tablet

John Carmack from id Software was talking about the future of mobile gaming, reports The Register. He explained why “why tablets, smartphones and cloud-gaming services such as OnLive will become the dominant gaming platforms.”

"It’s unquestionable that within a very short time, we’re going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles," he said.

Facebook is about to unveil a new feature next week, most likely in the mobile or tablet sector, said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the social networking giant.

In a visit to Facebook's Seattle office on Wednesday, Zuckerberg told reporters that the company plans to "launch something awesome" next week.

The project has been designed at the 40-person Seattle office, Facebook's only major engineering center outside of its Palo Alto, California, said Zuckerberg.

As Nokia has freed the niche in the market with the abandoning to develop its own software Research In Motion is missing crucial targets to introduce its new BlackBerry models, thus disregarding the still free space.

Citigroup downgraded RIM to “hold” from “buy” and explained in a note that new BlackBerry touchscreen models may miss the crucial back-to-school buying period due to production delays, while giants Apple and Google zoom ahead.

Samsung is partnering with Nouvoyance to create a display for tablets that could save ¾ of energy consumption when providing a more dynamic color palate. The PenTile WQXGA display would offer a 2560 by 1600 resolution with quality image.

The PenTile display uses larger subpixels with one pixel completely clear. Such a design allows the backlight to shine more light through. It also enables the larger sub-pixels to be more effective since fewer transistors are needed to power the display.

This week at technology conferences in the United States and Taipei, Microsoft Corp demonstrated its latest operating system codenamed Windows 8. Meantime, some PC makers were very upset with the requirement imposed by the Redmond company related to the involvement of vendors in the system development.

Microsoft plans to launch the new system with touchscreen features optimized for tablet computers within the following 18 months. But it told chipmakers who want to use the system for tablets to work with only one manufacturer to speed up the delivery.

This week at the Computex technology exhibition in Taipei Asus will show its first new PC in the "Ultrabook" class on Intel chips. Intel says it will include the best features of tablets and will go on sale by Christmas and cost under $1,000.

The Ultrabooks will be slim and lightweight but still pack high-performance processors. They should account for 40 percent of laptop sales to consumers by the end of next year, Tom Kilroy, a senior vice president at Intel, told Reuters in an interview.

Latest rumors in the media sources say that instead of one tablet Amazon is planning to launch an “entire family” of Android devices for the upcoming holiday season in America.

Android and Me blog speculate that the online retailer will introduce devices in several form factors, including smartphones and possibly a Google TV set-top-box.

Digitimes also reports that Quanta and Samsung will be the company’s hardware partners.

At RIM's BlackBerry World conference this week Steve Ballmer, a CEO of Microsoft, announced the partnership with Research in Motion. Now Microsoft’s Bing becomes default search engine and maps provider for RIM’s smartphones as well as Playbook tablet.

"We're going to invest uniquely into the BlackBerry platform," Ballmer said according to bloggers covering the event. "Bing will become the default search provider in the browser and maps" on BlackBerry devices.

Quarter sales of Microsoft Windows operating system declined reflecting thus a sharp downturn in personal computer market, which sent Microsoft’s shares down.

Microsoft's shares fell 1.2 percent to $26.37 in after-hours trading following the earnings report on Thursday.

Since its inception 18 months ago Microsoft has sold a record-breaking 350 million licenses for its Windows 7 operating system.

Being the main driver of the company profits PC sales dropped 1% in the first quarter of the year, as reported by a research firm.

According to the recent report, published by eMarketer, one of the leading research groups, the purchases of tablets and e-readers will increase this year.

Droid smartphone community blog Droid Life reported some speculations about Samsung’s plans to release a Wi-Fi only version of the Galaxy Tab on April 4th for a price of $399.

However, some observers believe that the price tag no longer is competitive because since the announcement of the iPad 2 old Apple tablets went down to the same price level while Motorola also plans to release its Wi-Fi only version of Xoom tablet this April.

It should also be noted that the new Galaxy will likely come on Android 2.2 version.
 

Faceplates of the next generation iPad and iPhone leaked online with some users posting the images of the parts. The images support the idea that the iPad 2 will have a front-facing camera while the iPhone 5 will be equipped with a larger screen.

It should be noted that the parts were made by Chinese vendors: the image of the iPad 2 case comes from a Chinese iPhone repair shop while the image of the iPhone 5 faceplace was posted on the website of Apple’s reseller in China.

Hewlett-Packard plans to show its first PCs in slate form-factor based on webOS early in February this year. The same date the company plans to unveil other tech innovations and devices.

Shares of Best Buy Co declined over 15% on Tuesday as the largest online retailer reported an unexpected decrease in fiscal third-quarter profit and cut its outlook. The No. 1 U.S. electronics retailer’s (BBY 35.52, -6.18, -14.82%) profit dropped as lower demand for televisions, notebook computers and videogames led to a sales shortfall in the U.S. While margin widened slightly, analysts said they were concerned that it came at the expense of sales.

“Consumers have turned their backs on Microsoft. A company that once symbolized the future is now living in the past.” This is what CNN Money says about the once popularized hi-tech brand.

The paper cited a resigning Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie who said that cheat death, Microsoft must escape Windows on the PC, and adapt to the new world order.

Ozzie joined the Redmond team in 2005 and participated in Microsoft’s move to online services with Windows Azure that followed his 2005 memo on Internet Services Disruption.