Filed under: Laptops

Look Sony, nobody’s rooting for your recovery more than your pals at Engadget. But seriously, two major recalls — first the $200+ million battery fiasco now 440,000 VAIOs — in two years? No wonder your stock is at a 3-year low.

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Filed under: Laptops

Look Sony, nobody’s rooting for your recovery more than your pals at Engadget. But seriously, two major recalls — first the $200+ million battery fiasco now 440,000 VAIOs — in two years? No wonder your stock is at a 3-year low.

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Filed under: GPS

The war for the low end of the GPS market promises to be a bloody one, and it looks like TomTom’s suffered the first major injury: quarterly profits at the device maker dropped 83 percent from last year, and the company says it’s due to competitive price cuts. TomTom made a net profit of just €7.3M ($11.4M) this quarter compared to €44M ($66.2M) in the year-ago quarter, results which led the company to lower its outlook for the entire year. The company actually sold 50 percent more devices than it did a year ago, but as PND prices steadily fall, it looks like TomTom will have to figure out a new way to pad those margins and refill its piggy bank if that $4.2B all-cash Tele Atlas deal goes through.

[Via TrustedReviews]

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A year ago today Toshiba was announcing ¥26.17 billion in profits for the quarter. Today, just ¥1.25 billion or about $12 million. In addition to the $580 million hit on account of its withdrawal from HD DVD, Toshiba also saw a swift decline in flash memory prices. While bad news for Toshiba on all accounts, we consumers are basking in a market dominated by a single high-def optical disc standard and cheap NAND and DRAM pricing. Sorry Tosh, but you won’t find any tears around here.

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Filed under: Cellphones

In a move meant to, uh, distract investors from its announced 48% profit downturn (compared to Q1 of the previous year), Sony Ericsson just announced a pair of mid-range handsets. The Z780 clamshell — now official — is the global sister to the announced Z770 for Europe. As such, she comes packing UMTS/HSDPA 850/1900/2100 and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE radios. While it comes loaded with Google Maps for Mobile and aGPS navigation, you won’t get much use from it on that itty bitty 128 x 160 pixel display of unknown dimensions. Hell, that bezel chews up an equivalent amount of real estate. The G502 candybar also features Maps but lacks aGPS. No worries for US Americans though as it’s likely to stay put in Europe with UMTS/HSDPA 2100 and GSM/GPRS/EDGE 900/1800/1900 radios. Both will feature M2 memory expansion, Bluetooth, and 2 megapixel cameras when they launch in “selected markets” come Q2. Sorry Sony Ericsson, but we’re not seeing a lot here to distract investors (or consumers) for very long. Xperia X1 please?

Read — Profits
Read — Phones

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Although you may not have been paying close attention to the actual breakdown, $3.2 billion of the staggering $5.6 billion AMD coughed up in order to acquire ATI last year was simply an estimated goodwill value. Unfortunately for the world’s number two chip maker, that estimate wasn’t exactly accurate. Reportedly, AMD admitted that it did indeed overpay for ATI, and to make matters worse, it noted that it would be forced to “write down the value of the goodwill estimate it attached to ATI” in a recent SEC filing. If you’re curious about the exact amount, however, you’ll be staying on pins and needles for the time being, as even AMD isn’t sure how large the charge will be. Granted, things could certainly be worse, but we’d bet AMD would argue otherwise.

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