ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

DSGi sold a computer and a TV every 2 seconds over Xmas and all the Megastores saw sales over £1 million each in the first week of the sale.

Sales from stores open at least a year rose 8% in the 12 weeks to January 9th (better than analysts' expectations of a 2-3% growth) and DSGi predicts £60m-£90m for pre-tax profit in the year to May 2.

Gross margins across the Group were down 0.8% year on year, driven by the Group's decision to drive sales through the peak period as well as product and market mix.

Go DSGi Sales Report

Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son shook up Mobile Asia Congress, declaring mobile networks alone can't support future data-intensive devices.

The CEO of Japan's largest Internet group uses this example to explain why future mobile networks may not be able to support the evolution of devices: if the same rate of device development continues, in 2024 an iPhone would be 1000X more powerful and will store 32 terabytes of data…

"The PC internet day is gone, the majority of Internet access will come from mobile," Son insists. "We will go aggressively to LTE but LTE is still not fast enough. We need both WiFi and mobile."

Son also says: 55% of Japan has migrated past 3G to 3.5G, Japanese mobile content industry is worth $14 billion annually, 50% of mobile data is consumed in the home, the peak time for mobile data consumption is between 9 PM -10 PM; and smartphone users consume 10X more data than non-smartphone users.

Go Softbank on WiFi Need

Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn says new plans call for up to 100 European stores in next 3 years, with 70-80 in the UK.

Two stores will open in UK in spring and Dunn told FT that Best Buy Europe's management and Scott Wheway (CEO in Europe ) will determine the pace at which stores open based on how customers respond to the Best Buy brand.

Best Buy last year paid £1.1bn for a 50% in a joint venture with Carphone Warehouse. Mobile phone sales have been falling in 2009, but Best Buy Europe, which now owns Carphone's 2459 shops, recorded growth. It sold 5.9m mobiles this year, up to Sept. 30th (up 2% on same period last year).

Best Buy Europe generated £1.7bn of revenue, up 4%, and £79m of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, up 7%.

Best Buy is this month opening in Turkey. And instead of opening 5-7 stores in China in 2010, they decided to open double (10-15 stores).

Go Best Buy in Europe in 2010

Gmail has keyboard shortcuts and this time last year Google offered users a free pack of color-coded shortcut stickers for tacking onto any keyboard.

Now Gboard, a specialized mini-keyboard for Google's e-mail service created by a film producer from California, can lead you to them for $19.99.

The device is powered by USB and users need to enable keyboard shortcuts within Gmail's settings.

Clicking on any one of 19 colored keys set in a standard size numpad-only keyboard performs a particular keyboard shortcut such as start a search, jump between message threads or code emails by priorities.

Considering a total of 69 Gmail shortcuts, Gboard could end up a 100+key version fighting Microsoft's lucrative keyboard business.

Go GBoard