Mobile: Big Business for Nvidia

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Nvidia reports "record" results for Q3 2012, with revenues reaching $1.2 billion with 12.9% Y-o-Y (or 15.3% Q-o-Q) growth and $209.1 million profits.

NvidiaThe company attributes such growth to its "new growth strategies"-- namely non-PC offerings such as the Tegra 3 processor. Currently over 30% of Nvidia revenues come from non-PC chips as revenues for the Consumer Products division (includes the Tegra family) grow by 27.6%.

The Tegra 3 powers a number of smartphones and tablets, such as the Microsoft Surface and the Google Nexus 7. It is also ideal for non-mobile devices, such as game consoles and STBs.

The consumer GPU unit also sees revenue growth (10% Q-o-Q), thanks to lower Kepler-based product prices and growing notebook revenues.

In other words, Nvidia's gamble on mobile devices is proving to be a success and any company producing PC components should stand up and notice. Will PCs go the way of the dodo? Probably not, but mobile will only grow even further in importance.

Go Nvidia Q3 2012 Results

Deloitte Starts Comet Cuts

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Administrators Deloitte start the job cuts at the struggling Comet chain-- 330 employees are now redundant, chiefly from head office and central functions (finance and marketing) based in Rickmansworth, Hull and Clevedon.

CometNo jobs are slashed (yet) from Comet stores or distribution centres and “all 236 Comet stores continue to trade as normal, and staff will continue to be paid for the work they do while Comet is trading in Administration," Deloitte insists.

The administrator says it is still looking for potential Comet buyers-- even if so far it failed to find a willing buyer for the entire chain.

Reportedly Maplin is looking into buying a "handful" of Comet stores, the Financial Times reports. Maplin also plans to take some Comet staff, while Dixons pledges to employ around 2000 Comet workers.

Owner OpCapita dropped Comet into administration a week ago, just 10 months it acquired the retailer from Kesa (aka Darty) for all of £2, a purchase including a tidy cash dowry worth £50m.

Go Administrators Confirm Redundancies in Head Office and Support Functions at Comet

Go More than 330 Lose Jobs at Comet (FT.com)

BlackBerry 10 Gets Launch Date

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Research in Motion (RIM) announces the date for the global BlackBerry 10 launch-- January 30 2012, with the date marking the launch of the new BlackBerry platform and 2 new BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

Blackberry 10BlackBerry 10 is the last great hope for a RIM struggling against the iPhone and Android devices. The company promises "a truly unique mobile computing experience" through BlackBerry Flow, a system allowing easy navigation between apps and a "hub" containing messages, notifications, feeds and events.

RIM also says the platform has FIPS 140-2 certification, making it suitable for government deployments.

January 30 will also see the launch of the 1st BlackBerry 10 devices-- a full touchscreen device (probably similar, if not identical, to the RIM test unit) and one more in line with the current BlackBerry Bold series.

Go BlackBerry 10 Launch Event to be Held on January 30 2012

Apple and HTC: War is Over

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Sometimes one wakes up to something truly surprising-- Apple and HTC drop all current lawsuits, thanks to a "global settlement" complete with 10-year license agreement covering all current and future patents held by the two companies.

HTC AppleYes, sometimes a man does get to bite a dog... and a couple of pen strokes end 32-month long patent war.

Unsurprisingly settlement details are confidential, even if HTC says the agreement does "not have a material adverse impact" on financials-- meaning HTC is paying at least something to Apple.

HTC was another target under Apple's "thermonuclear war" against Android. The first salvo fired on March 2010, when Apple sued over 10 user interface patents. HTC lost (due to 1996 patent covering a data-detecting function) and as a result products such as the HTC One X were temporarily banned in the US.

Read more...

TV Makers to Face EU Fines

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Ah, c'mon...not again? TV makers, already on their 2012 economic knees will face more EU fines later this month for a decade of price-fixing sins.

EUIs this another high-tech scandal? Nope. TV makers will be fined for their... cathode-ray tube sales during 1997-2007. Just when you thought you heard the last of CRTs, the old technology apparently still has some news to share.

Prices were fixed, says EU who raided the companies in 2007. The CRT villains include Philips, LG Electronics, Samsung, Panasonic, Technicolor and Toshiba.

They were ratted out by Taiwan's Chunghwa Picture Tubes who will avoid fines for "alerting the EU" to the alleged cartel. The fact Chunghwa are siad to be "avoiding fines" for their compliance indicates Chunghwa was associated with the group: so add them to the villain list.

Read more...

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