Hasta La Gadget!

HP’s stock is climbing in after hours trading from news of the company’s quarterly financial results. The Palo Alto firm has posted a profit of $1.2 billion for the first quarter, which is based on revenues of $28.4 billion. While the results fared better than HP’s previous expectations, both profit and revenue have fallen year-over-year for the Silicon Valley mainstay, down 16 percent and six percent, respectively. With respect to the company’s divisions, personal systems, printing, enterprise, services and software have each taken a hit from the previous year, with HP’s financial services segment being the only unit to show growth (despite the fact that financing volume is also down). Beyond the sagging numbers, Meg Whitman is offering reason for optimism to investors, saying the company will bring “a number of new programs and disruptive innovations to market in the coming quarters, and we expect the benefits from our restructuring will accelerate through fiscal 2013.” For the complete breakdown of HP’s financial health, just hit up the source link.

Filed under: HP

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Source: Marketwatch

So, catch the big game on the, er, internet? Or, if you took our advice and used more traditional hardware, you may have caught Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd trying to outdo each other to become Samsung’s “Next Big Thing” promoters (only to be trumped by LeBron James), or a BlackBerry Z10 user turning a tanker truck into rubber duckies. Other tech ads included Best Buy’s “Ask Amy” with Amy Poehler in full-on adorkable mode, Sony’s cinematic PlayStation God of War teaser and a pair of skeevy / cleverish Godaddy ads. We also got a sneak peak at the trailers for Iron Man 3 and Zombie apocalypse / Brad Pitt starrer World War Z. Finally, Star Trek: Into Darkness launched another teaser, which notably featured the debut of the Apple Store’s “AppStore.com” short link. All-in-all, pretty weak sauce compared to last year, in our opinion — but you can decide for yourself after the break.

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Samsung, Sony, Blackberry

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What better way to start the year than to make predictions – some obvious, some not so obvious – as to what trends will become more widely used in the design community. Each year seems to bring new ideas to the community and once they gain enough traction, they eventually become the norm (we’re looking at you, “pull to refresh”). More »

We’re about to put a big year behind us, but there’s also a big one ahead. We can expect the launch of next-gen game consoles, an inevitable onslaught of phablets, the death/rebirth of RIM, maybe a retina iPad Mini and who knows what else. What prospects have your hopes up? What is it you really want to see (or desperately want to not see) in the coming year? More »

Samsung is looking to move around 20 percent more mobile phones in 2013 than it did in 2012, according to a new report from The Korea Times. The Korean electronics firm wants to ship 510 million phones in the New Year, which exceeds the 420 million it projected for 2012. The 2013 increase adds anticipated holiday sales to its existing 288 million total devices sold through September. Around 76 percent, or 390 million, of that 510 million will be smartphones, according to a key Samsung supplier speaking to the Korea Times.

These figures are very optimistic compared to earlier projections from Gartner, which pegged Samsung at around 300 million smartphone sales next year at the upper limit. Samsung has since shown itself as a very strong competitor in the latter half of the year, thanks to devices like the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2, which have helped the smartphone maker become the top global cellphone brand in 2012, finally overtaking Nokia to win that honor, according to iHS iSuppli projections.

While Samsung execs see a possible slowdown overall for smartphone demand, the company will offer Windows 8 devices and smartphones shipping with TIZEN – a joint project with Intel — in addition to its existing stable of Android-based handsets. It also claims in the report to be considering “better pricing” in developing markets to drive growth, and provide LTE-capable handsets at lower costs in more established markets like North America.

Put in perspective, Apple’s iPhone sales for 2012 totaled just over 125 million, so Samsung’s plan would see it outselling its strongest smartphone market rival by a considerable amount and outpacing its other Android handset maker rivals by even more of a gap. Given how strong the Korean electronics maker has come on in both the Android OEM race and overall smartphone market, that’s not too surprising or unrealistic an expectation for 2013.