Hasta La Gadget!

With the Tokyo Marathon just round the corner and the climbing season about to begin, retailers are still hoping to capitalize on the growing boom in all things outdoors and the so-called yamagaaru mountain-loving young females trend.

This is best represented by the North Face, who next month is opening its first store aimed at women. Located bang on prime Meijidori, the store is set to be designed in a chic white and black wooden decor, a blend of the cool and the natural. Clearly these kinds of yamagaaru like to remain stylish when they are outdoors.

The American brand is not alone. Sankei reports that in the spring Asics is reviving its outdoors range Mescalito, which it had originally suspended in 2006, only this time switching the focus to women consumers. Descente is also adding outdoors goods to its sports products and Marmot is planning to raise sales of outdoors gear from 65 billion yen last March to 80 billion by 2013.

There are implications for tourism as well. Chichibu City in Saitama hopes to regenerate its fortunes through girls-only mountain tours in collaboration with travel agency JTB. The area has suffered, like many parts of Japan’s regions, from depopulation and the aging populace, and an injection of fully costumed, fashionable mountaineering urban girls might be just the trick for boosting the local economy.

And just because you apparently love the outdoors does not mean you even need to leave the house to indulge your hobby. Yamagaaru now have their own niche digital community site called, perhaps not surprisingly, YamaGirl.net, which recommends products and shares fashion snaps of women in snazzy outdoors wear.

The official TouchPad launch date isn’t even a date per se, but a season: summer. So we’re surprised to see DigiTimes reporting that HP will take delivery of shipments in March with the TouchPad going on sale in April with plans to ship 4 – 5 million units from the TouchPad “series” in 2011. Based on what we know, both from using the software-incomplete pre-production tablet and from our detailed discussions with Jon Rubinstein, an April retail date would be extremely aggressive to say the least. And DigiTimes‘ accuracy with regard to rumors for companies located outside of its home country of Taiwan is spotty at best. Nevertheless, HP’s new CEO Leo Apotheker did say originally, that products announced at the February 9th event would be on sale just a few weeks later. Unfortunately, only the wee Veer handset got an early spring promise with the Pre 3 joining the TouchPad for a summer launch. Perhaps this will be a case of HP under promising and over delivering? We can’t say for sure. But with any luck, HP could bring some clarity to the matter on March 14th — a day Apotheker had promised a big reveal regarding a “secret answer” and “vision of what HP is capable of in the future… the starting point.” Why so mysterious, Leo?

HP TouchPad on sale in April? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though hard facts on the HTC Thunderbolt’s availability were hard to come by, conflicting rumors were flying fast and strong — now, a Best Buy ad seems to clear most everything up. Like we’d originally heard, the 4.3-inch LTE smartphone will launch for $250 on a two-year contract — or a wallet-crushing $750 without — but the key ingredients here are three words at the very top. The Thunderbolt is apparently a “national retail exclusive” for Best Buy, which explains how the device could simultaneously face Verizon delays and yet come in for a Valentine’s Day landing at the big box store. You’ll also note that the ad mentions Skype video and 4G mobile hotspot functionality, so we’d be surprised if the phone came without, though it’s also possible that the whole kit and kaboodle has been delayed to match — Droid-Life says this ad comes from a February 20th circular, so we might not see anything until then.

In case you needed an additional reason to be excited about the Thunderbolt, the developers at AndIRC have some related news — they’ve already rooted a prototype version (which just so happens to have the familiar codename Mecha) and believe the same technique will work on retail devices. Wouldn’t it be nice to have root on day one… whenever that is?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

HTC Thunderbolt exclusively hits Best Buy for $250 at launch, rooted prototype provides hope for easy unlock originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Feb 2011 16:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Though it apparently doesn’t have any plans in place to close its existing 140 stores around the country, The Wall Street Journal is reporting this evening that network operator Clearwire is halting its direct retail strategy to concentrate on selling the use of its airwaves to other providers — providers such as Sprint and Comcast, for example, both of which make use of Clearwire’s WiMAX network for their own 4G services. The move doesn’t come as much of a surprise since the company announced unfortunate numbers back in November of last year — numbers that forced it to scale back its headcount and its dreams of launching Clear-branded handsets in the near term — and WSJ says that the move may make Sprint more comfortable investing more cash in the company since they’ll no longer be giving off the appearance that they’re competing head-to-head on the customer level. Investment is exactly what Clearwire needs to survive right now, and whether it comes from Sprint or another national carrier that’s in the market for 4G spectrum, you know what they say: money is money.

WSJ: Clearwire moving away from retail, will concentrate on network wholesale business originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s not much to see here, folks, just a few listings on Best Buy’s website for Apple iPads that don’t currently exist. They could be the result of a database error, an employee prank, or even just wishful thinking. Still, between well-placed sources informing us that a super-high-resolution, SD-card bearing, dual-mode iPad 2 is on the way and a feeling of déjà vu, we can’t help but think there might be a rather exciting prize behind doors number one, two and three. Or perhaps just a Verizon iPad. We’re sure that would make someone’s day.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Three iPad dummy SKUs appear at Best Buy website originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Jan 2011 21:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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