Samsung: Facebook Has Huge Impact On Device Sales, Electronics Industry Growth (video)

March 23, 2011

At a press event today, Samsung Electronics gave a brief overview of some of the key technologies and driving forces that the Korean company is working on these days.

To kick off the lunch event, Vice President Jim Elliott described how mobile computing has reached a key inflection point within the electronics industry.

Mobile Computing to be 10X Desktop Computing

Mobile Computing to be 10X Desktop Computing

“We’re expecting more than 10 billion units of sales of these connected devices or mobile Internet devices over the next decade. This is an order of magnitude over the desktop Internet era which helped propelled the growth of the last decade,” said the Samsung executive.

These connected devices are GPSes, laptops, tablets, all integrated seamlessly to the cloud. “There is a tremendous amount of back-end infrastructure that is needed to drive all these connected devices seamlessly as people look more and more to the cloud to power this data transfert.”

Samsung sees Facebook driving the growth of the entire electronics industry

The Impact of Facebook on the Electronics Industry Keeps Growing

Interestingly, for Samsung, Facebook is now the new killer app that is driving the whole electronics industry. The social network is having a huge impact on connected device sales as more than 200 million people are accessing it a mobile device. And according to Facebook, people that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active than non-mobile users.

“In the past, a lot of times it was when a new operating system launched that really spurred PC sales, now it’s social networking and particularly Facebook is so impactful on people’s usage patterns and daily lives and this is having a huge impact on infrastructure and device sales,” adds Elliott.

For the Samsung executive, social networks are also the driver for Internet usage, even more popular than e-mail!

Web 3.0 traffic has a huge impact on Internet traffic load

“Think about the traffic, the load impact that this has on the Internet, on the backbone to move this around. According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, about 31K petabytes per month needed to drive these pictures, videos… 1 petabyte is 13.3 years of HD video.”

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iSuppli: Battery, Display Are iPad 2 Weight Loss Secrets

March 16, 2011

Why the iPad 2 is 30% thinner than the original iPad

Apple reduced the thickness and weight of the iPad 2 compared to the iPad 1 by trimming the dimensions of several key components, most notably the battery, IHS iSuppli teardown analysis has revealed.

The total thickness of the iPad 2 is 8.8 millimeters, down 34 percent from 13.4 millimeters in the iPad 1. The iPad 2 weighs about 600 grams, down 15 percent from 700 grams for the iPad 1.

“Apple has particularly focused on thickness as a point of differentiation for the iPad 2. Other new tablets coming to market, all of which are about as thick as the iPad 1, now look fat in comparison to the iPad 2. This is likely to cause a scramble as competitors rush to slim down to match Apple,” said Kevin Keller, principal analyst for the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service.

iPad 2 battery: twice thinner than original iPad

The biggest reduction in thickness came in the iPad 2’s battery subsystem. This section in the iPad 2 is 2.5 millimeters thick, a 59 percent reduction from 6.1 millimeters for the iPad 1.

“The iPad 2 battery design represents a major shift from the iPad 1,” Keller said. “Apple moved from two thicker cells to three thinner ones, flattening out the entire battery structure. The new design also allowed Apple to eliminate an injection-molded plastic support frame from the battery subsystem, further cutting down its thickness.”

This refinement to the iPad design spurred a 10 to 15 percent increase in its iPad 2 power density, which is a measure of battery life relative to the mass of the battery. It shrinks the iPad 2’s weight by 5 grams, while still delivering the same battery lifetime.

Thinner, more durable, flexible display

Another factor contributing to the thinner form factor was the elimination of a stamped sheet metal frame from the display. This slashed the size of the display subsystem to 2.5 millimeters, down 17 percent from 3 millimeters for the iPad 1.

On the touch screen overlay, Apple has adopted a new glass technology that allows it to reduce the thickness of the section while maintaining durability. The touch screen overlay on the iPad 2 is 0.6 millimeters thick, down 25 percent from 0.8 millimeters for the iPad 1.

“The concurrent release of the iPad 2 and the new Dragontrail Glass technology from Asahi Glass Co. of Japan has led to speculation that Asahi may be the supplier of this durable new glass,” Keller said.

Physical tests conducted by IHS reveal that the iPad 2 glass is more flexible than the glass used in the iPad 1, a characteristic of increased durability.

The iPad 2 also slightly trims the space between the rear of the display and the top of the batteries. This space now amounts to 1.3 millimeters in size, down 19 percent from 1.6 millimeters in the iPad 1.

Source: IHS iSuppli.

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Analysts: Industry Impacts of Western Digital Acquisition of Hitachi Storage

March 8, 2011

On Monday March 7 Western Digital (WD) announced that the company had reached an agreement to purchase Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (HGST) for $4.3 billion in cash and common stock. The deal has already been approved by both companies’ boards and is expected to close in the third quarter assuming regulatory approval.

HGST’s parent Hitachi will retain a 10% stake in the combined company and HGST’s current CEO, Steve Milligan, will be president of the new business reporting to WD president and CEO John Coyne. The merger will impact the HDD industry including component and equipment suppliers and change the landscape for enterprise SSDs.

Biggest in HDDs

From a unit shipment perspective WD and HGST are the largest and third largest manufacturers of hard disk drives (HDDs). Today Seagate remains the revenue leader, thanks to the company’s dominance of the enterprise SSD market. The pending merger will push WD’s revenues ahead of Seagate’s.

WD is already the unit shipment leader, having surpassed Seagate’s unit shipments over a year ago. Combined unit shipments for WD and HGST account for nearly 48% of the world HDD market.

Hitachi GST was formed by the merger of IBM and Hitachi’s HDD units in 2003. After many years of losses HGST turned profitable for most of the last two years. Although the division is profitable, Hitachi was rumored to have been looking to divest itself of its HDD unit for several years. In 2010 and even in 2009 rumors reported that Hitachi was shopping for a buyer for the division with WD mentioned as one of the suitors. WD was also rumored to have been interested in Fujitsu’s HDD business before that company was acquired by Toshiba.

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