2010
Latest
Motorola Mobility reports robust growth in last quarter, but predicts difficult times ahead
Yes, we are deep in Q4 2010 financial reporting season, and Motorola's freshly independent Mobility arm is latest to step up and deliver its figures. Total revenue over the past three months reached $3.4 billion, marking a 21 percent increase year-on-year, net revenue from mobile devices was $2.4 billion, up by 33 percent year-on-year, and handset shipments were a seemingly healthy 4.9 million. That figure's disappointed Wall Street estimates, however -- the collective expectation, according to MarketWatch, was 5.2 million -- and the net profit of $80 million is barely (for a company of this size) in the black. More doom and gloom is cast by Motorola itself, which is predicting a difficult first quarter of 2011 that will end with the company losing between 9 and 21 cents per share in net terms. Ah well, let's try to enjoy the sunshine of Moto making money today and forget the rainclouds of tomorrow.
Apple's 'PC' shipments grow by 241 percent in iPad-inclusive Canalys stats
Canalys is a pretty well respected global stat-keeper and now it seems to be relying on that reputation to push through a pretty controversial message: tablets, such as Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy Tab, are PCs. "Accept new market realities," urges its polemic press release, before laying out global quarterly shipments that peg Apple as the world's third most prolific PC vendor (without tablets, Apple doesn't even break the top 5 according to IDC and Gartner). The company that was laboring with a mere 3.8 percent market share in 2009 has shot up to 10.8 with the aid of its 10-inch touchscreen device. Canalys' stance will inevitably be controversial, but then it's kind of hard to deny that machines like Samsung's Sliding PC and ASUS' Eee Slate make the distinguishing lines between tablets and netbooks look like a particularly technical form of bokeh.
AMD ships 1.3 million Fusion APUs, 35 million DirectX 11 GPUs, says it has 'momentum'
Hey, this interim CEO thing doesn't seem to be too hard at all. Thomas Seifert, the temporary solution to the problem created by Dirk Meyer's departure from AMD's top spot, has had a pretty comfy ride reporting the company's latest quarterly results. The pecuniary numbers themselves ($1.65b revenue, $375m net income) were tame and unexciting, but Seifert got to make a pair of juicy milestone announcements. Firstly, on the mobile and ever-so-efficient front, he noted that 1.3 million Fusion APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) have been shipped to partners since AMD started deliveries in November, and secondly, in terms of discrete graphics chips, he disclosed that the Radeon HD 5000 and HD 6000 series DirectX 11 GPUs have surpassed the 35 million units shipped mark. To give you some perspective on what that means, sales of Nintendo's bestselling Wii console are hovering somewhere around the same figure. So yes, AMD, your wagon has momentum, but shouldn't it have a driver too?
HTC profits leaping and bounding up, Peter Chou promises tablet and production expansion
HTC's fourth quarter of 2010 has gone exactly the same way as the first three: the company reports a 160 percent rise in profits (to $500 million) year-on-year and a 31 percent increase relative to Q3 2010. Total revenue for the final three months of last year rounded the $3.5 billion mark, having been a trifling $1.4 billion the year before. Company CEO Peter Chou sees no end to this dramatic growth, forecasting it'll remain in double digits through 2011, and he plans to match up to it by doubling monthly production capacity at HTC's Shanghai plant to two million handsets. If necessary, he says he'll even outsource manufacturing. Even more intriguing, however, is Chou's admission that HTC is strategizing an entry into the tablet realm: "It's a new market with many competitors, and we don't want to rush into it." Hardly a surprise, but good to have it from the horse's mouth.
Sony Ericsson ships 9 million Xperia Android phones, but latest earnings disappoint
Sony Ericsson has just made its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2010 official and the highlight, at least for milestone lovers like us, is the figure of nine million Android-based Xperia handsets shipped since the family's launch. Now, the language used here is important, as Sony loves to report shipments to retailers instead of actual sales, but it's still a pretty grand number of Xperia X10, X10 Mini, X10 Mini Pro, and X8 handsets out and about in our big wide world. Hell, it's even more impressive when you consider that those phones have spent most of their lives riding the ancient Android 1.6 as their operating system. In terms of actual currency figures, however, SE has fallen short of expectations, reporting a moderate €35 million pre-tax profit for Q4, which the company is turning into a positive by noting that it marks its fourth consecutive quarter of being in the black. If the new crop of Xperia Androids are anything to go by, we can probably expect this habit to continue for a good long while.
The 2010 Engadget Awards: Nominate the Game Accessory of the Year
It's time for the 2010 Engadget Awards, and we're asking for your nominations for the Game Accessory of the Year. Nominating is easy, simply leave a comment with what you're nominating for this category. We'll round up the best selections and put them to the popular vote. Here's five simple rules of what NOT to do: Don't include your reasons for nominating it. You can debate the product later when we put it up to vote. Just leave the name of what you want to nominate, okay? Don't nominate anything that wasn't sold for the first time in 2010. We will allow updated versions of previous devices, however. No concept devices or prototypes. It has to be a real gadget people can buy! Pre-orders don't count. Don't nominate anything more than once. It's not a popularity contest (yet), all it does is make our lives harder. Just do a quick find to see if someone's already beat you to it. Seriously, don't nominate anything that's already been nominated! Thanks, and good luck to all the gadgets!
The 2010 Engadget Awards: Nominate the HDTV of the Year
It's time for the 2010 Engadget Awards, and we're asking for your nominations for the HDTV of the Year. Nominating is easy, simply leave a comment with what you're nominating for this category. We'll round up the best selections and put them to the popular vote. Here's five simple rules of what NOT to do: Don't include your reasons for nominating it. You can debate the product later when we put it up to vote. Just leave the name of what you want to nominate, okay? Don't nominate anything that wasn't sold for the first time in 2010. We will allow updated versions of previous devices, however. No concept devices or prototypes. It has to be a real gadget people can buy! Pre-orders don't count. Don't nominate anything more than once. It's not a popularity contest (yet), all it does is make our lives harder. Just do a quick find to see if someone's already beat you to it. Seriously, don't nominate anything that's already been nominated! Thanks, and good luck to all the gadgets!
The 2010 Engadget Awards: Nominate the Netbook of the Year
It's time for the 2010 Engadget Awards, and we're asking for your nominations for the Netbook of the Year. Nominating is easy, simply leave a comment with what you're nominating for this category. We'll round up the best selections and put them to the popular vote. Here's five simple rules of what NOT to do: Don't include your reasons for nominating it. You can debate the product later when we put it up to vote. Just leave the name of what you want to nominate, ok? Don't nominate anything that wasn't sold for the first time in 2010. We will allow updated versions of previous devices, however. No concept devices or prototypes. It has to be a real gadget people can buy! Pre-orders don't count. Don't nominate anything more than once. It's not a popularity contest (yet), all it does is make our lives harder. Just do a quick find to see if someone's already beat you to it. Seriously, don't nominate anything that's already been nominated! Thanks, and good luck to all the gadgets!
The 2010 Engadget Awards: Nominate the Digital Camera of the Year
It's time for the 2010 Engadget Awards, and we're asking for your nominations for the Digital Camera of the Year. Nominating is easy, simply leave a comment with what you're nominating for this category. We'll round up the best selections and put them to the popular vote. Here's five simple rules of what NOT to do: Don't include your reasons for nominating it. You can debate the product later when we put it up to vote. Just leave the name of what you want to nominate, okay? Don't nominate anything that wasn't sold for the first time in 2010. We will allow updated versions of previous devices, however. No concept devices or prototypes. It has to be a real gadget people can buy! Pre-orders don't count. Don't nominate anything more than once. It's not a popularity contest (yet), all it does is make our lives harder. Just do a quick find to see if someone's already beat you to it. Seriously, don't nominate anything that's already been nominated! Thanks, and good luck to all the gadgets!
World sends 107 trillion emails in 2010, most of them about enlarging your stock portfolio
Hold on to your seats, stat lovers, 2010 is about to hit you with the full force of its quantifiable web exploits. Web monitoring site Pingdom reports that last year we all sent 107 trillion emails to our loved and unloved ones, which breaks down to 294 billion per day, though only 10.9 percent of those weren't spam. There are now 1.88 billion email users around the globe and when they're not too busy communicating, they're surfing one of the net's 255 million total sites (21.4 million of which are said to have arrived in 2010). The compendium of numerical knowledge wraps up with a look at social media, where Twitter still has a way to go before catching up with email -- there were only 25 billion tweets last year -- but continues to grow like mad, having added 100 million users during the year. Facebook added even more, 250 million users, and its thriving population is sharing 30 billion pieces of content (links, pics, video, etc.) each and every month. This isn't madness, this is the internet.
Black Ops led 2010 UK game sales, Just Dance top of the pops on Wii
Although it comes as little surprise, Call of Duty: Black Ops was the best-selling game in the UK last year. The UK Interactive Entertainment Association's 2010 bestsellers list features the usual suspects, with Black Ops, FIFA 11 and Just Dance occupying the top three spots, respectively, across all platform sales. Breaking it down by format, Blops landed in the top sales spot for Xbox 360 and PS3 games, while Just Dance and its sequel filled the first and third positions among Wii releases, naturally. Professor Layton And The Lost Future took the golden picarat for DS and FIFA 11 charged to the top of the charts on PSP. Although one could speculate as to why Black Ops wasn't at the front line of PC sales in the UK, it's just as fitting that Football Manager 2011 and 2010 occupied the forward spots in the region. Check out the complete breakdown by format after the jump.
GameFly reveals the 'most requested' games of 2010
Online rental service GameFly has named its "most requested" games of 2010. The rankings are based on each member's GameQ, which is "a personal wish list of games available for rent." Given the inconsistent availability of titles offered through the service, sometimes "wish list" is right.
Kill Screen's inaugural 'High Scores' show Limbo and Mass Effect 2 atop 2010 leaderboard
In its first annual "High Scores" ranking, our friends at Kill Screen broke down 2010's releases into two main categories: "Big Games" (including blockbusters, full retail releases and subscription-based MMOs) and "Small Games" (including indies, downloadables, DLC and expansions, mobile, social, free-to-play and completely free titles). Then, a whole gang of critics, Joystiq's Andrew Yoon and myself included, were elected as judges, each allotted 100 points per category and able to award any game 2–40 points. (A judge, for example, could have totally given 1 vs. 100 all 40 points it rightfully deserved!) Scoring in the top spots across the two categories were two titles that also appeared in our own Top 10: Mass Effect 2 (the "big" game) and Limbo (the "small" one). Notably, Minecraft landed in the #3 "Small Games" position, just below Super Meat Boy, showing how much critical love there's been for the just-in-beta world-building game. Also of note: BioShock 2's "Minerva's Den" and Mass Effect 2's "Lair of the Shadow Broker" charted, representing the only DLC to earn a "High Score."
2010 in review: Rise of iOS
Here, in no particular order, are some of the top stories we saw in 2010. The year was packed with Apple announcements, some planned and one unplanned. The real standout this year was iOS coming into its own. This year's WWDC was all about iOS, for example. The Apple TV now runs iOS. iOS 4.2 breathed new life into the already-new iPad, another major story of the year (a wildly successful one at that). Even OS X 10.7 "Lion" has some iOS-inspired elements from what little we've seen. But it's looking like 2011 will be a return to the Mac side. In 2010 we saw the new MacBook Air, which Steve Jobs called the "future of notebooks." What surprises does Apple have for us on the Macintosh side of the house? 2011 will be an interesting year (again) to watch! iPad In 2010, the iPad was revealed and the netbook industry felt the impact. The tablet industry has awakened. We expect 2011's CES to have an enormous range of tablet computers. iOS 4.2 was released months later, giving the iPad features like multitasking, which should have been there to begin with. Still, with paltry RAM, no front-facing camera and still not enough storage, the iPad has plenty of room to grow in 2011. Apps on the iPad made news in themselves, with some apps being available for both iPads and iPhones, some costing more for "HD" versions (a term Apple doesn't endorse, by the way) and some only available for iPad. The new realm of a tablet format opened up possibilities for developers, and we continue to see innovation from them on Apple's latest product. Still, the publishing world was a little dismayed to see the iPad not take off as an e-reader on its own. Digital magazines are falling flat (in part due to Apple's lack of a proper subscription model), and the iBookstore has had its own problems. iPhone 4 We all knew the iPhone 4 was coming thanks to a forgetful Apple employee and some poorly executed shenanigans from Gizmodo. If only they had tested the antenna! The iPhone 4 introduced the high-resolution Retina Display, plus a sleek new form factor that brought about "antennagate" and a subsequent press conference to address the issue. iPhone 4 cases were given away, and the problem was mitigated by a clever Apple marketing/communications team. The iPhone 4 also heralded FaceTime as a video calling service (and potential open standard, although we hear inside Apple there is little impetus to release the open portions needed to bring the service to other platforms). The iPhone 4 introduced a front-facing camera to facilitate video calling. The iPhone 4's addition of an LED flash introduced another wrinkle into the app approval process in that developers quickly started writing flashlight apps that took advantage of the powerful (but battery-killing) light source. Guess what? Apple finally woke up and wrote some clear but open-ended app approval guidelines that addressed many of the previously-unknown guidelines surrounding app approvals.
The Daily Grind: What are you looking forward to in 2011?
Farewell, 2010 -- hello 2011! As many of us prepare to ring in the new year tonight, our thoughts turn to the future as they typically do at the end of the year. What will 2011 bring for you? Will it be a banner year of excellence, or a year that would best be experienced on fast-forward? I have a better idea: Let's talk about what we're looking forward to in 2011 -- in MMOs, I mean. It's promising to be an exciting year as major projects such as Guild Wars 2, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Rift come to a head, and that's only the surface of 2011's potential. So what, if anything, has you jazzed about next year? What do you wish were already here -- a new game, an expansion, a special event -- so that you could enjoy it? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Michael's Best of Tech 2010 list
It's time for that honored tradition that's inescapable at the end of every year: the annual best/worst lists. But I'm generally a positive kind of guy, so I'm just going to share my "best of" part of the list. Below you'll find my selections for the best of tech that I used in 2010. Some of the items on the list may have originated before 2010, but this is the year I really put the tech to use. So, without further ado, here is the Best of Tech 2010 as I see it. Best Mac App: 2010 wasn't kind to the Mac app platform. The wild success of iOS and mobile apps in general seems to have taken a toll on innovative desktop apps. Hopefully the Mac App Store will reverse the trend. Until then, if you are looking for a cool new Mac app, try OmmWriter Dāna. It's a word processor designed from the ground up to lend itself to the user's creative flow. You can read my review of it here. Try it out (there are both free and paid versions), and you'll find out just how much a little thing like a horizontal cursor can increase your creativity. You can download OmmWriter here.
CNN says Apple's "antennagate" biggest tech fail of 2010
CNN has a list of their biggest tech "fails" of 2010, and the number one spot is the iPhone 4 antenna issue, aka "antennagate." Perhaps it was inevitable that the hubris of Apple's past decade would eventually catch up with the company. Antennagate, as you may recall, was the issue around a precipitous drop in "bars" (the apparent reception on your iPhone) when the iPhone 4 was held in the "death grip." I experienced this on launch day and even had a few dropped calls when putting the lower left corner of the phone into my palm. But according to Apple in a rare press event to address the issue, less than 1 percent of iPhone owners actually reported this issue. Nevertheless, CNN also notes that the issue has quietly faded away (after a bumper giveaway and OS update or two), and the phone is still a huge seller. The fail appears to have been a mere blip. It certainly didn't have as widespread an effect as the Gawker media sites being hacked, which came in at number seven.
Flameseeker Chronicles: A look back at 2010
Welcome to the last Flameseeker Chronicles of 2010, in which I wax sentimental over this year and salivate over what the next one promises. It's been a huge year for both Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 -- probably one of the biggest since Guild Wars 1 launched. There was civil war in Tyria, with consequences more far-reaching than any of us as players could imagine at the outset. Profession reveals came fast and furious for a while, and when the dust settled, we had extensive information on half of the Guild Wars 2 professions. Gamescom and PAX brought us actual Guild Wars 2 gameplay, the War in Kryta seemed to go on and on, and there were even some shakeups behind the scenes, with ArenaNet swinging a banhammer of massive proportions and dismantling the Xunlai tournament house. Follow along and let's take a look at what 2010 brought to Tyria.
EVE Evolved: Top EVE news stories of 2010
This was a big year for EVE Online, with the release of the Tyrannis expansion and some awesome news stories spreading across the internet like digital wildfire. The year was off to a good start in February with some epic political drama as GoonSwarm alliance was disbanded from the inside. More recently, EVE hit a landmark moment as over 3,000 players gathered in one solar system to fight and the server node they were on didn't crash. Massively has been here all year keeping you up to date with what's going on with EVE and the EVE community. This year has seen some awesome stories, and as this is the last EVE Evolved of 2010, I'd like to take the opportunity to look back on the top EVE news and community stories of the year. The highlight of the year for me has to be creating the official Massively Mob corporation. I expected around 50 people would join and perhaps a few extra readers would idle in the Massively channel. Instead, almost 200 pilots have joined the corp, and new applications come in every day. Several corp members have already begun organising their own events, and many spend their days answering questions or otherwise helping newer members of the corp. In this week's EVE Evolved, I look at the year's top EVE stories. I examine the EVE community's artistic side, some of the most positive and negative stories of the year, a number of extremely high-value kills and heists, and the emerging Sansha storyline.
So, what'd you get?
Let's just call it what it is: the best Christmas ever. Why? Well, for starters, it's December 25th. Secondly, it's a Saturday in much of the world. How often does that happen? The technology outfits 'round the globe have managed to deliver a rather insane stack of wares to consider this year -- from terrifically desirable goods to rubbish that we wouldn't wish on our worst enemy's enemies -- and now it's our turn to pry into your business and find out what Santa Claus dumped (or didn't dump) under your tree overnight. Hit us up with your scores in comments below, and be sure to cast your vote as to whether or not the kid on the right is feigning excitement over his newfound laptop. Oh, the kid in the video just past the break -- that's probably useful information. When you're done, check out what people got jazzed about in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009.
