Hasta La Gadget!

This week the folks at Qualcomm have revealed earnings for their fiscal Q1 of 2013, offering rather positive news for shareholders: a better outlook for the rest of the year than previously expected. With announcements of the new Snapdragon 800 and 600 series processors earlier this month, Qualcomm has revealed that they’re now in a position that’s ripe for growth throughout the upcoming year: “We are pleased to be raising our revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2013.”

Qualcomm’s fiscal Q1 for 2013 included the months leading up to December 30, 2012, and included a fabulous $6.02 billion in revenue for the group, this representing a 29% boost compared to the same quarter one year ago. This is also a 24% upward trend compared to the company’s Q4 of 2012, that being the quarter that went directly before the one being reported today. Operating income for Q1 2013 went up 35% year-over-year to $2.09 billion USD while Net income came to $1.91 billion, that being 36% more than it was last year at this same time.

The operating cash flow reported by Qualcomm for this quarter was a mighty $1.98 billion USD, this equaling out to be 33 percent of revenues and a boost of 11% year-over-year. As far as Qualcomm’s “key business metrics” for the quarter go, MSM chip shipments were reported to have reached 182 million units, this representing a 17 percent growth in shipments compared to this same quarter one year ago. Total device sales for this quarter ended up being an amazing $53.3 billion USD total, that being 29% higher than it was one year ago.

This quarter also showed an estimated 233 to 237 million 3G/4G device shipments, each of these between the prices of $224 and $230 on average – that’s massive. Qualcomm has reported their cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities to have totaled $28.4 billion USD at the end of the quarter being reported here, this compared to $22 billion on year ago. Have a peek at the timeline below to see other recent Qualcomm accomplishments and big announcements to see where the company is headed in 2013 – up and up!

[via Qualcomm]

Qualcomm Q1 2013 earnings shows surprise boost in future fiscal season is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week it’s been made clear – or perhaps just clearer than ever before – that a company able to manufacture its own device components is a company that will thrive. According to the readouts from Gartner showing 2012′s top consumers in the semiconductor universe specifically, Samsung and Apple are out in front of the pack – by a significant margin. Semiconductors, mobile processors, and hardware from displays to memory cards are all a part of this puzzle, and as the two next entries on that list show with double-digit percentage drops show, it’s not just Apple and Samsung that are floating upward here coming into 2013, it’s mobile smart devices as a whole (and all their little bits and pieces).

Samsung is a company that has the ability to create each of the most vital bits, (like their Exynos processor for mobile devices), for each smartphone and tablet it puts on the market. They are the company that went through the most semiconductors in the market in the world in 2012, and they’re making these components themselves. While companies like LG and Lenovo create devices and need billions of dollars worth of semiconductors too, they need groups like Qualcomm and NVIDIA to manufacture those pieces of hardware for them.

So while Samsung is indeed made up of several different businesses, one that makes displays, another that makes processors, another that designs smartphones, it’s still the brand Samsung that profits from one part consuming products from another. So when you see Samsung at the top of the global semiconductor customers list in 2012, a big chunk of that change is being kept in the family. Meanwhile even the third place company HP must rely on groups like Intel in a large way for the architecture in their machines.

Groups like Qualcomm and NVIDIA rely on the companies that do not manufacture their own device innards, on the other hand, so it’s not as if there’s only one perfect model here created by these top companies with their own supplies. Qualcomm creates mobile modems that sit in a large cross-section of the smartphones you see on the market today, while NVIDIA’s Tegra line of processors all but dominated the first wave of Android tablets and Super Phones that came out across 2011.

You’ll find the Qualcomm Snapdragon line of processors coming out in some of the most popular smartphones over the past year, too, including none other than Samsung’s Galaxy S III. What we’re going to be seeing here through 2013 – and what we’ve begun to see already – is Samsung sticking with their own Exynos processor lineup as much as they can muster. Meanwhile groups like ViewSonic, Toshiba, and ASUS will continue to work with NVIDIA and HTC, LG, and Nokia will opt for Qualcomm. Of course those partnerships aren’t definitive by any means, and several of the companies have gone between Qualcomm, NVIDIA, Texas Instruments (now out of the mobile processor business), and others in the past.

There’s also a cross-over happening on the part of NVIDIA with their first production device by the name of Project SHIELD. This is a mobile gaming handheld that’s branded by NVIDIA and includes both the Tegra 4 processor and their own Icera modem. we’ll just have to wait and see who they worked with to create the rest of the components in the final build, but for now, the point is clear: it seems clear that creating your own device, top to bottom, is becoming more and more preferable by companies with the ability to work with such a process.

Samsung and Apple one-brand manufacturing puts competition on notice is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

At today’s Qualcomm QRD Summit in Shenzhen, China Mobile sent its Deputy General Manager of Products Wang Hengjiang to share some hardware stats. In 2012, over 60 million TD-SCDMA devices were sold, with December alone pumping out over seven million units. To put that into perspective, there are now over 220 million 3G phone users in China (as of end of November), meaning the carrier still has plenty of catching up to do as it had a late start in the 3G game. That said, Wang also announced that China Mobile aims to sell twice as many TD-SCDMA devices this year, with smartphones expected to take up over 80 percent of that segment — hardly a challenge considering they already reached 94.4 percent in the last quarter. Wang added that out of the 120 million units to be sold this year, half of them will be customized by China Mobile — presumably so that it can choose its own bloatware, right?

As for TD-LTE, China Mobile expects its 4G technology to bloom in China some time between 2014 and 2015, as it continues to help the development of devices that natively support five modes (GSM, TD-SCDMA, UMTS, FD-LTE and TD-LTE) along with 10 to 12 bands. Obviously this is the very reason why China Mobile is getting cosy with Qualcomm, the company who has SoCs that support all these radios. Wang added that ahead of the full launch of TD-LTE, his company will be initiating user trials for TD-LTE data devices and phones throughout 2013 — the first half of the year for the former, and the second half for the latter. Well, we only have three words for China Mobile: hurry up already!

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

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Today Sony has made a bit of a soft announcement of their next-generation hero tablet, that being the Xperia Tablet Z: complete with a quad-core processor and a rather thin body. This machine is just about as strait up rectangular a tablet as we’ve ever seen with extremely tight (but not quite square) corners and what appears to be a slightly odd aspect ratio bezel around its 10.1-inch display. The Sony Xperia Tablet Z is also set to bring on none other than Sony’s own “S-Force” virtual surround sound system – strange stuff!

The reason we’re not exactly 100% solid on the specifications as we’d normally be with a release straight from the manufacturer is the fact that this is a bit of a third-hand sort of situation. While we see Engadget posting it from Blog of Mobile, they in turn are getting it from Sony Mobile‘s Japan-based hub. This means that even though this tablet will be hitting shelves in Japan with these specifications, we’ll likely see more than a couple changes by the time we see it in the USA (or outside the islands, for that matter).

This tablet is set to come in at least two color combination – on the back, anyway – and it’ll be coming with no less than the excellent Qualcomm Snapdragon APQ8064 quad-core SoC clocked in at 1.5GHz. This will be paired with 2GB of RAM, 4G LTE connectivity (and a wi-fi only edition we must assume) as well as an 8.1-megapixel camera on the back. This back-facing camera works with Exmore R technology and will likely be a star in Sony’s promotion of the unit overall.

The display on this machine is not quite as massively dense with pixels as the Google Nexus 10, but it’s tight nonetheless: 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution working with Mobile Bravia Engine 2 technology – we’ll see soon what kind of display it is, be it IPS or AMOLED – with the jumps we’re seeing here over previous model Xperia tablets, there’s no knowing what the Sony team is bringing forth. This tablet also works with NFC, has a microSD card slot for memory expansion, and the whole package is both waterproof and dustproof (though the exact amount of both we’re still waiting on, too).

Inside the machine you’ll find a 6,000mAh battery and the whole unit will be coming in at a super thin 6.9mm and 495g in weight. This machine is a rather large leap forward for Sony from any of their previous tablets – have a peek at our recent review of the Tegra 3-toting Xperia Tablet S to see how far the company has come in a relatively short time. Note the software there too, because we’re quite likely going to be seeing something rather similar soon!

Expect to see this at Mobile World Congress 2013 next month – we’ll be there with bells on!

Sony Xperia Tablet Z revealed with not-quite-Nexus specs is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Thinking about beefing up your IP profile? Try giving IBM a call. For twenty consecutive years, it’s been awarded more patents than any other company. According to IFI Claims Patent Services, IBM was issued 6,478 patents in 2012. To put things into perspective, its closest competitor, Samsung, trailed Big Blue by nearly 1,500 patents. No small wonder the company is the tech world’s intellectual property broker.

Some of the year’s biggest patent warriors made the top 50 list too. Both Apple and Google’s patent awards grew significantly over previous years, surpassing 2011’s numbers by 68 and 170 percent, respectively. The house that T.J. Waston built, on the other hand, grew only a meager 4.8 percent. Still, with patents in health, banking, defense, social networking, cloud computing and beyond, IBM probably has a few years left at the top. Ever onward, IBM. Ever onward.

Continue reading IBM caps two decades as heavyweight champion of the patent world

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Via: CNET, NYT

Source: IFI Claims