[quote=equalizer]
Acer creative in the USA? What kind of brand recognition do they have here? Where are there fancy gadgets that people crave? Brilliant marketing? But that doesn’t really matter as long as they can produce net profit, which was only $105M last quarter.
Samsung on the other hand is more on the bold side, they may even bring in a great Android Tablet this year (better have 10 hr battery life)!
Their Galaxy Sprint phone has great potential with advanced Bluetooth streaming to Samsung TVs and great keyboard.
Can someone tell me why all these tech companies with their hundreds of PhDs and design engineers continue to make phone keyboards that average male user deems unusable in 2 minutes??
I had conversation over 6 years ago with a smart 60yr old engineer lamenting dismal prospects for future jobs in USA for the young people. He said don’t worry about, that’s what they said about Japan in the 80’s and they didn’t take over the USA. Well maybe half the T-bond market, but that’s another story.[/quote]
I think you’re just digging deeper and deeper into a hole, EQ. But, since this blog is about bringing data. Let’s do that shall we?
Let’s talk about Acer since you brought it up. ..Acer overtook Dell in the #2 spot last December 2009. Acer also closing the gap on HP (which is remarkable, because we’re talking about HP + former Compaq)…And frankly, with Mark Hurd fired, I predict Acer will overtake HP once HP starts flubbing on it’s execution. In Q1 of 2010, the top 10 OEM was posted by Asian OEMS, most noteworthy ASUSTeK Computer Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Lenovo Group Ltd. and Acer Inc. Don’t believe me, go verify the data from iSuppli. Acer has 13.3% of the marketshare, while HP currently has 19.6%, US OEM’s lost ground considerably, though in reality the US versus non-US OEM computer companies is really a moot point, because none of this stuff is made here anymore anyway, which is another point of discussion. (For a refresher of Lenovo…This is the company that bought out IBM PC business, because IBM was smart enough to figure out that it wasn’t going to win in mud-fight with the other OEM’s and cashed out early)
posted on eetimes…
According to Gardner, Acer was also #1 in laptop shipments.
The growth of those “scrappy asian computer companies” has been at the expense of the U.S. OEM’s because those companies have figured out how to crack into a potentially larget market, China.
But in any case, HP is going to lose the market share, because the battle is not going to be in the PC markets. The battle is going to be in the netbooks/tablets/phone markets. From that perspective, both Acer and Dell are at least making an attempt in the right direction, with Acer also having a phone business, and both Acer and Dell having Android based phone and other non-pc projects. HP still has their head stuck up their ass in those markets.
While we’re at it, let’s also talk about the mobile phone business. Top OEM’s… Guess who is eating at Nokia, and why Nokia’s is now a single digit stock?
I might also add that almost all of the LCD technology in these smart phones came from the Koreans, with the highest quality/highest quality contrast screen found in Samsung Galaxy S (LCD made by Samsung) and Apple 4g (made by LG/Hitachi I believe) Every prediction 10 years ago about Samsung being the conglomerate gorilla equivalent of Sony has been dead on.
Side note: Go to sears appliance dept. And look at all the fridges/washers/dryers. Ask them who really makes Kenmore these days. It ain’t GE/Whirpool anymore…It’s LG and Samsung.
Motorola cell business, BTW is on life support, after a decade of fvckups. Currently, it’s turning around…run by Sanjay Jha…You might have heard of him, because he use to run Qualcomm QCT.Maybe you missed him at the La Costa country club because you thought he was the porter.
While where at it, let’s talk about HTC too. It started out a scrappy electronics company, and currently holds the #1 spot for Android based smartphone. If you are about to say about how much better iphones are. Save that argument too, because Android OEM’s logged the biggest percentage growth over the past two quarters.
Regarding
[quote]Can someone tell me why all these tech companies with their hundreds of PhDs and design engineers continue to make phone keyboards that average male user deems unusable in 2 minutes?? [/quote]
That depends on what keyboard you’re are talking about. If your talking about a touch keypad..Well, only until recently have any significant progress been made in touch technology with meaningful accuracy…Technology an innovation finally has caught up to allow meaningful keypads to be developed…
If you’re talking about physical keyboards on a phone, there is a classic tradeoff between weight/size of phone versus keyboard size. Motorola droid is a classic example in which they tried to put a real keyboard on the phone (which I thought was a novelty at the time)….But now relative to the peers like the Galaxy S, the droid feels like a fvckin brick.
If you find neither solutions feasible, you have a third option with is to use a Bluetooth HID keyboard and mouse, which should be available very soon on Android based phones directly from the OEMs…It’s already available via hacks/tweeks on Android Froyo based phones..If you don’t know what HID mouse/keyboard is or what Bluetooth is, well forget it…….If you somewhat know what it is, basic searching skills, you can figure out this mess at http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ if you are semi-skilled labor. If you’re a complete unskilled “mba in training”, my discounted bill out rate is $257/hr, and since you have no clue what I’ll be doing, I’ll say it takes 2 hrs for you 🙂
You could try an outsource shop, but they probably will end up turning your phone into a brick. Not to mention spending hours and hours of your own time interviewing/researching who would be the best to do that so you can save approximately $157/hr…But since you’re working on that killer app that’s going to make you millions, your hours must be worth more that $257/hour, right? After all, why waste your time on something that only costs $257/hr for two hours when clearly, your idea you’re working on is going to
be that 1-shot wonder that makes you millions….And if you think that’s expensive, I guess you’re idea and time isn’t as valuable as you thought 🙂
I’m bringing all this up, not to berate Americans/US or for that matter what’s great about this country. But I find it interesting that some folks think they’re going to be immune to the shit that’s going around and are pretty smug about thinking that you don’t think America is losing its edge and it won’t impact themselves…. and aren’t concerned about really contributing to build this country creativity/intellectual output.
