Symbian Foundation Taps Nokia S60 Head To Open Its Platform

Lee Williams, currently head of Nokia (NYSE: NOK)'s S60 Devices business, was nominated on Wednesday to be executive director of the Symbian Foundation as the foundation wrapped up its London meeting.

Williams will hold his S60 position until January 1, 2009, or until the foundation is operational. The show was accented by announcements of additional products and services designed to spur the growth of the open platform.

Williams takes over the reins of the foundation as its membership jumped from its 10 initial members to a total of 52 announced at the meeting. After announcing the acquisition of the Symbian Limited unit in June, Nokia has moved aggressively to assemble new members and new products and services to lead the way to developing the open platform, scheduled to unify the platform with its first unified foundation released slated for 2009. The foundation said it expects to make the platform available in open source by June 2010.

The new roster of firms ranges from eight device manufacturers, seven semiconductor companies, nine mobile network operators, 27 services and software companies, and even one financial services provider.

Members continued to chip in services and other contributions as members broke to return to their companies.

ARM and Symbian Limited unveiled ARM's Profiler for Symbian operating system that enables developers to reduce power consumption while adding enhanced features to mobile devices.

"Developers of complex mobile applications have come to expect the level of power management and performance optimization found within Symbian OS," explained Mike Whittingham, vice president of Symbian Ecosystem development, in a statement.

In another development, Cicero Networks announced a proof-of-concept that will enable voice mobility across multiple networks. The feature utilizes Symbian's FreeWay communications architecture on the Symbian OS. The approach promises to enable roaming between circuit switched networks up to and including Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMax architectures.

Source : http://www.informationweek.com/

Nokia's naked ambition: moving beyond cell phone business

LONDON — Let's call spade a spade.

During his keynote speech at the Smartphone Show Wednesday (Oct. 22nd), Kai Oistamo, Nokia's executive vice president, changed a title of his speech from "The Future of Smartphones" to "The Future of Computing."

"It's time to recognize that today's smart phones are full-fledged computers," said Oistamo. "We should call them what they really are."

Given the increasing processing power, bigger memory and higher display capabilities, together with always-on broadband access to the open Internet, "A smart phone, serving as an Internet node, is a 'computer' that's much more personal than today's mobile computer," explained Oistamo, responsible for Nokia's device portfolio, R&D, design and related strategy.

The notion of Oistamo defining Nokia's business something beyond phones is intriguing.

But hang on. Is he saying that Nokia is now aligned with Intel Corp., calling their phones "Mobile Internet Devices (MID)"?

Not so fast.

When asked the question during an interview with EE Times, Oistamo said, "Today, they are two different things, based on two different design paradigms." While MID is still more or less a miniature version of a laptop, "Smart phones are much more power-optimized and mobile-optimized," he explained. 

Source : http://www.eetimes.com/

Asus ARES CG1655 gains Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 GPU

Asus has placed the Nvidia GeForce GTX 280 GPU into their new ARES CG1655 gaming laptop along with a motherboard built around the NVIDIA nForce(R) 790i Ultra SLI MCP platform technology.

Coming up with the best gaming PC used to be a matter of using CPUs and GPUs with the highest power to bring the fastest gaming experience. But now new advancements in physics, 3G stereo, multi-GPU tech have amplified the importance of the GPU.

Nvidia PhysX tech GeForce GPUs make gams come to life with explosions which actually cause dust and debris cloth that drapes and tears naturally, characters that move withlife-like motion, and now the Asus ARES CG1655 is now available with this technology to bring the customer the ultimate, immersive experience.

Source

http://www.cheaplaptops.org.uk/

ASUS notebooks and handheld coming our way

They have all been announced, but ASUS finally revealed the availability and pricing details of its P552w PDA-phone, the S101 Eee PC and its Bamboo series notebook in Asia Pacific.

The P552w will come in black or white and costs S$669 (US$454.18). We had a go at its Glide custom interface and found it pretty easy to use. It wasn't revolutionary considering there has been much work done by HTC and Samsung in this area, but it's still a good alternative to Windows Mobile's default interface. This handheld goes on sale in November.

The Eee PC S101 is a premium version of the regular Eee PC Netbooks, which is an oxymoron of sorts considering this range was meant to be budget second notebooks for most people. We do have to admit that it feels much nicer than a regular Eee PC with very clean lines and an appealing design. The 16GB version with Windows XP will be available from tomorrow, while the 64GB Linux version will start shipping later next month. Either configuration will cost the same, S$1,098 (US$745.42).

Lastly, the ASUS notebook with a bamboo finish will finally ship in November and cost S$2,598 (US$1,763.75). This is actually a modification of the U-series notebook and comes with pretty impressive specifications including a 12.1-inch display, 4GB RAM and dedicated Nvidia 9300M graphics.

Source : http://asia.cnet.com/

Sony Outlook Increasingly Cloudy

The near term looks grim for Sony, yet things may be even worse than the electronics and entertainment giant is letting on.

After slashing its earnings forecast, the Japanese firm's outlook is bleak. Its new profit guidance, however, may not fully account for a further surge in the yen, Japanese equities continuing to tumble and weaknesses in Sony's core product lines. Plus, the slide in the won has given Sony's South Korean competitors an added edge.

On Thursday, Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) slashed its 2008 net profit outlook by 38%, to 150 billion yen ($1.5 billion), from its July forecast. The company said the most significant setback was higher than expected foreign exchange losses. The stronger yen, which went below the 100 mark against the dollar earlier this month, has dealt a blow to manufacturers, making exports more expensive. The company also cited a steeper global downturn, which is likely to pummel its LCD TV and digital camera businesses. To top it off, Sony expects to lose more on its equity investments thanks to the massive slide in Tokyo's stock market, which gained momentum this week.

But Sony's prospects are likely to be worse still. The company warned that "market fluctuations could further negatively impact the revised forecast" because the company stopped accounting for the slide in Japanese stocks after Oct. 1. Its guidance also included a one-time boost of 10 billion yen ($102.4 million), owing to an acquisition.

"This is just the beginning of a big earnings collapse," said a Tokyo-based analyst who asked to remain unidentified because of company policy. "Given the track record of this company, it will under-deliver all the way." He added that there is a "good chance" Sony will post a loss this year.

South Korean rivals Samsung Electronics (other-otc: SSNLF - news - people ) and LG Electronics (other-otc: LGEAF - news - people ) will get a boost from this year's 31.0% slide in the won, which makes South Korean exports relatively cheaper. Sony has the highest foreign exchange sensitivity of the three electronics giants and big exposure to the slumping U.S. and European markets.

Until its recent bounce back, a softer yen had hid serious weaknesses in Sony's core businesses for some time, CLSA analyst Atul Goyal wrote in an Oct. 21 research note. Sony will make further losses in televisions, videogaming and mobile phones (see "Sony Immobilized By Mobile Phones"), despite early 2008 promises of profits in TVs and its PlayStation3 videogame console. Its profits from digital cameras and Vaio computers will shrink considerably, owing to downward price pressures, he added.

"Even the slightest decrease in demand will trigger a massive price war. We're seeing the beginning of that price war. It will last much longer" with the global downturn, said the Tokyo analyst.

Sony's profit for the fiscal second quarter, ended Sept. 30, nearly halved from a year earlier, to 73.7 billion yen ($754.9 million). Taking into consideration a one-time gain of 60.7 billion yen ($621.8 million) from a property sale, Sony did much worse.

Before the earnings announcement, Sony shares closed 155 yen ($1.59), or 6.3%, lower, at 2,295 yen ($23.51), in Tokyo trading.

Source : http://www.forbes.com/

AMD develops Fusion concept

AMD has been discussing its new ‘Fusion’ branding approach with customers and partners at this year’s GITEX.

The ‘Future is Fusion’ brand is intended to reflect a new integrated approach to computing platforms, and will be backed up with an extensive marketing and awareness campaign, AMD’s VP of marketing for EMEA, Jochen Polster, told itp.net.

“When look at what AMD is about, clearly it is not just a company that individually produces CPUs, GPUs and chipsets - we are not so much an individual silicon vendor anymore. The idea is not to focus on components, but to look more at what the end user wants to do with their computer,” Polster said.

The new approach will see AMD developing integrated product offerings under three broad categories – work, home and play – with branded platforms targeted at each.

According to AMD research, most buyers have a primary use in mind when purchasing a PC, so AMD will develop offerings that are optimized for each broad usage model. OEM partners will be given guidelines on which additional components would best complement the AMD core, and individual brands will be created for each category. The AMD Game and Business Class brands are already being developed, and the whole concept should be developed by Q1 of next year.

Source : http://www.itp.net/

Fusion brand is AMD's top brand

AMD wanted to make things crystal clear what is its Fusion brand all about. It is not a mere Centrino counterpart, it is AMD’s new key brand that encompasses everything.

According to AMD “the new Fusion company brand was designed to address marketplace directions that AMD identified through internal research, and is intended to focus on the ways in which the AMD combination of technologies, coupled with close relationships with computer manufacturers and a deep understanding of customer needs, results in solutions that address experiences at work, at home and at play.”

This rather complicated explanation actually means that Fusion is not meant to be a platform name such as Centrino to Intel and it is AMD’s new overall brand that represents AMD as a whole.

AMD also got back to us saying that Puma is AMD’s answer to Centrino but at the same time Puma never made it to brand and it remained rather popular codename that got lost under many AMD stickers.

Since Microsoft decided to brand its OS simply Windows 7 and since AMD is not using Fusion, AMD might do the same making Fusion the the brand of all brands that will stay on top of many products just below the key brand AMD.

Yeah we know its complicated but it doesn’t mean that AMD has finally decided what to do with this brand, but for now Fusion is what AMD is all about.

Spurce : http://www.fudzilla.com/

Wii firmware update ushers in Nintendo Points

A glowing blue slot on your Wii this morning will indicate the fact that there's a new firmware update to be downloaded.

The update relates to the Wii Shop, where you'll know notice that Wii Points have become Nintendo Points, to bring it in line with the launch of the Nintendo DSi and its new point system, that will allow users to download content onto their handheld. Points won't be transferable between the two consoles, but Nintendo obviously just wanted to avoid confusion by identically labelling the points scheme across both platforms.

There's also a minor aesthetic change with some new icons added to make sure you don't inadvertently purchase items from the shop when you didn't mean to. How very gentlemanly of them.

Included in the most recent titles for Nintendo's virtual console and WiiWare services are Tetris Party, a four player online version of Tetris. Incredible Maze, which is a maze game that sounds far from being 'incredible' and Gradius 2.

Source : http://gaming.hexus.net/

Ignition, AQ Interactive release Boing! Docomodake for Nintendo DS

Mumbai: UTV's Ignition Entertainment in conjunction with AQ Interactive has released Boing! Docomodake for Nintendo DS. Based on the mascot of the leading Japanese mobile phone company, NTT Docomo, Boing! Docomodake is a game of strategy and finesse, mixed with a little action and adventure, sprinkled with a splash of colorful fantasy.

Shrooming across North America in March 2009 at an affordable suggested retail price of $19.99, Boing! Docomodake is a fun and interactive game, sure to entertain gamers of all ages.

Set on the day of the annual festival held in the Docomodake Forest, the Docomodake family is nowhere to be seen. Gamers play as Papa Docomodake and guide him through various obstacles and challenges in order to find his family and get them to the festival on time. Papa Docomodake has a trick or two to help him on his quest. With a tap of the stylus he can release 'Minis' that aid him when the going gets a little tough. Remember, Minis make the impossible possible.

"Boing! Docomodake utilizes the Nintendo DS stylus to deliver a gaming experience that blends action, adventure and strategy with a fun and memorable storyline. We expect the game to be a great addition to the handheld market heading into the New Year," said Ignition Entertainment president Ajay Chadha.

"Boing! Docomodake is a must-have game for every DS owner as it offers something for everyone. We are thrilled to partner again with Ignition Entertainment to bring another of Japan's top games to North America," added AQ Interactive CEO Tomoyuki Takechi.

Source : http://www.businessofcinema.com

Sony halves profit forecast on yen, electronics

Japan - *Cuts operating profit outlook by 57 pct on firmer yen

*Economic slowdown hitting LCD TV, digital camera operations

*Says may close some plants, reduce capex, cut jobs (Adds details on potential restructuring, other details)

By Kiyoshi Takenaka and Nathan Layne

TOKYO, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Sony Corp (nyse: SNE - news - people ) slashed its annual operating profit forecast by 57 percent to far below market expectations, citing a firmer yen and slowing demand for flat TVs and digital cameras.

The electronics and entertainment conglomerate said that it may close some plants, reduce capital spending and cut jobs to cope with a business environment it warned could remain weak through most of next year.

"We have to be prepared for these conditions to last for quite some time," Sony Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda told a news conference on Thursday. "We have to press ahead harder with restructuring efforts."

The downturn marks a major setback for Chief Executive Howard Stringer, who has implemented a wide range of restructuring steps since taking the helm in 2005 but has been unable to return Sony to a targeted level of profitability.

Sony, which competes with Samsung Electronics Co and Panasonic Corp in flat TVs, generates three-quarters of its revenue overseas, and the recent surge in the yen against the euro and the dollar has sliced into its profits.

But the currency is not the only problem. Sony also warned that the global economic slowdown and fierce price competition would hit profitability on its Bravia LCD TVs, Cyber-shot digital cameras and handheld video cameras.

Analysts and investors were already talking about the chances of another revision later this year given that Sony's revised euro/yen rate of 140 yen for the October-March second half is still far from the current level of around 125 yen.

Sony acknowledged that its operating profit would fall another 80-90 billion yen if current rates were applied.

"I'm a bit concerned about their new assumptions. There's a chance they may have to cut their outlook again," said Mitsushige Akino, chief fund manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management.

Sony cut its operating profit forecast for the year through March to 200 billion yen ($2 billion) from 470 billion yen. The new target is well short of the market consensus of 381.8 billion yen in a poll of 20 analysts by Reuters Estimates.

On a net basis, Sony lowered its full-year forecast by 38 percent to 150 billion yen, and trimmed its sales outlook by 2 percent to 9 trillion yen.

Sony changed its dollar/yen assumption for the second half of the business year to 100 yen from 105 yen, compared with the current level of around 98 yen It lowered its euro/yen rate to 140 yen from 160 yen.

The company cut its annual LCD TV sales forecast by 1 million units to 16 million, and said that it would be difficult to turn its TV and video game operations profitable this financial year.

A sharp downturn in the Japanese stock market has hit profits at its financial unit, which holds stocks and bonds.

Prior to the announcement, shares in Sony closed down 6.3 percent at 2,295 yen, underperforming the Tokyo stock market's electrical machinery index IELEC, which fell 4.1 percent. ($1=97.40 Yen) (Additional reporting by Mayumi Negishi, Taiga Uranaka and Sachi Izumi; Editing by Chris Gallagher)

Source : http://www.forbes.com/

AMD to hold vote in Texas

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. will hold a meeting in Austin, Texas, at which shareholders will vote on its $7.2 billion plan to spin off manufacturing.

The Desmond     
The date for the vote has not yet been decided, although some details of the proposal to be put before shareholders were released in documents filed Wednesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The shareholder vote holds the key to AMD's plans to build a $4.6 billion computer chip factory at Luther Forest Technology Campus in Malta through a joint venture with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi called The Foundry Co.

Although it is officially based in Sunnyvale, Calif., AMD has significant operations in Austin. It is also the city where most of the company's executive management team lives.

AMD shareholders must approve the creation of Foundry and the spinoff of AMD's two factories in Germany that will form the centerpiece of the deal — which also includes building the Luther Forest fab.

As its name suggests, the new company will be a "foundry" that makes microprocessors for AMD and other firms.

The documents filed Wednesday with the SEC do not shed any light on how AMD's deal with Abu Dhabi unfolded or when discussions began.

However, they do reveal that AMD must pay Abu Dhabi a $50 million penalty if the chipmaker were to be acquired or tries to arrange a deal with another company before this one is completed.

One of the conditions of the Abu Dhabi deal is approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a Treasury Department board that vets foreign investment for national security issues.

The SEC documents say Abu Dhabi can get out of the deal if its proposed investment in Foundry is eventually referred to the President of the United States, who can block the transaction. Such referrals are rare.

The documents also shed light on AMD's reasons for the deal with Abu Dhabi, beyond the fact that the company has been suffering financially and the spinoff is expected to help the chipmaker's balance sheet and make it profitable again. The documents essentially describe a changing world in which chip companies are relying more and more on foundries for their manufacturing.

"The semiconductor industry is undergoing a profound transformation," AMD says. "Vertically integrated companies are abandoning plans to invest in new capacity and manufacturing technology while announcing plans to outsource a growing percentage of their wafer requirements. Captive volumes can no longer support the cost of building leading-edge capacity and process technology investments."

AMD likely will file revised documents soon with the SEC that will set a date for the shareholder vote. Those documents also could include additional details of the transaction.

Source : http://timesunion.com/

Diversified Technology Debuts ATC6239 Quad-Core AMD Opteron-Based CPU Blade

Diversified technology, Inc. (DTI) has intruded the ATC6239 quad-core AMD (News - Alert) Opteron processor-based Node Board suitable for next generation telecom applications. The board is a PICMG 3.0 compliant processor blade which is capable of improving wireless access/edge, telecom fiber transport, media gateways, soft switches, and Internet IP-based applications cost effectively.

“DTI’s ATC6239 is a follow-up to our dual-core offering and it offers an increased performance for high-end applications utilizing the AdvancedTCA form factor. The AMD architecture of the blade provides freedom for our customer’s programs to use a truly unique, hardware-based innovation through the additional use of FPGAs connected to the node application processor,” said Joe McDevitt, DTI’s CTO.
 “Through this and ATC6239’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet and RTM Support, the blade gives unprecedented flexibility for ATCA applications for today and in the future,” said McDevitt.
The ATC6239 is the company’s AMD Opteron Socket F (1207) processor-based Node Board equipped with dual AMD Opteron Socket F 1.8 GHz quad-core processors. Both have 2 MB L2 cache (1MB per core) and support for up to 16GB of memory. It makes use of a high I/O bandwidth (Hyper Transport link interface)Broadcom ( News - Alert) HT2100 and HT1000 server-class chipset.

I/O peripherals located on-board include 10/100/1000Mbits/sec auto-negotiating with dual port Ethernet controller for the Base interface, a 10G dual port Ethernet controller for the Fabric interface, a 10/100/1000Mbits/sec auto negotiating with dual port Ethernet controller for one front panel interface and one AMC site for user configuration (the Fabric is x4 PCI-Express) besides other peripherals especially suitable for high-performance Telco needs.
The board is capable of supporting the AdvancedTCA concept of different data and control plane traffic when paired with DTI’s ATCA switch boards. The ATC6239 is ATCA 3.1 specification compliant.
The ATC6239 uses an AMI Embedded BIOS with boot from USB, HD, CD-ROM or the network. It also offers support to console redirection, PnP, and PCI auto configuration. The ATC6239 supports various Operating Systems (OS) including theMicrosoft ( News - Alert) Windows Server 2003, Red Hat Enterprise Linux4, SuSE and Fedora. The company plans for shipments to begin from end of 2008.
Diversified Technology is an embedded hardware company. The company works in tandem with other companies making sure that its products offer best performance, high reliability, less time to market and an optimum use of computing hardware for the program’s embedded application. The company has design experience with standardized form factors like AdvancedTCA,CompactPCI ( News - Alert), PCI, ETX and COM Express.

Source : http://it.tmcnet.com/

AMD/ATI adds Radeon HD 4830 into the mix

As mentioned
last week, a new little mid-range oriented Radeon card was to be
released on Oct 23rd and indeed that has happened today; AMD/ATI
squeezes the HD 4830 512MB into its lineup at the sub $150 segment.

As the new entry point for the 48xx series, this card is aimed more
squarely at NVIDIAs 9800 GT and looks to give it a real run for its
money. It boasts 640 shader processors, a core clockspeed of 575 MHz
and memory clock of 1800 MHz.



Looking over the reviews to have hit the web thus far, the card looks
to pack quite a punch for the dollars spent. You can see how it shapes
up for yourself via the below links :



- Hexus

- PC Perspective

- Techpowerup (Reference)

- Techpowerup (PowerColor)

- Tech Report

- AMDZone



We'll keep the listing updated through the day as more coverage surfaces.

Source : http://www.tweaktown.com