How much is the Xbox One's custom silicon worth to AMD? $3 billion plus!

   Microsoft's Xbox One will undoubtedly prove to be hugely popular console and although they have't said much about it yet the deal with AMD for the new 8-core APU which will be in the new console! If one of the ex-VP's of business development at AMD is correct then Microsoft paid a whopping $3 billion to make the most of the new chips!

   The news comes right from Bob Feldstein, who is now the Vice President of Technology Licensing at NVIDIA, but in time gone by he was employed by AMD and given he helped work on the “business management and supply agreement negotiations” with Microsoft whilst at AMD, he probably knows his stuff about the deal! Indeed, he said that, "AMD provided a custom silicon solution to Microsoft for the Xbox One, a game console and entertainment device."

   Feldstein didn't have any interesting information to offer up on the Sony use of AMD processors in the PS4, but perhaps he's holding that back for another day.  It's not like Feldstein has too much love for his ex-employer because they chose to sue him for supposedly stealing company secrets and handing them to his new employer Nvidia!

   That $3 billion is big money and we're sure Microsoft will get the most out of their investment!
GameChup Via Slashgear.

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Here's how the processor companies market shares compare from 2012!

   According to a report from Digitimes there has been some change in the people who produce the most processors in the world, figures which have been influenced lately by the decline in sales of traditional computers, sales which have instead gone to mobile devices.

   With that in mind Digitimes is reporting that Samsung and Qualcomm now ship more processors then AMD, who now find themselves in fourth place, behind the others which are second and third respectively. Intel are still running the show with 65.3% of the market share, but obviously there are growing threats from the ARM-based rivals and that's why Intel are working really hard on their Atom processors.

   This doesn't mean that AMD had a particularly bad year last year, they still shipped $3.605 billion worth of processors, but that was a 21% decline on the year before! During the same period Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor sales increased by a similar amount, 28% to be exact giving the company a $5.3 billion income through 2012.

   Samsung saw similar growth with their sales growing 78% throughout the year, something which the people behind the details say that Samsung made 83% of their processor revenues for the period came from Apple's orders.

   Into the future we expect companies to produce more and more ARM-based processors, but we'll have to wait and see what Intel can do to maintain their market share.
Digitimes Via TheVerge.

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22/01/2013: Microsoft confirms Surface Pro availability and pricing, EE offers improved 4G plans, AMD appointments and much more!

Microsoft Surface Pro gets arrival time and price tags!

   Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet has proved to be an interesting device, it's not running fully fledged Windows, but the device definitely has a place and more importantly a future at Microsoft. The new Surface Pro on the other hand is a totally different beast. Running full Windows 8 on relatively conventional hardware, all of which is crammed into a tablet form factor, this truly is the mobile computing experience. 

   We've had to wait a little while to hear about the Surface Pro's but alas we now know the devices will be available in both America and Canada from February the 9th! The tablets are a step up in price from the Surface RT's and so this bunch starts from $899! 

   The $899 will buy you 64GB of solid-state storage as standard, as well as a digital Surface pen, but if you add another hundred dollars you can have a 128GB of storage. 

   The rest of the device's internals include Intel’s Core i5 processor and HD Graphics 4000 GPU pairing, 4GB of dual-channel memory and a 10.6-inch Clear Type display which is Full HD, 1920 x 1080, and offers 10-point multitouch and support for the stylus we mentioned earlier!

   The device will have a good set of connections which include; WiFi a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, a USB 3.0 port, a microSDXC memory card slot, a headset jack, a Mini DisplayPort, and of course the connector for those keyboard covers! Your device will be nicely rounded out with a microphone, stereo speakers, and a two 720p capable webcams, one on each side of the device, all of which should make those Skype calls work well, as will the kickstand!

   All of this is crammed into a case which is 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.53 inches and will weigh less than 2lbs! One interesting addition is a special 48W power supply which has a little 5W USB port for making sure your accessories keep going as long as the tablet does!

   You can pick one of these up from Microsoft stores or online, unless of course you would prefer to pop to Staples or Best Buy if you live in the USA! If you live outside of the US or Canada you are still greeted with the 'Coming Soon' message, so we might see something soon about wider releases!
Via Engadget.

EE out new limited edition 4G plans with extra data!

   Since EE, the terrible twosome of Orange and T-Mobile, outed their 4G plans they were widely criticised by tech websites for their extortionate prices and very limited data options. Surprisingly it actually seems like EE took a little bit of notice and they've offered up a few more tariffs which have caught our attention this time! 

   EE are today offering some more less expensive plans the first of which is £31 per month plan costs, some £5 per month less than EE's cheapest standard offer. This plan will be available from January 31st to March 31st and it will include your normal unlimited minutes and texts, 500MB of data and it will require a 24 month commitment, but you will now be able to get some more inexpensive phones which have 4G capabilities. You can get both the HTC One SV and the Windows Phone 8 powered Nokia Lumia 820 from £29.99, which is actually a saving of nearly £100 compared to standard EE deals!

   Most of you will probably be more drawn in by this one though. It's designed for 'super users', who currently make up less than 1% of EE's users, but you can get your hands on 20GB of data, as well as those unlimited minutes and texts, for £46. If you want a phone with that the contract price jumps up to £61. You can get the deals in store from today all the way up to February the 28th!

   These still aren't cheap plans by any stretch of the imagination, but we'll have to wait for 4G deployment from other networks before we see some sort of value! For the moment we're sticking with unlimited 3G data!

The press release is available here.

In other news:

• The guys over at TechnoBuffalo have got their hands on a supposedly leaked roadmap of recent Samsung devices which will supposedly confirm the existence of the Galaxy Note 8.0 and the Galaxy Xcover 2! Head over to their site if you're interested, but they appear to be pretty much what we covered here and here!

• Phones4U has partnered with EE to create another UK based MNVO, this one is called Life Mobile. We're not sure exactly what unique features Life will bring, but we expect this is Phones4U's answer to the Carphone Warehouse's TalkMobile!
  Via EE.

• Slashgear things that this Q1 will work out as being one of the best periods of iPhone sales in Apple's history! This would certainly disprove reports of Apple cutting order numbers if this proves to be right. You can check out their mathematics here.

• HMV will temporarily be taken under the wing of Canadian company Hilco. They are the people who have previously saved Polaroid and they essentially own all of HMV's UK assets now that they have bought the debt off of Lloyds and the Royal Bank of Scotland. This deal is supposedly popular with record labels and film studios. On the plus side gift vouchers can now be used again!
  Via BBC.

• Huawei's P1 smartphone is currently available at the cheap price of £200 from the UK brand of Expansys! Their tweet embedded below will give you all the information you need to pick one up!

Huawei Ascend P1 now only £199.99 - #SAVE £95!bit.ly/WEud4c

— EXPANSYS.com (@expansysUK) January 22, 2013

• AMD has hired two senior engineers from Apple and Qualcomm to boost their system-on-chip (SoC) development.
  Charles Matar, came to fame at Qualcomm, where he worked on low-power and embedded chip design. He will be AMD's vice president of System-on-Chip Development according to Reuters' sources.
  Wayne Meretsky used to be employed by Cupertino's finest and he was charged with processors for i devices. He is AMD's new vice president of software IP development!
  Via Reuters.

And finally, If you pick up an Xperia Tablet Z from Sony then it seems you'll also have the privilege of charging your Xperia Z straight from your tablet! Only thing is that the only device which will support this currently is the Xperia Z, so hopefully Sony can add a few more devices to this list!
Via XperiaBlog.

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10/07/2012

RIM claim to own the qwerty market and make interesting comments about Chinese production.

   “We own the QWERTY market" is the claim today from RIM CEO Torsten Heins. It is this confidence that helps explains the company's plans to produce a full-touch BB10 device before unleashing the qwerty's. Heins' exact words were "That’s why we’re targeting the full-touch market first.”

   RIM see this as a good opportunity to diversify and in a way this is a fresh start for the company and hopefully they will be able to produce modern and stylish phones which will change the company's fortunes. 

   As always the company is relying on their comprehensive messaging services to win through and we can expect to see both qwerty and touchscreen devices in short succession in early 2013!

   There was one other interesting tidbit from today's shareholder Q&A in Waterloo. Heins was asked why the company doesn't produce phones in China to save money and his response was that he doesn't want to risk software leaks and industrial espionage. We don't know if this is a genuine concern or not really. Noone else seems to have this sort of problem, well not since Nortel cleaned up their act.

In other news:

• Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has promised to leave no space in the market where Apple is unchallenged. They have pledged to fight Apple on the software and hardware front in a head to head battle. This could get interesting!
• Kickstarter is coming to the UK in the fall!
• Android 4.1 Jelly Bean has had it's source code released to he AOSP, so expect custom ROMS in the very near future!
• It's been reported today that Nokia had given Jolla patents surrounding Meego but Nokia has denied this has happened today.
• AMD has suggested there will be an 11% drop in revenue in Q2 2012, as Intel wrestles more marketshare off of the company.
• Microsoft have proudly boasted that they are collecting royalties from 70% of Android devices today.

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13/06/2012

Samsung working on a Facebook competitor?

   Samsung is rumoured to be creating its own social network. A network designed specifically to tie in with existing devices and services. The new social network, which has been code named “Samsung Facebook”, has the mammoth expectation of becoming a competitor to Facebook over time. The network will be accessible on smartphones, cameras, and televisions. Samsung is looking to incorporate more social features into their arsenal something which would build on the well received ChatOn messaging service, which is available on all mobile operating systems at the moment.

   The Korea Times has said that Samsung will utilize a powerful cloud computing platform in order to make the service availability as widespread as possible. There's not an official name for this yet, but Samsung is currently making progress on its Family Story system, which hopefully will become the framework of this new platform. Family Story was first shown to us back at CES 2012; it's designed to share photos, reminders, memos and a whole host of other useful things via Samsung smartphones and televisions.

   Family Story is projected to be completed by the end of the year, with the service going live during the first quarter of 2013. The Korea Times said: “The eventual goal is to expand our social media service across different devices from different companies across different mobile platforms. That includes cameras, televisions and blue-ray [sic] players.” This could be a very exciting platform indeed!

The limited availability of iOS6.

   Apple had their brief little pop at Android mid-week about how many users have received the latest build of the OS, Ice Cream Sandwich, but Apple chose to omit that while iPhone 3GS and 4 owners will get a version of iOS 6, they won’t be able to use all the features, they would expect. In the companies finest small-print, on the iOS 6 preview page, Apple has revealed that FaceTime over cellular will only be available to the iPhone 4S and the new iPad, while 3GS owners will also have to make do without Shared Photo Streams.

   As well as these 'little details' it's been announced that the original iPad won’t be getting iOS 6 at all and will be stuck on iOS 5, while the iPad 2 won't get any Siri functionality, unlike the new iPad on iOS 6. Flyover and turn-by-turn navigation, features in Apple’s new Maps app, which replaces Google Maps in iOS, will be be available on the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 and newer.

   The list of features the iPhone 3GS won't have is the most extensive; VIP list support, VIP/Flagged smart mailboxes, and Offline Reading List, on top of the previously mentioned features, are only on the iPhone 4 or later, and iPad 2 or later. Apple’s plans for Made for iPhone hearing aids will require the powers of the iPhone 4S. Sorry to be the one to burst the bubble but it's better to know sooner rather than later, right?

Three announces EU Roaming deal to beat them all!

   One of the newest and most forward thinking UK mobile carriers, Three, has taken it upon themselves to challenge to extortionate data roaming charges that people have become wise to when travelling abroad. 

   Their solution is the new Euro Internet Pass. A service which offers unlimited data in most EU countries for £5 ($8) a day. The new add-on will support most of the popular European holiday destinations, such as France, Germany, Greece and Spain. The only slight downside here is that that tethering isn't included in the deal, but the company has said that “The pass was designed for browsing, so streaming may not be as good as it is on our UK network, and, tethering isn’t included.” 

   There's also been warnings that set-up may be a bit of a pain for first-time users, it'll require a combination of turning on data roaming but (initially) turning off push notifications so you can avoid charges until the day-pass realises it has started:

   “To activate the pass, firstly make sure data roaming is enabled. You’ll then also need to turn off your push notifications  (they’re the things that tell you stuff like when you’ve got an email, when it’s your turn in a game or when someone’s tagged a pic of you). They need turning off to avoid out of bundle charges while you’re setting up the pass. How to do it differs from phone to phone, so make sure you’ve worked out how to sort it before you go away. Then just click on the link in the SMS. Follow the simple steps to buy the pass and then you can go wild online until midnight that day (UK time)” 

   A full list of supported countries (and principalities) is below:

 Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal (incl. Azores & Madeira), Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain (incl. Balearic & Canary Islands), Sweden, Vatican City and Monaco.

    Not supported:

Aaland Islands, Albania, Andorra, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Channel Islands (Jersey, Guernsey), Croatia, Cyprus (North), Faroe Islands, French Guiana, Georgia, Gibraltar, Guadeloupe, Iceland, Isle of Man, Kazakhstan, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Martinique, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Reunion, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Ukraine, Turkey, Netherlands Antilles and the Rest of the World.

In other news:

• Nintendo are reportedly working on a Nintendo 3DS successor!
• Nokia are again trying to sell their luxury brand Vertu, this time it looks like they have a buyer and we'll keep you updated as to whether they manage to complete this deal.
• Apple's new Retina displays (2880x1800 pixels, 220PPI) for their laptops cost $150 each so that's one of the reasons the Macbook Pro's have shot up in price.
• AMD have licensed ARM's Cortex A5 technology to enhance their security on x86 based architecture.
• It's been reported that Microsoft is charging $85 for each Windows RT license, which'll make most Windows tablets inaccessible.
• Sony have announced two new phones today; The Xperia Miro and the Xperia Tipo. The later of which is a dual sim phone, whereas the former is a mid-range phone. Click on the name of each phone for a full information list.
• Windows Phone 8 is rumoured to have Skype integration and the inclusion of a whole host of Nokia exclusive apps such as their mapping technology. Keep it locked to TheTechFella for all the latest news.

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