Cross posted from Dr. Bill – The Computer Curmudgeon:

HP discontinues it’s tablet sales, but guess what? Technically they are currently number two behind Apple in tablet sales.

HP surprisingly emerges as No. 2 tablet maker

“At least for now, Hewlett-Packard can lay claim as the second mist popular tablet manufacturer behind Apple.

Too bad, it’ll be a short-lived reign.

Despite all of the attention focused on Apple’s iPad, other tablet makers have seen some adoption this year. In total, the U.S. tablet market–excluding Apple–saw sales of more than 1.2 million units and retail revenue of $415 million from January through October, according to a new study from NPD. HP stood on top of that non-iPad hill, closely followed by Samsung Electronics.

Of course, the market is still tiny when compared with Apple, which moved 11.1 million iPads in the last quarter alone.

That a fluke like the short-lived TouchPad–which launched July 1 for $499 but only sold well amid a fire sale in mid-August–was able to capture the No. 2 spot speaks to the fragmentation of the tablet market beyond Apple.

Despite Apple’s dominance, NPD believes there is an opportunity for alternatives.

‘According to NPD’s consumer tracking service, 76 percent of consumers who purchased a non-Apple tablet didn’t even consider the iPad, an indication that a large group of consumers are looking for alternatives, and an opportunity for the rest of the market to grow their business,’ said NPD analyst Stephen Baker.

HP managed to grab 17 percent of the share. Its TouchPad was snapped up quickly this summer when HP discontinued the tablet. The TouchPad’s price cratered to $99, and retailers moved quickly to unload the tablets. Of course, the phenomenon was only temporary; HP has since run out of TouchPads and has no apparent plans to start up production again.

Samsung has been in the tablet business longer than anyone outside of Apple, moving quickly to release the 7-inch Galaxy Tab a year ago. Since then, the company has released a variety of tablet sizes, including a 10.1-inch version that is able to connect to a high-speed wireless network. As a result, it had 16 percent of the non-iPad market and is poised to overtake HP in the coming months for the No. 2 spot.”

Following its smartphone business, Samsung has been among the most successful in getting carrier support for its tablets. But its also caught the eye of Apple. Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is part of a massive legal battle between the two technology titans. Samsung recently redesigned the Galaxy Tab for the German market in an attempt to get around an injunction won by Apple.

Asus and its Transformer tablet fell behind Samsung, followed by Motorola Mobility and then Acer. Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has spoken about the early difficulties of selling its Xoom tablet and has been quiet since the Xoom debuted earlier this year as the first Honeycomb-powered Android device.”

Cross-posted from Dr. Bill: The Computer Curmudgeon:

There’s an old joke about the vendor in New York that bragged that he sold his wares cheaper than anyone else. “Yeah,” said his competitor, “but you are selling BELOW the actual cost of the item!” “Ha!,” said the vendor, “I make it up in volume!” Get it? Selling below cost, even at volume, nets you no profit! However, that is what Amazon is doing! But they WILL make it up in volume of books sold!

Kindle Fire teardown puts build cost at less than $3 above retail price

Computerworld – Teardown experts at IHS iSuppli found that it costs $201.70 to build Amazon’s new Kindle Fire — that’s almost $3 more than the device’s $199 retail price.

Many analysts expected Amazon to take a much larger loss on the Kindle Fire, if only to better compete against other tablets such as the iPad 2, which has a starting price of $499, or the Nook Tablet, which starts at $249. Amazon is expected to make up the loss through sales of products and apps to Kindle users.

According to iSuppli’s tally the Kindle Fire’s hardware costs $185.60 and the cost of manufacturing the device is $16.10.

The $201.70 figure is an actual teardown cost estimate that was derived from taking apart one of the Kindle Fire tablets, which were released Monday. That total is $7.83 less than the $209.63 virtual estimate that iSuppli made in September.”

There has been a lot of hype about Apple’s “Siri” voice recognition. Maybe you have seen the commercials. Anyway, it may be that Amazon will add a similar tool to the Kindle! And, via a Charlotte, NC based company at that! Sounds good to a NC boy like me!

Siri in the Kindle? Amazon Buys a Voice Recognition StartupSiri in the Kindle? Amazon Buys a Voice Recognition Startup

“Some CEOs like to shout their acquisitions from the rooftops. And then there’s Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who would prefer that you didn’t know his company just bought a startup called Yap.

Here’s how cloak-and-dagger it got: Yap technically merged with a subsidiary called Dion Acquisition in September, according to SEC filings. Only now did an eagle-eyed tech blogger based in Yap’s hometown, Charlotte, N.C., notice that the address listed for the post-merger company was an Amazon building in Seattle.

Why all the secrecy? Well, it could have something to do with Amazon’s need for voice recognition technology to compete with Apple’s Siri. Yap had an Android and iOS app called Yap Voicemail, which was still in private beta (and has now been mysteriously discontinued); it transcribed your phone calls for you. Yap’s founders suggested their intellectual property went way beyond that, and that it was a potential competitor to the do-it-all voice recognition app Vlingo.

If the Kindle range of tablets — led by the Android-based Kindle Fire — is going to compete with the iPad in the long term, then having some strong competition to Siri is a must. Siri is currently baked into the iPhone 4S, but plenty of users have been able to get her up and running on an iPad 2, and there seems little doubt that Apple will be officially incorporating her into the iPad 3 in 2012.

With strong voice recognition, Amazon could push the Kindle as a supremely easy device for accessing your media hands-free. Finding songs, playing and pausing movies, even turning pages in a book (or buying a new one) could all be done via voice. Indeed, given the Kindle’s much-touted video mirroring capability, this could be a back door into making the Kindle a voice-based remote control for your TV.”

One reason I love my DroidX!

Despite iOS 5.0.1, iPhone Users Still Reporting Battery Issues

“Apple on Thursday released iOS 5.0.1, which was intended to include a fix for a bug that drained iPhone battery life, among other things. Some users on the Apple Forums, however, are reporting that they are still experiencing some battery issues, as well as other glitches.

‘After upgrading to 5.0.1 my iPhone is draining the battery even faster!’ reported user art_in_motion.
‘Early yesterday afternoon, I downloaded the iOS 5.0.1 update on my iPhone 4s,’ wrote a user named jeffrogers01. ‘After installing, I watched my battery drain 10 percent in 40 minutes while doing nothing on the phone. This update does absolutely nothing for battery life. I am beginning to wonder if this is a hardware issue.’
The user said this is his second iPhone 4S; the first one had the same issue so he got a replacement, but the new one did the same thing.”

A quad core CPU for hand helds! Sweet! “Project Kal-El” – gotta love the Superman reference!

Nvidia ships Tegra 3, claims it’s up to five times faster than Tegra 2

“Nvidia says its Tegra 3 processor, previously code-named ‘Kal-El,’ is now in production, making its first appearance in the Android-powered Asus Transformer Prime before the end of the year. The chip includes five ARM Cortex A9 cores, but the fifth ‘Companion core’ runs only up to 500MHz, and is optimized for saving power when running background tasks, the company says.

Nvidia introduced and demonstrated its ‘Project Kal-El’ last February. At the time, the chip was touted as the world’s first quad-core mobile processor, including four ARM-based CPU cores plus a twelve-core GeForce GPU (graphics processing unit).

But on Sept. 20, Nvidia disclosed that the Tegra 3 would actually sport five ARM Cortex-A9 cores, not four. The fifth ‘Companion Core’ is identical to the other four, except that it has been built using low power process technology and runs only from 0 to 500MHz, as opposed to the ’0 to max GHz’ delivered by the others, according to the company.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:29 — 134.8MB) | Embed

Our very first episode with information on hand held devices, and useful tips, tricks, and hacks for those devices! A new Nook coming from Barnes and Noble, with new features. Ubuntu coming to hand helds in 2014. You are only as good as your last hack!

Download M4V

Download WebM

Download MP3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:26 — 11.4MB) | Embed

Our very first episode with information on hand held devices, and useful tips, tricks, and hacks for those devices! A new Nook coming from Barnes and Noble, with new features. Ubuntu coming to hand helds in 2014. You are only as good as your last hack!

Download M4V

Download WebM

Download MP3

Feeling the heat from Amazon’s announced Kindle Fire (also at $199.00) Barnes and Noble has dropped teh price on their Nook Color to match it… BUT, they have also added new features!

Nook Color dropping to $199; new software update brings Hulu Plus, music

“The venerable Barnes & Noble Nook Color hasn’t been left out in the cold just because the new Nook Tablet specs and pricing are here. No, the Nook Color’s going to find itself with a nice little price drop down to $199. That’s only a $50 drop, and for that difference you’ll get a pretty big spec boost in the new Nook Tablet, but we’ll take what we can get.

And along with the price drop, a new software update is on the way for the New Color. Nook Color v1.4 will bring TV shows, movies and documentaries with Hulu Plus. You’ll get music from Rhapsode, MOG and Grooveshark, with free trials. (Pandora is still included.) You’ll get even more magazines and special Nook editions, expanding on current content. And more apps are on the way, too.

So, if you’re in the market for an e-reader/tablet this holiday season, and don’t want to break the $200 mark, the Nook Color is about to become very, very attractive.”

Ubuntu will become “touch friendly” with uTouch technology!

Ubuntu to hit smartphones, but not until 2014

“At the Ubuntu Developer Summit today, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth announced the company is planning on porting its popular Linux variant Ubuntu to the already crowded mobile OS market, destined for smartphones, tablets and TVs. This move has reportedly been in the works for two years, and won’t bear fruit until 2014, though the Unity UI has been remarkably mobile-friendly since last year, as shown above. Of course, it’s not easy going as a new mobile Linux in an Android-dominated market, but Ubuntu’s planning some interesting features, like shipping different versions of the OS to each device, but the ability to switch between them at will, allowing users to make their tablet handle like a computer when and if they want. We’ll see if novel ideas like this allow the new mobile version to succeed where predecessors like 2008′s Ubuntu Mobile Internet Device Edition and the unreleased Kubuntu Mobile have failed.

Individual users will be able to download and install the software, but Canonical does plan to team up with OEMs in order to get the OS built into products, so balancing between a consumer’s desire for freedom and a manufacturer’s and carrier’s desire for customization may prove to be tricky, and it’s tripped up others in the past.”

[Cross-posted from Dr. Bill.CC]
Invites to the press have been sent, so an announcement is coming… we assume it will be a new Nook!

New Nook? Barnes & Noble Sends Out Invites for Nov. 7 Event

Barnes & Noble on Monday sent out invitations for a November 7 event that will likely include the introduction of a revamped Nook device.

‘Please join us for a very special announcement,’ the invite reads, below an image of the Nook logo.
The event will take place in New York next Monday, and will kick off at 10am. PCMag will be there, so stay tuned for all the details.

The invite comes several days after The Digital Reader blog posted a story that said Barnes & Noble was readying its store for a November 7 announcement that would likely include a revamped Nook Color.
One individual, who works in a Barnes & Noble store, told The Digital Reader that they have replaced a customer service counter with a huge Nook boutique. ‘Our manager told us, this space was not designed to house just 2 nooks. He was being candid, he said, November 7th there will be a major announcement from the company. he concluded saying it was exciting times. Obviously something is coming,’ the source said.

Last month, The Digital Reader said that B&N was prepping a $349 tablet, which would possibly be known as the Acclaim. The Nook Smart Touch e-reader would still be offered at $139 while the Nook Color would remain at $249. Specs were not provided.

The event comes about a week before Amazon is set to debut its $199 Kindle Fire tablet on November 15. Pre-orders for that device started on September 28, and Amazon said recently that it has ramped up production on the Fire due to demand.

Barnes & Noble last updated its Nook e-reader in May, unveiling a device that was 35 percent lighter and 15 percent thinner than the first Nook. The company also touted an improved battery life and 80 percent less flashing on the 6-inch touch screen when flipping pages.”