market

Think things are going just 'pretty good' for Apple? That may not be the half of it, considering recent reports that one of the company's major hardware products is exploding in popularity. In fact, the hot 'n heavy item might just surprise you. We ... all know that the iPod and iPhone are ripping apart the competition this holiday season. That's hardly unexpected considering the slick MP3 player's entrenched position in the digital music market and the long, long lineups last summer for just a glimpse of Apple's new communicator. However, the company's Macinstosh line of computers has ... (view more)

Intuit, the maker of well-known products such as Quicken, Quickbooks, and TurboTax, has purchased Homestead Technologies, a provider of small business websites. (Source: www.techcrunch.com ) At face value there's nothing odd about this; Intuit has ... acquired more than 19 companies in the last decade. And yet, all of these previous acquisitions were directly related, in some way, to small business financial needs thereby complementing Intuit's focus on finance functions. Acquiring Homestead is out of character. Does it mean that Intuit has finally run out of room in the financial market? Maybe ... (view more)

Google has confirmed it's entering the mobile market, but not with the much-rumored Gphone. Rather than launching a branded handset, Google is developing an open source software platform for all mobile devices. They'll be providing their 'Android' ... software free of charge to handset manufacturers, which could pave the way for cheaper phones. As part of the launch, Google has formed the Open Handset Alliance, bringing together 34 partners. This includes handset producers Motorola, HTC, Samsung and LG, plus carriers such as T-Mobile and Sprint. (Source: BBC ) The software should be with ... (view more)

Behold the latest champion of the mobile phone industry! The new GPhone, the anticipated and top-secret mobile phone from Google, is already expected to beat the widely popular Apple iPhone by providing more features and lower cost. The GPhone ... project was officially launched after Google's recent acquisition of the small Finnish start-up company, Jaiku. The acquisition was a tremendous coup for Google because Jaiku holds many key SMS patents. SMS (Short Message Service) is text messaging, the technology that allows short messages to be exchanged amongst billions of ordinary cell phones. ( ... (view more)

Meet the all-in-one personal computer! A long since forgotten piece of hardware from the 1980's that combines a monitor and processing unit all in one piece. All-in-one personal computers have been around for decades, with the original 1984 ... Macintosh being among the most popular of the models. These all-in-one computers have been efficiently replaced by the more common monitor and tower configuration, because all-in-one computers have always been difficult to repair and upgrade. The failure of one component could dismantle the entire unit. (Source: usatoday.com ) Gateway Inc. has decided to ... (view more)

Fellow Infopackets blogger Carlo Orlando recently reported on Intel's interest in supplying the world's poorest children with $100 laptops . Despite such a charitable goal, the company appears ready to retain its hold on the premium processor ... market. That's why Intel has already released an ultra-powerful chip, called the Core 2 Extreme X7800. Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD, has been nothing but a thorn in the side of Intel in recent years. AMD beat Intel to the $100 laptop campaign, and over the course of the last twelve months or so, has effectively challenged for the top spot in next-gen ... (view more)

In an effort to increase market shares and regain losses suffered because of falling prices, Toshiba recently announced plans to more than double their monthly production of NAND flash memory chips. The company intends to increase its monthly output ... of NAND chips by using 300-millimeter wafers and hopes that the total monthly production will reach 210,000 chips by June 2008. (Source: sfgate.com ) This would be an increase from only 100,000 total memory chips produced this past March. NAND flash memory chips have become a major source of income for Toshiba. The abundance of rival companies and ... (view more)

In a recent commentary on Apple's upcoming and highly anticipated iPhone, British publication "The Register" outlined a number of reasons why the device is unlikely to fulfill Steve Jobs' lofty sales expectations for its first full year. The Apple ... CEO hopes his new baby will be grabbed up some ten million times in 2008, a prediction The Register counters with a number of critical factors making much lower sales figures far more reasonable. Although The Register provides some solid evidence, it really needs just one, central dynamic in its list: the iPhone's cost. Jobs hasn't used complicated ... (view more)

Unnamed sources have claimed that Treo maker Palm Inc. may be up for sale, and could likely be acquired by one of its rivals. As a result, this may give Apple's iPhone some trouble. Although four companies are said to be interested in the Palm ... purchase, including two private equity groups, the two front-runners of the acquisition are Motorola and Nokia. Such an acquisition could re-shape the cellular phone market. (Source: appleinsider.com ) If Mortorola bought Palm, it would establish itself as the single largest supplier of Windows Mobile devices. This position could lead to an elimination ... (view more)

Google's vice president for content partnerships, David Eun, recently revealed in an interview that Google is just as perplexed as the rest of the world with respect to the future of online video. Many were shocked when Google paid over one and ... three quarters of a billion dollars to acquire the emmensly popular YouTube web portal. Notably so. And yet, one might assume that in order for Google to make such a large purchase, the company must have had some prediction as to where things may lead. However, the opposite may be true. Eun admits that analysts have been unable to determine both the ... (view more)