Samsung in 3rd position after Nokia, Sony Ericsson

Samsung mobile phones are becoming more popular with Indian users, as per a research. Lately, it has gone ahead of Motorola, placing it at the third position. It even aims to beat Sony Ericsson by launching wider ranges of cellphones..
MOBILE HANDSET market in India witnessed a new graphical shift among its major players. Samsung has pushed Motorola behind at third position as per figures from a market research firm.

According to the latest ORG statistical reports, Samsung’s market share increased from 5.7 per cent in January 2008, to seven per cent in March, this year. Eventually, surpassing Motorola’s shares that fell from 6.7 per cent to 5.9 per cent.

Nokia rules the top position. It continues to dominate the market with a whopping 59.5 per cent market share. Sony Ericsson stands at second position with a market share of 8.1 per cent. Nokia’s market share, however, has dropped over the last three months. As a result, it lost one or two percentage points.

Samsung informs that it plans to reach the second slot in a few months’ time, leaving Ericsson behind.

Head of Samsung Telecom, India, Sunil Dutt, is of the view, “We have achieved substantially. We hope to gain with our new range of models and become the second largest brand in the market by the end of 2008. We have a manufacturing capacity of seven million units, which can be enhanced further. We can also leverage the group’s existing facility in Chennai if needed.” The company is also preparing for launching a range of new handsets for Indian customers.

However, Motorola

    * India: Broadband subscribers base crosses 4 million
    * Dalai Lama donates for Myanmar cyclone victims
    * Yojana goes online
    * Apple formally announces 3G iPhone
    * J&K social welfare department to employ 13000 women

opines that it will re-look into its efforts on the Indian market, so the competition for the third slot can become more dynamic in the near future.

A year earlier, analysts from Merrill Lynch paid a visit to India and reported that Nokia managed to separate a massive 75-80 per cent of the market because it rapidly rolled out retail distribution deals. Of the estimated 79,000 retail outlets in India, selling cellphones, Nokia had a presence in 72,000 of them.

Ever since, almost every handset dealer has laboured to make their retail presence felt. More specifically, in the shrinking market, maximum share rests with Nokia.

Sony re-enters the glass tube business, with an innovative new speaker

Sony is a company well known for creating new and innovative products, and has done it again with a new transparent tube speaker that will be released in Japan for a hefty price tag.

During a press event at Sony headquarters in Tokyo, the company introduced an innovative speaker design that uses hard glass instead of paper and magnesium used in regular speaker designs.

The Sony Sountina NSA-PF1 – the words “sound” and “fountain” combined – stands almost six feet high, has the width of a baseball bat, and can help music listeners cover 360 degrees of a room without stereophonics. It’s said to have an audible range of between 50 and 20,000 Hz.

Traditional speakers produce sound in one direction by pushing sound waves over a diaphragm, but the Sony speakers vibrates a glass tube that is able to send sound waves 360 degrees.

Aside from the home music market, Sony plans to market the pricey speakers ($10,000, or over a million yen) to department stores, hotels and other public places where one speaker may be ideal.

To add a certain ambiance, Sony also included three different LEDs for owners to use: blue, amber, pink, or purple. The LED is located at the bottom of the speaker, and reflects off of a stainless steel casing at the top of the tube. If used in a room dark enough, the glow can be seen off a steel string located inside the top of the tube. The colors must be changed via remote control and cannot change automatically.

Scheduled to launch on June 20, Sony hopes to sell several hundred speakers per year. The company plans to market the speaker in the United States, Brazil, Russia and Middle East starting in the fall, with additional locations to be added if demand is high enough.

Agreement with Sony may mean end of cable set-top boxes

The set-top box, a necessary appendage for millions of cable television customers for decades, is moving toward extinction.

A leading television manufacturer, Sony Electronics Inc., and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association said Tuesday they signed an agreement that will allow viewers to rid themselves of set-top boxes, yet still receive advanced “two-way” cable services, such as pay-per-view movies.

In most cases, cable viewers also could dispose of another remote control since they could use their TV’s control rather than one tied to the set-top box.

The agreement marks a significant meeting of the minds between cable companies and one of the world’s dominant makers of consumer electronics. The two industries have been feuding for a decade about how best to deliver cable service to customers while allowing them to buy equipment of their own choosing.

Sony agreed to use the cable industry’s technology in its sets as soon as possible but could not say when the first such televisions might be appear in stores.

The agreement is between Sony and the nation’s six largest cable companies: Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc., Cox Communications Inc., Charter Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp. and Bright House Networks. The six companies serve more than 82 percent of cable subscribers.

Cable subscribers are generally locked into renting a set-top box from their provider if they want more than the most basic cable TV service.

Sony’s Stringer Shows Next Generation OLED Screen: 0.3 MM Thick, Thinner Than A Credit Card

All Things Digital conference, Sony (SNE) CEO Howard Stringer, who comes out to the opening notes of the song “I think I’m turning Japanese.” He is being interviewed by Walt Mossberg.

Stringer says Sony is the number one seller of LCD TVs in dollars, but not in profits. They did $9 billion in televisions this year, but profit was not as high. He notes that it has become a commoditized business. He says race for market share drives prices down at a rate that is “quite striking.”

Stringer says LCD has plenty of life in it, but is working on OLED, which is very expensive at the moment. First product is in the market place. Costs $2,500 for 11-inch screen. Stringer says he has one on his desk. The screen is so bright; a million-to-one contrast ratio makes it 100 times brighter than an LCD screen. Stringer is showing the next generation screen, which is 0.3 mm wide, thinner than a credit card. And you can make a flexible plastic version. He says there will be 27-inch version “fairly soon,” and it will be “fairly expensive.”

• Stringer says they are making and selling their OLED panels; working very hard to figure out how to mass produce it. When they do, it is a winner.
• On game console business: Stringer says the model has been lose money for long time, then make money on software, and then on the hardware. He says they are coming up to break-even on the hardware for PS/3, and making money on the software. Now number one in the U.K. Has life beyond that of video game; working on Playstation network for later this year. Beginning to generate its own excitement.
• He says they won the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war in part because of the ability to play Blu-Ray titles on the PS3. Stringer says the company did NOT write a lot of big checks to the studios to get them to back Blu-ray. (Unlike the HD-DVD camp.)
• Walt is asking: How many years of value does Sony get for winning the high-def format war, given the move to digital download. Stringer says there is a long lead time. Downloading and streaming will be way to get video, but he says it will be a long time before you can get Blu-Ray quality that way. Stringer says if they had lost the format war, the headline would have been “Betamax 2.” So they did not want that to happen.
• Stringer says the movie theater is not going to die, as a shared experience. He notes that not every home will have a 70-inch Bravia, and even if they do, “you aren’t going to want to watch it with your mother.”
• On PCs, they had their best year ever last year, Stringer says. Mossberg notes they are low market share; Stringer says they are an elegant computer manufacturer. Mossberg says that the Vaio is loaded with “craplets, littered with half-baked programs.” It had 3 Sony-produced movies, but you had to pay $15 to watch them, Mossberg says. Stringer says he promises to do a “craplets review.”
• On music players: they are focused on phones. Stringer says they are doing more and more downloading relationships; you can get Usher downloads exclusively from Sony BMG on Sony Ericsson phones.
• Mossberg is wondering if standalone music and video players will eventually go away in favor of music and video capable phones. Stringer says there is room for 2 or 3 devices.

Sony Redfines LCD Picture Quality with New XBR HDTV Line

 Sony today introduced seven new BRAVIA® XBR flat-panel LCD high-definition televisions including models with Triluminos LED backlight and local dimming for outstanding black-level reproduction and unmatched contrast.
The new models expand the BRAVIA LCD line up to 30 models ranging in screen size from 19- to 70- inches measured diagonally.

The XBR models represent Sony’s premium line, delivering the latest features and the pinnacle of picture quality.

“Critics consistently praise BRAVIA as the best HDTVs on the market, and the XBR badge indicates the best of the best,” said Jeff Goldstein, vice president of marketing for Sony Electronics’ television marketing group. “Consumers can now experience the quality of BRAVIA from small-sized models all the way up through our premium big screen XBR series.

KDL-46XBR8

XBR8-Series

Leading the line is the full HD 1080p 55-inch KDL-55XBR8 and 46-inch KDL-46XBR8 models (all measured diagonally).  The models incorporate Sony’s TRILUMINOS® three-color LED backlight technology with local dimming coupled with 10-bit processing and 10-bit panel to deliver exceptionally deep black level and accurate colors.

Sony’s TRILUMINOS LED backlight technology dramatically expands the TV’s color range by aligning individual clusters of red, green and blue LEDs, significantly elevating color purity compared to traditional single white LED backlights.

Additionally, the sets offer the new Advanced Contrast Enhancer PRO (ACE PRO) technology.  ACE PRO, which features Sony’s own algorithm for local dimming, improves contrast and dynamic range by controlling the LED backlight level by area so that detail is maintained in the dark areas, while other areas are driven near peak brightness.  The technology reduces unnecessary light emission resulting in true, deep blacks and reduced power consumption compared to conventional LED backlit models.

The models also feature BRAVIA Engine™ 2 PRO, which is Sony’s latest high quality picture processing technology and the company’s Motionflow 120Hz high frame rate technology.

Supercomputer built with Sony PlayStation parts smashes previous speed record

 A US military supercomputer built with parts made for a Sony PlayStation has set a new speed record by processing more than twice as many calculations per second as the previous fastest machine.

Roadrunner computer can carry out 1.026 quadrillion – just over a thousand trillion – calculations per second.

Later this year it will be installed at a US government laboratory where it will be used to monitor nuclear weapons.

It will also be used to study climate change by allowing scientists to test warming models with higher accuracy.

“This is equivalent to the four-minute mile of supercomputing,” said Jack Dongarra, a computer scientist at the University of Tennessee.

“This gives us a window into a whole new way of computing. We can look at phenomena we have never seen before,” said Michael R Anastasio, a physicist who is director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico where the computer will be based.

The previous fastest supercomputer, IBM’s Blue Gene/L, is also at LANL.

It was recently upgraded and runs at a speed of 478.2 trillions of calculations per second.

Despite being more than twice as fast, the Roadrunner uses fewer chips than Blue Gene.

This is because the new computer is a so-called “hybrid” design, using both conventional supercomputer processors and the powerful “Cell” chip which was designed for use in the PlayStation 3.

Roadrunner’s record-breaking speed was confirmed during tests in New York before it is taken apart and moved to the laboratory.

When it is reassembled and ready to use to will be kept in 288 refrigerator-sized cases connected by 57 miles of fibre optic cable.