Hasta La Gadget!

Well, that didn’t take long. Even though Brian Krzanich took over the reins at Intel a mere 12 days ago, he’s already authorized his first-ever acquisition. The chip giant announced it has purchased ST-Ericsson’s satellite navigation chip business unit, which was put up for sale as a result of the latter’s dissolving joint venture. Though terms haven’t been disclosed, the sale is said to have reduced the Swiss manufacturer’s annual need for cash by around $90 million. As for the sat nav unit, it’ll become a part of Intel’s mobile chip outfit headed under smartphone chief Mike Bell. It’s all certainly in line with Krzanich’s recent promise to make Intel more competitive in mobile, which should be key in its ever growing battle with that other mobile chip architecture.

Filed under: Cellphones, Networking, Intel

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Source: AllThingsD

ST-Ericsson was already in some tumult after the ST half of the partnership said it was exiting the venture late last year. As we’re discovering, there was a little more drama in store for 2013. CEO Didier Lamouche has resigned from the company for a tempting job prospect elsewhere, and there’s no named replacement for him so far — a slight problem when Lamouche will be out by March 31st. He’s leaving ST-Ericsson in a better state than he found it, as the company is scoring key deals for phones like the Galaxy S III Mini while getting its LTE chip plans on track. Nonetheless, we suspect that remaining owner Ericsson will want that power vacuum filled quickly when there’s already enough uncertainty ahead.

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless, Mobile

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Via: Computerworld

Source: ST-Ericsson

[MWC 2013] Today, Metaio announced an agreement with ST-Ericsson, in which the semi conductor manufacturer agrees to integrate  Metaio’s Augmented Reality hardware IP, also known as “AREngine”, into its upcoming mobile platforms via the “first application processor accelerating Augmented Reality performance on mobile devices”, according to Metaio.

We know Metaio from its Augmented Reality  mobile browser, and its multiple innovations in the field.

We do not know much about this new hardware from the information we got from Metaio, we need to ask for more details.  According to the company, the new chipset “will improve nearly all aspects of an Augmented Reality experience, yielding performance increases in speed, precision and power consumption, with up to 60 times faster initialization, more than an AR app running on existing platforms – the highest to date in the mobile industry”. In addition, Metaio claims that its AREngine “drastically reduces power consumption making all-day AR experiences possible”.

(more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: NVIDIA Tegra 4i LTE Processor, Slacker Music Application Rebranded,

MeeGo refugee Jolla has demonstrated its new Sailfish OS today, as well as announcing a deal with ST-Ericsson to run the platform on its mobile chips, and a carrier deal with Finland’s DNA. Revealed back in October, Sailfish focuses on “effortless multitasking” with the ability to run multiple apps simultaneously and even interact with them directly from the homescreen view. It also attempts to cut down on the taps, swipes, and pulls involved in checking status updates and notifications, and promises easy compatibility with Android apps.

The homescreen-level interaction, Jolla suggests, means Sailfish will be the most streamlined and speedy OS for users to navigate through. For instance, they’ll be able to pause a song or end an ongoing call without having to open the respective apps themselves: you can swipe a finger across the music player app thumbnail to the left to pause playback, or to the right to skip to the next track.

Sailfish also has a so-called “Pulley Menu” for “fast and effortless interaction” and the open-source SDK is already being fleshed out. It consists of components including Qt, the Mer Core, and the Linux kernel, and can turn its hand to duties on smartphones, tablet, smart TVs, in-car systems, and other applications. Jolla will have a copy of the version shown off today “very soon.”

According to Jolla, many Android apps will run on Jolla devices with no modifications. However, there’ll need to be tweaks made if best use of Sailfish is desired “If you want to take advantage of all UI and other features of Sailfish OS and make yourapplications fast,” the Sailfish SDK wiki explains, ”you can port your applications to native QT/QML.” That’s the full version of Qt, too, along with HTML5, though there won’t be DRM support.

Jolla also has its first carrier onboard, with DNA set to get the first Sailfish-based devices and be part of what the company says will be “a network of partners” around the OS “during the coming year.”

Jolla isn’t content with just one chipset partner, however. “ST-Ericsson’s NovaThor platform combined with Sailfish OS will enable vendors to bring highly competitive mobile products to the market. We welcome other players in the mobile industry to join and contribute to this game changing movement” Jolla CEO Marc Dillon said today. “We also target to announce other chipset provider partnerships soon.”

Update: MTV3 has a hands-on video demo of Sailfish here. [Thanks Kote!]

Jolla’s Sailfish spills its MeeGo-reborn secrets: Carrier & chip deals inked is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
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