Surprisingly Phablets Bucking the Trend

Surprisingly Phablets Bucking the Trend
by Pawan Fangaria on 07-12-2015 at 7:00 am

Amid a fiercely competitive market for computing devices, smartphones, tablets, and so on, a number of devices were created in this decade to invade into each other’s functionalities to either eat away other’s market share or retain their own. The key contenders were smartphones, Phablets, tablets and mini notebooks, whereas… Read More


Intel Quits Mobile

Intel Quits Mobile
by Paul McLellan on 11-18-2014 at 5:00 pm

It happened today. As I have predicted for over a year, Intel would not be successful in mobile and would be forced to exit the market. Last quarter they lost $1B on revenues of $1M (as Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up, that M is not a typo). They ship “contra revenue” with their chips for the tablet market, meaning… Read More


I’d give my right ARM to be ambidextrous

I’d give my right ARM to be ambidextrous
by Don Dingee on 05-09-2014 at 8:00 am

Baseball loves a good switch hitter – from Frisch to Mantle to Rose to Murray to Jones, they are a rare and valuable commodity. AMD is calling on ambidexterity for its processors in 2015 and beyond, this week tipping plans for 20nm “Project SkyBridge” parts in either ARM or X86 with a common footprint. What remains to be seen is where… Read More


Smart Watch, Phone, Phablet, Tablet, Thin Notebook…?

Smart Watch, Phone, Phablet, Tablet, Thin Notebook…?
by Pawan Fangaria on 12-26-2013 at 12:30 pm

There are more, but wait a while, from this set which ones do you need? Or let me ask the question differently (I know you may like something impulsively and have money to buy), which ones do you want to buy and own? Still confused? I guess what you need, you already have, but you want to change it for something new and different. While I … Read More


Wanna Buy A Blackberry?

Wanna Buy A Blackberry?
by Paul McLellan on 08-13-2013 at 2:26 pm

So Blackberry (formerly known as Research In Motion or RIM) is up for sale. Basically, apart from some cash in the bank, its main value now seems to be patents and, perhaps, some security technology. The murderers are in Cupertino and Mountain View, Apple’s iPhone (and iPad) and Google’s Android along with its licensees,… Read More


Intel’s New Tablet Strategy Brings Ivy Bridge to the Forefront

Intel’s New Tablet Strategy Brings Ivy Bridge to the Forefront
by Ed McKernan on 12-19-2012 at 11:00 pm

In an article published this week in microprocessor report and highlighted in Barron’s, Linley Gwennap makes the argument that Intel should stay the course and fix the PC instead of trying to offset its declines with sales into the Smartphone and Tablet space. He cites that lower PC sales growth was due to a dramatic slowdown in processor… Read More


The Middle is A Bad Place to Be if You’re a CPU Board

The Middle is A Bad Place to Be if You’re a CPU Board
by Don Dingee on 10-09-2012 at 10:45 pm

In a discussion with one of my PR network recently, I found myself thinking out loud that if the merchant SoC market is getting squeezed hard, that validates something I’ve been thinking – the merchant CPU board market is dying from the middle out.… Read More


Smart mobile SoCs: Made in China

Smart mobile SoCs: Made in China
by Don Dingee on 08-29-2012 at 2:00 pm

One of the comments to previous installments of this series was that there isn’t much left for the merchant suppliers of smart mobile SoCs, considering Apple and Samsung have majority share and design their own parts. The theory is this makes it hard for many suppliers to continue investing at the resource levels needed to bring … Read More


Will Microsoft Go Thermonuclear?

Will Microsoft Go Thermonuclear?
by Ed McKernan on 06-21-2012 at 8:20 pm

Microsoft is in trouble. Many of you already know that. Steve Ballmer has one last opportunity to set the company on a growth path or they will retreat into IBM legacy mode… ala the post 1990s Lou Gerstner era. And so they introduce a large tablet-convertible in direct competition with their PC partners Dell and HP. The End Game is coming… Read More


Linley Tech Mobile Conference

Linley Tech Mobile Conference
by Paul McLellan on 04-18-2012 at 2:14 pm

I went to part of the Linley Tech Mobile Conference. This is the current incarnation of what started life as Michael Slater’s Microprocessor Report, and the twice-yearly Microprocessor Forum. These very technical analysis organizations seem to work well when they are a small group of analysts working together to cover… Read More