Business Articles

The PlayStation 2's record sales will be blown away by the market dominance of the PlayStation 5, according to a top Japanese analyst. Sony's next-generation console is expected to sell anywhere from 200 to 300 million units its lifetime, which is thought to last 5-6 years.

BOE is the largest supplier of display panels (AMOLED included) in China. A new report indicates that it now intends to compete even further with the likes of Samsung by making its own ultra-thin glass (UTG) as well. This material is the most effective existing solution to protect foldable displays, and as such may become more and more important in the future.

PlayStation fans in Southeast Asia will be dismayed by the rumor that the PlayStation 5 launch may have been delayed in a number of countries in that region, including Indonesia and Thailand. However, while gamers in some places may have to wait until 2021 to buy the console, Singapore has already received a second PS5 pre-order wave.
Update: Sony has issued a short statement about the SEA launch.

Intel-based business laptops still have to make do with Comet Lake. This may not stop business customers from buying, but for many customers, laptops with outdated hardware no longer make sense. The HP ZBook Firefly 15 G7 also shares this fate.

Intel's latest Celeron 6305 and 6305E processors have a number of up-to-date features and specs that may make devices based on them particularly worthy of consideration. There may have a lower base clock here compared to its immediate forebear, but it also supports double the cache, as well as faster memory and graphics. And, of course, Thunderbolt 4 is here in these newer models.

Intel has launched the Pentium Gold 7505 processor, which, unlike its immediate predecessor, has a 10 nanometer (nm) architecture thanks to its place in the Tiger Lake series. It also now has double the cache and supports faster integrated graphics compared to its closest 2019 counterpart - with Thunderbolt 4 on top of that.

Xiaomi is believed to be one of the potential buyers for Huawei’s sub-brand Honor if such a deal is being planned. Other companies connected with the alleged sell-off include Digital China and TCL. Huawei has denied the rumor in the past but such a sale could be good for both Honor and its founder in terms of sustainability and growth.

Sony has unveiled a new colour option of the Xperia 1 II, Mirror Lake Green. The fresh look for the flagship smartphone has also been paired with 12 GB of RAM, like the Frost Black version that Sony launched in August.

The Xperia 5 II may not feature a vapour chamber cooling system, but Sony has attempted to keep its latest flagship cool in other ways. Multiple pieces of graphite film should help prevent overheating, while the Xperia 5 II looks simple to repair too.

Nokia has secured a contract from NASA to provide it with a 4G/LTE network - for a lunar base. The US' space administration has plans to have such a structure on the moon and operational by 2028, and the Finnish brand is the one to supply the astronauts who will work there with a telecommunications infrastructure based on a common terrestrial mobile data standard.

OnePlus is a smartphone brand that has leveraged hype around "alternative" flagships into a market-leading position over the years, and Carl Pei has been there from the start as its co-founder. However, he has just posted a goodbye message to its official community website, thereby affirming he is stepping down from this position and leaving the OEM.

We recently reviewed the 15-inch version of the ultra light-weight Galaxy Book Ion and were very pleased with it - all except for one major issue. Despite its good connectivity, its driver issues mess with its overall rating. We hope the manufacturer will be sending an update.

ASUS has packed an awful lot of features into the slim chassis of the ROG Swift PG32UQX, its 32-inch gaming monitor. Not only has ASUS included a 4K panel, but it also has equipped the PG32UQX with a 1,152 zone Mini-LED backlight and a 144 Hz refresh rate. The PG32UQX supports NVIDIA G-Sync Ultimate too, although there is no HDMI 2.1 on board.

Apple is expected to sell at least 70 million iPhone 12 units by the end of 2020, DigiTimes claims. Apple may even top 80 million units before the new year, barring an escalation in the trade war between China and the United States. Apparently, hardware improvements and a fresh design will drive iPhone sales this year.

OnePlus has released a new version of the Nord, its budget alternative to the likes of the OnePlus 8T and OnePlus 8 Pro. The Gray Ash variant is only available with the premium storage option of the OnePlus Nord though, making it just £80 cheaper than the entry-level OnePlus 8T.

The AirPods Studio may not be arriving until December at the earliest, according to a new report. March 2021 is another likely candidate for the release window of Apple's over-ear headphones, which are rumoured to cost up to US$599. The AirTags are now slated to arrive next month alongside iOS 14.3, though.

Dell's end-of-2020 holiday deals have been outlined in good time this year. They are a range of discounts on PCs and monitors for entrepreneurs as well as those looking for gift ideas already. This includes Vostro-brand machines, in addition to the new XPS 13 Touch.

The Nubia Watch is now available to order globally for US$219. The futuristic-looking smartwatch features a curved AMOLED screen, a heart-rate monitor and an e-SIM, among other features.

Nintendo will sell more consoles than Microsoft and Sony this holiday season, despite the arrival of the next-generation PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X, according to analysis from NPD. Call of Duty is expected to continue to dominate the market too, while the sale of gaming subscriptions and accessories will receive a boost.

ASRock has announced three new Intel NUCs based on the chipmaker's Tiger Lake-U architecture. The NUC 1100 BOX series will be available with up to the Core i7-1165G7, although all SKUs will offer the same connectivity and plethora of ports.

A well-known and reliable leaker has divulged that several smartphone manufacturers are working towards delivering next-generation wireless fast-charging. Apparently, the technologies will be capable of transferring up to 100 W wirelessly, which would be a generational leap for smartphones.

The Dell UltraSharp 32 HDR PremierColor UP3221Q is the world's first 2,000-zone mini-LED monitor, and it will begin shipping as early as November 5. The monitor can reach 1,000 nits, but it will set you back US$5,000.

OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei has quietly exited the company to start a new venture. Pei’s departure appears to have happened shortly after the OnePlus Nord was launched.

The flipping camera technology of the ZenFone series has delivered again, according to camera reviewers DxOMark. According to the French website, the ZenFone 7 Pro records better selfie videos than any other smartphone, although it cannot quite match the photo quality of the Huawei P40 Pro.

Chromebooks with Google's ChromeOS have been enjoying some popularity in the education sector. It seems that Google is making inroads in the business sector as well now, as some companies transition to the simpler Google OS. Lenovo's answer to this development: The new ThinkPad C13 Chromebook Enterprise. This 13.3 inch convertible is also the first ThinkPad laptop with a blue chassis.

NVIDIA has stopped selling the RTX 3080 FE and RTX 3090 FE on its online store. The Founders Edition cards will only be available from Best Buy in the US, but there is no word on European fulfilment options.

You're probably going to need a beefy laptop and cooling solution if you want to maximize the performance potential of the vPro Core i9-10885H. The budget Dell Precision 3551, for example, is only able to sustain a clock rate of just 2.7 GHz when the CPU is capable of running much faster.

Any number of products, devices and software included, is showcased on YouTube every day. Now, Bloomberg reports that Google has a new project that involves linking these items to sales pages generated by the Mountain View company itself through the medium of the vlogging site. This, apparently, will allow it to cash in on the prevailing online sales boom.

Razer has dipped its toes into the world of toasters, cryptocurrencies, LED credit cards, chairs, gaming tablets, projectors, and now Sneki Snek plushies in the name of trees and wildlife conservation. Because why not.

An eagle-eyed Redditor has spotted that Intel just introduced the Core i3-10100F with minimal fanfare. This direct successor to the i3-9100F still has no integrated graphics - although it does have hyper-threading, which is a first for its nascent series. It also has the same recommended price range as its preceding generation.

Google's latest Pixel-series flagship had been released for pre-orders in France, Germany, Ireland and the UK until October 15, 2020. However, this option is now no longer actionable in either of these countries. Similarly, if you are in these nations and want a 4a (5G), you have to join a wait-list.

Innovative features may be the icing on the cake but in order to make it in the laptop market you need to cover the basics. The ThinkBook Plus's special feature is its e-ink display. Unfortunately, the rest of the notebook is average at best.

CTL has announced the Chromebox CBx2, which as the OEM asserts, is versatile enough to take on the demands of a retail display as it is those of a remote worker. It has a range of up-to-date connectivity options; plus, with 2 variants with CPU choices between 1 Intel Celeron and 1 Core i7 processor, it may indeed be configurable to a range of use-cases.

Samsung has dropped the first hints about the Exynos 1080, its mid-range successor to the Exynos 980. The chipset is due to be built on a 5 nm node with ARM's new Cortex-A78 and Mali-G78 cores. Samsung claims that the Exynos 1080 will score over 650,000 points in AnTuTu, a score that would put it beyond flagship chipsets like the Snapdragon 865.

The HERO9 Black is the latest and most advanced action camera launched by GoPro in 2020. The OEM now claims that its success has led to a number of paid subscriptions for the company that has now exceeded 500,000 in number. It also now estimates that this figure may grow to about 700,000 by the end of the year.

AMD has been recording profitable quarters upon quarters for some time now and is out to expand its portfolio with FPGA chips designed for the telecommunications and defense markets. The merger between AMD and Xilinx could enable team red to become an important player in the 5G infrastructure sector and finally try its hand at AI-driven applications, plus it could strengthen its position in the data center market.

NVIDIA has released a cheaper version of the Jetson Nano Developer Kit, its developer board with a 128-core GPU. The new model has 2 GB of RAM and retails for just US$54. There are a few compromises from the US$99 Developer Kit, though.

Razer has revealed a set of prepaid cards, appropriately called Razer Cards. The Razer Card works with in-app payment service called Razer Pay, while the premium card glows green whenever it is used.

For those who consider that installing Windows 10 is a pain, Microsoft is preparing a new setup approach. Already present in the Insider Build 20231 of the operating system, the reworked initial device setup offers six scenarios to choose from: Creativity, Gaming, Schoolwork, Entertainment, Business, and Family.

Samsung has joined Apple in beating analyst expectations as well as bucking the global downturn with a 58 percent jump in profit for the September quarter. The result was driven by various factors including an unusual number of parts orders for Huawei as well as the strong performance of its mid-range mobile devices.

The official PS5 teardown video has just been released, and judging by the amount of views it has already accrued, there just seems to be no slowing down of the PS5 hype train. A report from a major UK retailer has simply added to the PlayStation 5’s dominance in the perceived next-generation console competition.

The United States Senate had earlier commissioned an investigation into claims that the "Big Four" tech companies - Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google - exert monopolies on the main sectors in which they operate, and, furthermore, maintain them through systems that act in their favor. This process has resulted in findings that could be interpreted to uphold these complaints.

Revealed back in late 2018, the next-gen 1Ynm 16 Gb DDR5 DRAM by SK Hynix is finally ready to hit the market. According to market analysis firm Omdia, DDR5 will account for 10 percent of the market in 2022 and is supposed to hit 43 percent before the end of 2024.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang feels that Ampere card shortages may last till end of 2020 or even till early 2021. Huang anticipates that the combination of holidays and the "Ampere factor" will result in a busy Q4. However, he does not see this as a problem but as a phenomenon that just needs to be observed.

Dell is currently launching its latest UltraSharp monitors for home-office and prosumer use. The OEM also now unveils the SB521A, touted as the "world's lightest and slimmest soundbar". This accessory can snap onto a monitor from its own brand with its top-mounted magnets, thus immediately adding 3.6W RMS audio power to the display in question.

Remote-working products reign supreme at present; however, Dell has prepared its new Meeting Space Solutions against the come-back of the real-life boardroom. They are bundles tailored to in-person conference settings of different sizes and conformations, and also adapt to the software preferred by the business client in question: Microsoft Teams or Zoom.