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And the Number of Android Tablets Sold is...

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Let's use the power of math and calculate how many Android tablets got sold so far-- crunch the latest Android platform stats with the official activation numbers from the Google Q3 2011 financial results. The total should come to... around 3.42 million.

Android tabletThe calculation comes through the Twitter account of Android developer Al Sutton.

However Google's Andy Rubin disagrees-- at his opening keynote to the first AsiaD conference Rubin says there are "a little more than 6 million Android tablets out there running Google services," a total not counting other tablets.

What's the working behind the previous result? Google claims Android device activations total 190M. The platform stats show 1.8% of Android devices accessing the Android Market on the 14 day period to October 3 2011 used the tablet-only Android 3.x. Simple division does the rest.

However, one has to keep in mind these numbers only count officially activated devices-- there are certainly more tablets out there running on other Android versions and using 3rd party app stores, which would make a difference (if probably not by much).

Now we can only wonder how the forthcoming Android-based (but not Android Market using) Amazon Kindle Fire will affect such totals. Meanwhile, Apple claims it sold 15M iPads in a year...

Go Al Sutton's calculation on Twitter

Go Google Mobile Boss Andy Rubin at AsiaD

Go Android Platform Stats

Go Google Q3 2011 Results

Sainsbury's Makes Purchase in Online Entertainment

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UK supermarket Sainsbury's purchases "white label" online entertainment company Global Media Vault from MBL PLC for £1 million, saying “customers will soon be able to buy, rent or stream content from Sainsbury’s.”

Sainsbury'sGlobal Media Vault will operate with Sainsbury's as main client, and has a database containing 3M music, film and game assets for the UK market.

"Online retailing and the delivery of digital content will play a key role in the future of entertainment," Sainsbury's says.

The purchase follows the launch of Sainsbury's Entertainment website back in November 2010-- which we assume will soon start offering video-on-demand and online rental together with the physical DVDs and Blu-ray discs it already sells.

Go Sainsbury's Acquires Global Media Vault

Electronic Partner Slips in Decline

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Electronic Partner H1 2011 revenues decline by 3% Y-o-Y-- even if the market actually shows growth (by 4.3%), according to Manager Magazin.

MedimaxMeanwhile international revenues drop even further to reach the double digit range, with Medimax retail outlets threatening to slip even further towards the red.

Manager Magazin quotes EP managing partner and director Oliver Haubrich, who says the retailer is "in an alarming state."

The reason for such a decline? Family in-fighting, as Oliver Haubrich struggles with his uncle (and EP Advisory Board Chairman) Harmut Haubrish for control over the retailer--  paralysing company management in the process.

Go Decline in Sales at Electronic Partner (Manager Magazin)

Motorola (sort of) Follows Touchpad Example

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Guess who was following the HP fire sale? Motorola was, as it launches the Xoom Family Edition-- a Best Buy exclusive selling for $379.

Xoom Family EditionThe only differences between the "new" model and the regular Xoom are less storage (the Family Edition has 16GB instead of 32GB) and a collection of pre-loaded apps.

Last August HP started selling off its remaining TouchPad stock for either $100 (16GB model) and $150 (32GB) per tablet, before producing one last TouchPad run following reports of cheap tablets "mysteriously" vanishing off shelves.

Will customers go for a cheap(er) Motorola tablet? Not likely-- customers will probably either prefer pay more for an iPad or wait for the $200 Kindle Fire.

Motorola is also said to be launching a sequel to the Xoom this week, with an announcement of sorts coming in the shape of a mysterious teaser video.

Go Motorola Announces Xoom Family Edition

Watch Teaser: Motorola's Next

Go Arise from the Grave: the TouchPad is (sort of) Back

What’s Up in UPS?

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What’s new in UPS, you ask? OK, you didn't ask because you don’t think anything really new is going on. Isn’t it a mature market with a few behemoths locking up the business?

AST-PQTYes... and no. It is a mature market but Geneva-based AST Power Quality Solutions believes it can target the exposed underbelly of the old UPS beasts. The very fact that UPS is mature means the market leaders have over-extended their product lines, added more complicated features to units to justify their price points, and evolved clunky ordering and logistics structures. All for single digit profit margins. It’s the maturity that has created their vulnerabilities, argues AST-PQS.

Founded in 2009 and out with their A Series UPS line in Europe in September 2010, AST Power Quality Solutions is an independent joint-venture business extension to ASTModular SA, a provider of modular data centres and headquartered in Barcelona.

AST-PQS goal is to build a complete set of all-inclusive power quality solutions (aka UPS) for the professional (B2B) 1-phase markets. The USP of their UPS (OK, I’ve been waiting years to work in that clever phraseology of acronyms) is to simplify the typical confusingly-broad product offering by including all the most important features, yet matching the price points of “less advanced” products currently available.

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