Sony, just about the biggest and most far-reaching electronics manufacturer around, announced a first-quarter loss of $US390.5 million. They’ve been taking a beating across the board from Apple, Nintendo, Nokia, Canon and Samsung, and aren’t excelling in any one field.
Matt declared their latest, greatest salvo in the smartphone wars a wide miss, and analysts chimed in to say that yes, Nokia’s high-end prospects are grim. Well, Nokia’s second quarter earnings are in, and boy, are they gruesome: profit is down 66% from the same time last year, market share is basically flat, and product-wise, there’s no obvious cure on the horizon. [WSJ]
In Sony’s earnings report, CFO Nobuyuki Oneda noted that their costs are still 10 percent higher than the PS3′s price—if he’s talking about Japan’s retail, that means they’re losing 40 US bucks per console.
Bouncing Red Ball has a factory fetish and I can’t blame him/her/futanari/tentacle monster. Shot at night, these monsters are spectacular. God only knows what they make in them.
Welding goes back thousands of years, but was totally revolutionised just a couple centuries ago. Oobject has 12 awesome videos showing the evolution of welding from blue-collar craftsmen last century to laser-wielding robots today. [Oobject]
A spot of industry news for you on a Thursday morning: Garmin – whose products were previously distributed in Australia by GME – has opened up shop in Australia.
Why is this important, you ask? Well, it means that there’s a good chance we’ll see Garmin’s range of GPS devices arrive on our shores quicker and cheaper than before. Plus, they’re likely to release more of their products over here, so hopefully you can expect to see things like the Astro GPS dog-collar on store shelves in the near future. And with the nuvifone set to come out next year, having the parent company on our shores greatly increases the chances that we won’t have to wait for years to get it ourselves…
This year, 341 million touchscreens will ship worldwide. But according to research firm iSuppli, we ain’t seen nothing yet. Because by 2012, they claim that these shipments will double (682 million units) with the people of 2013 loving touchscreens even more (833 million units for a market of US$6.4 billion). If you’re one of those people who hates touchscreen technology, it might be a good time to exit the planet. Sorry. [PCWorld]
PC World Editor-in-Chief Harry McCracken announced in a blog entry today that he will be stepping down in June to build his own tech site from scratch. McCracken gained notoriety last May, after temporarily resigning due to the publisher’s pressure to kill an anti-Apple piece. Giz wishes Harry the best of luck in the next stage of his career. [PC World]
Bad news, bargain hunters; Nintendo has gone on record saying there are no imminent price cuts for the Nintendo Wii or DS. Satoru Iwata, the company’s president, said he did not believe in the “model” of price slashing, as it tends to leave early adopters feeling a little disheartened. Though we do agree, surely early adopters are well out of their honeymoon phase by now? With Nintendo’s profits soaring to new heights, they’re not exactly looking for a quick dollar, so perhaps the move makes a little sense. Still, Nintendo is not expecting to make as much cash on DS hardware sales in the coming year, which means there are a few more eggs in a Wii basket somewhere. The exact DS stats breakdown like this:
The big N anticipates it will shift 28.0 million DS units from now till March 2009, which is a reduction in the numbers sold in the previous year, where 30.3 millions units made their way to sweaty palms everywhere. Personally, I think Nintendo have their figures wrong; it’ll be 28,000,001 units, as I left my DS on a flight I took yesterday. Life sucks. [Associated Press]
