Intel names insider Krzanich as new CEO

Intel has finally named the successor to Paul Otellini and it’s Intel veteran Chief Operating Officer Brian Krzanich. Intel has continued the tradition of promoting from within rather than appointing an outsider with Krzanich having started with Intel in 1982 becoming the 6th CEO in Intel history. Krzanich is a very good fit for Intel as they double down on efforts to secure strategic partners for their fabrication business. Intel has so many fabrication plants that are not able to manufacture their insanely high tech new parts that they could easily manufacture for other companies and start taking business from the likes of TMSC and Samsung.

Pelican Imaging’s 16-lens array camera coming to smartphones next year

After seeing that Nokia was investing in Pelican’s array camera technology, I was wondering when they would start to apear in the next generation of Lumia Pureview devices, the answer could be as early as next year. Pelican CEO Chris Pickett said that the array camera technology would find its way into at least one new smartphone launching in 2014 and it sounds right up Nokia’s alley. Keep an eyeout for more news on this as the year goes on.

Google Hangouts add remote desktop control

Google has just made their video calling/conferencing tool, Google Hangout, even more useful. Freshly introduced is the ability to remote desktop control the computer of someone else in your Hangout so that you can help them out with a bit of handy tech support. Obviously there is security involved with the support needing to be accepted by the other party but it is nice to see Google adding more functionality into their products.

Instagram Introduces New ‘Photos Of You’ Tagging Feature On iPhone

Facebook’s killer feature is the online curation of your photos and the ability to tag your friends in them to create a social photo sharing experience. Since they bought Instagram the feature set of the photo sharing service hasn’t changed much to encompass the features of Facebook. Until now that is, Instagram will now let users tag each other in their photos making it easier to identify other users and to keep track of where you have been tagged across Instagram.

 AMD Spikes 14%: Rumors of Intel Buy

AMD’s share price jumped a remarkable 14% yesterday and there’s no particular reason why. Some are citing the company’s partnership with Sony on the PS4 and expected partnership with Microsoft on their next Xbox console as a possible reason, but others are launching something a little more left field into the fray. Could Intel be lining up to purchase AMD? In the past that would have been almost impossible with antitrust laws the way they are, but recently with the rise of mobile computing and the dawn of the age of the tablet Intel and AMD are no longer alone in the processor space. The rise of ARM based SoC chips could give rise for Intel to purchase AMD, but why would they? Intel announced their new onboard graphics options for the new Haswell generation of Core series processors yesterday and the new Iris and Iris Pro level graphics could be the solution to what many were calling sub par graphic performance from Intel’s Ivy Bridge chips. But what if Intel wanted to be even more serious about graphics, what if Intel wanted to buy AMD to compete in the mobile space with Nvidia (the other big player in the dedicated graphics space). Nvidia’s Tegra SoCs have some of the strongest integrated graphics in the market today and with Intel’s drive to get their Atom processors more widely adopted, a buyout of long time rivals AMD could bring a new level of graphic performance to both their SoC and onboard graphics departments and could be the push Intel needs to dominate mobile in the future.

Facebook’s Q1 earnings

Facebook is growing, their users now sit at 1.11 billion and although they may have narrowly missed the expectations of Wall Street they still managed a healthy first quarter earning of $219 million on revenue of $1.458 billion. The social network saw a massive 5% increase in mobile monthly active users as compared to the same period last year with 751 million now accessing the service from a mobile device. Facebook CEO MArk Zuckerberg has long been saying that their efforts to monetise the mobile users are a massive focus for the company and now with these figures you can see why.

Seagate’s Q3 earnings

Seagate announced a strong but not spectacular set of Q3 financials with $416 million of profit off of $3.5 billion in revenue. The storage giant still controls the lucrative enterprise market with strong sales to cloud computing data centers and the like which is keeping them in the race with WD who currently lead the consumer market in sales.

HTC M4 leaked, suggests flagship style with middleweight specs

While the HTC One continues to garner praise from reviewers for their flagship phone, the HTC One, they have their eyes on launching a full range of phones to compete at more price points than just the premium segment. Enter the M4, the oft rumoured middling spec phone with a 4.3-inch 720p display paired with a dual-core processor, LTE-capable radio and 16GB of storage. Leaked pictures have pegged the design as an almost carbon copy of the One, meaning that the M4 would surely be the best built mid range phone available.

Nokia to invest in ‘array’ mobile cameras

Array mobile cameras let a large number of small sensors take a series of images that are stitched together by an image processor to form one larger image. We’ve already seen Nokia shove a 41Mp camera into their PureView 808 phone and have used other fancy trickery such as OIS (optical Image Stabilisation) in their Lumia 920 smartphone, now it seems the Finnish smartphone maker is looking to array cameras as its next potential imaging trick. Nokia Growth Partners head Bo Ilsoe thinks that the technology from Pelican, a company who have been working on array cameras for years, is ”on the cusp of being commercialized”. So we should be seeing some sort of OIS, PureView, 40Mp array Nokia Lumia in the not too distant future, right?

Google Now available on iOS devices starting today

Google now was one of the most innovative features announced with the introduction of Android 4.1 (Jelly Bean). The service took information from your Google account and from the location and user set data that you gave it and provides real time information that should be relevant to you. The app does a fantastic job of making suggestions and of showing relevant content in Android and now the Google Now experience will be available for iOS as well. The Google Search app for iOS has been updated to allow for 22 of the 29 cards that appear on the Android version of the app to be available in the iOS app. The clear difference will obviously be the deep integration with notifications which iOS will not do, but for now it seems that Google can still build some of the best looking abnd performing iOS apps.

Windows Azure joins Microsoft’s billion-dollar business club

Microsoft measures success by the $1Bn revenue mark. For a division to be part of that club is a major achievement at the Redmond based software giant. The latest member of the club is Microsoft’s cloud computing and infrastructure product Windows Azure. According to Bloomberg Azure subscriptions have increased by 48 percent in the past six months. This means that there are over a dozen divisions in the club with SharePoint being the only one to have crossed the $2bn mark.

Alibaba buys 18 percent stake in Sina Weibo

If you don;t know who Alibaba is then this is going to be a bit of a shock for you, Alibaba is the world’s largest online retailer and Sina Weibo is China’s version of Twitter with around 50% more users than their western counterpart. With a US$586 million investment, Alibaba now owns around 18% of Sina Weibo and plans to heavily integrate user-account connectivity, online payment and marketing to create a giant of social commerce.

Samsung Galaxy S4 Teardown

iFixit has done the mandatory tear down of the new Samsung Galaxy S4 and has come away rather impressed with the repairability score of the new flagship hitting an impressive 8/10. The teardown also showed some interesting choices of components with Qualcomm having no fewer than 6 parts in the new Galaxy S4. From LTE modems and power management chips to the Snapdragon 600 SoC that does duty in the LTE version of the S4, Qualcomm is coming away with a large chuck of the componentry in the new S4.

Samsung May Launch A Rugged Galaxy S4

The Sony Xperia Z showed that top of the range smartphones could in fact be more rugged and less fearful of the elements with its dust and waterproof design. Samsung not wanting to leave any part of the market uncovered with their smartphone strategy is reportedly in the process of creating a Galaxy S4 rugged model that would compete for attention with those in the market for a workhorse of a phone both internally and externally.

LG will launch the world’s first 55-inch curved OLED HDTV

OLED TVs have barely made an entrance into the global marketplace and LG is already looking to differentiate with an IMAX style curved OLED panel that has gone up for pre-order in their homeland of Korea. The edges of the panels are curved towards the viewer to provide a “more immersive feeling”. The premium for such immersion? 35% over the already high $1000 USD RRP for the standard 55-inch OLED TV that LG already sells.

Intel to unveil next-gen Haswell in approx 3,337,200,000,000,000 nanoseconds

Intel’s newest chipset Haswell brings with it the promise of vastly increased battery life for notebooks and ultrabooks alike. True to Intel’s quirky  nature the event invite that went out to the press was not dated but rather given in nanoseconds just a shade over 3 quadrillion of them to be exact, otherwise known as Monday, June 3 or the day before Computex Taipai kicks off. Computex is one of the largest trade shows for Intel products and will no doubt have dozens of new designs and models from every PC maker to show off.

Samsung Galaxy S4 launches in South Africa

With a great deal of fanfare and pomp, the Samsung Galaxy S4 launched in South Africa last night. The superphone from the Koren giant boasts a 5-inch 1080p full HD Super AMOLED display with a Samsung made Exynos 5 Octa-core processor (or a Qualcomm S4 processor in the LTE model) along with 2Gb of RAM making this one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, phone in the world.  The thinner, lighter, faster Galaxy S4 came with a few surprises that we weren’t expecting. Samsung will be offering a free 2 year ADH (Accidental Damage from Handling) warranty which will cover all Galaxy S4 users for 2 screen replacements or liquid damage repairs, an absolute win for those who have had to replace a screen on a smartphone before (iPhone 5 screen cost in the region of R4 000 to repair due to the fact that the LCD and Gorilla Glass are bonded together now). I’ll reserve judgement on the phone’s day to day performance until I have one to review but from the brief interaction I had with the device, it is fast, responsive and will prove to be a great contender for anyone who is in the market for a new smartphone.

WWDC 2013 Tickets Sold Out In Just 2 Minutes

Planning on going to Apple’s developer conference (WWDC) this year? Well you and everyone else waking up to this news is too late. In a record time of around 180 seconds, WWDC 2013 has sold out. Excitement for the event is at an all time high with Sir Jonathan Ive having taken over full control of software and hardware design at Apple we are sure to see an evolution of iOS and Mac OS.

Amazon Profit Falls but Margin Widens

Amazon.com has been involved in massive capital intensive expansion over the last few years the result of which is continued falls in revenue for the e-commerce giant.Q1 2013 saw their profit decline by 37 percent to $82 million from $130 million a year ago. The good new though is that their traditionally tight gross margin widened to 26.6 percent from 24 percent.

Samsung’s official Q1 earnings

As if the Samsung juggernaut needed more encouragement their Q1 earning read like a fairy tale for any company. Net profit exploded by 41.6% to a record $6.4-billion with an estimated 70 million smartphones shipped in the three months. The results happened to coincide with the launch of their Galaxy S4 smartphone to the world and one would have to believe that the S4 will continue their steamroll of the world’s Android smartphone sales.

Microsoft announces Xbox event

May 21st 2013 is the date that Microsoft will show off the next Xbox to the world. Sony has already had their PlayStation 4 launch so Microsoft will know what they have to compete with in the run up to E3 on July 11th. The next Xbox is rumoured to have some serious specs including:

1. A 64-bit D3D11.x 800MHz GPU
2. An 8-core 1.6GHz 4MB L2 CPU
3. 8GB DDR3 RAM
4. 500GB HDD
5. USB 3.0
6. HDMI-out with passthrough
7. Blu-ray drive

Microsoft will surely show off some first party games from their more popular franchises to wet the appetite much in the same way Sony did, what will be interesting is how much emphasis Microsoft will place on their services and the use of the Next Xbox as a home entertainment hub.

Amazon reportedly introducing set-top box

Apple’s pet project; the Apple TV set top box has proven to be rather more than experimental in its adoption by the market. Now in its third generation the little black box has eschewed all manner of onboard storage to become a cloud based pipe directly into Apple’s iTunes store front. The other big player in the online content delivery market (besides for Google of course) is Amazon. Jeff Bezos has already proven that he has the ability to take the Amazon content store front and digitise it through a device with the Kindle Fire family f tablets. Now it looks like an Apple TV crossed with a Kindle Fire that will compete for living room eyeballs later this year.

Apple Offering 150 Free WWDC Tickets to Student Developers

Apple has created the WWDC 2013 Student Scholarship which will give 150 full or part-time students (aged 13 years or older) who are currently members of the iOS Developer Program, iOS Developer University Program, iOS Developer Enterprise Program, or Mac Developer Program the chance to attend WWDC this year for free. To sign up head on through to the link here: WWDC 2013 Student Scholarship

Qualcomm Q2 2013 earnings

24% growth in revenue up to $6.12 billion, net profits up 17% to $2.07 billion and expectations for Q3 numbers to increase by 25% and 14% again, this is the rosy outlook of chip manufacturer Qualcomm. You can’t deny that Qualcomm is the darling of the mobile chip world at the moment with the HTC One, Samsung Galaxy S4 and LG Optimus G all featuring the Snapdragon 600 chip from the company.

AP Twitter account hacked, makes false claim of explosions at White House

The Associated Press (AP) had their Twitter account hacked yesterday with the Tweet being sent stating that the White House had been rocked by two explosions and that President Barack Obama had been injured. The attack on the AP Twitter account has been claimed by the by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA) who last year took credit for a hack against Reuters. The AP responded with a tweet of their own discrediting the first tweet, but the damage had already been done. The Dow Jones Industrial Index had fallen by over 100 points wiping  millions of Dollars in value off of the exchange (although once the truth had come out the market stabilised to it’s earlier levels). Twitter has stated that they are busy testing a 2 factor authentication system internally which should help stop the potential of this happening in the future.

Apple posts $9.5 billion net profit in Q2 2013

Apple Inc announced their first year-on-year drop in profits in almost a decade as CEO Tim Cook delivered their earnings yesterday. The results are still nothing to be laughed at with $43.6 billion in revenue during the quarter and profit of $9.5 billion which helped grow the Apple war chest from $121 billion to a mammoth $145 billion in cash. The results come on the back of strong sale of iDevices with 19.5 million iPads and 37.4 million iPhones being sold in the quarter.

ZTE licenses Microsoft’s Android-related patents

Following hot on the heels of Foxconn licensing the patents last week, Chinese Android phone maker ZTE has taken the route of least resistance with Microsoft by licensing the Android related patent portfolio from them.Microsoft has stated that roughly 60 percent of phones sold with Google’s open source Android OS are covered by such licenses netting Microsoft much needed cash.

Nokia announces Asha 210 – The Whatsapp Phone

How important is Whatsapp to developing markets? Well today Nokia announced a $72 (approx. R665) Asha series phone that has a dedicated Whatsapp button on it. Much like phones that feature a Facebook button  the Whatsapp button shows that Nokia understands that low cost messaging is the driving force in most emerging markets in both Africa and Asia.

ValueAct Takes $2 Billion Stake in Microsoft

Microsoft has long since seen its heyday of being an investment darling. While the company continues to rack up stable profits they don’t seem to get the same sort of investment ferver that a company like Apple and Google do. Yesterday though, during an earnings call Jeffrey Ubben the founder of ValueAct Capital Management disclosed that their holding in Microsoft was valued in the $1 billion region. This would give ValueAct a holding in the region of 1% of the total shareholding of Microsoft. While it’s not enough to make any sort of significant changes to the way the company is run, it definitely signals that there are some in the market who think that $MSFT is worth investing in. (Microsoft shares rose 3.6% on Monday closing at $30.83)

Acer Iconia W3 reportedly leaks

Speaking of Microsoft, their plans for smaller Windows 8 tablets seems to coming along rapidly. Today sees leaked images of what may turn out to be the first 8-inch Windows 8 tablet from Acer. The W3 will reportedly run on a 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760 with 2GB of RAM, and would be small enough to fit in one hand. The main draw card of the tablet will be the ability to run full Windows 8 and not RT which would allow this little guy to replace a laptop almost entirely.

Facebook building $1.5 billion data center in Altoona, Iowa

The entire internet runs off of data centers and if you’re as big as Facebook is then you need some serious data centers to keep you running.  The town of Altoona in Iowa will be home to a brand new 1.4-million-square-foot (130064-square-meter) data center that is being touted as the ”most technologically advanced center in the world.”  The city which is already home to several data hubs will secure the data center contract because of a robust fiber-optic cable system, secure access to power and water utilities and affordable land along with tax credits that Facebook will be looking to gather from wind energy production to be used at the site.

ARM gains 44 percent increase in profit during Q1 2013

ARM is the company behind the designs of most of the SoC processors you’ll find in smartphones and tablets today. With names like Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple all using designs from ARM to make their SoCs. With that as a list of clients it’s no wonder that ARM saw a 26% increase in Q1 revenue to a massive $209.4 million with pre-tax profits soaring by 44%. The momentum won’t slow down either with Apple, SAmsung and many others releasing a slew of new products using ARM designed SoCs this year.

Facebook Home Hits 500K Downloads In Five Days

After 5 days of availability (granted it has only been on 5 devices officially) Facebook Home, the Android launcher that turns your phone into a Facebook pipeline has been downloaded 500 000 times. Considering the user base of Facebook exceeds 1 billion and many of them would have access to the range topping phones that are officially supported by the app; is Facebook Home a disappointment? As a frame of reference Instagram did over 1 million downloads in its first day on Android and more than 5 million in 6 days. Facebook is hardly touting Home as the only was forward for Facebook, but a group of 500 000 to 1 million users would allow Facebook to roll out new features to a control group of heavily embedded users. If you ask me, that is worth more to Facebook that the development costs of Home will ever be.

The 10.7mm, 1.9-pound Inhon Blade 13 Carbon Notebook

How this and light can you make a laptop? Apparently the engineers at little known Taiwanese computer manufacturer Inhon have come up with the Blade 13. At only 10.7mm and weighing a paltry 870g the Blade packs a 1080p display along with a choice of an Intel  Core i5 or i7 CPU, a 128GB or 256GB SSD and 4GB of RAM making the Inhon Blade 13 a very capable machine.

AMD Hires Ex-Apple Graphics Guru

AMD has had a torred time of it lately with earnings plummeting and the chip maker looking for ways to return to profitability. but the chip business is no joke, with some serious players to compete against, so AMD is doubling down on efforts to have some of the best minds in the business in their corner. The latest os a reacquisition of Raja Koduri, Apple’s director of graphics architecture who left AMD four years ago to join Apple in the first place.

Logitech G products updated to support Mac OS

With Apple dominating some segments of the market and with platforms like Steam making games more available on the platform it was always going to happen that gamers on Mac would begin to clammer for higher end peripherals.  Enter Logitech with their G-series of peripherals which have just been updated to support all functions on Mac OS as well.

 Apple’s shares plunge again, spooked by its audio chip supplier

Since peaking at over $700 a share in September last year, Apple’s shares have been on a downward trajectory that culminated in the $400 a share price threatening to be breached yesterday for the first time since December 2011. The reason for the drop was an earnings report for  Cirrus Logic Inc. which supplies audio chips for iPhones and iPads. Cirrus gets 90% of their profit annually from their contract with Apple and their report that a net inventory reserve of $23.3 million ($20.7 million of which is from one client) means that Apple is not pushing out iDevices as fast as expected. Will Apple’s share price recover from this low, probably, but will it reach the lofty heights of September, perhaps never.

Amazon has reportedly acquired Evi for voice-guided search

When the iPhone 4S was released upon the world, the digital assistant Siri was the headline feature. It brought an interactive voice controlled helper that had before then only been available in futuristic movies. Amazon has just finished an acquisition of Evi, best known for its personal assistant app. Amazon is getting more serious about launching a smartphone with every move that we see coming from Team Bezos.

MS confirms SA release for Surface

Microsoft’s first dip into building its ow harware, the Surface tablet, is heading to South Africa in the second half of 2013. The news comes from South African Microsoft MD Mteto Nyati at this years TechEd conference happening in Durban right now. Microsoft SA released a statement saying: “All we can share at this point is that Surface is coming to South Africa. We will reveal any further information, such as pricing, timelines and models, as it becomes available to us.”