Items tagged with Thailand
Cartoons taught us that robots mainly like to feast on oil, but then again, they also imparted other erroneous lessons, such coyotes being able to survive repeated falls off of cliffs -- beep, beep! Go ahead and color us intrigued, because it turns out robots have a taste for real human food. Or at least some do, such as the one developed in Thailand by Sirapat Pratontep, an expert in nanotechnology. A government-financed organization called the Thai Delicious Committee (yes, seriously) oversaw the development of the taster bot, or as it's more accurately described, an "intelligent robot that measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like...
Read more...
Are you starting to run low on storage space? Before you bite the bullet and pay an inflated price for another hard drive to store your expanding collection of lolcats or whatever else it is that's hogging your HDD, you might want to consider hanging tight for another month. If you can, you could end up saving as much as 10 percent on your HDD purchase. According to news and rumor site DigiTimes, the Taiwan market is getting ready to drop the price of hard drives by around 10 percent at the end of April. It's a move that, in part, is intended to promote sales, as buyers have been hesitant to stock up on storage ever since severe flooding in Thailand disrupted the HDD manufacturing business and...
Read more...
Toshiba and Western Digital announced a deal today in which the two companies will essentially swap some manufacturing equipment with each other -- though which is getting the better deal is debateable. Western Digital has agreed to sell Toshiba certain assets related to the production of 3.5" hard drives "to address the requirements of the regulatory agencies that have conditionally approved or are continuing to review the company's planned acquisition of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST)." Translation: We really want to buy Hitachi, so we're giving Toshiba a deal." As part of that deal, WD has agreed to buy Toshiba Storage Device (Thailand). The key word in that sentence is "Thailand;"...
Read more...
The hard drive shortage, Oracle's assault on Itanium, and highly competitive scenarios in its ink-and-printer business combined to kneecap HP's earnings this last quarter. The company's net revenue fell seven percent, to $30 billion, while overall margins dropped to just 6.8 percent -- a decline of 3.7 percentage points. The steep decline in revenue was driven by a number of factors. Personal computing sales were down 15% year-on-year, imaging sales fell 7%, and enterprise server product revenue was down 10%. On the upside, HP's services business, software revenue, and finance division all grew profits over the same period -- but not enough to offset these declines. The company's CEO, Meg Whitman,...
Read more...
Seagate this week reported financial results for the quarter ended December 30, 2011, in which the company said it shipped 47 million disk drives and collected $3.2 billion in revenue. For the six months ended on the same day, Seagate says it collected revenue of $6 billion and returned $151 million to shareholders in the form of a dividend. Not too shabby when you consider severe floods in Thailand left the hard drive industry in shambles. Unfortunately for Joe Consumer, relief is hardly in sight. In a supplementary note (PDF) discussing its quarterly results, Seagate warned that the impact of the floods on the hard drive industry will be felt throughout the entire year. "Seagate believes that...
Read more...
Multiple motherboard manufacturers are warning that precipitously rising HDD prices will impact their sales. Gigabyte has issued guidance that it now expects Q4 shipments to fall by 20 -25 percent, while Asustek predicts a much smaller decline of ~five percent. Analysts believe Asus is underestimating the impact of the price increases, and think the company's sales could fall as much as ten percent. This would be in line with guidance from MSI, ECS, and Asrock. Exposure to the shortage will vary depending on the degree to which a manufacturer relies on retail sales and the price points of their various products. The impact on budget boards in the retail channel, for example, is likely to be catastrophic....
Read more...
Both analysts and Apple are warning that the price of hard drives, which has already been creeping upwards the past few weeks, could jump significantly in Q4 due to catastrophic floods taking place in Thailand. During Apple's conference call this week, CEO Tim Cook said: ""Like many others, we source many components from Thailand and have multiple factories that supply these components. There are several factories that are currently not operable, and the recovery timeline for these factories is not known at this point... We would say that our primary exposure is on the Mac...I'm virtually certain there will be an overall industry shortage of disk drives as a result of the disaster." Industry...
Read more...
Seagate on Wednesday provided an update on its operations in Thailand following severe flooding that has ravaged the region. The hard drive maker said all of its factories in Thailand are operational and there aren't any logistical issues with employees getting to work, but it's not business as usual. "The hard disk drive component supply chain is being disrupted and it is expected that certain components in the supply chain will be constrained," Seagate said in a statement. "Given the volatility of the situation it is unclear what the magnitude of the supply chain disruption will be to Seagate’s hard disk drive output from its Thailand operations. "Seagate is actively managing its supply...
Read more...
It hasn't been that long since the couple has reconciled, but it appears YouTube and Thailand may be on the splits again. The government is seeking a court order to block two video clips currently on YouTube. "In the next couple of days, we will seek a court order to block those links deemed to cause public confusion and threaten national security," Yanaphon Youngyuen, head of the Justice Ministry's Internet crimes unit, told Reuters. "While awaiting the court order, we are seeking cooperation from Internet service providers to block those links," he said. The two-part postings,...
Read more...
YouTube wanna-be users in Thailand felt a weight lift yesterday as the government lifted a 5-month ban of the video service. The ban was instituted when an anonymous user posted a clip deemed insulting to the king. The ban was imposed five months ago, after an anonymous user posted a clip showing digitally-altered images of revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej next to a photograph of feet. Thais believe feet are the lowest and dirtiest part of the body, and avoid ever showing the soles of their feet in public. Placing feet next to anyone's head is seen as a tremendous insult. We'd say the ban actually backfired, as after the ban was imposed, clips spoofing the king...
Read more...
