Intel has the consumer to thank for not having such a bad year.
“What we saw was a downdraft especially on the commercial [PC] sector in 2009, but we actually saw unit volume growth for the consumer [PC] segment. That goes back to our point that PCs are really essential to the way we work and [...]

At a meeting in San Francisco today, I sat down with Nvidia’s director of marketing David Ragones for an update on the company’s netbook solution, ION.
Although ION has been out for about a year now, Nvidia claims that last year’s ION is still 5 to 10 times faster than Intel’s next-generation netbook platform, dubbed Pine [...]

 
When I hear Sybase, I think large databases and perhaps analytics software but certainly not mobile messaging.
But as I learned last night, I was dead wrong: Sybase, through its mobile subsidiary Sybase 365 is the world’s largest inter-operator mobile messaging company.
 
This year, Sybase 365 expects to reach $200 million in revenues (up 14% from last [...]

In a keynote style that reminds me of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer, HTC’s head of the Americas went as far as accusing his competitors (Apple, Motorola, Nokia or Palm) of committing a crime on developers with their App Store strategy.
“A lot of OEMs, a lot of manufacturers talk a lot about apps… Apps, apps, apps, [...]

Here are video excerpts of some of the topics Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Charlene Li, founder of the Altimeter Group, discussed at the Churchill Club last night:

the importance of women in the workplace;
what it takes to be a leader;
the tight relationship between Sandberg and Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
the Friendfeed acquisition;
the importance of [...]

IQ Engines is one of the startups presenting today at the Mobile 2.0 conference in San Francisco, Calif.
Created by a group of scientists, the Silicon Valley company has developed a biologically inspired algorithm which mimics the performance of the human brain and recognizes objects from images and creates “labels” that describe the content of that [...]

At Dow Jones’ VentureWire Tech Showcase event yesterday I met with Scribd co-founder Jared Friedman to talk about the San Francisco, Calif.-startup’s latest news: reaching profitability and hiring engineers.
“Scribd is the largest social publishing website where anyone can publish original writings and documents and share them with the world,” explains Friedman.
Scribd which so far raised [...]

At a press conference last night, Vudu unveiled its new “streamed” user interface with movie recommendation service Rotten Tomatoes.
Last August, the HD streaming video service, which directly competes with Amazon HD, resurfaced as a 100% “cloud” service, with both the UI and the video content being streamed over the Internet.
The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup is [...]

What a shocker!
According to the GrowthPoint Technology Partners‘ managing director Robert Horstmeyer, the U.S. military helps subsidising the price of the country’s oil import to a staggering $50 a barrel of crude, which rose today a bit over $70.
So if Horstmeyer is right, the “real” price of gasoline in the U.S. should be closer to [...]

Larry Ellison sided with operators on net neutrality, a position that was overlooked during his last appearance at the Churchill Club last month.
The Oracle chief argued that letting the U.S. government regulate pricing on carriers’ networks is wrong, favours Google and the likes and ultimately stifles competition.
“I think it’s very dangerous for the government to [...]

4-years after launching it’s high-end telepresence solution – Halo – H-P doubles down on visio-conferencing and introduces SkyRoom at the DEMOfall conference in San Diego, Calif.
In a nutshell, think of SkyRoom as a peer-to-peer version of Halo for desktops (equipped with a dual-core processor or better) to create meetings with up to 3 people. What [...]

Edge Motion is one of the most interesting products showed presented today at the DEMOfall 09 conference.
Emo Labs‘ invisible stereo speaker is a clear membrane (glass, plastic or carbon fiber) that fits on a TV screen and is “micro-flexed” by a piezo actuator to produce stereo sound which feels like it comes directly from the [...]

In a conversation with former Motorola CEO Ed Zander – hosted by the Churchill Club – last night, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said loud and clear that it will not spin off or kill MySQL, no matter what the European Union says about his deal to acquire Sun Microsystems.
“We never compete with MySQL… We’re not [...]

It was mostly all about e-books this afternoon at the DisplaySearch Emerging Display Technologies conference in San Jose, Calif.
First with a presentation by C.T. Liu, the vice-president and general manager of AUO’s consumer division – a Taiwanese display maker - who expects e-book display shipments to reach 3.6 million units this year, totaling $271 million. In 2012, [...]

On the heels of yesterday’s Intel  briefing, AMD started touring Silicon Valley to talk about its own strategy and vision ahead of the Windows 7 launch, due on Oct. 22.
Although most of the information is still under wraps until AMD’s own Sept. 10 event, worldwide marketing vice-president Leslie Sobon was keen to point out some [...]

What’s the point of having an innovative mobile device like the iPhone, when the cellular network just… sucks!
Well according to AT&T, this might be coming sooner rather than later, as the mobile carrier revamps its wireless network in Silicon Valley with “an 850 overlay”, causing even more service disruptions.
But in the meantime, the now centre [...]

A few months ago, I remember Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk warming at the idea of taking over NUMMI, the sole auto assembly plant on the West Coast.
Musk comments did make a lot of people laugh. Back in April, when the prolific entrepreneur spoke at a Churchill Club event, GM and Toyota were still committed [...]

Until recently it was hard to define what the Chevy Volt really is – a hybrid a-la Toyota Prius, a plug-in hybrid, an electric car…  - , since it’s not even built yet!
To help potential customers like myself – I’m currently shopping for a Prius! – understand what the Volt is, GM’s staff researcher [...]

After several months of soul searching, we finally know what the new Yahoo is all about: its not a search engine, or a webmail, or a chat service… it’s an information destination!
New slogan, old theme
Sounds familiar, right? Although the slogan is different, ”connecting you to what matters most,” the new Yahoo feels more of the same, [...]

For a change, research firms agreed to disagree in forecasting the emergence of the solid-state disk (SSD) drive market.
During a panel hosted today at the Flash Memory Summit conference in Santa Clara, Calif., small technical research firm Forward Insights blasted its larger competitors (including IDC and Gartner) for their hockey-stick-like projections of the SSD market.
But [...]