Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like Toshiba’s Cell processor ambitions didn’t quite pan out — Japanese news sources are reporting that the company’s selling its Nagasaki manufacturing plant back to Sony for 50 billion yen, or roughly $597 million in US money. Considering that Toshiba originally purchased the semiconductor facility for 100 90 billion yen (then $835 million) back in 2008, it seems like Sony’s making out like a bandit here — and it may have just found the perfect place to build more CMOS chips for its high-end camera lineup, too. Sony reportedly told the Nikkei Business Daily that it may repurpose the facility to produce HD image sensors for cameras and smartphones. What will happen to the chip that launched 40 million PS3s and a graphics co-processor or two? With any luck, we’ll find out at CES 2011 quite soon.

Sony buys back Toshiba’s Cell plant for 50 billion yen, makes a killing and plans a CMOS fab originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google TV was suppose to be center stage for CES 2011. According to a report by The New York Times, however, we might not be seeing all that much out of the service as the country’s largest consumer electronics show.

Google has reportedly asked Toshiba, LG, and Sharp to hold off on debuting their entries, thanks to poor early reviews of the Google TV software. According to The Times, the request “caught some of the manufacturers off guard.”

Google chalked the news up to “rumors and speculation” and refused to comment on it, saying generically, “Our long-term goal is to collaborate with a broad community of consumer electronics manufacturers to help drive the next-generation TV-watching experience, and we look forward to working with other partners to bring more devices to market in the coming years.”

Units from Sony and Logitech have already hit the market, of course. Samsung will apparently be the one manufacturer to introduce Google TV hardware at CES. Toshiba, for its part, seems to have confirmed that it won’t be introducing complementary hardware for the show.

Said a Toshiba exec, “We will not be announcing a Toshiba TV or Blu-ray player or demonstrating the products at C.E.S. We have an understanding with Google about the future product roadmap and will bring the right product out at the right time frame.”

Word on the street — and by that we mean a Nikkei Business Daily report — is that Toshiba’s dropping a cool 100 billion yen (around $1.2 billion in US currencies) for a new factory in the Ishikawa prefecture, Japan. Its raison d’être? Low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels, primarily for the iPhone (no indication on which version; Apple is said to be investing in a portion of the factory, as well). Construction begins early next year and production is apparently slated to commence in the second half. More than enough time to stockpile unicorn tears for the assembly line.

Toshiba building new factory to churn out iPhone LCDs, says Nikkei originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s more than a little crazy to think about, but a 0.07-second power disruption in Japan yesterday may have just caused as much as a 20 percent drop in chip shipments from Toshiba. The root of the problem is that the backup system at Toshiba’s Yokkaichi memory chip plant failed to kick in because the brief drop in voltage was more severe than the system was designed for, which has not only forced the plant to halt production until Friday, but may have caused irreparable damage to scores of chips in production at the time of the outage. As The Wall Street Journal reports, it’s still not clear exactly how much damage was caused, but if, for instance, the systems controlling the so-called clean room were shut off, all chips inside would likely be ruined. The good news, such as it is, is that there isn’t likely to be a worldwide shortage as a result of the outage — Toshiba plans to adjust their output accordingly early next year, and it notes that demand is usually slow in January and February anyway following the holiday shopping season.

Split second power outage may lead to drop in Toshiba chip shipments originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Dec 2010 13:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When’s the last time you said “Crank up the netbook, I love this song!” Yeah, probably never, but if you had a Toshiba mini NB520 you might — or at least that’s what Toshiba would like to envision you would do. It packs stereo Harman Kardon speakers that can crack the foundation and wake the dead with an amazing two watts each, apparently the smallest tweeters H/K has ever put on a laptop. That’s paired with an Atom N550 processor, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB HDD, 10 hours of battery life, and a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 LED-backlit display. If that’s too loud or you’re too old, there’s also the “no frills” NB500, offering the same specs but minus the petite sound system and stepping down to an Atom N455, though doing so at a lower price. What price? That we don’t know, but we’ll find out when both ship in the first quarter of 2011, which starts in a month. Yikes.

Continue reading Toshiba launches NB520 and NB500 netbooks, one with Harman Kardon sound, one without

Toshiba launches NB520 and NB500 netbooks, one with Harman Kardon sound, one without originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Dec 2010 08:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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