This is probably as good as it gets for D-ram industry consolidation in Taiwan. ProMOS, which stood on the brink of bankruptcy for much of the past year, was assured of new business on Friday when it signed an agreement to provide manufacturing services to Japan’s Elpida. Elpida will also licence the technology needed to produce future generations of D-ram chips to ProMOS. Continue reading "As good as it gets for D-ram consolidation"

The growth of the smartphone category is causing intense competition among operating systems, handset makers and the chipmakers that supply them.

Paul Jacobs, chief executive of Qualcomm, the biggest wireless chipmaker, sees that competition intensifying over the next year in smartphones and other handsets, which will translate into lower prices. Continue reading "Qualcomm sees falling phone prices in 2010"

Will the new Droid smartphone be a hit for the anti-iPhone alliance of Motorola, Google and Verizon?

How is Carol Bartz doing in her effort to turn around Yahoo?

And what does the fading buzz around Nintendo’s Wii say about the future of the gaming business?

Listen to reporters from the FT’s San Francisco and Tokyo bureaus discuss some of this week’s big tech stories.

This event is now over - read the transcript by clicking on the link below.

Continue reading "FT techtalk - Waiting for Droid"

Sometimes it feels like every news story you read is about Apple. If it’s not the iPhone or the phantom tablet, then it’s Steve Jobs’ health.

So to make up for it, today’s headlines are being hogged by Google. There was the first appearance of the much-hyped Android 2.0 on the Droid handset, not to mention what Techcrunch called a “killer app” for the new mobile software platform: a navigation service (see item below).

But that’s not all. In other Google news: the launch of Music Search, and efforts to appease the FCC.

Continue reading "From today’s Daily Google…"

In this week’s FT techtalk, whatever was under discussion, it was hard to avoid bringing Apple into the conversation.

A blow-out quarter, new products, fresh Android competition for the iPhone and Nokia launching a legal strike - Apple is in everyone’s sights.

We also looked at the latest eReaders (yes, we’re sure there’s an Apple one coming as well) and assessed whether they are ready to be bestsellers with consumers or end up in the remainders pile.

And we reported live as Microsoft issued its first-quarter earnings.

Read the multimedia transcript below and join us live again next Friday for FT techtalk, a multimedia chat with the FT’s tech correspondents. Continue reading "FT techtalk - We’ve an Apple for that"

With dozens of smartphones powered by Google’s Android operating system set to hit the market, a different challenger to the Apple iPhone was on display in Tokyo today: the Else, from London-listed Israeli technology company Emblaze, using software made by Access of Japan.

The two companies are making bold claims for the device, long in development under the codename of Monolith. “Imagine a device that is not a phone surrounded by gimmicks you will not use; where the camera literally replaces your digital camera; you get real-time push email wherever you are in the globe; almost every song and film in the the world is one click away; and any one of its multitude of features is reached with no more than one light gesture of your finger and not buried deep inside folders within folders,” said Amir Kupervas, the chief executive of Emblaze Mobile.

The credibility of that statement was impossible to judge while watching Access’s chief technology officer demonstrate the device. Continue reading "The latest iPhone challenger is something Else"

Nvidia today launched a “GPU computing in the cloud” service that will allow designers to manipulate and check photo-realistic environments in a fraction of the normal time it takes on a PC workstation.

The graphics chipmaker is combining “iray” rendering technology, from its mental images acquisition, with its high-end Tesla chips in a new RealityServer platform. It expects cloud computing providers to offer services based on the platform to designers of cars, aircraft, clothes, homes and office buildings. Continue reading "Nvidia cloud graphics offer reality check"

Google is expected to launch its own self-branded smartphone before the year is out, according to Ashok Kumar, Northeast Securities analyst

It will follow up with a series of phones running its Android operating system, as well as launching a branded netbook running its new Chrome operating system early next year, the analyst told me. Continue reading "Google to take on iPhone with own phone - analyst"