Worldwide PC shipments are projected to total 367.8 million units in 2010, a 19.2 percent increase from 308.3 million units shipped in 2009, according to the latest preliminary forecast by Gartner, Inc.
“The PC market revived in the first half of 2010, but the real test of its resilience is yet to come,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. “We have reduced our forecast for second-half 2010 PC growth to 15.3 percent, approximately 2 percent below our previous forecast, in light of the uncertain economic outlook for the United States and Western Europe. There is no doubt that consumer, if not business PC demand has slowed relative to expectations in mature markets. Recent dramatic shifts in the PC supply chain were in no small part a reaction to fears of a sharp slowdown in mature-market demand. However, suppliers’ risk-aversion is as much a factor in these shifts as any actual downshift in demand.”
On World Tech Update this week Samsung teases its Galaxy Tab, Apple is expected to launch new products, Google Street View irks the French, we take a behind the scenes look at a corporate data center, MIT Media Lab researches develop a table top collaboration system, Windows 95 hits its 15th anniversary and we try out the AR Drone helicopter.
On Wednesday Google launched a new Gmail feature that lets you place phone calls via Google Voice right from your Gmail inbox. Overall, the new service is a great addition to Gmail, and may even convince some users to give up their Skype accounts in favor of Google Voice. But while Google is off to a great start with voice calling in Gmail, there are a few changes I’d like to see that would really put this service over the top.
The service is currently limited to users in the United States, and all calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free until at least the end of the year. Fees for international calls start at 2 cents per minute. Google Voice users can also receive calls directly in their Gmail inbox using their Google Voice number.
The top three reasons cited are offshore job movement, failure in
education and national policy-making.
InformationWeek Analytics, the leading service for peer-based IT research and analysis, today announced the release of its “Research: Innovation Mandate” report. Nearly 625 business technology professionals weigh in on whether the nation is losing its position as global IT innovation leader. Report author Rob Preston, VP/editor in chief of InformationWeek,oversees the editorial direction of the world’s leading business technology media brand.
Research Summary:
For the better part of a decade, executives, economists, policy-makers,
researchers, and other so-called experts have lamented the inexorable decline of the U.S. IT industry and the country’s standing as the global technology leader. Reports with ominous titles have questioned whether U.S.-based IT vendors and the organizations they sell to have the technical chops, national backing and requisite will to out-innovate their counterparts in other countries.
While InformationWeek’s editors can relate to the sense of national urgency,
especially as the U.S. limps out of the worst recession in 30 years, they remain
bullish. Most of the profound IT-based innovations of the past decade came
from–and continue to come from–the U.S., not from Asia or Europe. But myriad
commercial, economic, political, cultural, and other challenges are evident.
The International Data Corporation (IDC) presented its first forecast and market landscape analysis for the U.S. employee benefits outsourcing services market and found that spending in 2010 will grow 3.8% over 2009. Additionally, IDC forecasts spending in this market segment to reach $10.3 billion in 2014, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.1%.
“The big theme for 2010 and beyond is healthcare reform,” said Lisa Rowan, program director, HR, Learning and Talent Strategies for IDC. “To grow their positions in the market and win over new clients, service providers should consider maximizing their message on compliance expertise and look to focus on lesser outsourced functions such as leave administration.”
Additional key findings from this IDC report include the following:
The results of a Yahoo search on Tuesday looked no different from an equivalent search a week ago, with the exception of three words in tiny script at the very bottom of the page — “Powered by Bing.”
Tuesday, nearly 13 months after Yahoo and Microsoft announced plans to collaborate on Internet search in hopes of challenging Google’s market dominance, the two companies announced that the results of all Yahoo English language searches made in the United States and Canada are coming from Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The two companies are still racing to complete the transition of paid search, the text advertising links that run beside and above the standard search results, before the make-or-break holiday period — a much more difficult task.
It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television.
Just another day at the gym.
As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done — and as a reliable antidote to boredom.
Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.
Think you can guess which Americans talk or text the most on their cellphones?
According to Nielsen, African-Americans use the most voice minutes – on average more than 1,300 a month. Hispanics are the next most talkative group, chatting an average of 826 minutes a month. Even Asians/Pacific Islanders, with 692 average monthly minutes, talk more than Whites, who use roughly 647 voice minutes a month.
African-Americans and Hispanics also text the most. Hispanics send and receive around 767 SMS messages a month while African-Americans send and receive around 780 – significantly more than Asians/Pacific Islanders (384 texts a month) and Whites (566 texts a month). The voice and text results are compiled from one year (April 2009-March 2010) of mobile usage data gathered by the The Nielsen Company, which analyzes the cellphone bills of more than 60,000 mobile subscribers each month in the United States.
Some Companies, Which Barred the iPhone, Build Apps for Tablet Computer and Give Apple Gadget to Employees
When Apple Inc.’s first iPhone came out in 2007, many companies told their employees that the device wasn’t appropriate for the workplace. The iPad is a different story.
The company’s tablet-style device seems to be sidestepping the resistance that the iPhone and other consumer-oriented devices have faced in the corporate environment. Indeed, many businesses have raced to snap up iPads.
One example is the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal LLP, which banned the iPhone when it first came out yet preordered 10 iPads in the run up to the tablet’s release in April.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market increased 11.0% year over year to $10.9 billion in the second quarter of 2010 (2Q10). This is the second consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth and the fastest quarterly revenue growth since 2003, as market demand continued to improve around the world. Server unit shipments increased 23.8% year over year in 2Q10, improving slightly over the strong 23.0% year-over-year shipment growth reported in 1Q10 and representing the fastest year-over-year quarterly server shipment growth in more than five years.
Volume systems experienced the sharpest improvement with year-over-year revenue increasing 32.0%, the third consecutive quarter of positive growth for the segment. Midrange server demand improved significantly with year-over-year growth of 6.9%, the segment’s first positive growth in nine quarters and another sign of improving server market conditions. Demand for high-end enterprise systems continued to be soft, as revenue declined 23.6% when compared to 2Q09. This is the seventh consecutive quarter of contraction in the high-end enterprise server segment of the server market, most of which occurred during the economic downturn.
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