Posts Tagged ‘tablets’
Thursday, March 31st, 2011
HTC is now valued at 22.2 times reported earnings, compared with 10.6 for Acer. Only in February last year, HTC had a PE ratio of 11 times, while Acer was at 22.
Taipei-based HTC is the world’s largest maker of handsets using operating systems from Google and Microsoft. Acer is the world’s second-largest manufacturer of personal computers.
The wheel of fortune for the two companies seems to have turned as sales of smartphones and tablet computers grew at the expense of notebooks and personal computers.
Prior to the explosive growth, set off by Apple, of the smartphone and tablet sector, Acer had snatched the lead from Asus for a similarly explosive growth in the netbook sector.
From HTC’s low in February last year, it has rallied some 264 percent, while Acer has fallen by 36 percent. According to Kevin Chang from Citigroup, Acer is the biggest seller of consumer notebooks in the developed world.
In a report dated March 28, Chang wrote that “Consumers are not buying notebooks because they have already spent money on new tablet PCs or on upgrading their handsets from feature phones to smartphones.” He adds that Acer could become “a much smaller company in the next few years,” if tablet PC sales grow to exceed those for notebooks.
Not surprisingly, Chang has a “sell” rating on Acer’s stock and a “buy” recommendation on HTC.
A March 24 report from the Goldman Sachs Group estimates that HTC’s market worth may reach $100 billion in the next three to five years from $30 billion now, as the company ships a possible 200 million smartphones and 30 million tablet computers a year.
HTC’s value has quadrupled since reaching a low of $7.4 billion in February last year, while Acer’s market capitalization has declined to $5.6 billion from a peak of $9.4 billion reached in January 2010.
Tags:Acer, HTC, netbooks, smartphones, tablets
Posted in Acer, Android, Figures, Gadgets, HTC, Notebooks, Phones, Tablets, Tech news, Windows Phone 7 | No Comments »
Thursday, March 10th, 2011
Two product “evangelists” and the Product Manager of Flash Professional show designers and attendees how to design once but deploy to different hardware and software platforms and screen sizes.
Instead of designing for the standard desktop monitor at standard screen resolutions, end-users are accessing web content using a whole range of devices with different screen sizes/resolutions, and on different hardware and software platforms.
These devices range from the traditional PC to the whole range of smartphones and more recently the tablets and web TVs.
Flash Professional Product Manager, Richard Galvan, went through the trends of the day and predicted that the number of people surfing the Internet using smartphones and tablets will surpass the number using PCs by 2013 – maybe earlier.
He demonstrated how the existing and upcoming versions of Adobe’s Flash Professional and Flex application development platform facilitates the ability to develope apps only once but deploy to devices running different operating systems such as Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS and RIM’s BlackBerry.
The product “evangelists” Paul Burnett and Michael Stoddart also illustrated how the software assisted coders by providing features such as code hints, code completion and code snippets – so much so that even designers could have a go at the coding.
Some of the sneak peeks of features being explored for future products were also presented. Some of these were first shown in Adobe Max 2010 developer conference in October last year.
The beta version of the BlackBerry Playbook, which made its first appearance during Adobe Max, was also displayed for the first time in Singapore.
Photoshop on a tablet?
Galvan also gave a demo on the recently released Wallaby – an experimental piece of software for converting Flash files into HTML5.
The simple animation he converted were identical before and after conversion – handy for banner ads without audio, video, or ActionScript.
Multi-touch interface for a future version of Photoshop?
Galvan believed that Flash and HTML5 were complementary instead of being mutually exclusive. He emphasised that Flash and HTML5 will continue to complement each other into the future, with Flash providing additional features and capabilities to HTML5 based content.
The roadshow was held at the NTUC auditorium at One Marina Boulevard from 8.30am to 5.30pm.
Tags:Adobe, Flash, Flex, smartphone, tablets
Posted in Adobe, Events, Flash, Gadgets, Notebooks, Phones, Photoshop, Software, Tablets, Technology | No Comments »
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Steve Jobs emerges from medical leave to unveil the iPad 2, an evolutionary upgrade of its predecessor, making it thinner, lighter and faster.
The iPad 2 was unveiled as anticipated on 2 Mar at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Specifications were in line with virulent speculations prior to the event. What was more uncertain was whether Steve Jobs would helm the launch.
He did, and Apple’s stock price rose $2.81 to $352.12 on the Nasdaq in a sign of investor confidence. The stock has risen 9.2% this year.
Steve Jobs has been on medical leave since 17 Jan but had stated that he would still “be involved in major strategic decisions for the company.” He is on his third period of medical leave in seven years and there has been rife rumours about how dire his health has become. For some, his attendance at the event was as important as the launch of the new tablet.
With 350,000 apps on the Apps Store, with 65,000 dedicated to the iPad 2, the tablet will hit US shelves on 11 March and ship internationally on 25 March. The $499 starting price is the same as the original iPad when it was first launched in Apr 2010.
Competitors already in the market include the Samsung Galaxy and Motorola Xoom – both Android-based tablets. Research In Motion plans to release four versions of its Playbook this year while HP will roll out the WebOS-based Touchpad.
Here are the more noteworthy features of the iPad 2:
- It’s available in white.
- Has 2 cameras for video conferencing: one front (VGA-quality), one back(720p).
- Faster: New A5 dual-core processor claimed to be twice as fast as the previous iPad.
- Faster: Graphics performance nine times faster than before.
- Thinner: by one-third to 8.8mm.
- Lighter: 1.3 pounds from 1.5 before.
Optional extras:
- Optional $39 HDMI adaptor that connects the iPad’s 30-pin port to an external display so that iPad’s display is mirrored on the external display.
- New magnetic protective case that puts the iPad to sleep when it is closed. Bendable and doubles up as an iPan stand. Comes in 10 colours (plastic ones: $39, leather: $69).
- iMovie and Garageband as Apps at $4.99 each on the Apps store
Pricing (original iPads are now $100 cheaper):
1. Wi-Fi only versions:
- 16GB: $499
- 32GB: $599
- 64GB: $699
2. Wi-Fi/3G devices:
- 16GB: $629
- 32GB: $729
- 64GB: $829
Tags:Apple, iPad, Steve Jobs, tablets
Posted in Apple, Events, Gadgets, Specifications, Tablets, Tech news, Technology | 1 Comment »
Thursday, February 24th, 2011
Have you received the invitation from Apple?
Apple emailed the invitation to a media event in San Francisco that showed a calendar page with the date 2 March and the top right corner of the page peeling back to reveal an iPad underneath. The peek-a-boo iPad suggests that Apple may unveil its new version of the iPad during the event.
Earlier reports from Taiwan-based Yuanta Securities had surmised that the iPad launch might be delayed to June this year because of production bottlenecks at the China production line of Hon Hai – Apple’s Taipei-based contract manufacturer.
Indulging in my own bit of speculation, both schools of thought may not be untrue. We might actuallly see an iPad announcement on March 2 followed by the taking of orders, with deliveries only materialising in June, probably staged out based on country.
What with the legion of Android tablets being unveiled by the day, with specs that trounce the year old iPad, any delay in unveiling the upgraded specs of iPad 2 could create a negative impression in people that the iPad is inferior to Android tablets.
The announcement of iPad2 with all the specs that has been rumoured to ship with it should maintain its aura of invincibility that over challengers.
Apple certainly won’t want to announce the iPad 2 in June only to have people yawn at its specs, since by then it may already have been featured on the Android tablets out there.
Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy Tab was launched last year and was well-received. Motorola’s Xoom Android-based tablet goes on sale today, while Research In Motion plans to release four versions of its Playbook this year.
The original iPad went on sale on April 3. Announcing the iPad 2 on March would mean that it will follow an annual cycle of updates like the iPhone and iPod.
Tags:Android, Apple, Galaxy, iPad, Motorola, Playbook, RIM, Samsung, tablets, Xoom
Posted in Apple, Events, Opinion, Tablets, Tech news, Technology | 2 Comments »
