Dell sued Hitachi, Sharp for fixing price and overcharging

On March 15, 2010, in News, by rohit
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In a recent technology war among all the leading brands of computer and gadget world, Dell Inc. sued Hitachi Ltd., Sharp Corp. and other three manufacturers of LCDs alleging that they conspired of making the prices fix and then overcharging for their respective products.

Some of the companies in U.S. have already paid fines for being guilty in price-fixing and selling the products at artificially inflated prices to Dell in 1996.

In the federal court in San Francisco Dell filed a complaint recently against some of the companies alleging antitrust and unfair-competition.

The two big companies, Sharp and Hitachi, had admitted that they targeted Dell and overcharged for the panels plea agreements. Sharp is the largest maker of LCDs of Japan and Hitachi is also a giant of Japan that makes household appliances, nuclear reactors and hard-disk drives. Sharp is based in Osaka and Hitachi is Tokyo based in Japan. In 2008 Sharp agreed to pay amount of $120 million as fines and Hitachi agreed to for $31 million in 2009.

In the lawsuit Dell is seeking for triple damages. The company, based in Round Rock, Texas, trails Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) and Acer Inc. in the market of personal computers.

However, the spokesman of Sharp Chris Loncto and the spokeswomen of Hitachi Lauren Garvey have not officially given any comment on this issue.

Similarly, in federal court in San Francisco, the largest mobile maker of the world Nokia Oyj has also filed a lawsuit against LCD makers. AT&T Inc. has even done the same to the manufacturers.
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The case of Dell is Dell v Sharp, 10-01064, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

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Say ‘Hello!’ in silent, new technology being developed for mobiles

On March 5, 2010, in Uncategorized, by rohit
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Can you speak on phone in silence? Let me ask in other way. Can you make silent call to others on mobile phones?

Strange…

Technology has the answer. Very soon you can talk to your friends on phone without actually making any sound from your mouth. Researchers say this could see an end to the era of loudly talking on mobile phones.
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The device being developed will be able to help you to conduct silent phone conversations.

The technology behind this that is working is it will measure the tiny electrical signals that is produced by muscles used when one speaks.

The new technology device will be able to record these pulses even when the conversation is not audible. It generates synthesised speech in the other hand.

Professor Tanja Shultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, “I was taking the train and the person sitting next to me was constantly chatting and I thought ‘I need to change this’.”

He added, “We call it silent communication.”

In the recent Cebit electronics fair in Germany there was a device on display. It relies on an electromyography technique that helps in detecting electrical signals from the muscles. In fact this technique is used to diagnose certain diseases such as those diseases that involve nerve damage.

The device that was displayed in the fair make use of nine electrodes and all of these are stuck to the face of a user.

Professor Shultz explained that “These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your articulatory muscles.” He further add that those are the muscles that are responsible for producing speech.

The electrical pulses is passed to a speically made device that helps in recording and amplifying before it is transmitted to laptop via Bluetooth.

Next, the signal is translated into text and again it is further spoken by a synthesiser.

Professor Shultz said this technology could be achieved in mobile handsets for instantaneous communication.

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Mobile is new, web sites are old school

On March 5, 2010, in News, by rohit
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Web sites are becoming an old school day by day with the burgeoning requirement of mobile for every industry and business. This message was very much clear at the Mobile Premier Awards held at Mobile World Congress last month.
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The entrepreneurs and investors were eager to offer predictions and tips in the award ceremony to business owners to prepare a mobile strategy. The suggestions were as mentioned below:

The first tips given was that every company or business should try becoming “visible” on the mobile devices. Mobile consultant Chetan Sharma said, “The idea is that if a consumer is looking for you on the run, your info must be available in any format where they are looking to consume that information — or else you miss an opportunity.”

The smartphones are unable to access most of the Web sites and more to this the content of many sites is not coded as per the devices that people carry on the go. Even the small screens, mobile browsers, the operating systems and search engines on smartphones has certain limitations. Take for example the flash content of dance clubs and restaurants. It cannot be visible on mobile devices as it is on computers.

Chetan Sharma recommends the companies and business owners to check the business directories, popular apps for mobiles, map and review sites to see whether your company is listed there or not. He adds that if it is not listed then list at least the basic details of the company such as location of the company, the contact information and also some short description on many free sites and free apps.

Few examples he gives which are easily accessible through mobile like Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Nokia’s Ovi Prime Place, Microsoft’s Bing Local Listings,Yelp and Foursquare.

Chief executive of Percent Mobile, David Harper, said that companies and business owners much optimize the existing Web content of their companies. He also suggests to use free WordPress Mobile Pact for the official blog of the company to convert the blog in a fast loading format which is also easily readable on the small screen.

Suggestions are okay, but it is necessary to keep in mind that the mobile and personal computer audiences are different. A computer audience may be interested to see flash and videos where as the mobile audience only needs information.

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Last quarter income down, but Dell well tuned for Mini 5

On February 28, 2010, in Dell Mini 5, by rohit
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Dell faces a drop of six per cent in its income even though there is a good level of demand by consumers for netbooks and laptops which have brought up shipments.
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Dell announced this drop recently and contrary to it there has been signs of more spending in the critical business sectors.

In the recent quarter the earnings of Dell fell to $334 million, which is 17 cents per share.

However, the revenue of the company was increased by 11 percent to $14.9 billion and the gross profit margin was 17.4 percent.

In the holiday season it was noted that consumers bought low cost netbooks and laptops. This has made the shipments to be higher by 29 percent. It is said that these low cost notebooks and laptops gives less profit to the company.

The recent dismal results of Dell are sharply in contrast to Apple. It has been seen recently that Apple has taken the high road if we talk of personal computers and other products.

Though Dell has a hold on much higher market than the Apple overall, but the company has been fighting in lower margin end of those business that it has pioneered.

Well, the forthcoming tablet products of Dell may do some magic in the graph of income. The Mini 5, which is the first of the tablet series, is going to be launched very soon and it will be competing Apple’s new iPad neck-to-neck.

Mini 5 is also a mobile apart from being a table computer where as the new iPad of Apple is a web-enabled tablet device. Mini Five has only 5″ screen, much smaller than the iPad. Mini 5 will be using Google’s Android operating system.

One more pinch of information to share here. Recently the competitor HP had also announced a strong PC and business server sales, which is a trend that has been also reported by Intel just last month.

Let us know what you think whether Dell’s income will have a magical rise with the launch of Mini 5.

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