Items tagged with Hardware
As most US-based companies have learned by now, it's very difficult to penetrate the Chinese market (just ask Microsoft), with the country's government being at the crux of the issue more so than cultural differences. Apple in particular has had a rough go at feeling comfortable in China, and recently, things have been made more difficult with sliding sales. In the past year, Apple had to mold its products to better-suit the Chinese market, which included getting rid of iTunes Movies and iBooks, and crippling its popular news app. Since then, Apple has invested more in the Chinese market, which...
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If you're contemplating a small form factor build for your next system, you may want to consider ASRock's new Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac motherboard. That's a mouthful and as the name suggests, this is a mini ITX motherboard for space saving builds, though don't be fooled by its diminutive size. Though its small in form, it offers a high level of function, starting support for Intel's 6th Generation Core processor line (Skylake) that utilizes the new LGA1151 socket. You could certainly do worse for a Skylake chip -- this thing boasts an eight-layer PCB with an eight-phase power design. It also...
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There’s a lot of positive energy flowing through Microsoft these days. The company by all accounts won E3 with the unveil of a new 1TB Xbox One console, a swanky new “Elite” wireless Xbox One controller, and backwards compatibility support for Xbox 360 games. And we can’t forget the July 29 release of Windows 10, which is the highly anticipated follow-up to Windows 8.1. However, there are also a few dark clouds heading towards Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington headquarters and they are zeroing in on the company’s smartphone division. Microsoft today announced another round of job cuts, this time...
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Your existing game console is about to be behind the times. That's because all three major console players - Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony -- have something new up their respective sleeves. Starting with Microsoft, the company is planning to release a revised Xbox One console that comes with 1TB of onboard storage and a tweaked game controller. We learned a little about the new controller just over a week ago when Microsoft updated one of its support pages to reflect the addition of a 3.5mm audio port. Microsoft revealed that it would be available on controllers released after June 2015, but didn't...
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After a rapid rise in the mobile market to become Apple's chief rival (and target of many lawsuits), Samsung hit a rough patch in 2014, one that will challenge the South Korean company going forward. And as expected, Samsung today confirmed its first year-on-year profit drop since 2011, even after factoring an uptick in sales in the fourth quarter. Samsung's flagship Galaxy S5 handset is largely to blame. More precisely, Samsung's shortfall in Galaxy S5 sales isn't doing the company any favors -- after being left with unsold inventory, Samsung decided to restructure its business model, including...
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Following the philosophy that it takes spending money to make money, Samsung Electronics announced plans to invest around 15.6 trillion won (around $14.7 billion in U.S. currency) to build a new chip manufacturing plant in South Korea. This qualifies as Samsung's biggest investment ever into a single semiconductor plant. Construction of the new facility will begin in the first half of next year in Pyeongtaek, located about 47 miles south of Seoul, and is expected to generate 150,000 jobs, according to Reuters. That's equivalent to around a third of the city's total population. If all goes to plan,...
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Lenovo is already the world's top PC maker in terms of shipments and sales, and once it closes the deal with IBM for its server division, the Chinese company will become the third largest player in the global x86 server market. No small deal, Lenovo is paying IBM $2.1 billion to increase its standing in a market that's worth $42.1 billion. "With the close of the x86 acquisition, Lenovo will add a world-class business that extends our capabilities in enterprise hardware and services, immediately making us a strong number three in the global server market," said Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of...
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This week, Broadcom announced that it would exit the LTE modem market and shut down its LTE research division. The move comes less than a year after Broadcom bought Renesas' (formerly known as NEC) LTE modem -- and that purchase was supposed to give Broadcom a leg up in modem design after its own in-house LTE product had failed to ship. With Broadcom gone, Qualcomm is, for all intents and purposes, the Emperor of LTE mountain. The market shift has happened quickly -- look at where revenue share sat in 2009, when 4G was still on the horizon and 3G modems were the norm. Qualcomm is still the...
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After reading the title, you might be thinking, "OMG why does HotHardware hate tablets?!?!" Don't get us wrong, we think tablets are great for what they're designed to do, but when it comes to servicing and/or upgrading parts on your own, they don't hold a candle next to a traditional PC. Teardown after teardown reveals liberal use of adhesive and other challenging factors, as tablets just aren't built to be cracked open like a desktop. Underscoring this point is iFixIt's teardown analysis of Valve's prototype Steam Machine, a full-fledged PC in a console-like shell. If the Steam Machine design...
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Gamers aren't supposed to be able to get their mitts on Microsoft's upcoming Xbox One console until it launches to retail on November 22, 2013, a week from this Friday, however some lucky individuals received an early surprise. Due to a retail glitch, some Xbox One consoles landed on doorsteps two weeks ahead of schedule. Microsoft's Major Nelson confirmed the early shipments, saying that only a "very small number" of consoles went out to gamers ahead of schedule. While Major Nelson didn't specify which vendor was responsible, it's since been revealed that Target was the one that missed the mark....
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A few weeks ago, we covered the news that Microsoft's Xbox One would feature a slightly faster GPU than originally planned, with a boost from 800MHz to something in the 845-855MHz range. Now, it seems the company is giving its CPUs a kick as well. Xbox Chief Marketing Officer Yusef Mehdi spoke at the Citi Global Technology Conference, and commented that the Xbox One's eight Jaguar cores would be clocked at 1.75GHz, up from the 1.6GHz originally forecast. That's a relatively modest increase of about 9% -- enough to be noticeable, in some tests, but unlikely to redefine the experience of using the...
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Barnes & Noble may be scaling back its NOOK hardware business as Amazon, Apple and Google eat up whatever remains of the tablet market, but that doesn't mean that it's ditching the brand entirely. The company has just launched a suite of free NOOK Video Apps for iOS, Android and Roku devices. The apps enable customers to watch movies and TV shows from NOOK Video instantly on a wide variety of mobile devices, and moreover, customers with the NOOK Tablet and NOOK Color will now have access to NOOK Video through a specially designed app that will automatically appear in customers’ lockers...
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According to a joint survey from Intel and IDC, the PC market could see sunnier days in 2014. That's the proposed takeaway from a survey IDC conducted of 3,977 adults across both suburbs and cities. The respondents, who all owned at least one PC or Mac, were organized into two basic groups -- those using a PC 4 years old or older, and those using a PC purchased in the last 12 months. Between the two groups, 45% had tablets and 64% owned smartphones -- further underscoring that tremendous popularity of tablets in the American market. According to the survey, 40% of buyers are interested in upgrading...
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Square has taken the mobile payments world by storm in the U.S., and evidently there has been demand to help make Apple's iPad an actual cash register. As the conventional POS machine begins to see the end of the line, it's devices like the Square Stand that have a chance to take its place. The new device actually fully converts the iPad into a complete point of sale system. It's a piece of hardware designed for savvy B&M locations, and while it looks pretty slick, the asking price ($299) is certainly on the high side. Square Stand works with Square Register, the free point of sale application,...
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