TechEye |  |
- People in a muddle over devices
- Carmakers mock Apple’s move into their industry
- Lenovo continues to spy on Thinkpads
- Nvidia tinkers with its high end
- Nintendo joins Khronos for open source Vulkan
- Flat panel makers switch direction
- IBM introduces cloud security technology for apps
- Enterprises consider internet of things strategic
- Cars drive internet of things
- Notebook makers stuffed by Intel
| People in a muddle over devices Posted: 23 Sep 2015 03:40 AM PDT
Ranjit Atwal, a research director at Gartner said: "Users are extending the lifetime of their devices or deciding not to replace their devices at all." All the categories Garner surveyed show a decline in shipments except for mobile phones. And in that category, smartphone shipments will increase by 14 percent this year. India and Indonesia will show a growth of 43 percent this year, but mainland China will only grow by three percent. Gartner believes that by 2017 mobile shipments will hit two billion, with smartphones representing 89 percent of the market. The analysts believe that businesses won't start adopting Windows 10 until 2017, when the PC market will show a four percent growth. Tablet sales this year will fall by 13 percent compared to 2014, with 192 million units shipping. People aren't replacing their devices. And 54 percent of the people surveyed don't intend to buy new notebooks, but go for an alternative gizmo. Atwal said that currency devaluation and price increases will mean businesses hold back from replacing notebooks. People with tablets with screen sizes of seven to eight inches are not replacing their devices. |
| Carmakers mock Apple’s move into their industry Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:18 AM PDT
Apple yesterday leaked that it was hoping to save its bacon with a move to car making on the sound basis that an electric car is just a big smartphone with wheels and an engine. Apple has been desperate to find something to replace its fast shrinking smartphone and tablets and its move into smartwatches failed to pay off. Former GM and BMW executive Bob Lutz appeared on CNBC and completely dismantled the notion that Apple has even a fighting chance to make even the tiniest dent in the auto industry. He said that shareholders in Apple should be furious that the company is moving from a high margin toy making operation to a low margin automobile business/ "You can't show me one company in the world that, to date, has made a nickel on electric cars. They are generally money losers and the only reason that everyone is producing them is because they are necessary to meet European fuel economy regulations and U.S. fuel economy regulations. There is absolutely no reason to assume that Apple is going to be financially successful in the electric car business," he said. Lutz bluntly said that Apple getting into the car business would be nothing more than a huge waste of money. Part of the problem is that Apple has no expertise in batteries. They don't make batteries. The specialised electrochemical companies make batteries and Apple is going to buy batteries like everyone else. And when it comes to actually making cars, there is no reason to assume that Apple, with no experience, will suddenly do a better job than General Motors, Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota or Hyundai. The Tame Apple Press of course is furious that Lutz would dare to say that Apple would make anything low margin and that it would be less than perfect at anything. " Apple, a notoriously stingy company, is likely the last company that would simply throw tens of billions of dollars down the drain so casually," sniffed BGR. In other words -“Don’t they know that Apple is perfect and makes no mistakes.” Lutz said that Apple could get Hyundai, Kia or a Chinese manufacturer to manufacture the cars for them and then they would put all of their software and interconnectivity in it afterwards. "I don't see the advantage to that… But to say that [Apple] is going to do it with an electric car which is, from a cost standpoint, [that's] the toughest way to go. And by the way, the electric car market is still miniscule. That just doesn't make sense… If I were a board member of Apple, I'd ask some serious questions about this thing." His comments follow those of former GM CEO Dan Akerson who all but said that Apple has no idea what it's doing when it comes to cars. And Mercedes-Benz chief Dieter Zetsche has said that he sees no rationale behind Apple entering an industry with a relatively low return on investment.
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| Lenovo continues to spy on Thinkpads Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:17 AM PDT
One would think that a company being watched like a hawk to make sure that it did not spy on customers to sell secrets to the Chinese government would be super careful. However it seems that Lenovo is continuing to make software which accesses customer data. First there was the Superfish scandal where they were found to be pre-loading ad software that was so poorly implemented that it left customers vulnerable to serious security flaws. Then it was caught modifying the BIOS, to insure that, no matter what a customer did, its software got installed. In the end, Lenovo updated the BIOS not to muck around with the installed copy of Windows. We had hoped Lenovo had learnt its lesson, after it said that the Lenovo Service Engine software does not come loaded on any Think-branded PCs. But security expert Michael Horowitz wrote on ComputerWorld that he found some troubling info in the task scheduler database of two thinkpads. He found there was an entry called “Lenovo Customer Feedback Program 64″. It was running daily. According to the description in the task scheduler: “This task uploads Customer Feedback Program data to Lenovo”. The program that runs daily is Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.Agent.exe and it resides in folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Lenovo\Customer Feedback Program. Other files in this folder are Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.Agent.exe.config, Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.InnovApps.dll and Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.OmnitureSiteCatalyst.dll. Omniture is an online marketing and web analytics firm, and SiteCatalyst is a service application for client-side web analytics. The Lenovo Experience Improvement system uninstalls itself after 90 days. The document mentions that it can also be manually uninstalled from the Control Panel “Programs and Features” where it is listed as “Lenovo Experience Improvement”. Lenovo repeatedly mentions, in document HT102023, that the data it collects is not “personally identifiable information”. It also states that the only apps for which it collects data are its own. And, Lenovo.TVT.CustomerFeedback.Agent.exe gets a clean bill of health at Virus Total where it was first seen in May of 2014. |
| Nvidia tinkers with its high end Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:15 AM PDT
The GeForce GTX 980 has not shipped with the traditional "M" on the end of the model number. For Nvidia fans looking to buy a notebook with the chip inside it, that would not be a problem – they would know that this was not a mobile chip. Nvidia has done its best to configure the GPU so that it will not drain the battery too fast. It has made some careful optimisations of the components that accompany the GPU. This includes changes to the memory, voltage regulation module, and PCB. This helped Nvidia take the full desktop GeForce GTX 980 GPU (GM204) and cram it into mobile form factors. These helped it achieve high frequencies at lower-than-typical voltages. The GPUs are paired to 7Gbps GDDR5 memory and heatsinks with up to 2X the cooling capacity. Notebooks powered by this GPU will be unlocked, and fully overclockable. And they'll also offer users the ability to alter fan curves. The GeForce GTX 980 will apparently allow notebooks powered by the GPU to push multiple screens or power VR gear. MSI GT80 is huge for a mobile PC, and packs in a mechanical keyboard and 18.4" display and we suspect you will need to be as rich as Croesus to own one. But it is telling that the gaming market is becoming so important that Nvidia is prepared to tinker with its top of the range models to make them fit into notebooks – even if they are not true mobile chips. |
| Nintendo joins Khronos for open source Vulkan Posted: 23 Sep 2015 01:14 AM PDT
A NeoGaf post, noted that Nintendo’s name was added to the list of Khronos Group contributing members earlier this month. The news is somewhat surprising. Nintendo failed to make its membership public and it puts it on track to head down an unexpected route. Practically it means Nintendo has joined up with companies like Microsoft, AMD, Sony, Oculus and Nvidia to exert some influence over the development and promotion of license-free, royalty-free products using Khronos. As a Khronos Group contributor Nintendo has full voting rights and is empowered to participate in the group’s API development, but it doesn’t have a seat on the Khronos Group board and can’t participate in the final ratification process of new API specifications. If all of them went with it, it could see the big names in the graphics business focused on a single open sauce standard. Vulkan does seem to be moving forward with AMD saying it should have a chip using the standard next year. The only problem AMD is facing is that some of the hardware needed might be proprietary, but will move to pure Open Sauce eventually. |
| Flat panel makers switch direction Posted: 22 Sep 2015 06:59 AM PDT
It said that while shipments in August of notebook display panels grew by 21 percent compared to July, demand is still weak and there's heaps of inventory sitting in warehouses worldwide. Trendfore estimates that 41.74 million notebook display panels will ship in this, the third quarter, and that's a four percent drop compared to the second quarter. The third quarter was the boom time for notebook and PC sales, until recent years. The manufacturers of flat panels are now concentrating on high value products rather than vlime shipments, according to Trendforce. LG Display and Samsung – the leading South Korean vendors – will concentrate on wide view angle products – with between 25 and 30 percent of shipments using this format. Trendforce also expects there will be demand for wide view angle displays from so called 2-in-1 devices. Resolutions are now moving to Full HD and above but margins on these products are "razor thin" because of competition and price cutting. Trendforce believes that panels will Full HD or above will represent 20 percent of shipments during 2015 with those figures set to grow next year. |
| IBM introduces cloud security technology for apps Posted: 22 Sep 2015 06:49 AM PDT
Cloud Security Enforcer combines cloud identity management – which it dubs identity as a service – that helps enterprises uncover outside apps accessed by employees, including on mobile devices. IBM said that employees using apps are exposing enterprises to potentially dangerous security exposure. It said a third of employees at Fortune 1,000 firms share and upload corporate data on third party cloud apps. Risky things include people signing in with personal email addresses. IBM claims that 40 percent of mobile apps aren't secure before they're made available to the public. Big Blue said it has built this security feature into software including Box, Office 365, Google Apps, and salesforce.com. IBM claimed that the product uses "deep threat analytics" from its global intelligence network, IBM X-Force, which monitors the internet and analyses over 20 billion global security events daily. |
| Enterprises consider internet of things strategic Posted: 22 Sep 2015 06:39 AM PDT
Different sectors are moving at different speeds, however. IDC said that the healthcare industry is ahead of the game, followed by transportation and manufacturing. But government lags behind, the report said. IDC surveyed 2,500 respondents from 15 countries and claims that has shown that the internet of things "is not just a concept but a real global accelerator of the third platform". But organisation are still chary about implementation, with security a major worry as well as putting up money and ongoing costs. And in 2015, hardware vendors fell behind software vendors in implenting products and plans. The retail industry, said IDC, is currently the underdog but that is set to change on the next 24 months. The enterprises surveyed by IDC included organisations with over 500 employees and 50 percent of those who responded had at least heard of the phrase internet of things. |
| Posted: 22 Sep 2015 06:30 AM PDT
ABI Research said that by 2020, there will be $60 billion worth of global telematics and "infotainment" service revenues. But the surprising thing is that it will be 3G and not 4G networks that will be the primary connection technology. 4G won't come into its own until after 2020, according to research director Dan Shey. He said that there will be exceptions to the general rule that vertical markets are slow to implement the latest technology – with the US, Korea and Japan implementing 4G but even then that won't happen until 2019 or 2019. By 2020, vendors including Ericsson, Verizon, Wireless Car and Airbiquity will grab the lion's share of the market. The car industry will also shift into a cloud based approach to connect everything up. ABI believes the IoT will be powered by open source hardware reference designs and third party mobile integration, putting pressure on existing vendors like Harman and Bosch to radically shift their design models. |
| Notebook makers stuffed by Intel Posted: 22 Sep 2015 06:17 AM PDT
According to Digitimes, Intel has put the introduction of Skylake chips and Kaby Lake on the back burner and that means that the vendors are waiting to see what happens before they finalise their own roadmaps. Normally the vendors and the original design manufacturers (ODMs) have finalised their plans for the coming year's models by September but the report said that some are now delaying the designs until the end of October or even November this year. Dell, apparently, won't put in their requests for quotations for their enterprise notebooks until February next year, while consumer notebooks are being decided on in November. 2016 has been a troubled year for the notebook industry, with big stocks building up in the channel and demand slow, even given the launch of Microsoft Windows 10. |
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