Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like Intel’s having its best quarter ever all over again: this time, the company’s reporting $3.0 billion in profit on a record $11.1 billion in revenue. Chipzilla attributes the surplus to three percent increases in laptop and server chips sales respectively, but none to Atom-based netbooks — sales of Atom chips actually decreased by four percent. That may be more than you needed or wanted to know about the booming processor business, but humanitarians will be pleased to know it’s not all about the silicon; Intel also hired 1,300 new flesh-and-blood employees last quarter to keep the machines running.

Intel reports record $11.1 billion revenue, brings home $3 billion in bacon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 18:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Straight from Sony’s Google TV unveiling in New York we finally know the official details of its plans, which include four HDTVs (24-, 32- , 40- and 46-inch) with prices from $599 to $1,399, plus a funky white set-top box with built-in Blu-ray player for $399. The 24-inch is a CCFL backlit LCD, while the larger models all feature edge LED lighting, while all of them feature built in WiFi, so no need to go stringing any new network cables to the living room. The only custom app we’re seeing among the preinstalled ones (Netflix, CNBC, Napster, Pandora and more) is a Sony Qriocity VOD player, for more you’ll be waiting for the Android Market to hit in early 2011. If you want to be the first on your block with one, hit up the local Sony Style outlet when they go on sale this weekend, or Best Buy stores starting October 24, meanwhile, check the press release after the break for full specs and details.

Continue reading Sony Google TV HDTVs and Blu-ray player launch details revealed

Sony Google TV HDTVs and Blu-ray player launch details revealed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Updated to include Intel’s comments about current MeeGo devices

It hasn’t been smooth sailing for MeeGo, Intel and Nokia’s combined effort to develop a Linux-based operating system for mobile devices. A key executive departure and news that smartphones running the operating system won’t be available until sometime next year has left Intel and Nokia fighting to stay on course.

“The community around MeeGo is very strong,” Suzy Ramirez, an Intel spokesperson told Wired.com. “We are on schedule and MeeGo will be available for TVs and in-car entertainment systems soon, and other devices next year.”

MeeGo has had a tough week.  On Tuesday, Ari Jaaksi, the vice-president of Nokia’s MeeGo division, confirmed he will leave the company for “personal reasons.” Last month, Nokia went through a change of guard when CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo stepped down to be replaced by former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop.

A Nokia spokesperson has said the company’s MeeGo roadmap remains unchanged.

Meanwhile, Intel vice-president Doug Fisher told Forbes that the company expects to show the first smartphones running MeeGo operating systems early next year and have them in hands of consumers by mid-2011.

“All this has added confusion to MeeGo’s prospects, especially given the tremendous stride being made by alternative operating systems such as Android and iOS,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst with research and consulting firm Current Analysis. “Given the management changes at Nokia and the possibility that MeeGo phones could be delayed, it leaves question marks about the future of MeeGo.”

Over the last three years, the rise of smartphones and the growing popularity of tablets and streaming media players has opened the doors for new operating systems that can promise a better user experience. For instance, Android, which launched in 2008 for smartphones, has now spread to tablets and has even birthed Google TV, a platform that combines cable TV programming with sites from the internet.

MeeGo hopes to do something similar. But it started small. Last year Intel started a project called  Moblin that would be a Linux-based operating system designed specifically for netbooks. Separately, Nokia had been working on a Linux-based software platform called Maemo for smartphones and tablets.

At the Mobile World Congress conference in February this year, the two companies decided to combine efforts and spawn a new OS called MeeGo. MeeGo is now hosted by the Linux Foundation and has expanded its reach to phones, tablets, TVs and even in-car entertainment systems.

Both companies desperately want to control a next-generation mobile OS. Nokia has heavily relied on Symbian, which enjoys massive popularity worldwide but is saddled with an archaic, needlessly complicated interface that hasn’t adapted well to the world of touchscreen phones. And Intel has seen success supplying its Atom chips to the netbook market, but hasn’t made significant inroads into smartphones; it’s hoping that an OS might help it leverage its chip business into a new market.

In the next few weeks, Intel plans to release a version of the nascent OS so developers can start creating the user interface required to put MeeGo on different devices. MeeGo with an Intel-developed skin is expected after that. MeeGo will have its first developers’ conference in Ireland in November.

“From a product perspective, we expect to show smartphones and tablets on MeeGo in mid-2011,” says Ramirez.

Already some intrepid device makers have released MeeGo-based devices. German company WeTab is offering a MeeGo based tablet, while U.K. company Amino has shown a TV that runs MeeGo.

Still Greengart isn’t convinced that plans for MeeGo won’t change. Intel is dependent on Nokia to deliver the hardware that will bring MeeGo to consumers and Nokia’s big management changes could affect MeeGo’s future, he says.

So far, Nokia has said that it plans to use the Symbian OS for low and mid-level smartphones and build MeeGo into high-end devices that are more focused on computing.

“The problem is that Nokia executives, including the CEO who talked about this strategy just a week or two ago, are  not there. And who knows what’s going in the company,” says Greengart. “The future of MeeGo depends on how much Nokia and Intel are willing to stick to their plans in a fast-changing world.”

See Also:

• Nokia Phones Hacked to Run Android
• Kno Creates 14-inch Tablet for Students
• Linux Chief Sounds Off on Android, Apple and App Stores
• Letter From Silicon Valley: Doing the Math on Android vs. Apple

Photo: MeeGo Phone browser (Steve Paine/Flickr)

While Nokia remains mum about the status of its first MeeGo handset, Doug Fisher, Vice President of Intel’s Software and Solutions Group and General Manager of Systems Software Division, is being decidedly more talkative. According to an interview published by Forbes, MeeGo phones and tablets are in the works but we’ll have to wait until 2011 to handle them. Specifically, Fisher says that MeeGo based cellphones won’t debut until the first half of next year, possibly at a large industry trade show. Hmm, could that be Mobile World Congress by any chance, scheduled for February 2011? It’s also worth noting that Fisher’s timeline coincides with plans for a MeeGo 1.2 release tentatively scheduled for sometime around the end of April.

This is of course disappointing — especially after seeing Nokia’s amazing looking MeeGo-based N9 (pictured) in that supposed leak. Though it’s hardly unexpected given all the executive level changes at Nokia. Remember, back in December Nokia had promised to “deliver” a Maemo 6 powered mobile computer in the second half of 2010. That promise was then seemingly reiterated when the joint MeeGo initiative was announced in February (MeeGo being the union of Maemo and Intel’s Moblin). It was during that announcement that Intel and Nokia promised to “launch” MeeGo devices from Nokia and other manufactures in 2010. We took that to mean retail delivery, not just a product announcement. In fact, we’ve already seen the first MeeGo tablet — the WeTab — ship in Germany. And Fisher says that other MeeGo devices like netbooks and Internet Connected TVs are still on track to ship this year.

Regardless of the semantics, we just want to see Nokia get this right, especially as MeeGo looks to be Nokia’s big play to win back the US market. If they don’t get this right, well, Nokia might not get a second chance — not with Android rapidly maturing, Windows Phone 7 set to launch, and HP getting ready to put its muscle behind webOS. Let’s give Skillman some time to perfect the user experience, shall we?

Intel says no MeeGo phones until first half of 2011, Nokia just shrugs originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Oct 2010 08:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Solid state storage is maturing rapidly, as you can see on this allegedly leaked slide, but AnandTech reports that the improvements aren’t all about price per gigabyte — the 25nm successor to Intel’s X25-M G2 is shaping up to be one killer drive. In addition to increasing capacity to 600GB for a 2.5-incher and 300GB for a 1.8-inch size, the publication reports that the Postville Refresh will bring up to 40,000 IOPS in random 4K writes, and transfer larger sequential files with up-to-250MB/s reads and 170MB/s writes. To put that in context, they should be competitive with today’s very best SandForce SF-1200 drives, and hopefully trounce them on price. More impressive (if true), however, is that these new Intel X25-M G3 units are built to last: they’re reportedly able to transfer at least 30TB before they give up the ghost, and have a “power safe write cache” feature that may keep errant power outages from prematurely conking them out. We don’t exactly expect OCZ, Corsair, Mushkin and Crucial to sit around while Intel revolutionizes the market, though — even if Intel’s 25nm plant only benefits Intel, smaller die sizes will help solid state storage companies across the board.

Intel’s 25nm solid state drives boast huge capacity, improved reliability, four times longer life? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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