Fresh reports emerge on what Amazon is apparently working on these days-- new Amazon smartphone rumours and Kindle Fire upgrade, the better to take on both Google and Apple with.

The latest Amazon smartphone report comes from Bloomberg. According to "people with knowledge of the matter" Foxconn is making the device while Amazon keeps itself busy buying wireless technology patents.

Amazon even has new help with the patents acquisition-- Matt Gordon, former senior director of acquisitions at Intellectual Continue reading...

It appears Microsoft's ambitions of becoming similar to Apple go beyond merely making own-branded tablets-- Bloomberg reports Microsoft kept its PC partners in the dark, keeping the Surface a closely guarded secret.

Which company has a reputation for shrouding all future plans under a thick veil of darkness, before announcing them in glitzy press-only events? Oh, right...

According to anonymous Bloomberg sources in the US and Taiwan, PC vendors were let know about the Surface tablet only 3 days before it was shown to the press, when Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky "made a round of telephone calls but gave only the barest details on Friday, neither revealing the name of the gadget nor its specifications."

Sources at Acer and Asus say they only learnt about the Surface at the LA news conference. Analysts at Ovum say Microsoft was giving hardware partners "a huge vote of no confidence" and they "rightly feel slighted".

LG will focus resources and development on smartphones rather than compete against the iPad, telling Bloomerg it is putting tablets "on the back burner of the time being."

The company revealed its first tablet, the 8.9-inch Optimus Pad, at Mobile World Congress 2011. An LTE version of the Optimus Pad was released on January 2012.

However only Apple and Samsung manage to make money out of tablets-- according to ABI Research, even the Kindle Fire "fizzles" in 2012 as shipments from all other vendors Continue reading...

Adata announces a rebrand of all product lines at Computex 2012, replacing previous product names and categories and getting rid of product numbers.

Now Adata USB flash drives and external HDDs fall under the "DashDrive" name, which consists of 4 product categories-- DashDrive Elite ("for business professionals"), DashDrive Choice ("for stylish trendsetters"), DashDrive Durable (for outdoor use) and DashDrive ("for value seekers").

The product family already has a new addition with  DashDrive U Continue reading...

Corning presents the next Gorilla Glass generation-- Willow Glass, an ultra-slim flexible glass for "today's slim displays and the smart surfaces of the future."

The glass is just 100 microns thick (as thin as a sheet of copy paper) and can be potentially "wrapped" or mounted around non-flat surfaces. The company also says Willow Glass supports thinner backplanes and colour filters for both OLED and LCD technologies.

It withstands temperatures of up to 500 degrees Celsius, allowing for previously Continue reading...

So long, Cius, we hardly knew you-- Cisco stops spending on the Cius tablet and decides to leverage on other tablets with Jabber and own software deployments instead.

SVP of Telepresence Technology OJ Winge says "Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today. However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific ne Continue reading...

Lenovo promises to create $1 billion worth of business for the EMEA channel in return for helping achieve its goal-- becoming #1 EMEA PC vendor in the financial year ending March 2013.

Speaking at the Lenovo EMEA channel conference, Berlin, EMEA president and senior VP Gianfranco Lanci says ""If we look at the overall PC industry, most of our competitors are struggling in terms of performance. But for the past two years we have been the fastest-growing company in the PC market... And this build-up of a profitable and sustainable business model has been because of how we work with partners and the channel."

Lenovo has big plans for both consumer and SMB markets, with a number of future product launches. It is also taking on new partners, and says it on-boarded 4000 partners across EMEA over the past 6 months.

Dell posts negative results for Q1 2012, with a -33% Y-o-Y drop in profits and revenues falling by -4%-- declines the company blames on current economic woes and changing consumer preferences.

PC revenues are down by -6% Y-o-Y for the quarter, while consumer sales fall by -12% to reach $3 billion. The company explains some of the PC declines with supply chain disruptions caused by the 2011 Thailand floodings, as well as consumers buying tablets instead of PCs.

Most regions see drops in revenues-- Continue reading...