Tag Archives: africa

Jul 12

PC shipments slow as tablet and smartphone sales ...

Posted on by

Tablets and smartphones continued to eat away at worldwide PC shipments, which remained flat during the second quarter, according to research released by Gartner on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Lenovo inched closer to taking the top spot in PC shipments from Hewlett-Packard, which barely held on to the title of world’s largest PC maker. Lenovo has been growing through acquisitions and aggressive pricing, Gartner said.

Worldwide PC shipments for all vendors totaled 87.5 million units, a decline of 0.1 percent compared to the same quarter last year, Gartner said.

Consumers are spending less on PCs and more on smartphones and tablets, Gartner analyst Mikako Kitagawa said in a statement. The trend is more pronounced in developed countries where the PC market is highly saturated, he said.

Research firm IDC on Wednesday also reported a year-over-year decline of 0.1 percent in worldwide PC shipments, a turnaround from its forecast in May of 2.1 percent growth.

A slowing economy in China also hurt PC shipments, the research firms said.

PC shipments in the U.S. declined by 5.7 percent year over year, and shipments in Latin America declined by 1.7 percent, Gartner said. Factoring in Western Europe, overall shipments in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) grew by 1.9 percent. Shipments in Asia-Pacific grew by 2 percent, and shipments in Japan also grew by 2 percent.

The slowdown has hurt chip makers as well as PC makers. Advanced Micro Devices reduced its revenue expectations earlier this week on poor consumer spending and weak sales in China and Europe. The company said its OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturing) business underperformed, indicating that PC makers bought fewer chips than expected.

Intel is making a push to revitalise PC shipments with ultrabooks, a category of thin and light laptops that became available starting in late 2011. Intel has poured millions into developing and promoting ultrabooks, but so far they have failed to reignite laptop shipments, Kitagawa said. Ultrabooks are at an early stage and a new batch based on Intel’s third-generation Core processors are slowly becoming available.

But the second-quarter slowdown does not bode well for ultrabooks, nor Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 OS, due later this year, Gartner said.

HP shipped 13 million PCs in the quarter, a drop of 12.1 percent, giving it a 14.9 percent market share. Second-place Lenovo grew its shipments by 14.9 percent to 12.8 million units, giving the Chinese PC maker a 14.7 percent market share.

Acer took the third spot with 11 percent market share and shipments of 9.6 million units, up 3.6 percent. Dell’s shipments fell by 11.5 percent, putting it in fourth place ahead of Asus.

PC shipments slow as tablet and smartphone sales boom

Jun 22

Acer shares doubts on Microsoft surface

Posted on by

The senior VP and president for Europe, Middle East and Africa of Taiwanese manufacturer Acer has questioned Microsoft’s attempt to enter the tablet market with Surface.

“I don’t think it will be successful because you cannot be a hardware player with two products,” Oliver Ahrens told Reuters when asked about the new device.

He saw the PC giant’s attempt to compete with Apple as inherently flawed.

“Microsoft is working with two dozen PC vendors worldwide, including the local guys, whereas Apple is alone, it can more or less do what it wants. Microsoft is a component of a PC system. A very important component but still a component.”

He was also concerned how the distraction would affect Acer’s business.

“I worry that this will lead into a defocus internally for Microsoft, and then we have to suffer because we are working with their products.”

Acer inc manufactures a number of popular devices, including the Google Chromebook and the Aspire desktop series.

Acer shares doubts on Microsoft surface

Oct 30

Blackberry Service Briefly Restored In Europe, ...

Posted on by

Considering that Research in Motion’s fates of late haven’t looked really what you’d call anything like good, about the last thing they needed was a service outage following the announcement of the new and even more powerful iPhone 4S. Even worse would be for Blackberry to restore service but then fall prey to a second outage mere hours later. And indeed, the worse happened for Blackberry users as a second outage landed shortly after the first was repaired.

For nearly 20 hours, Blackberry device users across three continents, including users in the Middle East, Europe, Asia  and Africa, lost service to their devices, and Research in Motion tried to repair their outages, not offering up much in the way of explanation as to why it happened. Our own Chris Smith filled you in on this one back around 20 hours ago when the outages started. And indeed, early this morning local time, the service was restored, though explanations as to what managed to kill off RIM’s entire service for most of a full day were short on the ground. now there are reports that a whole new outage has kicked in, mere hours after the previous one was resolved.

While some of the new problems aren’t all outright outages, delays and malfunctions are coming into play now, and that’s posing some serious problems for Blackberry in general. with a new Apple device more powerful than ever, with iMessage looking to supplant Blackberry Messenger, RIM’s going to be hard pressed to keep its subscribers, especially with more frequent outages and other problems coming into play. If reliability becomes a sufficiently serious issue, that’s likely going to be sufficient to overcome entropy and get Blackberry users looking to a whole new fruit.

But what do you guys think here? any Blackberry users starting to think Apple’s looking better for more reliable service and fewer outages plus many of the features you already enjoy on Blackberry devices and then some? Or are these outages and problems merely isolated incidents and not sufficient to get you to switch? Either way, we want to hear from you, so hit the comments section and tell us what you think!

Blackberry Service Briefly Restored In Europe, Middle East, Asia–Promptly Hit With New Issues [Service Restored Early Tuesday Morning To Affected Blackberry Users, But A New Problem Hit Shortly Thereafter]

Oct 25

Apple updates iPad 2 Smart Covers with color ...

Posted on by

Apple on Monday modified its selection of magnetic Wise Covers for that apple ipad 2, adding a couple of color options while stopping the orange memory version, among other changes.

As possible seen around the order page for Apple’s online shop, the modified apple ipad 2 Wise Covers now feature an inside micro-fiber lining that’s color-matched up towards the outdoors cover. Formerly, apple ipad 2 Wise Covers had exactly the same grey color inside.

A choice of an orange memory Wise Cover has additionally disappeared, with this color getting been changed having a dark grey option. That color is additionally towards the light grey, blue, eco-friendly and pink Wise Covers.

The memory colors are also modified to become “more vibrant,” Apple’s official description of product reads. The leather covers remain unchanged aside from the navy option, that has seen its color slightly modified to really make it “more navy,” a resource told MacRumors.

The apple ipad 2 Wise Covers remain listed at $39 for that memory versions, and $69 for leather. Additionally to navy, the leather Wise Covers can be found in tan, black, cream and (Product) Red-colored, which portions visit the Global Fund to battle Helps in Africa.

The Wise Cover is definitely an accessory for that apple ipad 2 that has 21 magnets to really make it rapidly and simply attach and align itself to pay for as well as clean the touch screen of Apple’s tablet. The covers were developed alongside the apple ipad 2, featuring additional internal magnets to correctly align the coverage instantly.

Additionally to since the screen, the Wise Cover may also be folded to support the apple ipad 2 for any keyboard stand or using The face-time and watching movies. A choice within the iOS operating-system also helps make the Wise Cover instantly unlock the apple ipad 2 when it’s removed, and re-lock the screen once it’s put in place.

Apple updates iPad 2 Smart Covers with color changes

Sep 28

Tablet Shipments Exceeding Forecasts; Still ...

Posted on by

Ingrid Lunden, On Wednesday September 21, 2011, 7:37 am EDT

It’s debatable whether and when tablets will become as mainstream as mobile phones or PCs, but in their own right, their sales trajectory appears to be booming at the moment.

A report out from IDC notes that tablet shipments in EMEA have exceeded earlier estimates, while Juniper Research notes that globally shipments of tablets will grow five-fold in the next five years.

Both also confirm what we’ve already heard many times before: Apple’s iPad is the undisputed leader for now.

IDC says that tablet shipments in Europe, the Middle East and Africa were close to 4.4 million units in Q2 2011—700,000 more than the researchers had originally forecast. that translates to a growth of nearly 400 percent over the same quarter last year, and 82 percent more than Q1 2011. overall, the region is on track for shipments of 22 million for the full year. Juniper, which has today released worldwide figures, predicts that tablet shipments will reach 253 million by 2016—the figure for 2011 it says will be 55.2 million units.

The main driver of this? mostly “soaring demand” for the iPad 2. Apple’s share of the market has definitely gone down over last year—in Q2 2010, before others had entered the market, it had a 94.3 percent market share; in Q2 2011 that is now down to 66.6 percent. But IDC notes that Apple (NSDQ:AAPL – News) is likely to retain its market dominance into 2012 with the introduction of the iPad 3. it is still the largest single manufacturer in the table (see below), and in that sense the tablet market is theirs to lose.

On the Android front, it seems like retailers have not yet come to grips with what consumers are really demanding.

Android tablets. although the many varieties of Android tablets have driven the market to some extent, IDC notes that Android tablets as a whole actually failed to meet its original forecasts for shipments, reaching fewer than 1.4 million units, despite some models (such as the seven-inch Galaxy Tab from Samsung), getting discounted down to €99 in some cases.

IDC also noted that Acer sold less well than expected—it shipped a lot of its Iconia tablets, but these were not bought up as quickly as expected. meanwhile, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer sold better than originally thought—meaning that more could have been shipped. Despite all this, IDC also thinks that Android tablets will continue to gain market share, and will end 2012 with 34 percent of the tablet market in EMEA.

Two more things on tablet competitors: given the huge price discounts for the TouchPad from HP (NYSE:HPQ – News), it will be interesting to see how and if that impacts tablet sales in Q3 figures later in the year. and: even if we have seen some mis-steps around tablets from brands more traditionally associated with PCs, Juniper believes that the PC makers’ entry into the market, going head-to-head with those from the smartphone camp, is inevitable and will only grow in the years ahead.

At the moment, the drive for tablets looks like it is primarily coming from consumers rather than enterprises, IDC notes. this is because of the dominance of Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT – News) in desktop software: that has held back a lot of businesses, which are still trying to figure out how tablets would integrate into such that existing infrastructure.

That speaks of an opportunity for Microsoft and its device partners, who will have a chance to take a bite out of the tablet market with Microsoft’s newly-announced Windows 8 OS. and perhaps a missed opportunity from RIM: it shipped only 93,000 PlayBooks in the quarter, and has largely been targeting consumers, not its traditional enterprise base, with the product.

Ultimately, though, this will remain a relatively smaller part of the market: Juniper says that enterprises will account for one-fifth of all tablet sales by 2016.

Related

Tablet Shipments Exceeding Forecasts; Still Apple’s Game To Lose