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The Strange Case of the Disappearing Touchpads

29 August 2011 Bob Snyder Laptops, Tablets, eReaders
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Best Buy sold less than 10% of its initial order of HP TouchPads after its July launch and wanted HP to take the remainder of the 270,000 TouchPads back.

HP TouchpadThen in HP's famous capitulation of the PC business, CEO Leo Apotheker said, "Our TouchPad has not been gaining enough traction in the marketplace. We have made the difficult but necessary decision to shut down the WebOS hardware operations."

Then the firesale started:  Instead of taking the inventory back, HP gave Best Buy the go-ahead to dump the units. Authorizing a price drop of $250 on the TouchPad, the reatiler tried again.

This time the "music-powered by Beats Audio" units with Adobe Flash jumped off the shelves at $99 for TouchPad 16GB and $150 for TouchPad 32GB.

350,000 TouchPads sold in just 24 hours. 10 times the number of tablets that had been sold at Best Buy prior to HP's exit announcement.

TouchPad is now sold-out at most major retailers and also online.

And what's the lesson here? Customers love a bargain. The TouchPad had the wrong price point. Leo is definitely not a hardware guy. All of the above?

The strange case of the disappearing TouchPads is not over yet.

At HP, now a house run by an ex-SAP executive, the initial conclusion seems to be it may have been a mistake to throw out WebOS (software that drives the TouchPad). Not a word about the hardware.

Yet some of the units came out of the box with Android software. Why? No one knows... but the stpry on the disappearing Touchpads isn't going to disappear for some time...

Go TouchPad? What TouchPad Inventory?

AMD (Finally) Gets New Boss

26 August 2011 Marco Attard Vendor News
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After running CEO-free since Dirk Meyer's January 2011 resignation, AMD appoints ex-Lenovo COO Rory Read as CEO and president.

Rory ReadRead takes over from Thomas Seifert, who ran the company as interim CE.

At Lenovo Read was responsible for growth strategy in the Americas-- driving it to double-digit revenue growth and market share gains. Prior to Lenovo, Read has a 23 year history with IBM.

Seifert will return to his previous role as CFO.

Rumour has it AMD's CEO hunt took this long because the Board fired Meyer over disagreements, not performance-- before starting to look for a high-profile executive replacement. We wonder if Read will fit that profile?

Go AMD Appoints New CEO

Go AMD & The Ride of the Headless Horseman

Tablets' Future Growth and Changes

25 August 2011 Marco Attard Laptops, Tablets, eReaders
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In-Stat predicts tablet shipments will reach 250M in 2017, thanks to increasing competition from major companies (including Samsung, Motorola, RIM, LG and HTC) entering the market.

TabletsThe analyst says tablets are competing not only against PCs-- but against all CE and computing devices.

The tablet market and its ecosystem will continue evolving, with the next few generations showing increasing differentiation towards different market segments and useage models.

Meanwhile degrading prices will make tablets increasingly attractive to the mainstream and enterprise markets, together with with increasing mobile apps and new semiconductor technologies.

The dominant tablet form factor will remain 9-11", with 56% share of the 2017 market.

Maintaining over 90% of the 2017 market are iOS and Android, with Windows following far behind-- the analyst says a number of companies will fail in the tablet market due to not supporting one of the leading OS platforms.

Go Tablet Shipments to Approach 250M in 2017 (In-Stat)

The Belle of the Symbian Ball

25 August 2011 Marco Attard Mobile Phones
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Following a teaser campaign on Monday Nokia announces its latest Symbian update-- Belle, the successor to Anna, coming on 3 new devices launching on Q3 2011.

Symbian BelleBelle brings single-tap NFC sharing and pairing to Nokia phones-- enabling data sharing and pairing with NFC-enabled devices (such as speakers or headsets) by touching devices together.

The update also increases the number of home screens, alongside tweaks on web browsing, widgets and notification access.

The announcement includes 3 new Nokia handsets-- the 700, 701 and 600 models.

Nokia says the 700 is its smallest smartphone, the 701 has its brightest ever display (with a 3.5" IPS LCD with ClearBlack tech and Gorilla Glass) and the 600 is a music-centric model Nokia says is its loudest yet (with 106 phons of sound).

The Belle update will also eventually show up on other phones-- specifically the N8, E6, E7, C6-01, C7 and X7.

Go Nokia Symbian Belle

Helping With Password Storage

25 August 2011 Marco Attard Accessories
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One can't always rely on their memory for password storage-- thus your customers should find a secure alternative with Menstecnica's I-Memo and its fingerprint recognition.

I-MemoThe I-Memo is a portable password-storing device smaller than a mobile phone, allowing access to stored passwords via fingerprint verification instead of a  master password.

It stores up to 2000 records (each with PIN, userID, password and other fields) and has a random password and number generator. The device can handle up to x10 different user fingerprints, each with their own password records.

Further security comes through an AES encryption algorithm (with a 256-bit key) and the firmware's digital key (verified in hardware).

Users can connect the device to PC via USB cable in order to backup data (as an encrypted copy) and install firmware updates through using the included management software.

Go Menstecnica I-Memo

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