Report: Market share of octa-core powered smartphones will slide this year

According to industry sources, the percentage of smartphones shipped with an octa-core processor will decline this year. The main reason is that branded and white-box smartphone vendors in China continue to roll out quad-core powered models in order to increase their market shares in the low to mid-range category. And while many manufacturers are excited about the true octa-core MT6592 chip from MediaTek, relatively few smartphone vendors have designed octa-core powered silicon into their products. These sources don't see demand for octa-core chips coming until next year.

The sources add that MediaTek has kept a fairly wide price gap between its quad-core and octa-core chips in order to keep demand flowing for the former. The speculation is that MediaTek isn't ready yet to use pricing as a way to drive business to the MT6592.

While the international version of the Samsung Galaxy S5 will feature Sammy's homegrown Exynos octa-core chip, the ubiquitous industry sources are not totally convinced that Samsung's new flagship will be the runaway hit that many expect it to be.

source: DigiTimes
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Bob’s Watches Streamlines The Rolex Market With An Electronic Exchange

As a watch nerd, I love to see the stuffy old watchmaking industry try new things. That’s why I was intrigued by the recent changes at Bob’s Watches, a retailer turned website that buys and sells Rolex watches using a very simple exchange model.

Founded by Paul Altieri in 2010, the site was mostly a sales portal for years. Now, however, the company has created a Rolex Exchange, a real-time engine for pricing Rolex watches. Owners can post their own watches for sale and Bob’s gets a cut while buyers can see prices for hundreds of pieces.

First, a bit of background: Rolex watches, unlike most fine watches, tend to hold their value. There is a massive underground of exceedingly obsessive collectors who buoy prices and the brand awareness is such that potential customers are everywhere. A particularly popular Submariner that cost $8,000 retail can usually maintain its value over the years, falling to $4,000 on a bad day but generally staying within 50% of the purchase price. The vast majority of classic watches don’t do this – an Omega or Breitling falls precipitously in value over the years but the price can rise if it’s a particularly nice or historical model. The only other popular brand that truly maintains its value is Patek Phillipe but those start in the tens of thousands.

What Bob’s has done is create a simple market. Buyers can ask for a quote and Bob’s will sell the watch through their site. This gives the seller a better chance of getting a fair price and reduces much of the risk in dealing with an anonymous online seller. Given that almost every watch hobbyist has seen at least one timepiece get “eaten” by FedEx or DHL, it’s nice to be able to pawn some of the risk off on another party.

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Windows Phone Surpasses BlackBerry In The US Despite Flat Market Share

The dogfight between BlackBerry and Windows Phone in the U.S. has a new leader. Microsoft’s smartphone platform now controls more market share than that of the Canadian firm. But there is more to the story. New Comscore data indicates that even while besting BlackBerry at last, Windows Phone’s market share in the U.S. isn’t budging.

Is passing BlackBerry much of a feat for Windows Phone? No. Take a look:

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Flashnotes Buys Moolaguides, Consolidating The Market For Crowdsourced, Online Study Materials

Flashnotes, a Boston-based startup that operates a marketplace for students to sell and buy study materials for specific courses, has acquired a smaller competitor called Moolaguides. The move comes around a month after Flashnotes announced a Series A round of $3.6 million from Stage 1 Ventures, Runa Capital, SoftBank Capital and Atlas Ventures.

Strategically, the acquisition points to a trend of consolidation in the online education space.

Moolaguides is based out of Florida, where it was founded by a senior at Florida State University called Thomas Brady, and it has an active footprint there. Last July, Flashnotes acquired rival NoteUtopia to strengthen its reach on the West Coast of the U.S. The company is on track to expand its reach to some 300 universities by the end of this year, Matousek told me last month.

“Moolaguides was created with a similar vision to help college students earn money – and to get better grades, and Tom has developed an impressive business,” said Matousek in a statement. “We’re excited by this opportunity to expand our student-to-student marketplace, particularly at FSU, and we think Moolaguides users will really benefit from our expanded selection of study materials and payment distribution for student sellers.”

Consolidation among startups is important in a market dominated by well-funded, large online education companies like Chegg, and the wider trend of MOOCs that pull students away from physical classrooms altogether.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Moolaguides has generated around $400,000 in revenue to date, Flashnotes’s founder and CEO Mike Matousek tells me, and it has paid out some $375,000 to students on its platform to date. Flashnotes, meanwhile, doesn’t provide a total figure for payouts on its platform, but its leaderboard details that its top-five student earners have gained between $11,000 and $5,000 from selling study guides, flashcards, notes and other study media on the Flashnotes platform.

Image: Flickr

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Digital Storm's $2,000 Steam Machine is a PC for the high-end market

byJessica Conditton Jan 6th 2014 9:00PM

0The Bolt 2, revealed today as a hybrid PC and Steam Machine, is not for the everyday market, Digital Storm Chief Brand Officer Harjit Chana told Joystiq at CES. The Bolt 2 will cost $1,900 when it launches later this month, and the system ranges in price from $1,500 to $2,800.

"Our brand itself is more about high-end systems," Chana said. "We're not really a more mainstream type of brand; we're focused on higher-tier. So that's where the Bolt 2 came in. We wanted to create a product that appeals to this type of market as a Steam Machine. Because obviously, when someone thinks of a Steam Machine, they think of something compact, hybrid – something they can place in their home theater environment as well."

The Bolt 2 is designed ideally for 4K gaming, with an eye on the future, Chana said.

"A $500 Steam Box isn't going to run a 4K TV," he said.

One $500 Steam Box, the SBX from iBuyPower, won't run 4K, but neither is it a PC. The SBX is presented as a console Steam Machine, while the Bolt 2 is very much a PC Steam Machine. The Bolt 2 launching in January won't ship with a Steam Controller, but it will have the option to install the beta of SteamOS, which anyone can download now. The true Steam Machine version of the Bolt 2, with the controller and SteamOS, will launch later in the year. The Bolt 2 will always run both SteamOS and Windows.

"The whole idea with it being such a high-end product, is we had to make it a hybrid because they're so high-end you can't just run SteamOS because SteamOS is still very limited, for what it is," Chana said.

There is a "pretty big" market for high-end gaming PCs, Digital Storm Senior Technician Robert Wall said. The Bolt 1 launched last year and did "extremely well," he noted:

"We've got a ton of great interest. Even online right now, there's tons of interest, people that want this."ShareTags: bolt-2, ces-2014, digital-storm, Linux, pc, STEAM, steam-machines, steamos.fyre .fyre-comment-media-expanded{display:none!important}.fyre-notifier-container{display:none}.fyre .fyre-comment-divider>span.fyre-comment-reply-wrapper{top:18px}.fyre .fyre-comment-divider>a,.fyre .fyre-comment-divider>a:hover{top:20px} InfoDescription

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Posted on Jan 6th 2014 7:15PM

Hands-on with Valve's Steam Machine beta hardware

Posted on Jan 6th 2014 5:05PM

Super abridged Joystiq news review of 2013

Posted on Jan 5th 2014 10:30AM

EngadgetKindle for iOS updated with flashcards, notebook ...Equil JOT nabs Evernote integration for easy ...meMini's wearable camera gives you the gift of ...TUAWEvening news roundup for January 6, 2013 ...Cut the Rope 2 perfects the art of having in-app ...8 Time Machine excuses that don't make sense ...MassivelyNot So Massively: LoL downed by DDoS attack, Star ...The Stream Team: Heroics continue in World of ...DayZ destroys Hall's early sales expectations ...WoWThe WoW Insider Show LIVE! ...How to PvP ...WoW Moviewatch: Brief History of WoW ...AOL TechJoystiq

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Tactus Raises Series B To Help Bring Its Disappearing Touchscreen Keyboard To Market

Next StoryMedallia’s Amy Pressman On Extracting Value From Investors

There were plenty of media darlings at last year’s CES, but few tickled people’s fancies the way that Tactus and its amazing disappearing tablet keyboard did. The company has spent the past few months crafting reference devices for would-be partners and gearing up to help OEMs bring that impressive keyboard tech to market, but now it’s looking to supercharge those efforts with a newly raised Series B round.

Sadly, the company is keeping most of the particulars under wraps for now — Tactus didn’t disclose the size of the round or the full list of new names that are joining existing investors like Thomvest Ventures. In fact, the only new investor Tactus specifically called out is Ryoyo Electro, a sizeable Japanese OEM (that I’ve honestly never heard of) that the company originally tapped as a strategic partner late last year.

And what exactly does Tactus plan to do with a freshly minted Series B? To expand on what it’s been doing for the past year or so — working with OEMs to fine-tune the Tactus experience ahead of some big initial launches. Naturally, part of that fine-tuning comes in the form of developing different sorts of keyboard layouts for OEMs to implement since the last thing a forward-thinking device manufacturer needs is a killer feature that competitors can pick up and run with themselves.

We’ve seen the traditional keyboard layout in action before: it involves pumping up areas of the screen that correspond to your usual set of alphanumeric keys, but more exotic configurations would see the gaps between keys to bulge instead to better guide users’ fingers where they need to go.

To hear Tactus CEO Craig Ciesla tell it, the first batch of devices with those expanding keyboards should hit store shelves toward the middle of this year, and with any luck that’ll just be the beginning. After all, the company has pointed out in the past that the process of crafting traditional glass cover lenses that sit over tablet and phone displays is tricky and costly enough to make a fluid-filled Tactus layer a viable choice. When asked if Tactus’ ultimate goal was to completely supplant traditional cover lenses, Ciesla cautiously confirmed his ambitions.

“It’s not going to be a case going from Q1 2014 where everything is glass to Q1 2015 where everything is Tactus,” he noted. “This is a better interface, it’s more satisfying, it’s lighter, it won’t shatter. It’ll just take time.”

Bold words, but we’ll soon see how right he is — Tactus has promised to show off some updated models when CES starts in earnest next week, so check back to see if these guys (and their partners) can make good on their lofty promises.

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Wells Fargo downgrades Apple stock over market concerns

(Credit:James Martin/CNET)

Apple's shares might have some trouble growing in 2014, a new analyst report claims.

Wells Fargo analyst Maynard Um on Tuesday issued an Apple stock downgrade, pushing the company's shares from "Outperform" to "Market Perform." The move, however, did not include a change to Um's 12-month prediction on Apple's share price of $536 to $581. Apple is currently trading at $553.

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According to StreetInsider, which obtained a copy of the analyst note, Um said that there are three issues Apple will face in 2014 that could put a damper on its share price: the possibility of a declining profit on each iPhone 6 sale, limited market opportunities in Apple's current competitive landscape, and his believe that mobile power will side with carriers this year, rather than handset makers.

The analyst note focuses heavily on financial data, but makes a clear point: despite the downgrade, Apple is still expected to have a solid year, thanks in large part to the iPhone 6. Um also believes an iWatch launch this year will help the company generate more revenue.

Apple is still an overwhelming "Buy" on Wall Street, with 53 analysts giving the company that rating. Just two analysts say it's time to sell.

Topics: Apple Corporate Tags: stock, Apple

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Windows 8.x Busts Past 10% Market Share As Windows 7 Rises, XP Falls

According to Net Applications, Windows 8.x crossed the 10% barrier in December of 2013. Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 ended the year with 6.89% and 3.60% apiece for a combined 10.49% total market share.

In the month, Windows 7 picked up 0.88% market share, as Windows XP fell below the 30 percent mark, shedding 2.24% to land at 28.98% in the month. While Windows 8.x’s market share growth is probably still under what Microsoft wants, enterprise adoption of Windows 7 appears strong as the end of Windows XP approaches.

Windows 8 gained 0.23% market share in December, an almost surprising figure given the general availability of Windows 8.1, a free upgrade. The latter did pick up 0.96% in the month.

It will be interesting to see how Windows 8.x’s growing market share converts into downloads of applications through the Windows Store. Previously, the Windows developer portal provided detailed download numbers. However, this morning I was unable to load the usual set of analytics through the system. Microsoft may have removed the capability.

If so, we will not be able to correlate downloads with market share, which will limit our ability to vet Microsoft’s ability to convert new Windows 8.x users to its new application platform. That’s a shame.

To wrap 2013, Windows 8.x manages a new threshold as Windows 7 manages to accelerate the end of Windows XP. Not a bad way to start 2014.

Top Image Credit: Flickr

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Samsung Stock Closes Down 4.6%, Cutting $8B Off Its Market Value As Investors Worry

Samsung isn’t off to a great start for 2014 – during its first full day of trading of the new year, it lost 4.6 percent of its stock price value, which amounts to a more than $8 billion drop in market value, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. The drop is likely attributable to increasing lack of investor confidence in Samsung’s ability to continue to grow its mobile business.

Outlook for the company’s upcoming quarterly results are good – analysts estimate that they will see an increase in profit derived from their mobile business, which is the big powerhouse at the company when it comes to driving earnings. But that increase will be off the pace from the previous quarter, and the fear is that in general Samsung’s ability to continue to see increasing gains in its mobile business has come to an end.

The problem for Samsung comes from a number of developments in the mobile market over the past year. First, there’s the fact that smartphone penetration at the top-end of the market is now pretty wide-reaching, meaning there’s theoretically much less opportunity to sell high-end devices than there might have been previously.

There’s also ample price pressure making its way into the world of smartphone sales. Google’s Nexus devices continue to set examples for high quality hardware at lower, contract free prices, and now Motorola is also offering extreme value for money with the $179 Moto G, and the just-reduced Moto X at $399, a price drop made permanent earlier this week. To compete with Google and Google-owned Motorola on price, Samsung would inevitably find margins on its products lower than usual since budget devices becoming more important drives down mobile profit overall.

Samsung held a conference designed specifically to address the concerns of analysts and investors back in November last year, where it tried to reassure its backers and market watchers that it had the right plans in place to continue growth. However investors seem unconvinced. Its stock price was mostly flat coming out of that event, and both for the last day of 2013 and now the first day of 2014, price has dipped considerably.

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Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 pass 10% market share, Windows 7 still gains more, and Windows XP falls below 30%

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With the release of Windows 8.1 to the world in October, Microsoft ended 2013 with two full months of availability for its latest operating system version. While Windows 8.1 is certainly growing quickly and is eating into Windows 8

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Nokia Closes Out 2013 With 92% Of The Windows Phone Market

The fine folks at AdDuplex have provided Paul Thurrott with an early look at their final Windows Phone market data for 2013, giving us in the public a final look at the key statistics of Microsoft’s smartphone platform’s OEM and device makeup.

The figures are much as they have been all year, only more so. Nokia continues to control the lion’s share of Windows Phone hardware, ending the month up a few points at 92.1 percent (this is a calculation of usage share, tracked through AdDuplex’s network). And the Lumia 520 handset continues to dominate its brethren, with a new high of 39.3 percent share. And that Windows Phone 8 grew against the now-fading Windows 7.x system, with record relative market share of 78.3 percent.

Windows Phone’s 2013, if you had to put it into basic trends, would be that Nokia cleaned up, and its Lumia 520 was the weapon of choice.

Thurrott well describes the current low-ending of Windows Phone (bolding original):

Almost no high-end phones are popular. Worldwide, only the Lumia 920 makes the top 10 list for usage among all Windows Phone handsets, and if you look just at Windows Phone 8 handsets, only two high-end devices make the list: The Lumia 920 and the 925. In the US, there are three: The Lumia 920, 928, and 1020. All the rest are new low-end devices or old devices. The Lumia 1520 phablet doesn’t appear anywhere in this report.

What this means is that the sales momentum that Windows Phone has comes at the cost of per-unit revenue. Margin pressure increases at lower price points. The list of sacrifices that had to be made to produce the Lumia 520 is not small.

So, as we tally what could be the final month in which Nokia rules Windows Phone, it’s important to note that rising unit volume has come at a cost. The Lumia 1020 is a hit among a subset of the technology elite, but perhaps few else.

Can you build a mobile empire on predominantly low-end phones? Apple managed the opposite, so perhaps this, too, is possible.

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BTC China CEO Attempts To Calm The Bitcoin Market After RMB Deposit Shutdown

In a letter posted on the Chinese bitcoin trading site BTC China CEO Bobby Lee attempted to calm the markets by posting a long, detailed description of the way forward for the company. “As China’s first Bitcoin and Bitcoin trading platform company, we have more than two and half years of operating experience and a good reputation,” he wrote. ”I believe you love Bitcoin and will fully understand our decision.”

Lee also clarified that the ban on RMB deposits is temporary and that the People’s Bank Of China saw bitcoin markets as similar to any commodity market and that “ordinary people have the freedom to participate in them at their own risk.” He also announced a number of improvements and changes to the platform aimed at retaining customers.

The company announced a new product called “Currency Lock” that stores bitcoin in “cold storage” with “bank-level” security. Commentators see this as a move to prevent a bitcoin sell-off by skittish investors who could see their wallets disappear while they wait out the RMB ban. They have also added a 0.3% transaction fee to all deposits and withdrawals to discourage rampant bitcoin conversion or transfers and to prevent large accounts from buying or selling speculatively.

In short, it’s business as usual at BTC China, but with a few caveats. The company recently closed a $5 million Series A round from institutional investors Lightspeed China Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners. BTC China was bootstrapped prior to this round, with money put in by its three co-founders, Bobby Lee, Linke Yang, and Xiaoyu Huang. The closure of RMB deposits by the People’s Bank Of China this week precipitated a 50% decline in the currency which has stabilized at about $700 on Mt. Gox.

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