iMacs expected to boost desktop market growth in 2010
Mobile computing has taken over as the main driver of growth in PC sales for the past year, with notebooks overtaking desktops in late 2008 and sales of desktops declining for the last two years. However, Caris & Company analyst Robert Cihra is expecting desktops to show a small positive growth this year, due in large part to brisk sales of Apple's iMac. Cihra still expects notebooks and netbooks to account for 90 percent of overall growth in the market for the current year. But the increased demand driven by emerging markets, a slight increase in corporate IT spending, and "power gamers" should result in a 3 percent uptick in desktop sales over last year. "[B]elieve it or not," Cihra wrote in a note to investors, "we estimate Apple's iMac accounting for a full one quarter of ALL desktop market growth in calendar year 2010." The number isn't so surprising when you consider that the iMac pushed an impressive 70 percent year-over-year growth in desktop Mac sales for 2009. Contrast that with a 12 percent drop in overall sales of desktops for the same time frame. Apple's second fiscal quarter sales are already looking healthy, with sales up 36 and 43 percent year over year for January and February respectively. Those figures led Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster to peg Mac sales at about 2.9 million for the quarter. That's less than the recent record quarters of late, but would still mark a 31 percent year-over-year growth compared to the second quarter last year. Sales of iMacs resumed in earnest recently after manufacturing problems with the large 27" LCD panels caused some delays. Cihra also praised Apple in his note for its ability to drive growth without sacrificing average selling prices or margins. ASPs for desktop and portable Macs have decreased slightly over the last year, while ASPs for HP and Dell have dropped more dramatically. Meanwhile, Apple's tight control on costs have driven increased operating margins that exceed even the gross margins of HP, Dell, and Acer. It's worth noting that while Acer has seen explosive sales growth over the last year—in particular due to low-cost netbooks—the company's operating margins hover around 3 percent while Apple's are just over 25 percent. Read the comments on this post
published yesterday, 12 hours 50 minutes ago, ars-technica
10.6: A workaround for a Boot Camp x64 installation issue
Today I installed Windows 7 Ultimate x64 via Boot Camp on my 2007 MacBook Pro 2.4GHz machine. I was stumped when I couldn’t install the Boot Camp drivers from the 10.6 DVD in Windows. I tried several different approaches, but every single try ended with the message Boot Camp x64 is unsupported on this computer model when launching the Boot Camp setup app. I could also not install the 3.1 update. The only visual indication was Nvidia drivers installing, and afterwards, it would simply quit while all the time there was no reference that I was actually about to install Boot Camp. Knowing that I didn’t do anything wrong, I didn’t want to give up and finally found a solution. Here's a step by step guide: Boot into Windows 7 and insert your 10.6 DVD Right-click on Start » Programs » Accessories » Comman...
published yesterday, 23 hours 49 minutes ago, macosxhints
Google sells just 135,000 Nexus Ones in 2.5 months
In spite of early fanfare, Google has sold just 135,000 Nexus One phones in the past 2.5 months, according to a Flurry estimate. Having tracked sales since the early January launch, the analysts believe the Android "superphone" in 74 days has had just a fraction of the sales the original iPhone managed over a similar timeframe in 2007, when it cracked 1 million. Motorola has also landed an ironic blow as the Droid is believed to have outsold both with 1.05 million passing through Verizon....
published on Tuesday, the 16. March 2010, macintosh-news-network
40% of Blackberry users willing to trade in for an iPhone
BlackBerry users may be ready to move on to other smartphone platforms, suggesting that RIM isn't keeping up with consumer demand in its efforts to combat growing encroachment from the likes of iPhone and Android. In fact, two in five BlackBerry owners plan to swap their current device for an iPhone when it's time to upgrade, according to market researcher firm Crowd Science. The iPhone has had a lasting effect on the smartphone market, changing the conception of what a smartphone should be almost overnight after the launch of the original iPhone in 2007. Despite RIM's entrenchment among business users, however, the iPhone platform has grown at a faster rate than the BlackBerry over the last year. Perhaps the trend can be explained by Crowd Science's findings that many are using their smartphones for both personal and business use. Nearly a third of iPhone owners use their device for strictly personal use, versus just 16 percent for BlackBerry users. Just one percent of iPhone owners use their device for business only—no surprise there—so two-thirds are using an iPhone for business and personal use. And, while the BlackBerry has a reputation as the best enterprise mobile device, a scant seven percent of BlackBerrys users dedicate the device to business use only. That leaves over three-quarters of BlackBerry owners using their device for dual purposes. The iPhone isn't the only platform attracting the attention of BlackBerry users, though. Interest in Android-based devices has grown since the introduction of Google's Nexus One, with 32 percent of BlackBerry users surveyed saying they would swap their current device for a Nexus One. "These results show that the restlessness of BlackBerry users with their current brand hasn't just been driven by the allure of iPhone," John Martin, CEO of Crowd Science, said in a statement. "Rather, BlackBerry as a brand just isn't garnering the loyalty seen with other mobile operating systems." About 90 percent of current iPhone and Android users plan to stick with their current platform for their next phone upgrade. Read the comments on this post
published on Monday, the 15. March 2010, ars-technica
10% of Microsoft Employees Using iPhones
The Wall Street Journal over the weekend profiled iPhone usage among employees of Apple's longtime rival Microsoft, noting that approximately 10,000 Microsoft employees, representing about 10% of the comp...
published on Monday, the 15. March 2010, macrumors
Intel ships $125 budget SSD
Intel catered to the rapidly growing budget SSD realm today by launching the X25-V. The 2.5-inch SATA II drive is meant alternately for netbooks and for dual-drive systems where a fast and more reliable OS drive is crucial. The SSD isn't as fast as the M or X series, at 135MB per second reads and 35MB per second writes, but is still about four times faster on average than a 7,200RPM rotating hard disk....
published on Monday, the 15. March 2010, macintosh-news-network