A senior executive of Telstra told Australian site ChannelNews “We know what is coming we have seen the new device and it will be available on our network as soon as it is launched in the USA. By Christmas this phone will be capable of 42Mbps which will make it faster than lot of broadband offerings and the fastest iPhone on any network in the world.” Telstra is one off the Australian mobile carriers that have announced that they will carry the 3G iPhone and presently their 3G-network supports 14.4Mbps HSDPA speed.  The company has already said that they will have 21Mbps HSPA network ready by end of 2008 and will start supporting the 42Mbps HSPA+ in early 2009. If the above news is true, then will Apple support the HSPA+ in the coming 3G iPhone or will they update/release an iPhone with HSPA+ support in December.

Sharp has announced that they will soon ship the world’s thinnest auto focus, 5-megapixel camera module with CMOS sensor. The thin camera module has a signal-to-noise ratio of 1.6 times greater than the best camera module currently available, resulting in higher-quality images. The 0.25” thickness of the module is achieved by using flat-screen lens and high-density auto-focusing CMOS sensor.  The 0.37” x 0.37” module is called RJ63SC100 and is aimed at cell phones and other small form factor devices. Sample modules will ship by end of this month and full production will start on June 30th.

Apple took 14 percent of the PC market share last quarter in US and according to the latest data from NPD Group they took 10.6 percent of the market in unit volume last month for WiFi market. Airport Extreme base station has been the top selling 802.11n router for five of the last nine months. The newly released Time Capsule also topped sales charts for Network Attached storage device. Apple was placed fourth in overall 802.11n base station sales behind Linksys, D-Link and Netgear.

Alienware, the pioneer in gaming PCs has relaunched their famous Area-51 desktop. The new system comes with Intel’s Core 2 Extreme QX9770 that is overclocked to 4GHz from 3.2GHz. The Area-51 ALX uses a high-performance liquid cooling solution to keep the desktop running. You can choice from Dual SLI NVIDIA GeForce 9800 or Dual ATI CrossFireX Radeon 3870 X2 graphics cards. The other features on this gaming bad-boy are 4GB DDR3 RAM, dual Ethernet ports, series of hard drive options and optional Blu-ray burner. As you might have guessed Area-51 ALX desktops won’t come cheap and their starting price is $5,549. You can order it on Alienware’s website.

Samsung F480 is one of the first touchscreen devices using the new TOUCHWiZ user interface. The unique menu of widgets displays functions such as clock, radio player, music player and other personal elements. You can drag and drop new widget on the menu for quick access. Samsung has added a modified haptic feedback technology; Samsung calls the technology “differentiated tactile technology”. The other big feature on the phone is its 5-megapixel camera that uses a high-end CMOS sensor. The camera features auto focus, face detection, image stabilization and smile shot mode. The F480 will come with 240MB onboard memory, microSD card slot, USB 2.0 support, GSM, HSDPA and a battery that would last three hours talk time. The phone measures 3.87” x 2.16” x 0.45” making it relatively easy to hold in hand. The phone will be available in Europe starting this June and will be released soon in other GSM markets.
[Via Samsung]

DailyTech has posted the specifications of the next generation NVIDIA graphics cards. The cards will be based on the new graphics core codenamed D10U. There will be two graphics cards based on D10U, GeForce GTX 280 (D10U-30) and GeForce GTX 260 (D10U-20).  The D10U-30 version will have 240 unified stream processors designed into the processor where as the D10U-20 will have 192 unified stream processors. The unified shaders will have 50% better performance compared to present generation D9 cards. The GTX 280 will have 512-bit memory bus to support up to 1 GB GDDR3 memory; the GTX 260 will come with 448-bit bus to support 896MB memory. Both the cards will have similar features as GeForce 9800 GTX but they will incorporate the PhysX stream engine into the D10U shader engine for the first time. The new cards will be launched on 18th June. The cards will compete against AMD’s upcoming Radeon 4000 series that has support for GDDR5 memory and DirectX 10.1, which won’t be present in GeForce refresh.

An unexpected line for 3G iPhone has started to form in front of Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City. The line has more than 60 people, even though Apple does not have any special event planned for today or a product launch planned for next week. Some participants in the line claimed to be waiting in line for 3G iPhone where as others were confused why they were there. It is believed that Apple will announce the 3G iPhone at WWDC on 9th June and it will ship before the end of June. If this is an indication of the zeal the 3G iPhone will generate, we should be prepared to stand in line very soon or pay big bucks on eBay to get one.

Video game retailer GameStop has decided to pull the plug on Microsoft’s Zune MP3 player because of insufficient sales. The decision would not affect GameStop as most of its revenue comes from video games sales and Zune’s contribution to its sales figures had been almost negligible for past two years. This will definitely put a big hurdle in Microsoft’s attempt to grow Zune sales, as GameStop has more than 4,400 stores and losing a big distribution channel will hurt Microsoft. A GameStop’s spokesperson said, “We have decided to exit the Zune category because it just did not have the appeal we had anticipated.” Like I said in my previous post about Zune sales, there is a decrease of 50% in year over year sales for Zune, since it was launched in 2006. Most retailers won’t back a product that sees 50% drop in sales, in second year after launch and that to when three new models are released.

According to ComScore, number of search queries fell to 10.6 billion, a drop of 2 percent in April compared to March. All the major search providers saw a drop in search share except Google. The company gained 1.8 percent compared to March and reached 61.6 percent search share. Yahoo share dropped 0.9 percent to 20.4, Microsoft saw a drop of 0.3 percent to 9.1 percent, AOL had a drop of 0.2 percent to 4.6 percent and Ask dropped 0.4 percent to 4.3 percent. In April 2008 Google increased its absolute number of queries by 1 percent, but rest of the companies saw a drop.
[Via Cnet]

AT&T announced that they would deploy full HSPA coverage for its 3G market by end of June. HSPA (HSDPA/HSUPA) upgrade will make AT&T’s 3G network even faster giving them theoretical download speed up to 7Mbps. AT&T has 3G network in more than 350 markets out of which 275 already support HSPA protocol. AT&T will implement HSPA in 75 more markets in about a month’s time. This sudden urge to cover as many markets as possible with HSPA is an indication of a major 3G-device release. Similarly AT&T embarked on major EDGE network upgrade last year, just before iPhone was launched. Most likely Apple will announce the 3G iPhone at WWDC on June 9th and AT&T wants to be ready for massive deployment of 3G iPhone based on HSPA protocol.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) introduced the first laptop XO in 2005 and started shipping them in late 2007. The two main objectives of designing the XO laptop were low cost and low power requirement. Now the organization has started working on next generation of the XO laptop, the XO-2. The design objectives will remain same to reduce power requirement and lower cost. XO-2 will have power consumption of 1 watt and cost $75. The XO-2 will have dual touchscreens and can be used as a traditional laptop or as an eBook. The laptop will be half the size of present generation, folding up to make it book-scale. OLPC had originally targeted $100 price tag for XO laptop but last year it was costing almost $200 and now it is around $188. Designing a dual touchscreen laptop for $75 will be really impossible even in 2010. I don’t think the present generation XO will reach $100 price target even in 2010 leave alone a dual touchscreen system.

On Tuesday, Microsoft demonstrated how advertising campaign could cross several different types of devices. In the demo the company had a music festival sponsored by Doritos. A musician from the festival creates a Zune Social profile that has a playlist of his songs and a small advertisement for Doritos. When a user becomes friends with this musician he will be allowed to download free songs from the playlist with a Doritos advertisement/logo. The advertisement/logo will not only appear in his Zune software but also on the actual Zune device. Microsoft also demonstrated users emailing a link to this musician’s profile to other friends, who will receive the email on mobile phone and perhaps play a Doritos sponsored Asteroids game linked with the email. Music is a very personal thing for me I normally use it to get away from surroundings for example while traveling. The reason I carry a MP3 player and not a FM radio is advertisements. If my MP3 player also starts getting advertisements, I will have to find some other way to listen to music.
[Via CNet]

A Taiwanese newspaper Economic Daily is reporting that LCD backlight manufacturer Kenmos Technology, the main supplier of LED backlights to Apple will have an even more dominant role next year as Apple switches its consumer models to LED based LCDs. Kenmos has already shipped 1.5 million LED backlights in first four months this year, five times more compared to the total shipment last year. Steve Jobs has promised that Apple would switch to more environment friendly LED based LCDs as soon as it is economically feasible. It is believed that Apple will introduce redesigned Macbook that will use aluminum in place of plastic for outer casing and will have Intel’s new Centrino 2 platform, but will it get LED backlit screen is yet not know. It is very likely that the next Macbook update after the upcoming re-design will have LED backlit LCDs.

A new phishing scam targeting iTunes users via a spam email message has been reported by a security company on Monday. The spam email message informs the user that they must correct a problem with their iTunes account. The link in the email takes the user to a spam website masquerading as an iTunes billing update page. The page asks for information like credit card, security code, Social Security Number, phone number, address and mother’s maiden name. Phishing scams are normally used to steal a victim’s identity and take money from their accounts. The two things every customers should remember are no online stores will ask for things like Social Security number or mother’s maiden name and if you get a email to update your account information, it’s best to go to the main website then log in your account and check if anything needs to be done. Clicking a like in an email is never advisable as it can be a phishing scam.

Apple has filed a patent application for an improved method to enable user accounts to be portable across different multi-user computer systems. According to the application a user account on a computer can be stored to an external portable data store, making the user account portable. The external portable data store can be an external drive or a media player and hence the user can carry it. The OS on the host computer will be able to locate user accounts on not only local storage of the computer but also in any removable data storage attached to the computer. A user will be able to login to computer and be presented with their user configuration and user directory. In simple words you will be able to carry your user account from your computer to any other computer using an iPod or an iPhone or even a flash drive. All your user data will be saved on the drive basically creating a complete user account. Whenever you attach the drive to a computer that is not your primary computer it will give you an option to log in to your account that is on the external drive/iPod.

Napster, the music subscription service provider on Tuesday launched a la carte download service with DRM free tracks in MP3 format. The MP3 catalog has 6 million DRM free songs more than any other service offering DRM free songs. Apple’s iTunes Music store has more than 6 million songs but most of them are DRM protected. The big four Music labels except EMI have thus far refused to make their catalogs available to Apple DRM free, in an effort to break Apple’s dominant position in music download market. The good thing about this struggle between Apple and music labels is it’s resulting in more DRM free music content online. The new kid on the block, Napster will offer single tracks for $0.99 and most of the albums will be priced $9.95. The songs will be encoded at 256kbps and the downloaded track will include high-resolution album art.

Netflix has launched Roku player that allows subscribers to watch movies and TV shows streaming directly to your TV via company’s Instant Viewing service. The Netflix player works on wired or wireless broadband connection to access the entire Instant Viewing catalog. The player is a barebones system with no memory to store content on it, its strictly meant to just watch the movies and TV shows you’ve already queued up via your online Netflix account. You will get unlimited streaming if you have an $8.95 plan or above. Making it the cheapest way to watch streaming movies online. The biggest drawback of the service is that content available in Watch Now is almost negligible as only two of top 100 DVDs are available for streaming. In fact none of the hit new releases are available to watch. The other downside of the service is picture quality as it is not even near DVD quality. So the only thing going for the Netflix player for now is cheap price, but if Netflix can improve streaming video quality and add larger selection of content it can become a service to beat.

Gizmodo is reporting that a source very close to 3G-iPhone launch has informed them that Apple will announce their new model at WWDC Keynote on 9th June. The 3G iPhone will be available worldwide right after the launch and will have new sales policies in some countries. It’s almost set in stone that we will see the 3G iPhone in June. If Gizmodo’s post is true we will have it in our hands on 9th June. Well just 19 more days to go.

Hitachi has revealed their new standalone Blu-ray burner that can write discs directly from the camcorders that have eSATA ports. The DZ-WR90 works directly with the camcorder, bypassing the need of a computer to transfer video. The burner will finalize the discs after it has finished burning. The DZ-WR90 will also burn DVD-R discs and can burn on double sided discs also. The Blu-ray disc will fit three hours of 1080p video and it will take the drive one hour and 30 minutes to burn the disc. You can store about six hours video at 720p on Blu-ray, where as a DVD will store one hour of 720p video. The drive will be available in July, the price is not known.
[Via Slash Gear]

iriver announced the P10 portable media player (PMP) last year and has at last started shipping the player in Korea. The player comes with a 4.3” touchscreen with 800 x 480 resolution and support for handwriting recognition. The PMP has a beautiful unique UI with dictionaries for English, Chinese and Japanese. The player supports almost all the formats you can think of and has T-DMB for on-air TV. The P10 comes with 33GB of memory, it will be priced around $312 for DMB free version and around $390 for the version with DMB. iriver has also starting shipping the D5 clamshell multimedia e-dictionary in US. The D5 comes with 3” screen (480 x 272), QWERTY keyboard, FM radio and Voice recorder. The D5 will be available in two colors black and white, in two sizes 2GB for $299 and 4GB for $349.
[Via Engadget]

Chinese language website HKEPC is reporting that Intel will introduce new Q9650 Core 2 Quad processor in the third quarter. The new Q9650 will be priced $530 almost half of the price of current high-end Intel processor QX9650 Core 2 Extreme that is priced $999. But Q9650 will have the same specifications as the QX9650 with 3GHz clock speed, 1333MHz FSB and 12 MB L2 cache. Intel will also launch 3.33GHz Core 2 Duo E8600 that will replace the current high-end dual-core 3.16GHz Core 2 Duo E8500. The E8600 will be priced $266 and the price of E8500 will be reduced to $183. Intel will also reduce the prices of their current Quad-core models. The 2.83GHz Q9550 will drop from $530 to $316 and the 2.4GHz Q6600 will be dropped from $224 to $203.
[Via Nanotech]

NPD data for first quarter shows Apple’s retail market share is 14% but two third of the computers sold are Macs for PCs costing $1,000 or more. "In notebooks they're growing two times the market," said Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis. “Windows notebooks had "zero percent" growth year over year.” On desktop side Apple had 45% growth, where as the Windows desktop market showed a decline of 25%. Apple market share for desktop and laptops above $1,000 is 70% and 64% respectively. Bring their total market share to 66 percent for PCs selling above $1,000 price point. Apple has just one computer below $1,000 price range the Mac Mini. This shows that Apple rules the market where profits margins are higher. The other companies like Dell, HP and Lenovo are making most of their sales in low-end market where Profit margins are very low. Stephen said in his remarks "iMacs are growing and the Windows desktop ain't. No matter how you look at it, Apple is outperforming Windows."
[Via Apple Watch]

According to the latest data provided by NPD Group for first quarter of 2008, mobile phone sales were at 31 million, falling 22 percent year over year. The good news was smartphone sales reached 17% of all phones sold compared to 7% year ago. Motorola maintained its No.1 position, even though it share fell from 35% a year ago to 27% this year. Samsung came in second with 18%, third place went to LG with 17%, Nokia was fourth with 8% and the fifth in top five was RIM with 5% market share. In smartphone sales RIM topped followed by Apple’s iPhone in second place.
[Via Moco News]

Samsung’s L870 is a Symbian S60 based slider phone that measures 4” x 1.9” x 0.53”. The phone will come with an interactive directional pad that will change based on the menu item on the screen. The L870 supports triband GSM, 2100 UMTS and HSDPA for connectivity. It comes with 2.3” QVGA screen, 3-megapixel camera, VGA camera in front for video calls, USB 2.0, Bluetooth, and microSDHC card slot. The phone will be announced with in a month or two and will be available in Asia and Europe.

Intel is not a major player in high-end server market but it is trying everything to gain some traction. The previous generations of Itanium processors released by Intel have failed against processors released by IBM and other companies. The quad-core version of Itanium codenamed Tukwila will be the first monolithic design by Intel and will be released in early 2009. Tukwila will also have integrated memory controller and QuickPath Interconnect technology, increasing the data transfer rate in Itanium. The cache on the chip will also be increased to 30MB. The processor will run at 2GHz with TDP of 170 watts or 130watts depending on model. The new processor will give vendors the ability to deliver eight socket systems with up to 32 cores. An alliance that promotes the Itanium processors said that more than 30% jump has been observed in volume growth year to year and they are collaborating with Microsoft to deliver new programs.
[Via CNet]

Nintendo today launched the new Wii fit in US. Wii Fit is a fitness game/program that comes with Wii Balance Board, a platform that senses both weight and shifts in movement and balance. According to Nintendo, Wii balance board connects wireless with the console and serves as the centerpiece for more than 40 activities that include areas like yoga, aerobics, strength training and balance. The Wii Fit including balance board will be sold for $89.99. Wii Fit is available today exclusively at the Nintendo World store in New York, and will be at retail stores across the country on May 21st.
[Via Business Wire]

Alone side the new Slim LCD TV line-up, Sharp also announced three Blu-ray/DVR combo systems that will be released this fall. The combo play pairs a Blu-ray player with DVRs of different sizes. The three DVR hard drive sizes are 250GB (BD-HDW22), 500GB (BD-HDW25) and 1TB (BD-HDW30). The player will support the latest Blu-ray profile 1.1 and have HDMI 1.3 support. The DVR on the combo players will record TV shows in HD using MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 codec at 4.8Mbps, 8Mbps or 12Mbps depending on user preference. The player will not be able to record content from Blu-ray disc to the hard drive even though it’s a combo player. Sharp has not announced the pricing yet.
[Via Engadget]

XSKN, a company that designs cases for iPhone has revealed a case design on it website described as an “iPhone 3G” case. The case is slightly different from the one that the company sells for present generation iPhone and matches the specs released by iLounge few days ago. The case image shows the non-recessed headphone jack, tapered back and space for camera near the top part of the screen. This is another indication of design changes in upcoming 3G iPhone. Actually you can order the 3G iPhone case online at the company’s website for $24.95.

Today was Sharps day as they rollout 22 new LCD TVs in various sizes that will hit stores this summer. The top of the line 1.9” thick RX5 series will come in three sizes 65”, 52” and 46” with 1080p resolution, 120Hz motion, 1500:1 contrast ratio, 12-bit image processing and internet access. The mainstream GX5 series comes in range of 52” to 32” displays with 1080p resolution, ARSS speakers and Internet access. The GH5 series has two models the 32” and 26” that comes with 720p resolution. The DS5 series comes in variety of sizes but drops Internet. Most displays will be available in different colors like black, brown and white. For more information about the LCD TVs released by sharp visit AV watch.

Macenstein has posted an email they received from a reader that shows the new keyboard and talks about the upcoming Apple TV update. The new Bluetooth keyboard has the same all aluminum design and chiclet keys but adds a touch-sensitive area on the right. This touch-sensitive area will be backlit and programmable. It can illuminate as a numerical pad, a click wheel or a standard trackpad. The reader also mentioned in the email about the update for Apple TV that will add Bluetooth capabilities, better processor and bigger hard drive. The software for Apple TV will include full .mac compatibility, allowing you to check email, surf, organize photos and even video chat via USB webcam. As always take the rumors with a grain of salt and very soon we will find out if Apple does any of the above-mentioned stuff. Though I have to say that the keyboard is very interesting and I wish I could buy one.

The Canadian high-end gear maker Classe announced their new SSP-800 preamp/processor. The SSP-800 will be part of the Delta series of high-end components for the company. The preamp will use 64-bit TI DSP processor for 10 channel audio output and Video circuitry that can handle 36-bit depth in color. The Blu-ray has maximum 24-bit color depth, hence making the SSP-800 future proof for next generation of video standards. The very good-looking preamp has a touchscreen control panel up front. The system will ship this month for $8,000.
[Via Engadget HD]

AU Optronics today revealed world’s first curved TFT LCD screen and also the worlds slimmest TFT LCD (0.63mm) in 1.9” and 8” sizes. The 8” LCD is 400cd/m2 bright and weighs only 2.1 grams. Even though, the new LCD are not as slim as the OLEDs but still it is a great achievement, as it will decrease the overall thickness of mobile devices for next two-three years. The company also showcased the new in-cell, multitouch displays in 4.3” and 8” sizes. The new display has multitouch feature built-in the LCD cell. In current touchscreens there is an additional glass on top of LCD that has touchscreen functionality. The display also offers better anti-glare properties making it very useful in outdoor conditions. The 4.3” panel will be released this quarter and the 8” panel will hit the market in Q3.
[Via Engadget]

Bits blog on NY Times is reporting that Apple is in talk with music labels to expand the variety of ringtones and music related features for the iPhone. One of the music label executive said that apple want a big launch for its 3G iPhone in June, the negotiations are active but final deal has not been set. Apple is planning to offer ringback tones (answer tones) – songs that a caller will hear in place of the ring-ring sound. Apple also wants to sell songs using the 3G network and not only WiFi network as it does now. Like always music labels want more money and want to use the opportunity to press Apple on some of their other longstanding requests like flexibility to set different prices on individual tracks. I hope Apple wins this price war again keeping the price at 99 cents and offers music download over 3G network.

Microsoft said on Sunday that it is crawling back to Yahoo, to bargain an unspecified deal with the company. The software giant has proposed an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo, but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo. Though Microsoft didn’t provide any details about the proposed transaction but it is very obvious that it involves Yahoo’s search and advertising business. Search and advertising were the two main reasons why Microsoft wanted Yahoo in first place. It is very clear that Microsoft is too desperate to get Yahoo’s search and advertising business, as they don’t have any clue how they would compete with Google on their own. But the truth is combining two losers won’t result in a winner. Combined market share of search and advertising business of both Yahoo and Microsoft will be around one fourth of what Google has today. So unless the combined company comes up with a better way to do search and online advertising I don’t see any hope of Microsoft making a dent in Google’s market share.

Wii again topped the sales chart for the month of April according to the latest data from NPD group. Even though the biggest release ever in video game history “Grand Theft Auto” was only released for Xbox and PS3 and not for Wii. Wii sold 714,200 units in April, where as Xbox sold 188,000, PS3 sold 187,100, PSP sold 192,700 and PS2 sold 124,400, bringing their combined total to 692,200. In previous months Wii was out selling Xbox by a margin of two is to one. But outselling all other gaming consoles combined is a very big feat. Nintendo also sold 414,800 units of DS, bring the total sales to 1.12 million gaming systems for Nintendo in April. That is nearly twice what the other two companies Microsoft and Sony sold in total. In a statement Microsoft said it is not competing with Nintendo. Microsoft when someone is kicking your ass this badly its better to runway then stay in competition. For more information about complete sales figures for month of April read the post on Ars Technica.