Hasta La Gadget!

Sennheiser is busting out a pair of personal audio products worth boasting about at this year’s IFA. First up is the very fashionable Momentum, a pair of chrome and leather cans that take cues from the Amperior reference design, with a 3.5mm stereo lead and optional smart remote. However, if you’re in the market for something a little less visible, the company’s CX 890i earphones are coated in a “glass-like” finish that offers “outsanding” passive noise attenuation — sparing you jacking up the volume to avoid your co-workers bickering. Both sets are available in the UK from September, with the Momentum costing £260 and the CX 890i (pictured after the break) a more modest £120.

Continue reading Sennheiser launches the Momentum retro-cans and CX890i earbuds

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video

Sennheiser launches the Momentum retro-cans and CX890i earbuds originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 30 Aug 2012 15:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More developments on Barnes & Noble’s plans to launch its Nook devices in the UK, the first market outside of the U.S. to see the e-readers and tablets: today the company has announced that it will sell the devices via John Lewis, a retail heaven for the UK’s middle class, but not a bookstore.

The 37-store chain, which markets itself with the tagline “never knowingly undersold,” will be selling devices starting with the Nook e-readers, the NOOK Simple Touch and NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight, beginning in October, as well as online. B&N says that more retail locations will follow in the autumn. B&N first announced its plans to finally launch in the UK earlier this month. It will also sell the devices directly through its own retail site.

Commercial terms of the partnership have not been disclosed.

B&N is ramping up its game in the UK as Amazon also prepares to launch the Kindle Fire in the UK. Amazon earlier this year inked a deal with Waterstones, a leading UK bookseller, to co-market the devices in its retail locations as well as online. Some saw this move as directly levelled against B&N, which had been widely expected to sign a similar deal with Waterstones.

The deal with John Lewis is a crucial one for B&N, which does not have any retail locations of its own in the UK: without a retail plan it would have been virtually impossible for B&N to replicate the model it has used to good effect in the U.S., using its physical bookstores to promote the Nook devices.

Still, it is but a small advance in terms of the kind of ubiquity that B&N has in the U.S., where it operates some 1,300 retail locations.

What’s interesting is that putting the devices at John Lewis pitches the Nook into much more of a consumer electronics — and less of a reading — marketing strategy. John Lewis is known for home goods, clothing and electronics — but not really books.

“John Lewis is where knowledgeable customers turn for trusted advice on the best products to purchase, and they are a perfect partner to help launch NOOK in the UK,” said Jamie Iannone, president of digital products at Barnes & Noble, in a statement. “We look forward to bringing more choice and convenience to discerning UK customers with our critically acclaimed line of reading devices and expansive selection of content.”

Samsung Electronics has been knocked hard on mobile phone design innovation in the last few days, but in what might be a spectacular display of diversionary tactics, it is also doubling down on another significant part of its business — chipmaking. Today, the Dutch semiconductor machine maker ASML announced that Samsung would be investing close to $1 billion — yes, more or less the same amount for which the jury in California held it liable over Apple patent violations on Friday — towards R&D and an equity stake in the business. In doing so, Samsung will be joining Intel, which took a 10% stake in ASML in July for $2.1 billion.

Samsung’s interest in ASML —  along with another investor, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s – was registered at the time of the Intel investment, and today’s announcement makes a point of saying that Samsung will “commit” the funds. That implies although the deal isn’t signed, sealed and delivered, Samsung was keen to get some news out quickly that pointed to it coming out fighting in the wake of the bad news delivered on Friday.

ASML describes itself as “one of the world’s leading providers of lithography systems for the semiconductor industry.”

The machines it makes, which employs a technique called extreme ultraviolet lithography, can help speed up the production of more powerful and smaller semiconductors — an essential component of smartphones, tablets and other devices. As Samsung pointed out in its internal memo to employees in response to the jury verdict, Apple is one of its most important customers for this part of the business.

Under the terms of the “commitment” announced today, ASML says that Samsung Electronics will put €276 million ($345 million) into ASML’s research and development program over the next five years. The company had targeted total backing of €1.38 billion for that R&D program, and it says that has now been met.

Separately to this, Samsung will also investing €503 million ($629 million) for a 3% equity stake in ASML. In total, Samsung, Intel and TSMC have 23% of ASML, equivalent to €3.85 billion, which will get returned to shareholders in a share buyback scheme.

Provided that Samsung has to pay the full penalties recommended by the jury, and that it follows through on its ASML investment, that $2 billion potentially will weigh heavy on profits in a typical quarter, especially if there are any injunctions attached to the first of those. In Q2, Samsung Electronics made $6 billion in operating profits — essentially, the news of the last couple of days would have wiped out one-third of that.

Worth pointing out that at the moment, the shining star for Samsung is its mobile phone business — which includes its Galaxy line of Android-based smartphones, the same ones that were the subject of the lost U.S. lawsuit. At the same time, its chip business actually declined by 6% in terms of revenue — a sign that Samsung needs to continue investing in the division to keep it in fighting form.

While we will still have to wait and see if Samsung will have to pay up the full amount of damages, and whether it will have longer injunctive effects, the ramifications have already come out in short-term investor activity. Just look at the drop in how Samsung’s stock performed in trading this morning, dropping nearly 8%:

(via Yahoo Finance)

Thorsten Heins is assembling his crack team for BlackBerry 10, hiring and firing to assemble the lineup of business heavyweights he needs. RIM’s UK and Ireland chief Stephen Bates is the latest to move, being promoted into the newly-minted role of European Managing Director, while former product manager Rob Orr will take his place. A RIM spokesperson told ZDNet that the moves are to ensure the company’s BB7 legacy devices remain strong sellers in a key market while preparing the region for the advent of BB10.

Filed under: Cellphones

RIM promotes UK and Ireland head in preparation for BlackBerry 10 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Aug 2012 04:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve heard a lot of rumors in the last year, but now Barnes & Noble has finally unveiled its first official  plans for taking its Nook tablets and e-readers to markets outside of the U.S. Today it announced that it will be launching the devices, starting first with the e-readers, in the UK in October, along with a new UK online storefront for the Nook digital bookstore (2.5 million digital titles) and “partnerships with leading retailers” to sell them.

The move comes as B&N’s arch rival Amazon gears up to launch the Kindle Fire in the UK — in a deal with leading book retailer Waterstones that includes other Kindle devices as well as e-books. Both the Kindle Fire and the Nook are built on forked versions of Google’s Android OS.

The news also comes at a time when people are scrutinizing how well the Nook line of devices is performing, questioning what sort of an impact Microsoft’s $300 million investment in B&N will have longer-term.

Prior to Amazon announcing a Waterstones agreement, many had thought that B&N would partner with the UK bookseller itself as a way of getting its Nook line of readers and tablets into the UK market. The CEO of Waterstones had publicly praised Waterstones, and reviled Amazon as a devil.

In the absence of a Waterstones deal, B&N now promises “partnerships with leading retailers,” although it has yet to specify any names. It also says that pricing for the Nook readers and tablets will be revealed closer to the date of commercial launch.

Amazon already offers its Kindle e-readers in a number of global markets, and in that sense this is about B&N catching up: “The first products to be available when the company begins offering its products in the UK in mid-October,” it notes, “include Barnes & Noble’s line of…E Ink Readers, NOOK Simple Touch and NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight.”

The company does not specify when its tablets will be entering the mix.

B&N has for months now been building up its presence in the UK and the rest of Europe, so this may well be a first-move into the rest of the region. In March, the company incorporated in Germany and started to hire there. It has also been running events to cozy up to Android developers in the UK — although in the absence of local billing, and more concrete details on device launches here, that perhaps hasn’t been as buzzy as B&N would have hoped.

The company is due to report its quarterly earnings this week, and all eyes will be on how well its digital and device strategies are holding up, in the wake of people reading less paper books and general problems that have befallen other traditional booksellers like Borders.

Judging by how B&N has marketed the Nook in the U.S., its retail partnerships in the UK will be key to how well it does here. The company doesn’t have any physical stores of its own, and yet its sales strategy in the U.S. has been heavily based on promoting the devices in-store, creating reading areas and offering users free reading time while in the retail location. Whether it will take the same approach here has yet to be made clear. But again the fact that Waterstones, the biggest physical bookseller in the UK, is not going to be among those stocking it will inevitably be a setback in that sense.

The Nook tablet has less than 5% of the U.S. market for tablets at the moment, according to IDC. B&N says that it has sold “millions” of Nook devices to date.