Hasta La Gadget!

During a sitdown with reporters yesterday, NVIDIA Chief Executive Jen-Hsun Huang discussed his company’s near- and long-term financial outlook, while providing some insight into the chipmaker’s quad-core future. According to Huang, NVIDIA expects to rake in between $4.7 and $5 billion in revenue during fiscal year 2013, with revenue from its mobile chip unit projected to mushroom tenfold by 2015, to a whopping $20 billion. Huang acknowledged that these predictions could be affected by external factors, including the ongoing patent wars between tablet and smartphone manufacturers, but didn’t seem too concerned about their immediate impact. “At this point, it looks like it’s much ado about nothing,” he said. In fact, Huang foresees rather robust growth in the mobile processing sector, estimating that there are about 100 million devices that will need chips this year — a figure that could soon rise to one billion, on the strength of more affordable handsets, efficient ARM processors and the rise of ultra-thin notebooks. And, despite his recent disappointment, Huang expects Android tablets to comprise a full 50 percent of the market in the near future, claiming that NVIDIA’s Tegra chips can currently be found in 70 percent of all slates running Google’s OS, and about half of all Android-based smartphones.

In the short-term, meanwhile, NVIDIA is busy developing its quad-core mobile processors — which, according to the exec, should appear in tablets during the third or fourth quarter of this year (quad-core smartphones, however, may be further down the road). Huang also sees room to develop wireless-enabled, Snapdragon-like processors, thanks to NVIDIA’s recent acquisition of Icera, but he hasn’t given up on GPUs, either, predicting that demand for graphics performance will remain stable. The loquacious CEO went on to divine that Windows 8 will support apps designed for Windows 7 (implying, perhaps, that Microsoft’s Silverlight platform will play a major role in future cloud-based developments), while contending that smaller, “clamshell devices” with keyboards will ultimately win out of over the Ultrabook strategy that Intel has been pursuing. For the moment, though, Huang seems pretty comfortable with NVIDIA’s position in the mobile processing market, citing only Qualcomm as primary competition. “We’re the only people seriously on the dance floor with Qualcomm,” he argued, adding that companies without a solid mobile strategy are “in deep turd.” You can find more of Huang’s insights at the source links below.

NVIDIA CEO sees major growth in mobile processing, quad-core tablets coming this year originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 07 Sep 2011 03:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just a few days after introducing its own Android-like OS, Baidu is now looking to expand its mobile reach to the hardware front, with the help of Dell. According to Reuters, the Chinese search giant has joined forces with the PC manufacturer to produce a line of tablets and smartphones within China, in the hopes of capitalizing on a market of more than 900 million mobile subscribers. A Dell spokeswoman declined to offer a launch date for the new line of products, but sources close to the matter say they could launch as early as November. Details on the devices remain equally opaque, though Dell seems intent on resurrecting its tablet / handset unit, following the demise of the Streak 5. “We have a partnership with Baidu and you know we have the Streak 5 tablet, so the partnership will be in that space,” the company’s rep explained, adding that future releases would involve Baidu’s mobile app platform, as well. Today’s announcement also comes after Dell’s Chinese sales grew by 22 percent during the first quarter of this year, though it remains to be seen whether or not this alliance will have much affect on a market currently dominated by Apple and Lenovo.

Baidu, Dell join forces to produce line of smartphones and tablets in China originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Sep 2011 06:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Griffin announces ‘Stylus + Pen + Laser Pointer,’ gives up on creative product names

Griffin announces ‘Stylus + Pen + Laser Pointer,’ gives up on creative product names originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Sep 2011 18:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T willing to make concessions to save T-Mobile merger, sources say originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Sep 2011 02:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There have been rumors circulating that Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi were going to combine their LCD making efforts. Now, according to Yomiuri Shimbun, that plan seems to be moving forward. The deal doesn’t cover big-screen manufacturing, only small and medium sizes that find their way into phones and tablets. The joint venture will command roughly 20-percent of the market according to TechCrunch when it finally becomes official, with a hefty investment from the semi-public Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, which will own a significant stake in the new company. It may be another day or two before the deal is announced, but consider this a serious shot across their Korean competitors’ bows.

Sony, Toshiba and Hitachi look to join LCD manufacturing forces originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Aug 2011 09:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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