News - SlashGear

Posts Tagged ‘news’

Apple report latest finances: Mac sales & margins up, iPod touch sales double

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 20th 2009 No Comments

apple logo Apple have announced their fiscal Q4 2009 financial results, and it’s been another successful three months for the company. Anybody suggesting that Apple’s tactics of selling relatively few expensive devices (rather than many cheap ones) will have some explaining to do in the face of these latest figures: Mac sales are up around 17-percent from the same period one year ago, while gross margin is up 36.6-percent. That’s helped the company reach $9.87bn in revenue, of which $1.67bn is profit (compared to $1.14bn profit in Q4 2008).

After the cut, slumping iPod sales and the promise of “really great new products” by Steve Jobs

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Sprint buy iPCS in $831m deal: quell ongoing litigation

By Chris Davies on Monday, Oct 19th 2009 No Comments

Sprint continues its acquisitions process, with the latest to be gobbled up being affiliate iPCS. Currently sold as Sprint service in the carrier's own stores, Sprint envisage the transition process to be pretty much seamless; even better, the $831m acquisition will see the end of ongoing litigation between them and iPCS, and Sprint will no longer be required to divest its iDEN network in certain iPCS territories.

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Archos 5 Android Tablet firmware reportedly stable; Android 1.6 Donut by end of 2009

By Chris Davies on Friday, Oct 16th 2009 No Comments

The Archos 5 Android Internet Tablet saga continues, with sales of the 5-inch PMP still partly frozen on Amazon while the company has also pushed out a new firmware update. Amazon put the Archos 5 160GB on hold earlier this week after unspecified complaints from buyers; now the 500GB model has come into stock with the retailer, but shows no such sales-freeze. According to ArchosFans, meanwhile, there’s a new, stable firmware – version 1.1.01 – that addresses many early complaints from owners.

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Nokia Q309 finances report 51% profit slash over last year

By Chris Davies on Thursday, Oct 15th 2009 No Comments

Nokia have announced their Q3 2009 financial results, and when your “Highlights” section leads with the news that overall net sales were down 20-percent year-on-year, at €9.8bn, and mobile device volumes down 8-percent year-on-year (5-percent sequentially) to 108.5m units, you know it’s not been a good quarter. In fact, operating profit for devices & services was down 51-percent from the same three-month period a year ago, plunging from €1,602m to €785m.

CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is putting a positive spin on things, painting a picture of improving demand for products constrained by “component shortages we encountered across the portfolio”. Devices & services net sales have at least risen from the previous quarter, by 5-percent (6-percent when currency fluctuations are cancelled out), though Nokia Siemens Networks net sales continue to drag overall performance down.

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Plastic Logic deny B&N color ebook reader in 2010

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 13th 2009 No Comments

Last Friday’s news that Plastic Logic were apparently building a color ebook reader for Barnes and Noble now looks to be a little too optimistic; the company – who are on course to deliver their first, monochrome model in early 2010 – have denied that a color device is pipeline for next year. According to Plastic Logic, the Barnes and Noble employee who seemingly announced the color ebook reader “was misinformed” and not an “authorized” spokesperson of the retailer.

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T-Mobile sending $100 gift card to Sidekick data-loss victims

By Chris Davies on Tuesday, Oct 13th 2009 1 Comment

After admitting that they could have lost every scrap of Sidekick users’ online data, T-Mobile USA are now following up on their promise of “additional measures” to make it up to affected customers. The carrier is now more hopeful of restoring lost data than it was at the weekend – when it described the likelihood of recovery as “extremely low” – but any user facing a loss will automatically get a $100 T-Mobile gift card.

t mobile sidekick 3g 22 r3 480x270

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Unlocked HTC HD2 shipping November 11th

By Chris Davies on Monday, Oct 12th 2009 No Comments

Hot on the heels of Vodafone Spain's earlier announcement that it would be offering the HTC HD2 to its business customers from December 2009, comes word from UK retailer Clove about SIM-free, unlocked availability for the flagship Windows Phone. Clove is reporting that the unlocked HTC HD2 will be available from November 11th; they're currently listing it, contract-free, for £469 ($739) plus VAT.

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Sidekick users face irretrievable data loss; Inept backup policy blamed

By Chris Davies on Monday, Oct 12th 2009 No Comments

It’s been a weekend of pain for Sidekick owners, with last week’s data outage ironically only the first step in an escalating catalog of mis-management by Microsoft, T-Mobile USA and the Danger team. On Saturday, an official statement was posted to the T-Mobile Sidekick forum, advising users that personal data stored on their servers and not on the handset itself “has almost certainly been lost”, together with the ominous advice that Sidekick handsets shouldn’t be turned off, run down or reset.

t mobile sidekick 3g 22 r3 480x270

Check out the official statement after the cut

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NVIDIA Ion 2 confirmed for 2009 launch

By Chris Davies on Friday, Oct 9th 2009 No Comments

NVIDIA have confirmed that they plan to launch their second-generation Ion 2 chipset sometime in 2009, after rumors of such plans circulated in early July. According to Fudzilla the confirmation came from NVIDIA’s head of chipsets, with the Ion 2 expected to deliver a smaller die, far faster graphics and many more shaders.

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Amazon confirm International Kindle DX is coming

By Chris Davies on Friday, Oct 9th 2009 No Comments

Having announced earlier this week that their Kindle ebook reader would be available in more than 100 countries worldwide, in the shape of a GSM version with international data roaming, Amazon have also confirmed that they plan an international Kindle DX, too. The DX - launched in the US back in June - has a larger, 8.9-inch display than the Kindle 2, and is better suited to textbooks, magazines and other periodicals.