Intel’s next-generation Ivy Bridge processors will be the first to feature a “3D Tri-Gate transistor,” The BBC reported on Sunday. The company plans to initially release 13 quad-core processors for desktop computers that it promises will offer more computational power while using less energy. Intel hopes its new transistors, which have been in development for 11 years, will help it challenge ARM’s reputation for energy efficiency. “This is the world’s first 22 nanometre pro...

Samsung’s iCloud competitor, dubbed S-Cloud, may be unveiled at next month’s Galaxy S III announcement in London on May 3rd, a South Korean newspaper reported on Friday. The service is similar to Apple’s offering but without any limitations on the type of content users can upload. The service is also expected to have access to popular TV shows, movies and music with free and paid content that will be available across a range of Samsung devices. The amount of storage allotted to users is rum...

The Pew Internet & American Life Project’s latest poll indicates that one in five adults in the United States still doesn’t use the Internet. “Senior citizens, those who prefer to take our interviews in Spanish rather than English, adults with less than a high school education, and those living in households earning less than $30,000 per year are the least likely adults to have Internet access,” Pew Internet said. Almost half of those adults who don’t use the Internet found the t...

Mobile World Congress has been a roller coaster ride so far this year. The week kicked off with a bang on Sunday with both Sony and HTC unveiling their latest and greatest smartphones, and the HTC One X was definitely the star of the show. Things were up and down on Monday and Tuesday however, and the show actually got pretty slow for a while there. Our time in Barcelona isn’t up just yet, however, and Microsoft chose today to unveil the latest version of its next-generation operating system, Windows 8....

Smartphone shipments overtook client PC shipments for the first time in 2011, according to new data from market research firm Canalys. Vendors shipped a total of 158.5 million smartphones in the fourth quarter, representing a 57% increase compared to the 101.2 million units shipped in the same quarter a year earlier. Shipments for the full year of 2011 rose 63% to 487.7 million units, up from 299.7 million shipped in 2010. The PC market only grew 15% to 414.6 million units in 2011, which included an astonis...

Acer chairman JT Wang on Thursday reaffirmed the company’s dedication to the new “ultrabook” market, further distancing his company from the low-margin netbooks that have dominated its PC lineup in the past. Following the success of Acer’s first-generation ultrabook — the Aspire S3 reportedly shipped between 250,000 and 300,000 units during its first quarter of availability — Acer plans to launch new ultrabook models in both the second and third quarters this year. According to Dig...

We saw a few new Samsung phones revealed during AT&T’s press conference Monday morning. Coming soon to AT&T’s smartphone lineup are the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD, but the South Korea-based vendor has much more in store for us at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. Smartphones, tablets, computers, HDTVs and more will debut from Samsung this week at CES, and Monday’s press conference is where we’ll get our first live taste of what’s in store. T...

Samsung is considering an exit from the low-margin netbook business as soon as next year according to a recent report. French CNET blog Blogeee claims to have obtained an email sent by the South Korea-based electronics giant to several of its partners. “Following the introduction of our new strategy in 2012, we stop the product range in 10.1” (Netbook) in Q1 2012 for the benefit of Ultraportables products (11.6 and 12 inches) and ultrabooks to be launched in 2012,” the email reportedly stat...

Sales of notebook computers during the back-to-school rush this year beat expectations, new data from market research firm NPD Group found. While sales of Windows laptops continued to slide compared to last year, the decline was significantly less severe than in the first half of the year according to NPD. Windows notebook sales between July and August dipped 4% compared to the same period in 2010, while sales in the first half of 2011 were down 12% year-over-year. ”The sequential results from NPD’s ...

During Microsoft’s BUILD conference in Los Angeles, Microsoft execs took the stage and showed off a number of new tablets, notebooks and desktop computers running its latest Windows 8 operating system with the new Metro-style user interface. Steve Sinofsky demoed the operating system running on ARM-powered devices, Qualcomm powered devices and even one tablet running NVIDIA’s upcoming quad-core Tegra 3 chipset. One desktop computer, the HP Phoenix, is expected to be unveiled later this week, altho...

Acer founder Stan Shih on Friday said that tablets like Apple’s iPad and ultrabooks like those in the works from numerous Intel partners — including Acer — are a “short-term phenomena.” Speaking with DigiTimes, Shih urged companies to continue focusing on notebook computers and innovative value-added products. Shih commended Apple for thinking outside the box when bringing the iPad to market, but said personal computers will continue to be requisites for businesses and consumers. When as...

Market research firms Gartner and IDC have both released preliminary data for global PC sales in the second quarter of 2011, and the reports paint a much improved picture compared to the first quarter of the year. Lenovo was the biggest winner globally in terms of growth according to Gartner, having shipped 10.23 million PCs for a 12% share of the market. The China-based vendor’s PC market share grew a whopping 22.5% compared to the same quarter a year prior, and Lenovo now finds itself in the No. 3 spo...

During his Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference keynote on Monday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that the company has now sold 400 million Windows 7 licenses to date. Microsoft’s current operating system was first launched in October 2009, and it was welcomed with open arms as customers were eager to dump Vista following its troubled introduction. Despite an impressive 20 months for Windows 7, it is still far from being the world’s most used operating system. Windows XP’s share w...

Taiwan-based Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute expects roughly 360 million combined personal computers and media tablets to ship in 2011, Taiwan Economic News reports. MIC sees PC shipments growing 6.6% over 2010 to land at more than 320 million units this year, and it thinks shipments of media tablets like Apple’s iPad 2ill w exceed 48 million units in 2011, up 198% from 2010. MIC senior industry analyst Chris Wei notes that the improving global economy and replacement PC purchases in the ...