According to the latest data from Gartner, worldwide PC shipment reached 71.9 million units in second quarter of 2008, a 16% year-over-year increase. HP continued to maintain it No.1 position with 18.1 percent market share, followed by Dell with 15.6 percent market share. Acer came in third with 9.4 percent share. Lenovo (7.8%) was fourth and Toshiba (4.4%) was fifth. In US, Dell maintained it No.1 position with 31.9% market share and HP came in second with 25.3 percent share. Apple continued its rise and grabbed the third place with 8.5 percent market share followed by Acer (8.1%) and Toshiba (5.5%). Even though the overall PC growth rate for this quarter was 4.2 percent, Apple’s PC shipments grew 38.1 percent in the quarter. Gartner notes that the home PC segment continued to be the strongest driver for Apple as well as sales into the education segment. Apple PC sales grew 20 times the overall sales increase in US. Apple market share was 6.4% last year in US and now it is 8.5%. If Apple continues the same growth rate it will cross the 10% mark by Q1 2009.

Researchers of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and University of Tokyo are working on new type of flash memory that will be smaller in size, more energy efficient and last longer than current flash memory.  The new ferroelectric memory chips will last 10,000 times longer than today’s flash memory chips. Another limitation that the new chip will overcome is size as flash memory chips can be decreased in size up to 20 nanometers only.  The prototype ferroelectric chips can be scaled down to 10 nanometers and the technology is still in development. The new ferroelectric chips will use less than six volts to rewrite, as opposed to 20 volts used by today’s chips making it more power efficient also. This is another addition to the line of upcoming memory technologies that will one day replace flash memory. There is no word on when we should expect to see this technology in market.
[Via Macnn]

iPhone 3G was launched last Friday and many iPhone reviews have been published since then. Most iPhone 3G reviewers had one common compliant the battery life of the phone is not good. So the question is how bad is iPhone 3G’s battery life? According to most reviewers, iPhone 3G gave them around 4 to 6 hours of battery life on 3G network. PCWorld has published their battery test results and iPhone 3G beats every other 3G phone except BlackBerry models that support EVDO. Now we can rule out BlackBerry with EVDO because EVDO network only support data and not voice. So basically you can either surf or make call, you can’t do both and the average speed of an EVDO network is lower than HSDPA network. If we consider all other 3G phones, iPhone 3G has the best battery life. PCWorld still says, “The battery life on Apple’s new 3G iPhone isn’t great, but it beats that of other AT&T 3G smart phones we’ve seen.” So being best won’t make iPhone’s battery life great than what will?
I have used two other 3G phones in past one and a half year Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson K850i both the phones never lasted more than three hours on 3G network. The iPhone 3G that I have be using for past 5 days has always given me more than 6 hours battery life in combined use (web surfing and calls) on 3G network. Actually, I don’t know a single 3G phone that would give 6 hours battery life, then why is iPhone 3G’s battery life not great. Some reviewers say that though other phones have less battery life they come with replaceable battery and iPhone doesn’t. Now my question is how many people carry an extra battery with them? In fact I have just met three in my whole life. Most people I know have a car charger or a charger in their office. In my past 10 years of mobile phone usage I have never carried an additional battery.
Most reviewers are comparing the iPhone 3G battery life to original iPhone that gave more than 8 hours of talk time on 2G network. If you want more battery life, you can switch off the 3G network on iPhone 3G also and you will get 10 hours of talk time on 2G network. To get a proper idea of how good the battery life of a mobile phone is, the phone should be compared to comparable phones. In comparison of battery life for 3G smartphones, iPhone 3G comes on top and has the best battery life. The average mobile phone usage for a person is around two and half hours per day and iPhone 3G will give you more than double of that time.

Intel launched their updated Centrino 2 platform on Tuesday. Aside from the new processors the platform adds new integrated graphics chipset and a new wireless chipset. There are three P-series processors, two T-series processors and one X-series processor based on 45nm Penryn architecture. The P-series includes P8400 (2.26GHz and 3MB L2), P8600 (2.4GHz and 3MB L2) and P9500 (2.53GHz and 6MB L2) processors with 25W TDP. The T-series has T9400 (2.53GHz and 6MB L2) and T9600 (2.8GHz and 6MB L2) processors with 35W TDP. The X that stands for Extreme has X9100 processor with 3.06GHz clock speed, 6MB L2 cache and 45 W TDP. The prices for the new processors will range from $209 for P8400 to $851 for X9100.
The Centrino 2 will use the new 45-series chipset that promises users enough power to playback Blu-ray movies and enable notebooks to playback an entire Blu-ray movie on one full battery charge. The graphics performance of the new chipset shows 70% improved over previous version in graphics benchmarking application 3D Mark 06. Intel is introducing switchable graphics – a technology that can switch between discrete and integrated graphics depending on user setting or requirements. If you need more battery life from your laptop you can simply switch to integrated graphics and the system will run more power efficiently. The platform will also have new 5000-series wireless chipset. The 5300 version will be for regular sized notebooks and a smaller 5100 version will be for compact notebooks. Intel will add WiMAX to the wireless chipset in September.
Intel’s Regional Marketing Manager Sujan Kamran has also said that Intel will bring quad-core mobile processor in August this year. The processor will be part of the Extreme series and will have a TDP of 45 watt. The overall performance of the systems based on Centrino 2 platform will increase by 15-30 percent depending on what applications you are using. If you are need a notebook now, Centrino 2 is a solid platform, it is better than AMD’s Puma platform. But, if you can wait for few months, Intel will release new mobile processors based on Nehalem architecture in Q1 2009, which would increase the performance and power efficiency by up to 50 percent and that would be a good time to buy a new laptop.

Yankee Group’s Carl Howe said that the one million iPhone 3G sold this weekend was the largest first weekend consumer electronics launch in history, as measured in inflation adjusted dollars. The record previously belonged to 2007 launch of original iPhone that generated $150 million in its first weekend on sale. The original iPhone had eclipsed the Microsoft Xbox 360 ($128 million on first weekend), Microsoft Windows 95 ($122 million first four days) and Sony Betamax ($58 million in first 7 months). The iPhone 3G posted approximately $433 million in first weekend sales. Howe says, “If this had been a movie, it would have broken all box office records for a first weekend opening – by a factor of nearly 3.”
[Via Yankee Group]

Last week Hasselblad made headline when they announced their 50-megapixel H3DII-50 camera, the highest resolution non-scientific camera. Today, Phase One took the highest resolution non-scientific crown away from Hasselblad, when they announced the P65+, a 60-megapixel camera. The camera has a full frame sensor that shoots at 1 frame-per-second and offers variable resolution. Phase One built the proprietary sensor with help from Dalsa. The company will start shipping the camera by end of 2008 for $39,990.

While the world is busy talking about the new iPhone 3G, Sprint and Palm launched their new smartphone Treo 800W. The Windows Mobile 6.1 based device comes with Touchscreen, WiFi, GPS, EVDO Rev.A and Bluetooth. The new device is slightly slimmer than Treo 700, but its still a fatty in today’s iPhone and HTC world. Slash Gear has posted a review of the new phone.  In the review conclusion the website says, “Faced with the iPhone 3G, it’s tough to make a decent case in favor of the 800w.  If you’re devoted to Sprint, need the latest version of Windows Mobile and a touchscreen, the 800w is your choice.  Sadly that’s a choice forced by lack of options, rather than anything else.” The Treo 800w is available starting today for $249.99 after rebates with two year contract.

Apple today announced that iPhone and iPod touch users have downloaded more than 10 million applications from its groundbreaking new App Store since it was launch on Thursday. The new App Store allows iPhone and iPod touch users to wirelessly download applications directly to the device and start using them immediately.
“The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days,” said Apple’s CEO, Steve Jobs. “Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly.”
If you consider the one million iPhone 3G Apple sold (most analyst predicted that Apple will sell around 400,000 iPhone) and 10 million applications download from App store in first four days, Apple had a grand slam weekend.

Apple today announced it sold its one-millionth iPhone 3G on Sunday, within three days of its launch on Friday July 11th. iPhone 3G was launched in 22 countries last Friday and in most places the stock went out quickly.
“iPhone 3G had a stunning opening weekend,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO, in the press release. “It took 74 days to sell the first one million original iPhones, so the new iPhone 3G is clearly off to a great start around the world.”
Less than a month ago, Samsung announced that its Soul designer phone sold one million units in its first 30 days on market in Europe. It was considered the best mobile phone launch. iPhone 3G has reached that mark in less than three days (72 hours) or one tenth of time it took Soul to reach one million mark. In next few months Apple will continue iPhone rollout in 50 more countries and that should increase the sales further.