Filed under: Laptops

Now that NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M has made its debut in Apple’s new MacBooks, Technical Marketing Director Nick Stam says that five major notebook vendors are planning to ship systems with the chipset — though we don’t know if that includes Apple or not. Stam expects NVIDIA will carve out 30 percent of the integrated graphics market for itself, partly by improving other experiences besides games — Google Earth, photo editing, day-to-day video encoding, and other activities performed by people who use keys besides W, A, S, and D. Frankly, we’re just thankful we’ve evolved past the days when we needed a 19-inch monster to perform high-impact 3D tasks without sacrificing to the sinister gods of screen tearing.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Uh oh, Moto. Go ‘head with your bad self. Just days after posting a meager profit (but a profit nonetheless) and maintaining your position in third in worldwide mobile market share, along comes a report claiming that you’re still numero uno in the United States. While handset sales overall shot up 5.3% here in Q2, Motorola maintained a 26% share and managed to stare down at least a few naysayers. In related news, LG held tight to the silver with 22%, while RIM gained a double-digit market share increase thanks to sales of its oh-so-hot BlackBerry handset. Number nerds, feel free to tap the read link for even more fractions and decimals.

[Via RCRWireless]

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Filed under: Cellphones

What’s this? Some joyous news on the Palm front? No need to Windex your spectacles — the aforementioned handset maker has indeed managed to up its share of the smartphone market from 7.9% in the fourth quarter to 13.4% today, largely thanks to the popularity of its Centro. In general, analysts seemed quite pleased by the gains, noting that it (along with RIM) were able to take advantage of the 7.5% skid experienced by Apple during the same period. Despite the recent gains, Palm’s market share is still down from 23% in Q1 a year ago, but considering the sweeping slump in cellphone sales of late, we’d say this should still go down as a victory — however minor — for the firm.

[Via Palm InfoCenter]

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Given that Sony has primarily used its PlayStation 3 console to snag market share in the home video sector thus far, it’s not surprising to see it branching out now that Blu-ray stands alone. Nevertheless, the next logical step has already been hinted at by Ryoji Chubachi at a recent press event in Taipei. Reportedly, Sony is hoping to “increase the global market share of its BD products from 20-percent currently to 50-percent by the end of 2008,” and in order to do so, it’s looking to gift select LCD HDTVs with “BD recording functionality.” Of course, it was only a matter of time before those DVD / LCD combos became Blu-ray / LCD combos, but giving users the ability to capture broadcast material without an external burner is certainly an interesting twist.

[Via Electric Pig]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

Looks like there’s something to this “downloading music” thing after all — just eight months after topping Amazon, iTunes has now passed Best Buy to become the number two music retailer in the US. Apple says 50 million customers have bought over 4 billion songs, with 20 million sold on Christmas day alone. That leaves just Wal-Mart in first place, but with the percentage of digital music sales growing each quarter, ol’ Wally may not be safe for long.

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Just days after Sony vaulted to the top of North American LCD sales charts, DisplaySearch is now reporting that worldwide shipments of LCD TVs have overtaken CRT TVs for the first time in the history of the universe. More specifically, LCD TV sales rose some 56-percent year over year, and 47-percent of the world’s TV market is now held by said technology. Reportedly, the transition from CRT to LCD was seen as a logical one, considering that it could extend down to sizes smaller than 20-inches and satisfy desires for large-screen sets. We know you’re just itching to go diving head first into more numbers on the subject, so feel free to toss on those wire-rimmed glasses and hit the read link below.

[Via TGDaily]

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Filed under: Cellphones

Although Motorola’s market share has been steadily sliding to the delight of Nokia and Samsung, DigiTimes would have you believe that Moto reigns supreme in the global Windows Mobile Smartphone segment. Citing “internal data from Microsoft,” the oft-wrong, occasionally correct tattle-rag claims that HTC’s share of the WinMo Standard space has declined leaving Moto with the largest market share just barely beating Samsung by, “a small margin.” This after HTC saw a 50% Smartphone domination during Microsoft’s Jul 2006 - Jul 2007 fiscal year. HTC still maintains a 50% market share for WinMo Professional touch-screen devices. Of course, this could be true. After all, Moto has refocused their attention to high-margin, full-featured handsets at the expense of emerging markets and entry level handsets. And you can’t swing an HTC Vox without knocking over a dozen Qs. Still, until we hear otherwise, take this rumor with a quarry-sized load of rock salt.

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Filed under: Cellphones

Although it does sound as if the much protested plant closing in Bochum, Germany will indeed leave around 2,300 workers sans a job, the street was still loving what Nokia had to talk about today. In its latest earnings report, the firm announced that it raked in €15.7 billion ($22.76 billion) in revenues and €1.8 billion ($2.6 billion) in net profit from October to December 2007. Furthermore, the firm managed to move a record 133.5 million handsets in the aforementioned period, which is up some 27-percent from Q4 a year earlier. That sales surge enabled the handset maker to grab hold of 40-percent of the global cellphone market, and apparently, bigwigs at the company aren’t expecting things to plateau in 2008. Needless to say, things are pretty spirited in Helsinki right about now, so feel free to tag the links below for even more jaw-dropping figures.

Read - Nokia 4Q profits up 44 percent, market share reaches 40 per cent
Read - Nokia’s Q4 2007 report

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Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Oh, how the times they are a-changin’. Merely months after Vizio ousted Samsung as the LCD TV king in Q2, Sammy is back on top of overall flat-panel TV sales here in North America. Thanks primarily to a staggering 37-percent quarter-to-quarter growth rate (compared to Vizio’s 12-percent), Samsung now has an 11.8-percent unit share compared to Vizio’s 10.2-percent. Strictly looking at LCD TVs, Vizio still isn’t holding the gold; rather, Sharp rocketed ahead to the top spot in that category and left the previous leader clinging to second. It should be noted that Vizio’s sales are far from stagnant — the firm has experienced a 334-percent increase year-to-year in LCD TV growth compared to Sharp’s 88-percent. Still, we wouldn’t count on the current leaderboard staying this way for long, as Black Friday (and the holiday season in general) has a tendency to shake things up.

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