Displaying items by tag: Transformer

On an investors conference that Asustek hosted yesterday, company president, Jerry Shen announced that company sales have been beyond planned in Q2 of 2012. They achieved a new record in operating profits and profits before tax. They plan to ship out 22 million notebooks in 2012, and believe that the release of Windows 8 in the fourth quarter will be very important for their market results. According to Asustek there is a new wave of competition arriving at the end of the year that will reshuffle the rankings of tablet and notebook PC players. They announced consolidated revenues of $3.15 billion for second quarter, which is a 4% increase.

With all of the news around Windows 8 and Microsoft’s Surface tablet many might have missed out on a small report that went around. In this report it was revealed that manufacturers like Qualcomm Texas Instrument, Samsung and more were having issues getting drivers working for Windows RT. We covered it and found that in more than a few cases the information was pretty spot on. We know that Acer decided to focus on x86 based products instead of opting for ARM due to technical difficulties. The issue which has slowed some OEM’s Windows RT progress was also used in the many reports that Microsoft was showing OEMs how it’s done.

At CES 2010 we watched as the “PC” world began to gear up for its onslaught into the tablet market. Many at the time were still claiming that Apple was going to hold the market simply because they had a very big foot hold (and still do). However as we watched press briefings from Asus, Lenovo, nVidia, AMD, and Intel we saw something very interesting; the move to tablets that make sense for everyone. We are not talking about the choice of OS here either.

Asus has recently released their quarterly results for the other side of Asus. This is the part of the company that makes and sells notebooks, netbooks, the EEE Pad, PC and Slate. It is also a part of the company that we expect to turn into its own fully fledged market with the potential for direct sales in the future. The numbers look pretty impressive so far with gains across the board.

In our continuing coverage of life after Steve Jobs at Apple (and our preparation for that new website Sh*t Tim Cook Says) we are bringing in a few new links and other fun items today. It seems that a typical Apple earnings call brings more pleasure to the press than almost anything else. While researching this article we found so many different versions of “Apple is wonderful” articles that we lost count (and almost our lunch). The fawning over Apple was a tad on the overkill side. So let’s sum up the earnings call for you.

There are more claims showing that the “New” iPad is more powerful than the Tegra 3. This time they are using some very interesting evidence to show this off. One site in question is claiming that they are able to calculate the difference using the benchmarks from the iPad2. Now some of you might be thinking that this could be true since the iPad and the “new” iPad share the same base GPU core. Both have Power VR SGX 543 GPUs inside. The iPad 2 had a dual core SGX 543MP2 and the New iPad has the quad-core SGX 543MP4.

So Asus has released the specifications of their next generation Transformers and as we told you they are not getting rid of the Tegra 3 for their HD version of the popular tablet. The original rumor was that Asus was replacing the Tegra 3 for a Qualcomm SoC. In truth we find that Asus is entering the realm of cellular tablets.

On Monday of this week there was a rumor that went around the internet that claimed Asus was abandoning Tegra for Qualcomm in their upcoming Transformer line. The rumor cam complete with a fuzzy show of a slide from a presentation. This would seem to confirm the move and to give a confirmation before the Mobile World Congress that is kicking off. After asking around we have found that the real story is something a little different.

It seems that the press feels that Apple has won the war with Proview in China. There is much crowing about how Apple rightfully owns the trademark for the iPad in all countries including China. There is even a lengthy court document over at “AllThingsD” that covers it. There is, as there always is, a problem though. So many people are concerned with the aggressive tone of the judge that they are missing one very crucial fact.

One of the issues in the modern consumer electronics market is of course competition, but it is not the biggest issue. No, believe it or not the biggest issue in the world of consumer electronics is the throw-away mentality for most consumers. Back in the 1950s this problem was visited on the car industry. The automobile makers (in the US) were pushing people to replace their car every two years (yea that is true). This caused many cars to become quickly outdated (in many cases long before their time was really up). By the mid to late 60s the trend had changed because people did not have the money for this and the banks were starting to tighten up on their lending practices. The automotive industry had to change tactics and started pushing longer last vehicles (with better trade in and resale values).