First with a presentation by C.T. Liu, the vice-president and general manager of AUO‘s consumer division – Taiwan’s largest flat-panel maker - who expects e-book display shipments to reach 3.6 million units this year, totaling $271 million. In 2012, shipments of over 18 million units will generate over $1.1 billion.
e-book readers to reach 77 million units in 9-years; touchscreen, colour in the horizon
Then, DisplaySearch analyst Jennifer Colegrove grew even more optimistic and estimated that the e-paper display market for e-books and e-textbooks (5 to 10 inches in size) will grow from 4 million units this year to 77 million in 2018, totaling $3.8 billion in revenues!
A huge growth, unless of course – as rumoured – Apple unveils one next week!
Finally, E Ink vice-president of marketing Sriram Peruvemba expects that by the end of year the number of e-books (small 5″ displays to 6″ to 8″ and sometimes 9″ for specific applications) will exceed 50, from about 25 different manufacturers.
Interestingly, Peruvemba believes that e-Textbooks will be the killer application for e-Paper/e-Book readers.
“On average, college students spend $650 per year on textbooks, which would pay for the device,” says the E Ink executive.
Peruvemba also showed a sleek 5″ e-book that fits in his jacket’s inside pocket. A colour version from E Ink is due by the end of 2010. Today, Fujitsu’s $1,000 Flepia is the only colour e-book reader on the market.
Follows a short video clip of the 3 presentations:
On the heels of yesterday’s Intel briefing, AMD is touring Silicon Valley this week to talk about its own strategy and vision ahead of the Windows 7 launch, due on Oct. 22.
Although most of the information is still under wraps until AMD’s own Sept. 10 event, we caught up with worldwide marketing vice-president Leslie Sobon at AMD’s headquarters in Sunnyvale where she was keen to point out some of the work the chip designer did to optimise its upcoming notebook and desktop platforms to support Windows 7 high-end graphics capabilities aka DirectX 11.
“We’ll have the first DirectX 11 games enabled on our graphics cards. You’re not going to see that from Intel… or nVidia either… It’s all about the compute shader… The first pieces of what comes out for DirectX 11 is in the gaming side but it actually translates even into entertainment and video visual quality,” explains Sobon.
Consumers don’t care about the processor
During our conversation, Sobon also commented on the complexity consumers are facing when choosing a new computer.
“Mainstream consumers don’t care about the processor in their system. They care about whether or not they can watch Hulu HD or if the Flip camera video actually runs on their PC. They don’t care if it’s a Turion, or an Athlon or a Core i5… they didn’t care for many many years,” explained Sobon.
AMD will support GPU overclocking
On overclocking – which is a way to increase the speed/frequency/clock of individual PC components like the CPU or the memory -, the AMD executive confirmed the chip designer’s commitment to continue offering a wide range of options for PC enthusiasts to boost or “overclock” every part of their computers, including soon the graphics processor (GPU)!
“What aren’t we doing to help overclockers. We’ve got the chipset that enables it, AMD overdrive that lets you optimise at your heart’s content on the platform side, as well as on the CPU side… We have the overclocking record,” adds Sobon.
For more on AMD plans, we’ll have to wait Sept. 10th!
ATI's former mobile graphics chip boss Phil Eisler is now Nvidias general manager of the 3D Vision business unit
Can ATI stop the talent exodus?
After ATI’s former CEO David Orton, CTO Bob Drebin and other executives and engineers defecting the Canadian outfit, the chipmaker recently lost its senior vice-president and general manager of the chipset and notebook business unit Phil Eisler who was just named last night Nvidia’s general manager of its emerging 3D Vision business unit.
“3D Vision has created immense buzz since its’ launch. The team has brought a very high quality interactive solution to market, at a very affordable price. Gaming, movies and digital photography are all being pushed to a new level with 3D Vision. Phil will be responsible for driving NVIDIA 3D Vision onto a global scale and building it into a key differentiator of GeForce based desktops and notebooks,” said senior vice-president of Nvidia’s GeForce business unit Jeff Fisher in an internal memo.
At AMD/ATI, Esler was responsible for the mobile and integrated product lines, including mobility Radeon graphics processors. He had been at ATI for nearly 15 years.
The funny part is that despite leaving some months ago, when AMD decided to relocate some ATI staff to its Austin, Texas, headquarters, Esler’s bio is still up on ATI’s website. Nostalgia maybe?
ATI will officially launch its next generation graphics chip dubbed “Evergreen” – previously shown at Computex and QuakeCon – on September 10th at the U.S.S. Hornet in Alameda, Calif.
If IDC's bearish forecast materialises, then more Flash memory makers will have to declare bankruptcy
For a change, research firms agreed to disagree in forecasting the emergence of the solid-state disk (SSD) drive market.
During a panel hosted today at the Flash Memory Summit conference in Santa Clara, Calif., small technical research firm Forward Insights blasted its larger competitors (including IDC and Gartner) for their hockey-stick-like projections of the SSD market.
But first, to set the stage, IDC research manager in hard-disk drive (HDD) components and solid-state disk (SSD) drives Jeff Janukowicz said he expects the SSD market to reach $3 billion in sales next year, compare to $733 million in 2008 and less than a billion dollar this year.
IDC’s forecast will lead Flash memory makers to bankruptcy
A bearish growth that for Janukowicz will be mostly driven by enterprises adopting SSDs to improve the performance and lower the consumption of their data centres and by early-adopters in the PC market like gamers in the desktop segment or executives’ laptops.
Here’s a video excerpt of Janukowicz remarks:
Great outlook, right?
Well, not really according to Forward Insights President Greg Wong who thinks that this kind of hyper growth can not be done in a profitable way.
“If you take a look at the industry right now, profitability is a big challenge for everybody. So where will they get the money to invest and expand at the big growth rate that you see here [pointing at competitors' forecasts]… wether its through technology migration, plus 3-bits per cell, plus 20% CAPEX. That’s what you need to achieve those rates that [competitors] are predicting for next year. If you believe that it’s feasible, then I guess you’ll have to use their projections… And even if demand is quite strong next year, where will they get the cash?,” explains Wong.
A more prudent sentiment that was echoed during the conference by Sandisk CEO Eli Harari and Samsung vice president of memory marketing Jim Elliot.
In this video excerpt Wong explains his opposing arguments to the explosive growth of the Flash memory market:
Objective Analysis believe SSDs will never reach prices of HDDs
In his presentation at the Flash Memory Summit today, Objective Analysis principal Jim Handy was quite optimistic on the future of the NAND flash memory market; for the near term.
Flash memory market business to remain viable until 2011
Handy pointed to current product shortages and price stability that will probably last until 2010-2011 due to growing demand combined with production and capital investments cutbacks; which is music to the ears for the 5 Flash memory makers left (Hynix, Micron, Samsung, Sandisk, Toshiba) in the market which are still recovering from their deep losses in 2008.
Looking at SSDs, Handy believes this market is ripe for consolidation; which will go from the 171+ Flash-based drive makers of today to just a handful. “Remember that there were 282 companies that used to make disk drives before the market consolidates to about 5 today,” recalls DISK/TREND founder Jim Porter.
Handy also expects SSDs to stay weak in the PC market due to higher costs compare to hard-disk drives and the upcoming launch of Braidwood, the codename for Intel’s update of its Turbo Memory technology, a flash-based caching technology that should improve disk access performance which is scheduled to be featured on mainstream motherboards in 2010.
To add insult to injury, Handy doesn’t see a price crossover between SSDs and HDDs… actually this may never happen.
Hard-disk drives will hold back the performance benefits of Intel's upcoming high-end graphics chip Larrabee
With the first generation of Intel’s high-end graphics chip – code named Larrabee – only a few months away from shipping, Intel is trying to set some expectations in regards of its performance.
Speaking at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., Intel’s desktop “performance guy” François Piednoël pointed that the performance and the user experience of a Larrabee-based PC will be “less interesting” with a hard-disk drive installed, highly recommending a solid-state drive (SDD) instead.
Hard-disk drives are what is holding PC performance back
Luckily, it so happened that the Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker had recently shipped its next-generation 80GB SSD for about $220. At this price, Piednoël argues, consumers will begin to pay attention on this new category of devices.
“On a lot of benchmarks you will get more performance benefits to put an SSD into a laptop than having a discrete graphics card… This accelerate dramatically the user experience.”
A statement that I largely agree with having experienced a jump of performance after I installed a Kingston’s SSD on a MacBook used for video editing. The jump in performance was immediately noticeable and would have only been possible if I had upgraded the processor and/or the Nvidia discrete graphics.
With that in mind, Intel’s heavy investment in SSD technologies makes a lot more sense. “The CPU and the SSD are intimately linked. The faster the SSD is, the more you need processing power, and vice-versa.” CQFD.
Follows 2 video excerpts of Piednoël’s presentation at the Flash Memory Summit:
Can AMD change the game in graphics with its upcoming Evergreen GPUs? We'll know on September 10th!
[Update 1] We’ve got confirmation from AMD that the Evergreen cards are being shown this weekend, at the QuakeCon video game convention in Dallas, Texas.
[Update 2] AMD will host its Evergreen’s official launch on aircraft carrier U.S.S. Hornet moored in Alameda, Calif.
The word is finally out. AMD will launch it’s much anticipated next generation graphics processors code name “Evergreen” on September 10th; ahead of Windows 7′s launch in late October..
For AMD, these 40-nm, Microsoft DX11-compliant GPUs will fundamentally change the graphics industry and give it a clear advantage over Nvidia, again!
The prior generation of ATI cards was such high performance and so cheap that they forced Nvidia to hastily put together competitive video cards.
Sadly, AMD’s Santa Clara, Calif., rival hasn’t shown much of its DX-11 chips yet. However, Nvidia might choose to show off its wares at its own GPU Technology conference at the end of September in San Jose.
The GPU market is finally kicking some tires, just in time for the holiday season!
Verbatim continues its push in Flash memory with this tiny and tough USB drive
You’d be surprised what an old storage company like Verbatim – which started by selling data cassettes 40-years ago – can bring to the rapidly changing flash memory market.
For Mark Rogers, the company’s marketing manager for its 6-year old Flash business, it’s all about:
Lifetime warranty on all Flash products (both cards and USB drives); replacing any faulty devices, no questions ask. Kingston also offers a lifetime warranty on its Flash memory cards, but only 5-years for its USB drives; for Sandisk its 2-years and just 1-year for PNY;
A standard password protection feature (for Windows only, not Macs) available on most of Verbatim drives;
Enough performance to speed up Windows, thanks to the USB keys “ReadyBoost” compatibility;
And in conjunction with this week Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., Verbatim introduced new USB keys – the TUFF-’N'-TINY line – that are among the smallest and sturdiest in the market.
Mobile phones are main driver of Flash memory cards sales
However, despite being the fourth top selling brand of USB flash drives in the U.S., Verbatim is yet to ship a solid-state drive (SSD) that would compete with the likes of Intel/Kingston, STEC, etc.
“But we’re in the process of launching an ExpressCard SSD [announced at the Consumer Electronics Show last January and already shipping in Europe] which is based on a removable form-factor. Verbatim is in the removable media business and we chose to start our entry in SSD in that manner ,” said Rogers.
More on our exclusive interview with Verbatim in the video below:
Intel's strategic investing arm managed to survive thanks to its financial returns
Started in 1991, Intel Capital is by far the longest surviving “corporate” venture capital organisation and the most active in Silicon Valley.
“We have the classic objective of balancing strategic needs for the company as well as financial returns. We existed this long because we have generated quite positive financial returns for the company… We invest off the balance sheet, we don’t have a fund type structure. But in any given year we invest hundreds of millions of dollars,” explains Intel Capital’s cleantech leader Steve Eichenlaub, speaking at the Intel Technology Summit yesterday in San Francisco.
Intel Capital is “round” agnostic – although prefers investing in B and C rounds – and its 100 or so investment professionals will usually poor around $300 million to $400 million a year, in all stages (seed to publicly traded) of a company’s evolution, worldwide.
Think of Intel Capital as a large venture capital organisation inside of a large publicly traded corporation. “In some ways we kind of do an entire venture capital fund every year!,” added Eichenlaub.
Intel Capital invests in these 7 technology markets, cleantech being the newest one
One of the “value-add” that Intel Capital brings to its portfolio companies is its vast network of relationships with large customers, through Tech Days, a one-day event hosted 60 to 70 times a year at a partner location, like Microsoft, BT, Huawei, BMW,Comcast…
Here’s a video excerpt of Eichenlaub’s overview of Intel Capital:
Intel Capital invested over $100 million in Cleantech startups in the past year and a half
Today Intel announced five cleantech investments (1 new, 4 “follow-ups”), totaling approximately $10 million: CPower (demand response and energy efficiency), Powervation (digital power control), Convey Computers (energy efficient high performance computing), Grid Net (smart meter infrastructure) and iControl (home automation and monitoring).
What’s driving the chip maker to invest, collectively in the last year and a half, over $100 million in cleantech is its own Open Energy initiative, said Intel Capital’s cleantech leader Steve Eichenlaub.
Speaking at the company’s Technology Innovation Summit held in San Francisco today, Eichenlaub added that Intel is looking at additional “technology-driven” companies – around the world – in the areas of generation and storage, transportation, consumption and transmission and distribution, to complete the company’s cleantech portfolio.
Follows is a video excerpt of Eichenlaub’s presentation of Intel Capital’s cleantech investment strategy :
And another video that summarises Intel’s investments in Cleantech:
Finally, here are 4 videos where Eichenlaub explains why Intel made investments in Convey, iControl, Grid Net and Powervation.
Can anyone @IBM fix the WiFi network at #IOD11 ? It's been terrible for the past 2 days and everybody I talked just can't stand it anymore 6 months ago
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