November 24, 2009
PC sales bounce up (and down)
Channel Register
Timothy Prickett Morgan provides some findings from Gartner regarding PC shipments for this year.
“Gartner … has revised its PC shipment estimates for 2009, saying that PC makers did better than expected pumping out machines in the third quarter. But because average selling prices are falling – thanks in part to the advent of cheap netbooks and general price erosion across all PC types – sales are still going to be down this year. Specifically, Gartner said that global PC revenues will fall 10.7 per cent to $217 billion this year and shipments will rise by 2.8 per cent to 298.9 million units. Perhaps more significantly, Gartner has put out a rosier forecast for 2010 and now says that worldwide PC sales will grow by 2.6 per cent to $222.9 billion and that shipments will rise by 12.6 per cent to 336.6 million units.”
Chrome OS And The Microsoft Squeeze
TechCrunch
MG Siegler writes where Google’s focusing its Chrome OS customer efforts.
“Google is aiming Chrome OS right at the bottom of the market. That is to say, cheap computers, netbooks. Apple, of course, takes the opposite approach, targeting the high end of the market with their high-quality and high-margin machines. If Google is successful with its Chrome OS netbooks (let’s call them ChromeBooks), what we could see is the squeezing of Microsoft, an idea I first laid out a month ago. With attacks from the top and bottom, Windows will be relegated to the middle. And ultimately, if Google has its way, marginalized.”
Latest Opera Update Hopes to ‘Unite’ the Web
Webmonkey
Scott Gilbertson writes about some of the new features of Opera’s new Web browser, Unite.
“The only new notable feature in this release is Opera Unite, which is essentially a Web server built in to the Web browser. Opera Unite allows users to build and host not only Web sites, but also custom web apps powered by JavaScript. Apps running on Unite could be used to power private social networks like mini-Facebooks or mini-Flickrs, as well as collaborative tools like Google Wave or even file-sharing darknets. With Unite, Opera is making it possible for anyone to host their own server with the click of a button. Once Unite is up and running, anyone can connect to it from any browser. While your copy of Opera runs the server, your visitors can use any browser they’d like.”