Items tagged with Industry
According to a report from MarketsandMarkets, the 3D printing industry is poised for huge growth in the next several years. By 2020, the industry should hit upwards of $8.4 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of a healthy 23%. Of note is that much of that growth will come from the healthcare and aerospace industries, as opposed to hobbyists, makers, and the like, and although the Americas currently leads the world, Europe is slated to surpass it in terms of revenue by 2020. The APAC region will see a lot of growth, as well. Growth will come from hobbyists and makers with printers like the MakerBot Replicator 2, but the bulk will come from other fields Factors contributing to the 3D printing...
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Another week, another tech-related IPO. While Facebook's stock has been on a long, mostly downward ride since its IPO, it recently surged past its initial offering price. Soon after, its archrival in the social networking space has decided to pull the trigger as well. Recently valued at over $10 billion, Twitter has announced today that it has filed paperwork for an IPO, and if all goes well, it'll be traded on the public market in the near future. Goldman Sachs is backing the IPO, and it's pretty clear that this company is going to be a hot one once it goes up for sale. Twitter team shortly after the IPO announcement. Twitter began as a niche service that only nerds would think of using, and...
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It feels like forever ago that Circuit City bit the dust. Everything seemed to be humming along just fine, and suddenly, the wheels feel off. That left Best Buy, its main rival, in great shape. Suddenly, the world was its oyster. There really was no competition. But that's the issue: just because there was no issue on the retail front, online e-tailers began to eat away at Best Buy's share of the market. Over the past few years, Best Buy's growth has halted, and it has been forced to close a number of stores as sales slump. And things don't seem to be getting any better. Now, founding Richard Schulze -- the man who has previously proposed that Best Buy return to being a private company -- has...
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It's really not a great time to be in retail consumer electronics sales. Or maybe it's just not a great time to be Best Buy. The United States' largest consumer electronics retailer hasn't had a great year, with its CEO stepping away and sales / profits sliding. Now, it's taking measures to ensure that it doesn't slip too far behind, and that's bad news for select employees. The company has just confirmed a 1.4% employee cut, representing 2,400 jobs. This is following the company's announcement that it would have to close 50 lower performing stores in the U.S. Best Buy will cut 600 of those jobs from Geek Squad (which currently employs around 20,000 people), with the other 1,800 coming from "store...
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So, this is interesting. Evidently, making $1.6 billion in pure profit in a quarter isn't enough to justify keeping 27,000 on the payroll. It's obviously never that easy, nor that cut and dry, but HP is choosing a quarter where it profited more than some companies will ever gross to suggest that job cuts are in the pipeline. The company's most recent quarterly earnings have hit, and restructuring is at the top of the priority list. Supposedly, cutting around 8% of the workforce will lead to "annualized savings in the range of $3.0 to $3.5 billion exiting fiscal year 2014, of which the majority will be reinvested back into the company." This, however, may be the best part: "These moves are expected...
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It may strike some of you as shocking, but it's really not too much of a surprise: more smartphones were sold in the last quarter than actual PC computers. Even three years this would have been a huge, huge deal, but these days? Smartphones are everywhere, and they're still becoming more and more important and in-demand. PCs, meanwhile, aren't nearly as "hot" of an item, and many people are learning that they can delay new PC purchases and continue using the machine they already own to check email, check up on news and compose Word documents. Phones, however, are more like an accessory. Something that has style and fashion attached to it, and something that people are just more willing and ready...
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Here's something that shouldn't really come as a surprise: tablet PC shipments are on the rise, and if reports are accurate, they'll continue to rise. The Consumer Electronics Association is watching the rise of tablet PCs closely. This year, they're likely to be one of the most purchased devices out, particularly by consumers who already own other devices. The tablet PC isn't new to the industry, but the iPad has created a new whirlwind of interest that should lead to high sales throughout the year. We already know that the industry as a whole is on pace to break a lot of records when it comes to overall sales, but the CEA is projecting that shipments of tablet PCs alone in the U.S. will reach...
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In need of some good news for your weekend? Try this on for size. With the economy on the rebound, many analysts are looking to the consumer electronics sector to see if disposable income is once again being spent on new PCs and other gadgets that we could probably live without, but would rather not. After Microsoft, Intel and just about everyone else suffered less than ideal quarters throughout 2009, we've seen some rather glowing reports from the earnings front this year. And now, the Consumer Electronics Association (the same trade group that organizes CES each year) is estimating that spending on consumer electronics will be quite lofty in 2010. How lofty? Recent reports of positivity around...
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You know us--we'll never turn a blind eye to a good megacorp vs. megacorp battle. Be in Intel vs. NVIDIA, AMD vs. Intel or Dell vs. HP, we love to watch the shots from the sidelines. And folks, this is a good one. Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg, director of product management for Xbox 360 and Xbox Live, recently sat down with Game Informer in order to talk shop, and while some of the chatter involved far too many numbers and guesstimates for us to worry over, a few choice quotes definitely caught out ear. For starters, he didn't miss any opportunity to brag about the Xbox 360's expansive game library, not to mention the console's ability to tap into Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and (of course) Netflix....
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Given that "radios" lost their glitz decades ago, we'd say a RadioShack re-branding is long overdue. Announced today after a flurry of rumors, RadioShack Corporation has decided to completely overhaul its brand, its mission and in some ways, its purpose. Moving forward, you'll see less of the aged RadioShack branding and more of "THE SHACK," a hip new label that will hopefully encourage more consumer electronics shoppers to stop by and check out items that fit their lifestyle. Previously, RadioShack was best known for odd-and-end adapters and batteries; now, THE SHACK is looking to be your go-to store when it comes to electronics accessories.It's a tough battle, for sure. The accessory market...
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Considering the condition of the overall economy, few will be surprised by the latest report on the handset market. Strategy Analytics has publicly forecast that the worldwide mobile phone market will shrink nine percent during the course of 2009, which would mark the sector's first decline since 2001. The firm stated that it "expected the first half of 2009 to be very weak, as the industry is hit by a double whammy of slowing post-holiday shipments in developed markets and subdued demand during the normally buoyant Chinese New Year in Asia." As for exact figures, it has forecast that 1.08 billion handsets will be sold in 2009, down from 1.18 billion in 2008. If this proves true, it will be just...
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It's been said that you can find virtually anything you are looking for on the Internet. Sometimes, you stumble upon some things you wish you didn't find, or at least hope that your children never see. Such are the concerns of the U.K. Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, which just released its report on "Harmful content on the Internet and in video games." To cut to the chase, the report "calls on Internet industry to sharpen up its act to protect users from harmful content." It doesn't necessarily recommend government regulation, but it doesn't rule it out either--especially if the committee feels that industry self-regulation continues to miss the mark following the report's...
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IBM Introduces the Industry's Fastest One Terabyte Storage Tape DriveNew IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive Delivers New Capacity and Performance for Clients ARMONK,NY - IBM today introduced the industry’s fastest one terabyte (TB) storage tape drive, which will enable clients to protect and archive more information with less cost and less energy usage - the highest capacity and performance of any tape drive in the market.The new IBM System Storage TS1130 Tape Drive will be able to store up to one TB of uncompressed data per tape cartridge and with a native data rate of 160 megabytes per second (MB/s), storage backups can be completed up to 54 percent faster than the previous generation...
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Anybody who has e-mail knows all about phishing scams. As spam filters and firewalls become more potent, and users become more sophisticated and informed about responding to online deceptions, the spammers have had to become more sophisticated in their approach too. One approach spammers now use is to avoid mass e-mailing and tailor their message to a few high-profile targets. They call this approach "whaling." Thousands of high-ranking executives across the country have been receiving e-mail messages this week that appear to be official subpoenas from the United States District Court in San Diego. Each message includes the executive’s name, company and phone number, and commands the recipient...
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