Hasta La Gadget!

You don’t have to look much further than the millions of Galaxy Notes sold to realize that Samsung is serious about the stylus, but the company’s now made that commitment clearer than ever by buying a piece of Wacom. It’s not the biggest of investments for a company of Samsung’s size, but the $58.9 million it’s laid out will give it a five percent voting stake in the company, and a further in with what is one of the world’s leading stylus makers. According to Wacom, its share of the global pen tablet market stands at a whopping 85 percent, and its sales of its components for use in smartphones and tablets have nearly doubled from 2011 to 2012.

As for where the new cash infusion will be put to use, Wacom says that by March of 2014 the entire net amount raised from the sale of shares will be invested in “product development and manufacturing and supply system enhancements for products to be supplied to Samsung Electronics,” adding that it aims to “expand its relationship” with Samsung even further.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

Comments

Via: Phone Arena

Source: Wacom (PDF)

This week there’s no hiding the fact that the public remains uncertain that they’ve been convinced by BlackBerry 10 after its first launch event. The company known until this week as RIM has re-branded itself as BlackBerry as they should have done long ago, this also creating an unacceptable amount of confusion for the consumer at large. Now we’ve got a “new” operating system on a couple of “new” smartphones created by a company with a “new” name – investors certainly must be praying for some additional tricks to be pulled out of the company’s sleeve quickly.

The pricing of the all-touch smartphone BlackBerry has revealed this week as the BlackBerry Z10 has a price point of $199 – that’s in general and not solidified as subsidized or off-contract. Several carriers in the USA and many abroad have let it be known that they are ready for BlackBerry 10 action without precisely targeting timeframes or pricing on their units, with many questions about how much business users will be paying both initially and through the course of time for their BlackBerry 10 machines and service.

When you experience a launch event for a brand new rebirth of an operating system complete with two new hero devices for that OS, you see one of two things. The first is a clean “this is what we have and this is why you want it” showing that depends on the quality of the products and their solid presentation of their total package – BlackBerry did not do this. The second way of presenting a new era in your company is to bring in a collection of videos that do not reveal new information while you show the products you’ve got here and there between odd announcements about new staff members and special offers for “early adopters”. This is what BlackBerry did.

BlackBerry did not inspire confidence in the public to the degree that they needed to, and the products they showed this week were not as groundbreaking as the position RIM has been in recently required. While BlackBerry has a chance to ride BlackBerry 10 out for a few seasons more, the products and services we’ve seen so far cannot be the full extent of the company’s offerings. BlackBerry needs to show something wholly unique and they need to do it soon.

BlackBerry 10 = BleakFuture is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you haven’t yet upgraded to Windows 8, you might want to do that today. Starting tomorrow, that $39 Windows 8 Pro upgrade deal will jump to $199, while a normal Windows 8 upgrade will cost $119. We gave you a fair warning a couple of weeks ago, so if you’ve been procrastinating, today’s the deadline before you’ll have to pony up even more money.

In the past, Microsoft offered a promotional deal when Windows 8 launched where users of Microsoft’s older operating systems, such as Windows 7 and Vista, could upgrade to Windows 8 Pro for only $39.99. Frankly, it’s pretty fantastic deal, not quite as good as Apple’s $19 upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion, but we’ll still take it. However, if you don’t take the deal today, you’ll suffer tomorrow.

$199 is definitely a steep cost for an upgrade, but the company will be offering a regular Windows 8 upgrade for $119 if it turns out that you don’t need all the Pro features. If you’re already on Windows 8 but want to upgrade to the Pro version, Microsoft will sell those for $99 starting tomorrow as well.

What’s perhaps even more of a deal, is that Microsoft is letting anyone who bought a Windows 7 machine between June 2, 2012 and January 31, 2013 an upgrade offer to Windows 8 Pro for only $14.99, which is the best deal yet for upgrading to Microsoft’s latest OS. We’ve warned you once, and we’re warning you twice. Take the deal now, or be subject to ridicule starting tomorrow.

Windows 8 upgrade discount officially ends today is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re using Chromium in Windows, you can now get a notification center. The feature’s just in a developmental stage right now, but it could lead to some neat developments with Chrome that tie it closer to the Android operating system. More »

Mega and Megaupload sprang forth from the same loins so maybe it’s unsurprising that Kim Dotcom’s latest venture into the world of file sharing is already running into problems. Here we go again kids. More »