Sony Ericcson to take over Motorola??

Motorola has one the oldest tradition when it comes to mobile phones.. Martin Cooper of Motorola is widely considered to be the inventor of the first practical mobile phone for handheld use in a non-vehicle setting. While, Sony Ericsson is the new kid in the block, a company established only in 2001. But, it seems the kid is going to take over the big daddy of mobile phones. At least that is what the rumour mills are spreading over the last few weeks. Motorola has not had much success in the last few years, their sales have gone down, and conversely, Sony Ericsson is even competing Nokia for the Prime Market. Now, that makes the rumour believable.
This is what Mobile Mentalism says,

For the first quarter of 2007, Motorola's mobile handset sales were down 15% from the previous year, and incurred an operating loss of $231 million. This was in stark contrast to Sony Ericsson and Nokia, both of whom enjoyed considerable success with their range of handsets.

Internally, Motorola has been having a battle with Carl Icahn, who owns 3% of Motorola's stock, and who recently failed in his attempt to win a seat on the Board of Directors at Motorola. Icahn has pulled no punches in his criticism of Motorola's current management.

Against this backdrop comes the rumour of Ericsson buying Motorola.

Also the analyst Ed Snyder at Charter Equity Research, has allegedly claimed that two of the main shareholders in Motorola told him that Carl Icahn has spread the rumours about this possible merger. And it's not like Icahn doesn't have his own agenda!

Who knows we might get too see MotoRokrs with Megabass, or a Motorazrs with CyberShot. Let us wait and see. You may be excited, I also may be. But this might be sending nightmares to Nokia, as this merger would definitely remove them from the top spot. Already Sony Ericsson is known for its perfection and is dominating the middle and high end market. Also, the critics have acclaimed Sony Ericcson for the better sound and camera. If this merger happens, they could easily invade all the markets.
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AMD's new desktop PHENOMenon

AMD has said last month that Barcelona range of processors will get them their lost glory. Now, they have moved a step forward from dream to reality, as they announced that later this year they would be launching their new range of powerful desktop range of Quad Cores and Dual Cores named Phenom. Atleast the name looks appealing than the Core2 from Intel, for now. But we will have to wait and watch how they differ in performance. Later this year the quad core Phenom FX, Phenom X4 and the dual core Phenom X2 will be ready.

AMD has been pleading for long that the Intel quad cores, which are actually 2 dual cores fused are no match to their actual quad cores with 4 independent cores, better connectivity, independent processing backed up by the powerful and fast Hypertransport, [read Barcelona]. Intel who were arguing at first are now actually designing chips in the similar way with integrated Memory controllers and point to point links, this would be ready only by 2008. The product is called Nehelam.

The AMD quads are based on Barcelona architecture, and would be a big test for them. The enthusiasts are looking forward to this release as this is the superior to Intel's fused quads. This would also give AMD a chance to revive its multicore market which it lost to Intel last year.
AMD will also give 4x4 a boost, which was introduced in between a big hype but which eventually died down. They will also introduce a product called FASN8 which could hold to Phenom quads. That would be a nice fiesta for performance hungry users.
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Microsoft annoyed with Linux

Microsoft lawyer Brad Smith, in an interview with Fortune said that Open Source violates over 235 patents. It said the Linux kernel itself violates around 42 Microsoft patents, while its UI and other elements around 65. The Open Office also violates 45, and 83 more by other Open source softwares. The allegations come as a surprise as Microsoft had lately signed a deal with Novell to work on bridging software between Windows and SuSe Linux.
No clues were given on how Microsoft would proceed with these findings, as the Open Source community has grown strong enough to defend their fort, Microsoft has to play safely. The Open Invention Network has been piling intellectual property, some of which could be used to counter attact Microsoft. The Network includes major players like Sony, Philips, NEC, IBM and Red Hat. They could virtually choke out Microsoft.
The violations are not a new discovery for the Open Source world, this was well identified a few years back, the community has been working towards eliminating the "evils of patents" and has been urging the developers to pool in the rights to the Open Source community for free use. In fact they have been forcing the developers to do so. The new GNU Pubic license in making, also includes clauses which would make the pacts like the one between Microsoft and Novell, virtually impossible, says sources.
courtsey: news.com.com
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Intel going for the kill??

Two weeks ago, at Bejing, Intel revealed its new plans, which revolved mostly around a new chip, codenamed Larabee. which is actually dubbed as a processor for consumer devices, which uses an array of cores running in parallel to give trillion floating point instructions per second. The processor is also x86 compatible and hence easier to program, according to Intel. The processor would go public by 2008, maybe after the Fusion release by AMD. The processor is aimed at high end scientific apps.
Another one in the making is Tolapai, which also combines x86 processor core with an encryption co-processor, which will also consume less power and space. It would go in air later this year. It is aimed at the security computing sector.
Though the Larabee chip was slated as a competitor to the Fusion processor, the real threat is actually Nehalem processor, which would have a GPU core at some point of time. The chip which would be out the late 2008 will have upto 8 cores. It is also dubbed as the "dynamically scalable procesor", meaning the intel designers would develop variants of the processor for each sector. It would also support mutithreading, and also take the most successful technologies that brought AMD to top, a faster memory controller bus and the point to point links connecting the cores. This processor would be fabricated in the 45 nm technology.
Already the Penryn processor, which is etched on 45nm cores, will provide 20% performance improvement over Core2Duo on general apps and 40% on games. This is more or a less a shrink of C2D architecture into 45nm.
Intel already is working hard with Beyond3d to get their GPU homeworks correct. So, tighten your seatbelts and watch the processor war.
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