Almost two months after Apple unveiled its latest tablet, the new iPad continues to see shipping delays when ordered online. Availability of the device in the U.S. continues to improve, however, with the shipping quotes now whittled down to under a week for the first time since the slate launched in March. Orders through Apple’s online store are now expected to ship in 3 to 5 business days, although international customers will still be forced to wait between 1 and 2 weeks. If the wait is still too long, Best Buy and other retail outlets are said to have plenty of stock. The Cupertino-based company previously said demand for the new tablet was “off the charts.” In the first quarter of 2012, Apple sold 11.8 million tablets.

[Via SlashGear]

Read

After pre-orders sold out in less than a day, the $35 Raspberry Pi Linux computer faced a number manufacturing hiccups and distribution problems. On Monday, however, the company announced that the first batch of Raspberry Pi single-board Linux computers has finally arrived at distributors and begun to ship worldwide. “This is an exciting and momentous phase for Raspberry Pi as the boards start heading out to customers from our distributors,” said Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi founder and trustee. “We know from the incredible amount of interest in Raspberry Pi that there is a huge impetus among enthusiasts and educators for a product that brings computer programming to the masses, and we encourage these new programmers to share their experiences and results with us.” The Raspberry Pi is smaller than a smartphone and is equipped with a 700MHz processor, 256MB of RAM, an SD card slot, two USB ports, an Ethernet jack and both HDMI and RCA outputs. Read on for the Raspberry Foundation’s press release.

Raspberry Pi deliveries start from RS Components and Allied Electronics

First boards leave RS warehouses for shipment to customers across the globe

OXFORD, England–(BUSINESS WIRE)–RS Components (RS) and Allied Electronics (Allied), the trading brands of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the world’s leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products, are commencing shipments of Raspberry Pi, the credit-card sized computer board designed to seed a new generation of programmers. The shipments are being sent to the first group of customers from around the world, all of whom registered for a Raspberry Pi from RS and Allied.

When ordering Raspberry Pi from the dedicated online store, customers can click through to the associated parts and accessories required for activation of the board. These include USB A-B cables, HDMI cables, power supplies and SD memory cards from a range of leading suppliers, all available to purchase from stock. By ordering these cables and other accessories from RS and Allied at the same time as the Raspberry Pi board, customers can make a saving on the delivery cost, as the same total shipping charge is applicable.

“There has been a huge wave of anticipation and extraordinary levels of demand for Raspberry Pi since it was launched, so we are delighted to be delivering the first boards to initial customers,” said Glenn Jarrett, Head of Electronics Marketing at RS Components. “We are working very closely with the manufacturer to bring subsequent batches of boards into stock so that we can fulfil every customer order for Raspberry Pi as quickly as possible.”

Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi founder and trustee, commented, “This is an exciting and momentous phase for Raspberry Pi as the boards start heading out to customers from our distributors. We know from the incredible amount of interest in Raspberry Pi that there is a huge impetus among enthusiasts and educators for a product that brings computer programming to the masses, and we encourage these new programmers to share their experiences and results with us.”

RS and Allied are currently developing a variety of tools and initiatives to support Raspberry Pi users and the companies’ DesignSpark electronics design community is seeing many people discussing ideas and thoughts on Raspberry Pi. Recent additions to the site include a series of Pi Perspectives, where leading UK academics and scientists share their views on Raspberry Pi, and information on a Raspberry Pi experimenter’s kit now being developed. Various tutorials covering everything from initial set-up to a guide to the different Linux flavours, including a Fedora Mix start-up guide, are also available.

For developers, there is the free schematic capture and PCB layout tool from RS and Allied, DesignSpark PCB. It has already won awards from across the globe, and the company is seeing more developers adopt it with some already creating prototyping boards to use with Raspberry Pi.

The Raspberry Pi boards from RS and Allied are priced at £21.60 plus a shipping charge of £4.95 to any destination worldwide, plus VAT and import duty as applicable.

The Raspberry Pi board was created by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charity based in Cambridge, UK, and was conceived to encourage and enable children to learn and apply computer programming.

Boxee will begin shipping its new Boxee Live TV tuners this week according to a post on the company’s blog. The new device is a dongle that provides Boxee Box owners with the ability to watch local broadcast TV stations. The Boxee Box accessory costs just $49.99 and it is likely best for those who have turned to Boxee to replace their cable television subscription, not those who are using it as a supplement. The Boxee Live TV tuner supports the following:

• Social Channel Listings – We’ll show you what’s on, what your friends are watching, and how many people total are watching a show as you flip through channels.
• Sharing – Share the traditional Boxee way on Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr AND you can now passively share to Facebook using our Live TV Timeline App – turn sharing on and whatever you’re tuned into will post to your Facebook ticker automatically.  It’s easy to switch off too so your friends don’t need to know about your addiction to HSN.
• Edit Channels - Quickly hide channels from your lineup that don’t speak your language or have pissed you off with bad programming decisions like taking Arrested Development off the air.  Easily rename WNDHCTA 7.2 to NBC.
• All-In-One Interface – done watching a show on broadcast, easily jump into more episodes from the web. It’s the best of both worlds all on the same remote.

Google is reportedly in talks with retailers in an effort to create a subscription-based expedited delivery service that will compete directly with Amazon Prime. Citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal on Thursday reported that Google has contacted a number of retailers in an effort to provide unlimited speedy deliveries to members who pay an annual fee. Among the retailers Google has reportedly contacted about the service are Gap, OfficeMax and Macy’s. “They’ve approached us with the idea, but we haven’t made any decisions,” a Macy’s spokesman told The Journal, seemingly confirming the report. Google plans to integrate the service into its search engine to an extent, but the system would also feature some amount of integration on partner sites. According to the report, Google plans to pilot the service in San Francisco ahead of a full launch, which the company hopes will take place some time next year.

Read

It has been more than six months since HP officially took the wraps off of the Pre3 and it looks like the company is finally getting ready to bring the phone to market. Pre-orders for an unlocked model of the Pre3 have started on HP’s official German website, but don’t get too excited: the German variant has a QWERTZ keyboard instead of the QWERTY layout we’re accustomed to. Other specs include a 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor, a 3.6-inch 800 x 480-pixel resolution display and a 5-megapixel camera capable of recording HD video. The German Pre3 is priced at €349 ($500) and HP expects the phone to ship within one to two weeks. We expect to hear more about U.S. availability shortly now that the device is launching in other parts of the world.

[Via Engadget]

Read

During the Computex trade show in May, Intel laid out its vision for new “Ultrabook” notebooks that will blend the performance of today’s laptops with a tablet-like experience in a thin and light product. While the company originally said that ASUS’ UX21 notebook would be the first such device when it launches in time for this year’s holiday season, a new report from DigiTimes suggests that HP will beat ASUS to the market. Reportedly, the computer manufacturer will use Foxconn Electronics for the production of at least two Ultrabooks, which will run on Intel’s 1.8GHz Core i7-2677M and the 1.7GHz Core i7-2637M platforms. Rumor has it that Foxconn has already started to ship the Ultrabooks to HP, but it’s unclear when the devices will launch.

Read

It looks like we may finally see Apple unveil its mid-2011 MacBook Air models some time this week. Best Buy has stopped shipping all MacBook Air notebooks as of this past weekend. The online retailer is still taking orders, however, which indicates that Apple will likely not adjust pricing when it issues its refreshed models. Of note, unless Apple introduced an entirely new model at a much lower price point, this puts earlier rumored sales targets of 8 million units well out of reach. Several sellers on the Amazon.com website are showing low inventory or stockouts as well, further supporting the notion that Apple has stopped refreshing distributor inventory as it prepares to begin shipping updated MacBook Air models. Apple’s mid-2011 MacBook Airs are expected to feature Intel’s new Sandy Bridge processors and Thunderbolt I/O ports, among other changes.

Read [Best Buy] Read [Amazon]

Last week T-Mobile said that the high demand for the G2x had resulted in “inventory constraints,”and that it was working with LG to get the device back on shelves as quickly as possible. As a result of those constraints, however, the carrier has increased the price of the G2x to $249.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate —a $50 boost from its debut price of $199. Hopefully T-Mobile drops the cost back down after LG increases its production volume, but the carrier has given no indication that will be the case.

Read

Famed Russian technology blogger and analyst, Eldar Murtazin, thinks he has a beat on global Windows Phone sales figures, and the results are grim. Murtazin notes that although the company has shipped 1.5 million handsets worldwide, it has only sold 674,000 to end-users. The article’s author never indicates where his information originates from, but Murtazin has a proven track record when it comes to providing accurate insider information in the mobile space. Selling 674,000 smartphones certainly isn’t anything to to be ashamed of, but we’re not sure it is cause for celebration either.

[Via Phone Arena]

Read

Keeping up with the white iPhone 4 saga over the past few months? Well, you’ll be happy it’s all coming to a close this Wednesday. With that said, if you’re completely strung out and waiting for a white iPhone 4 32GB unit, you might be in for a rough come down. We have got a hold of an internal AT&T UPS shipping invoice which clearly details that 20 white iPhone 4 16GB devices are destined for a specific AT&T store. Unfortunately, there are no 32GB units that are incoming. So sad.

According to a hidden page on ThreeUK’s website spotted by 9to5 Mac, the white iPhone 4 could be delivered to some customers as soon as this Wednesday, April 20th. Apple has failed to launch the white version of the iPhone 4 in the 10 months since it made the official announcement, but earlier this year the Cupertino based company confirmed that it would launch the new hue this spring — after which floods of information about the device’s launch date began to spill. In March, an analyst suggested that Apple would begin shipping the device in April. Just last week, sources confirmed to Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal that the launch was imminent and would likely occur in the coming weeks. If you’ve been holding off for a white iPhone, it looks like your wait is coming to an end.

Read

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. Ltd.-owned Foxconn is considering spending up to $12 billion on new facilities in Brazil that would help the electronics manufacturer’s clients avoid high import taxes on devices shipped to key markets from China and Taiwan. The move would also potentially help the manufacturer avoid some of its rising labor costs in China. The Brazilian government says it is currently studying Foxconn’s plans, and the country’s President Dilma Rousseff is overseas discussing this and other matters with Chinese President Hu Jintao. “You’ve got an ample range of investments that go from $300 to $400 million to $12 billion over 5 to 6 years in the case of Foxconn,” Rousseff told Reuters. “They’re proposing a partnership. They came to us and said we want to invest in Brazil.” Foxconn could start building devices like Apple’s iPad in Brazil by the end of November according to Aloizio Mercadente, Brazil’s science and technology minister.

Read

UPDATE: Sprint has issued BGR the following statement via email: “HTC EVO View 4G is in development with Gingerbread. Our plan is to offer Honeycomb. If we receive the software in time, we hope to launch with Honeycomb. If not, we will launch with Gingerbread and upgrade to Honeycomb as soon as we can.”

Read [Sprint] Read [HTC]

Just ahead of Apple’s international launch of the iPad 2, replenishment of U.S. inventory appears to be incoming. BGR has confirmed with various Apple Store and third-party retailer locations that new shipments have begun to arrive over the past few days. Retailers we have spoken with in the New York metropolitan area appear to be receiving new units in very small quantities, and Wi-Fi iPad 2 tablets seem much easier to come by than 3G-enabled units. Apple’s online store also adjusted its shipping estimates for new orders down to 3-4 weeks from 4-5 weeks. While the short supply has lead many to believe Apple’s new iPad 2 is selling quite well, the company still hasn’t announced any sales figures.

Read

According to an email offer being sent to Sears Canada affiliates, Research In Motion’s highly anticipated BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will begin shipping on April 10th — the launch date we reported exclusively earlier this month. The email offers recipients the opportunity to pre-order the device beginning tomorrow, March 12th. The PlayBook at Sears… okay. We’ve reached out to RIM and will update this post with any comment it provides.

Read