Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry sent an investor note out on Wednesday warning that a weak back-to-school season caused last weekend’s Mac sales to slump between 35% and 40% from the weekend of July 23rd. It was “probably one of the slowest weekends for Mac sales,” Chowdhry said, suggesting that higher gas prices could be responsible for the decline. Chowdhry surveyed four different university book stores for his data, which doesn’t sound like a large enough sample pool ...

Acer on Friday drastically lowered its 2011 shipment forecast for tablet PCs, Taiwan Economic News reported. The company now anticipates shipping approximately 2.5 million consumer tablets in 2011, down 50% or more from earlier projections of between 5 and 7 million units. Acer chairman J. T. Wang said at a shareholder meeting that Acer would likely meet its second-quarter shipment goals, which are down 10% sequentially, and that third-quarter shipments could be marginally better. Wang said performance will l...

Shares of RIM stock have taken a beating since the company announced devastating first-quarter earnings last Thursday. The Waterloo, Ontario-based BlackBerry maker missed Wall Street’s first-quarter consensus, it lowered its full-year guidance, it announced workforce reductions, it confirmed product delays and investors went running for the door as did a top executive. Since the earnings release last week, RIM’s stock has fallen more than 25%. This is bad news for every RIM investor, but two in...

When Apple first unveiled its iPhone 4 smartphone last summer, most media and bloggers were in agreement that the new glass construction was stunning. They also agreed, however, that the iPhone 4 would likely be more prone to significant damage than other smartphones due to the fragile nature of glass compared to plastic and metal. While we’ve heard our fair share of shattered iPhone stories, U.S. Air Force Combat Controller Ron Walker’s tale should help dispel the notion that the iPhone 4 is in...

Fresh intel indicates that Best Buy will be dropping the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, U.S. wireless provider Sprint, to just $299 with a new two-year contract — the device will retail for $499 when activated with a month-to-month contract and $549 with no contract at all. The above image, which comes to us courtesy of a Best Buy source, all but confirms this. No word on if this pricing is exclusive to Best Buy or if it will also be mirrored by Sprint. Recent rumors indicate that Verizon Wireless w...

Both Zach and I have bought no fewer than five Roku XDS units as holiday gifts this season. So it comes as no surprise to us that Amazon has slashed $20 off of the device’s price now that our Rokus are all wrapped, mailed, and committed. The online retail giant has quietly reduced the price of the 1080p streaming media player from $99.99 down to $79.99. The Roku XDS offers full Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu Plus compatibility, as well as a host of other streaming options thanks to an online channel-sto...

Here’s a bit of good news: Hulu has just announced that its Hulu Plus premium subscription service will shed $2 from its monthly price tag. As the press release reads: “The monthly price for Hulu Plus moving forward is just $7.99. Any current subscribers who joined during our preview period will receive a credit for the difference from the $9.99 preview price. This credit will automatically be applied to their next billing cycle.”But the juice doesn’t stop there.  Hulu has also announ...

There is a fairly extensive support thread over at Google — that stretches from January of this year all the way to the present — that details issues some Nexus One owners are having with Wi-Fi connections. The bug reports all read like this: your N1 connects to a wireless network; you put the phone down and the display eventually goes to sleep; while the screen is off the N1 is still technically connected to the wireless router but no data is passing through the device; the device sees itself as ...

This past Wednesday Apple reported a very solid quarter due to growing iPhone and iPod sales that provided enough revenue to diminish its waning personal computer sales. Unfortunately it looks like Microsoft had no such cushion. For the first time in the company’s storied 23-year history, Microsoft reported a year over year slide as Q3 FY09 revenue declined 6 percent to $13.65 billion. Net income slid as well, down a disheartening 32 percent YoY to $2.98 billion. While enterprise revenue remained stable...