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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Various companies and even the RIAA have either settled with or won numerous law suits against pirates and/or networks that allow piracy such as the old Napster or Kazaa. We're talking at least 9-figures worth of damages awarded and/or settlements paid off, but yet the artists don't seem to be getting paid:"Artist managers and lawyers have been wondering for months when their artists will see money from the copyright settlements and how it will be accounted for," said lawyer John Branca, who has represented Korn, Don Henley, and The Rolling Stones, among others."Some of them are even talking about filing lawsuits if they don't get paid soon."It would be an incredibly ironic end to the music...
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The Eee PC from Asus has certainly garnered a lot of attention from the public and the media, but those aren't the only eyes watching. After all, it behooves the major players to know what the public wants.Senior VP of Sony's IT product division, Mike Abary, has been watching the Eee PC very closely and had this to say:"If (the Eee PC from) Asus starts to do well, we are all in trouble. That's just a race to the bottom," said Mike Abary.He means that if mainstream PC buyers start to find their needs met by a lightweight, simply featured, inexpensive portable, it's likely to impel all of the major players in the industry to pile on by lowering their prices. And that's in an industry with...
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A rising tide lifted all the boats in the video gaming industry, and we all shot those boats with RPGs in our spare time. The industry reports $17.9 billion in sales for 2007, 43 percent higher than 2006. The Wii led the way in hardware, and Halo 3 sold an astonishing 4.82 million games. The industry set new highs in every category of hardware and software, says NPD analyst Anita Frazier. "Both the PS3 and the Xbox 360 realized strong hardware sales increases," Frazier says. "The 360 in particular seems to have benefitted from a killer slate … including Call of Duty 4, Assassin's Creed and Halo 3."Despite the Wii's success, it was only the top-selling console system. Nintendo's handheld DS actually...
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Compared a year ago, digital music sales are now double what they used to be. However, the research report by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) also said that the music industry as a whole continues to slump. Although digital music sales are still growing quickly, the growth has not kept up with shrinking CD sales. In fact, for seven consecutive years, global music sales have declined. From 2005-2006, sales figures dropped 5% from $19.6 billion to $20.7 billion. Perhaps what is happening is that digital music sales are becoming a substitute for CDs. However, the overall decline in music sales may lie in the fact that with digital music, consumers can mix and match...
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PC Industry Rallying Behind DTX Specification to Enable Small Form Factor Adoption - Open Standard Allows OEMs and ODMs to Innovate and Develop Smaller, Quieter and More-Efficient Desktop Systems - CeBIT - Hannover, Germany -- March 15, 2007 --Further demonstrating its commitment to lead the world to energy-efficient computing, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced strong ecosystem support for DTX, the open standard specification driven by AMD to enable the broad development of small form factor (SFF) PCs. DTX has been developed to empower industry stakeholders to deliver innovative, energy-efficient small form factor solutions that are smaller, quieter, and desktop-friendly, all while delivering rich...
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AMD Drives Industry Efforts to Enable Console-Quality Games for Handheld Devices -Technology, Tools and Support Enable Content Development on Open Industry Platform for the Ultimate Mobile Gaming Experience - SUNNYVALE, CALIF. - March 7, 2007 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced its strategy to enable visually stunning and immersive games and multimedia content optimized for handheld devices powered by AMD's next-generation graphics technologies. As a leading supplier to the handheld market, AMD is introducing a suite of tools to help content creators jumpstart the development of applications for handheld devices based on OpenVG 1.0 and OpenGL ES 2.0 industry standards and AMD's patented...
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We don't condone piracy for one second simply out of respect for the creators of games, music, you name it, but apparently piracy may not actually be as harmful as certain industries claim. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) claims that piracy accounts for a large loss of sales annually but a new study shows that P2P piracy may only account for as little as .07% of lost sales. According to the architects of this experiment, the reason that the RIAA blames so much loss on piracy is because of the way it tracks it's sales in the first place. I know, it sounds farfetched, a huge industry based on sales manipulating data to prevent a source of distribution...
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In a interesting twist, a New York boy accused by the Record Industry for being a 'pirate' is fighting back. Claiming he was downloading songs that he already owned on CD and that his accusers have no real way of proving he illegally downloaded, the now man and his attorney are demanding a trial by jury intended to seek among other things compensation for damage to his reputation, distracting him from school, and his family's legal fees. A New York teen, dubbed a pirate by the Record Industry, is counter suing them for defamation, violating anti-trust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats. In papers responding to a lawsuit filed...
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