Hasta La Gadget!

Sir Howard Stringer is a busy man. Currently holding the Chairman, CEO and President titles at Sony, the man’s in charge of one of the vastest empires in the history of vastness, which is probably why the company’s now said to be looking for someone to succeed him at one of those posts. Bloomberg‘s reporting that Sony is having internal discussions about appointing a new President, with Kaz Hirai and Hiroshi Yoshioka identified as the names at the top of the pile. The pair are currently responsible for handling one half each of Sony’s broad consumer electronics portfolio and it’s notable that the Japanese giant seems to be looking for its next great leader from the hardware side of the business. If this speculation does bear fruit, expect the next President to deputize Stringer in the short-term and to eventually succeed him as top banana when the current ruler decides to hang up his cornflower-blue tie.

Sony said to be looking for new President to lighten Sir Howard’s load originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Come one, come all — we’re guessing you won’t want to miss the most comical business arrangement since the latter part of 2007, when ROK acquired a majority share of Rock. Believe it or not, iControl and uControl have somehow put their selfish ways aside to come together as one, but it’s pretty clear who’s really in control. The merged company will forge ahead as iControl Networks, leaving u with nothing but fading memories and half a bottle of Jack. In all seriousness, this melding of minds could definitely give the home automation world a boost it’s badly in need of; fragmentation and a lack of universal compatibility (not to mention stratospheric pricing) has severely hindered adoption in the consumer universe, and we’re hoping that these guys can somehow make ZigBee, Z-Wave and your ZR1 talk to each other sans any hoop jumping. ‘Course, we wouldn’t expect any sort of quick collaboration — these two have to get on speaking terms before any magic happens, you know?

Continue reading iControl and uControl engage in home automation merger, domestic disputes seem inevitable

iControl and uControl engage in home automation merger, domestic disputes seem inevitable originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Nov 2010 05:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tired of going at it alone, eh WiGig? The aforesaid Alliance has just teamed up with yet another organization — a mere six months after doing likewise with the Wi-Fi Alliance. For those unaware, WiGig’s 60GHz multi-gigabit technology has already begun to penetrate the higher-end AV market, particularly in devices that shoot 1080p from source-to-display sans cabling. But as we’ve seen, the adoption rate there isn’t anything to write home about, and it seems as if the entity is branching out in an effort to broaden its potential profit portfolio. The newest partnership is with VESA, and the most important aspect of it (from a consumer standpoint, anyway) is summed up here: the two will be working to create a certification program for wireless DisplayPort products. The goal, as you may imagine, is to create a new spate of products that’ll connect PCs and handhelds to monitors, projectors and HDTVs, all without wires and with gobs of bandwidth. Sadly, no time table is being revealed just yet, but we’ll be cautiously expecting a few prototypes at CES. Right, dudes?

Continue reading WiGig and VESA team up, promise wireless DisplayPort gear

WiGig and VESA team up, promise wireless DisplayPort gear originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Nov 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint certainly isn’t out of the woods yet, but at least it’s picking up customers from somewhere. The company’s Q3 2010 earnings were ushered out today, and while its stock fell around ten percent on the news, a few silver linings were present. The carrier saw postpaid subscriber losses of 107,000, but that’s an 87 percent improvement compared to Q3 2009. The CDMA network added approximately 276,000 postpaid customers during the quarter, 471,000 (net) prepaid subscribers and 644,000 total wireless subscribers from a net perspective. It also landed its second best postpaid churn result ever, but the bottom line still looks battered — the operator announced a net loss of nearly a billion dollars ($911 million, if you’re scouting specifics). Of course, phasing out iDEN should probably help things in the long run, but even its 4G advantage could quickly fade if (or more likely, when) Verizon gets its LTE act together next year.

Sprint fails to impress Wall Street with Q3 2010 earnings, still notches 644k net adds originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Oct 2010 19:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Chalk another up to the rumor mill. Just as we’d heard, the Garmin-Asus partnership will soon be no more. After a few arguably valiant attempts to break into the smartphone market, it seems as if ASUS is walking away in hopes of finding greener grass elsewhere. According to Reuters, an unnamed ASUS official has confirmed that it would be “ending its mobile phone cooperation agreement with Garmin.” We’re expecting the rest of the breakup details to roll tomorrow, but honestly, you’d turn the other cheek and move on if you were classy. But we both know that’s not happening, right?

ASUS officially walks away from Garmin-Asus partnership originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Oct 2010 11:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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