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A decade or so ago, when mobile phones first appeared, no one would have thought that these simple gadgets would one day evolve into a device packed with a huge array of features. Picture taking and music playing are the two most commonly seen features being integrated into today's versatile handsets. Camera phones now account for more than 50% in aggregated shipments. Although the ratio of music phones is lower, their sales continue to climb sharply. As the two functions become more widespread, satellite navigation is expected to be the next application in the age of feature-rich cell phones.
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Despite the seasonal slowdown in the PC sector for 2Q07, the CPU price cuts by Intel and AMD in April helped push up MB shipments above expectations in May. However, after May, the shipment figures began to fall once again. In addition to the continuing effects from the weak seasonality, the decline was also attributed to the following factors.
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It is an undeniable fact that DRAM assembling&testing (A&T) houses are closely following DRAM makers'expansion, but lesson is learned here. Price fall of DRAM after over expansion in 2006, was resulted in a miserable situation in 1H07. Not only DRAM makers were mostly seeing their operation running below cost, but also A&T houses seeing severe price pressure. Alongside with the rising exposure to global DRAM A&T industry, DRAMeXchange observes that expansion among A&T houses are cautious in nature, given that uncertainties are still filling when heading to DDR3.
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The 2007 Taipei Summit WiMAX Asia-Pacific Conference & Exhibition was held at the Taipei International Conference Center on May 14th-15th, 2007. The main theme of the conference was illustrating the current development progress of WiMAX, and the changes it may bring forth to the telecommunications industry.
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Just how fast are the SSDs? Are they really capable of significantly boosting the PC performance, in contrast to the HDD? Can it help notebook computers (NBs) conserve more power and improve the battery lifetime?Although no definitive answer can be made now, DRAMeXchange recently conducted benchmark tests on SanDisk's new SSD 5000 2.5" SATA device, hoping to shed some light on these questions.
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In 1Q07, the market ratio of Intel and AMD based MBs stood at roughly 78.6% and 21.4%. In contrast to the previous quarter, AMD's market share declined slightly, due to Intel's more complete product line, market penetration of lower priced products and Dell's worse-than-expected shipment results.
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In the wake of the delayed MB purchases in 4Q06, global MB shipments for 1Q07 reached 40M; a QoQ decline of 6.8% and a YoY increase of 6%. Compared to the usual 10% quarterly drop during the turn of the year, the 6% decline in 1Q07 was milder. The smaller decline was mainly attributed to the lower shipment base in 4Q06, along with consumers holding off their purchases until 1Q07.
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After the official launch of the Windows Vista home edition in January, it played a crucial role to the NB demand growth. Consumer NBs were the main driving force in fueling the Vista adoption rate and overall NB growth in 1Q07. According to the roadmap of vendors, a more notable amount of NBs will be installed with Vista after 3Q07. By then, the Vista adoption rate in consumer NBs is projected to surpass 80%, a better-than-expected figure than previously forecast during early 2007.
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After two years of negotiations, the first wireless 802.11x standard was released in 1997. The Wi-Fi Alliance, on the other hand, was subsequently established in 1999. The 802.11a standard was also approved in 1999 by IEEE as well, which served as the first industrial commercial standard. After several years of development, wireless technology has become a common and convenient tool in our daily lives. In recent years, multimedia content has emerged as a mainstream application in internet surfing; game consoles or desk top PCs. These devices have evolved as the home multimedia center; creating the so-called digital home. Their applications require higher and wider download/upload bandwidth to meet the user demand. Thus, to accommodate this development, the industry must have a new wireless communication protocol to replace the existing 802.11a/b/g.
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For the past several years, the NAND Flash industry has been undergoing robust growth, as consumer-based electronic products, namely digital cameras, mobile phones, USB drives and MP3/PMP players experienced surging sales. Digital cameras and mobile phones store their data within NAND Flash chips via an external memory card, while MP3/PMP players and USB drives have the chips embedded directly inside them. To the average PC user, USB drives have emerged as a perfect substitute for floppy disks in backing up data. These four different consumer products already account for roughly 90% of the current NAND Flash consumption. However, excluding mobile phones, steady growth is seen in the other three applications. Many are thus pinning their hopes on the PC sector as the next catalyst behind the NAND Flash industry.
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