Sep 24
Manufacturers and consumers alike better brace themselves: memory chip prices have hit a two-year high because of a major fire in a massive Chinese production plant.
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Sep 06
Leaked Verizon doc prices Galaxy Note 3 at $699 retail, $299 with contract, $599 if you bundle the watch
Posted in: Today's Chili
AT&T and T-Mobile customers already know what they will have to cough up if they want to squeeze Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 into their pockets. Verizon customers, however, are currently in the dark — despite big red encouraging you commit in advance all the same. A reportedly leaked document received by AndroidSPIN pegs the phone at $699 sans-contract, or $299 if you sign on the dotted line for a two-year fling. Verizon seems keen to bundle in the Galaxy Gear, too, offering a joint package for $599 should you want to go all in. The pricing-curtain officially lifts at 9am ET, but here’s a head start if you need to count those beans. Take a squint at the image yourself past the break.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Via: Sammobile
Source: AndroidSPIN
Aug 27
We guessed Samsung wouldn’t be far behind LG in terms of its curved OLED’s European debut, and we were right. Starting this Wednesday, if you’re in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium or Italy you’ll be able to bring home a “flawless” screen for a mere €7,999 (around $10,697) — a full grand less than LG’s similarly-sized not-flat display. We’ve been wondering when we’d see the tech giants sparring again; thanks for not making us wait very long, Samsung.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD, Samsung
Source: Samsung Tomorrow, Samsung (Korean)
Aug 09
DOJ defends Apple e-book price fixing injunction, says publishers had it easy
Posted in: Today's Chili
The US Department of Justice isn’t buying publishers’ arguments that proposed injunctions against Apple for alleged e-book price fixing are excessive and contradictory. DOJ attorney Lawrence Buterman claims in a response letter that the penalties against Apple are necessarily harsher, since it didn’t settle the accusations like its reported co-conspirators. The group objection even justifies Apple’s punishment, Buterman claims; it suggests that publishers are just waiting until the end of a two-year ban on agency pricing to raise prices once again. The five-year restriction imposed on Apple could keep prices down for longer, the lawyer says.
Apple, meanwhile, isn’t done with its objections. In addition to an earlier request for a stay on proceedings pending an appeal, it now contends that the court excluded or ignored testimony while giving Amazon and Google witnesses too much credibility. The company will present more of its opinion at a conference today with both the DOJ and the presiding judge, but we’re not expecting a quick resolution — neither side is budging at this stage.
Filed under: Internet, Software, Apple
Source: Letters to the court (1), (2), (3), (4)
Jul 30
After going through a year-long rigmarole of summonses and interrogations to find out why Australians are being overcharged by as much as 66 percent on digitally-distributed Apple, Microsoft and Adobe products, and how the practice of “geo-blocking” prevents customers from seeking fairer prices elsewhere, an Australian parliamentary committee has finally hit on a solution. In the words of committee chairman Nick Champion, speaking to ABC News:
“What we want to do is make sure that consumers are aware of the extent to which geo-blocking applies to them and the extent to which they can lawfully evade [it].”
Now, if you were hoping that the Australian government would somehow force these companies to drop their prices down to US-equivalent levels, then this quote may admittedly sound a bit weak. It might also seem impractical, since geo-blocking is designed to be difficult to evade, by binding a customer’s IP address, credit card or other details to their home market. Then again, things start to make more sense when we factor in the committee’s other suggestions.
In particular, it proposes that the country’s Copyright Act be amended to make it clear that an Australian won’t be prosecuted just because they annoyed a multinational tech company by circumventing its geographic restrictions — and, indeed, the population as a whole should be taught “tools and techniques” to achieve this wherever possible. The committee even recommends that Australians should have a “right of resale,” such that they could legally remove locks on digital content that limits it to one user or one ecosystem. We have no idea how seriously the government will take these ideas, or how quickly it may implement them, but the committee’s defiant tone makes for some good reading at the source link.
Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Audio/Video, Internet, Software, Mobile
Via: ABC News, HotHardware
Source: Committee report (PDF download)
Jul 24
Take the $59.99 official price (before tax) for first-party Xbox One titles in the States, run it through your favorite currency convertor and you get something like £39. Add in Royal Baby taxes (aka VAT), incomplete globalization and whatever else, and it seems the final amount for UK buyers comes to £49.99 — a price tag that has appeared on games like Dead Rising 3 and Forza Motorsport 5 over at Microsoft’s UK web store. It’s not a surprising figure, and not too dissimilar to current Xbox 360 RRPs either, but it still seems high in a world that has seen Steam’s sales model bring prices down for PC gamers. Anyway, maybe it’s better not to get into all that again.
Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft
Via: Pocket-lint, VG247
Source: Microsoft Store UK
Jul 24
Ubuntu Edge pricing drops to $625 minimum on Indiegogo after initial sellout
Posted in: Today's Chili
So far, it seems that Canonical’s $32 million Ubuntu Edge smartphone Indiegogo campaign has been a roaring success, having raised over $3.5 million in about 40 hours. But after selling out all 5,000 units in the lowest $600 pricing tier, Canonical has added three new pledge levels. Initially, those who missed out on the one-day-only offer would’ve needed to cough up $830, but there are now $625, $675 and $725 rungs prior to that price, each with 1,250 of the linux-coated handsets available. Meanwhile, the counter at the original $830 second level — which had already been in the hundreds — has been reset, with all those buyers dropped to the new $625 tier. Canonical promised it would “refund the difference (to those buyers) at the end of the campaign,” adding it would contact each with more info. After setting an Indiegogo record by raising $2 million in about 8 hours, the fundraising inevitably slowed down, and the revised price tiers could be a response to that — either way, there’s still a steep climb to the gargantuan target.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Via: OMGUbuntu
Source: Indiegogo
Jun 13
Apple’s Eddy Cue acknowledges e-book price increases at antitrust trial, reveals talk of Amazon deal that would split books/music control
Posted in: Today's Chili
The issue of e-book prices, and alleged price fixing, has come up again and again in recent years, with the focus most recently shifting to a Manhattan courtroom where Apple is at the center of an antitrust trial. After revealing new details of the company’s market share yesterday, Apple’s Eddy Cue has today offered another piece of surprising news: that he and Steve Jobs once discussed a potential deal that would see Apple stay out of the ebook market if Amazon agreed stayed out of music. There’s no indication that went beyond the early discussion phase, or actually involved any discussions with Amazon, but it would obviously raise considerable antitrust questions had it gone any further.
As CNET and The Verge report, the DOJ is hoping that revelation will bolster its case that Apple engaged in antitrust practices to inflate ebook prices across the market. On that front, Cue, who the DOJ describes as the “chief ringleader of the conspiracy,” reportedly acknowledged that the prices of some ebooks did go up from April of 2010 (when it opened its iBookstore) through to 2012, but he attributed that to publishers unhappy with Amazon’s $9.99 pricing. Cue’s facing further questioning from Apple’s attorneys this afternoon, with the trial expected to wrap up by the end of next week.
Filed under: Apple
Jun 05
Gigabyte reveals prices, availability for NVIDIA-equipped U-Series Haswell notebooks
Posted in: Today's Chili
Since not everybody wants to lug an eight pound gaming machine or settle for a lightweight but graphics-challenged notebook, Gigabyte unveiled its U-series at Computex: two notebooks and an ultrabook with discreet NVIDIA graphics and 4th-generation Intel CPUs. The models build on the company’s last-gen 14-inch U2442 Ultrabook, which unlike most models in that category, carried GeForce GT640M graphics and a generous supply of ports while still maintaining a respectable 3.3 pound heft. Gigabyte’s looking to continue in that vein with the new models, which will all arrive by early August. To see a breakdown on all the pricing and specs, head after the break.
Gallery: Gigabyte U24F Press Gallery
Gallery: Gigabyte U24T Press Gallery
Filed under: Laptops
Jun 03
Acer has already managed to cram full Windows 8 into a $380 8-incher (shown above), but ARM-based Windows RT tablets have the potential to drive prices down even further — if only someone, somewhere would see their merit. According to Bloomberg, Microsoft is now trying to help things along by offering discounts to OEMs who’ll use RT in smaller tablets. The prices in question are confidential, so it’s hard to gauge the likely impact for consumers, but with Dell’s XPS 10 (shown above) still costing $400 with its dock, and with Surface RT fetching $500, there’s definitely scope for improvement.
Filed under: Tablets, Microsoft
Source: Bloomberg
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