Hasta La Gadget!

Intel’s been trying to break into the home entertainment market for years, and while it’s made some inroads, it’s also looking at a notable list of ho hum attempts that never managed to gain traction. Take the CE3100 processor, for instance — a couple of years ago, the outfit seemed certain that this here chip would be powering every last living room box for the rest of eternity, and nowadays it’s hardly a household name. But this week, Intel has picked up Texas Instruments’ cable modem unit, which gives it a direct link into the very area it’s been trying to exploit. The goal of the acquisition — which is scheduled to close in the fourth quarter of this year — is to combine TI’s Puma product lines with DOCSIS and Intel SoCs. Once that magical marriage takes place, Chipzilla intends to push out complex set-top boxes, residential gateways and modem products, possibly even going for the OEM artery. Details beyond that are few and far betwixt, but we doubt it’ll be too long before the pickup begins to bear fruit.

Continue reading Intel acquires TI’s cable modem unit, might be sneaking into your AV rack

Intel acquires TI’s cable modem unit, might be sneaking into your AV rack originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 13:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clearly dissatisfied with what it sees in the mirror, Panasonic has today announced its decision to bulk up. A new share issue expected to raise ¥500 billion ($5.7 billion) will be enacted soon as part of raising the cash to complete the buyout of Sanyo Electric and Panasonic Electric Works. Don’t ask us why a company named Panasonic has to buy another company with Panasonic in its name, but them’s the facts. The total outlay is expected to come in at around $9.4 billion and is justified by Panasonic as fundamental to its future strategy of expanding into environmentally friendly tech and developing a three-pronged operating paradigm by 2012. The Osaka-based company is also reporting a ¥43.7b ($498 million) profit for the last quarter — a major upswing from a ¥53b loss in the same period last year — though that’s information the market seems to have ignored. Panasonic shares have plunged down 7.7% in the immediate aftermath of the acquisitions being announced, while Sanyo’s have shot up. Click past the break for the novella-sized press release explaining the details of the deal.

Continue reading Panasonic to spend $9.4b on buying out Sanyo and PEW shares, posts robust quarterly profits

Panasonic to spend $9.4b on buying out Sanyo and PEW shares, posts robust quarterly profits originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 06:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re having a hell of a time believing this, but BusinessInsider’s Dan Frommer is citing “a source familiar with the negotiations” as saying that RIM, Google, and Apple — yes, Apple — were all in the mix for Palm at one point or another as the bidding war went on earlier this year. We all know how that story ended up playing out, but prior to HP’s winning bid, RIM allegedly made a generous offer and could’ve ultimately come away with the prize had it not failed to re-up the bid (and may have even reduced it, looking at Palm’s SEC filings) after HP made its move. For its part, Google apparently made some not-too-serious moves, primarily in a perceived head game with Apple.

Speaking of Apple, the company was said to be in it primarily for Palm’s sizable patent portfolio — but is claimed to have also been interested in keeping the platform alive, possibly in an effort to compete in the physical QWERTY market where the iPhone has not. Of course, if you look way back, it’s important to remember that Mac OS X itself is based on outside work (if you consider NeXT “outside”), so we guess that keeping webOS alive in some capacity after an Apple acquisition wouldn’t be totally unprecedented — but it’d still be really, really weird at best.

Apple, RIM, Google all bid on Palm? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember our old friend Twidroid? You know, the app that came out as cream of the crop in our little Android Twitter client round-up? Things are about to get interesting again — following today’s acquisition of said app, SEO firm TweetUp has renamed its latest trophy to Twidroyd to avoid upsetting a certain Mr. Lucas. The bigger news, though, is that we’re told this action-packed app will be preloaded “on millions of upcoming Android phones from five of the leading handset manufacturers.” That’s a pretty bold statement to make, especially considering it wasn’t long ago when Twitter Inc. pushed out its own Android client, but we’ll happily accept this freebie anyway.

Continue reading Twidroid acquired by TweetUp, soon to be bundled with new Android phones as Twidroyd

Twidroid acquired by TweetUp, soon to be bundled with new Android phones as Twidroyd originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, it looks like HP’s year of acquisitions isn’t showing any signs of letting up just yet — it’s now reportedly bought Melodeo, the parent company of the Nutsie music streaming service, for between $30 and $35 million. While the service doesn’t exactly have the name recognition of the now Apple-owned Lala, Nutsie’s mobile applications (for iPhone, Android and Blackberry) have reportedly been downloaded more than two million times, and the company already has partnerships with a range of carriers and cellphone companies including Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. As TechCrunch reports, however, what might be most interesting is what the company has in store for Nutsie 3.0 — it will apparently let you copy your entire iTunes library to the cloud and access any song on demand (it currently offers a more limited service that only offers a shuffle mode). We’ll let you take the Palm / WebOS speculation from there.

HP buys Melodeo, brings Nutsie music streaming service into the fold originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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