Lenovo seeks to increase its stake in Europe by buying German retailer Medion AG.

The company wants its PC market share to grow further-- up to 14% in Germany, and to around 7.5% in W. Europe. Currently almost 50% of Lenovo's business comes from China (alongside most of its enterprise customers).

Medion's speciality is low-cost computers, alongside CE and mobile devices.

The deal comes few months after Lenovo signed a joint-venture deal with Japan's NEC. Meanwhile analysts also say the company Continue reading...

At Apple's WWDC, Steve Jobs came on stage to announce iCloud, an Apple service that stores your music, and content and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices — automatically. Users can put all the songs they have ever bought from the company's iTunes store on up to 10 devices at no additional charge.

Apple says it will do the same with books and apps previously purchased through its online stores.

Future iTunes purchases can be automatically sent to all the devices. Content transfers will NOT require devices to be plugged into a computer (only a wireless connection).

Nvidia demos a quad-core version of its Tegra processor at Computex 2011, saying devices carrying the processor will start hitting the market in September 2011.

Bearing the codename "Kal-El" (that's Superman's Kryptonian name, won't you know), the quad-core Tegra should first appear in tablets, before showing up in smartphones. Nvidia fails to mention any vendors by name, but one can safely assume the list will include any of Nvidia's current partners (which include Motorola, Dell, Sony and Asus). Continue reading...

Super slim laptops, smartphones and tablets make part of Intel's plans for the PC's "evolution"-- or rather the company's position within the market, following CE Paul Otellini's talk at the company's analyst meeting.

The Financial Times reports Otellini showing a slide with a MacBook Air-like laptop while talking of a vision "similar to that of... Steve Jobs".

Otellini's future PC will obviously have higher performance, while being instant-on, permanently connected to the internet, low power, Continue reading...

SanDisk purchases Pliant Technology, in a deal reaching $327m in cash and equity-based incentives.

Pliant is an enterprise-level SAS protocol-based SSD developer. It also sells PCI-e based solutions for high performance servers.

Pliant uses multi-level cell (MLC) NAND in enterprise SSDs, and the lower cost of MLC is a key enabler for the broad adoption of SSDs in the enterprise market.

As it increases performance and reduces power consumption, flash memory is making significant inroads into Continue reading...

Devices with screens users can fold to store in their pockets? Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology presents a prototype of an AMOLED display it says does exactly that, while bearing no visible crease.

The prototype in question consists of x2 AMOLED panels with silicone rubber (a hyperelastic material), a protective glass cover and a module case. The display's folding radios is of just 1mm-- meaning the panels nearly touch each other when folded at a 180° angle.

The glass cover not only Continue reading...

Google announces its Android Open Accessory standard-- an API allowing developers to build hardware that can interact with Android devices via USB port-- opening the gates to a possible future flood of accessories designed for Android devices.

Currently most Android devices are only able to act as USB devices, and can't initiate connection with external USB devices.

The API is compatible with both Android 3.1 and Android 2.3.4.

Google also has an Arduino-based reference hardware design, the Accessory Continue reading...

Google announces Android version 3.1 at its I/O conference-- alongside a look at the OS' future, Ice Cream Sandwich.

Android 3.1 will be tablet only, and will have a number of tweaks to Honeycomb's interface, as well as allowing Android devices to act as USB host-- or, in other words, allowing users to plug in USB input devices (keyboards, mice, game controllers) for use with Android tablets.

It will also support Google's Music Locker service, as well as movie rentals via Android Market.

The Continue reading...