Taiwan’s Acer (TPE: 2353) reported its 2014 fiscal year earnings Wednesday, after the markets closed in Taipei and the company reported its first slim profit in three years.

The company reported revenue of $10.39 billion, down 23% year-over-year, but its gross profit grew 28.3% year-over-year to $925 million.

“The results show that Acer has stayed profitable throughout the entire year, with increasing profits each consecutive quarter, and has steadily turned its operations around,” Acer said in a press release. “We’ve kept adjusting the product mix contingent upon the demands of various markets.”

Jason Chen is already writing his legacy

Move the clocks back a year ago and things weren’t looking good for the company that’s considered one of the pillars of Taiwan’s PC-making industry. Acer’s then-new CEO, Jason Chen, who was installed in the company’s top position was looking at an ailing company. The PC market showed no signs of recovering, and while Acer had made considerable efforts to branch out to other markets such as tablets, smartphones and cloud, this diversification was not enough to stem the losses.

But over the last year, a series of wins for Acer turned things around. Its Chromebooks had a warm reception from consumers and its cloud business started to grow. Then the PC business once again began to pick up, growing even more once Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced Windows 10.

In a January profile piece from Bloomberg, Chen said that this year would be a year of growth, not recovery, for Acer.

“The turnaround is pretty much done,” he said. This year, “we should no longer talk about turnaround.”

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Acer (TPE: 2353) announced Tuesday that it’s planning to release the XG270HU gaming monitor, a 27-inch display that has QHD (2560 x 1440) resolution, a fast 144Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time.

Keen observers of the company’s releases might be confused. During January’s Consumer Electronics Show Acer announced the same thing, down to the connectivity (HDMI 2.0 port, Dual-Link DVI and DisplayPort 1.2a). However, this Feburary re-release has one key difference: the monitor supports the open source FreeSync from AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) and not Nvidia’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) G-Sync.

The difference between FreeSync and G-Sync is one uses open standards and DisplayPort, while the other uses proprietary components that are licensed to the monitor manufacturer. While Nvidia would argue strongly that G-Sync has technical advantages over FreeSync, for most users the difference is negligible.

The difference, however, comes down to the cost to manufacturers — which is thus passed on to consumers. Unless Nvidia delivers a strong incentives packages to companies to include G-Sync in their monitors, they will simply opt for the open source alternative. Why? Because they can pass the savings on to consumers.

It’s too early to tell if this is the beginning of a trend, or write the postmortem for G-Sync. Nvidia didn’t have much luck pushing out 3D Vision 2, which also required manufacturers to sign-on to include proprietary hardware in their monitors. Granted, consumers didn’t have much enthusiasm for 3D gaming — particularly if it required them to use a monitor which included proprietary technology.

Acer’s move is a vote of confidence for FreeSync, but not an outright rejection of Nvidia’s G-Sync. It will at least take another two or three quarters to get the first glimpse of a winner in the adaptive sync battle.

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Acer (TPE: 2353) said that the company is confident of its business scale in 2016 after its successful efforts to return to the profit-making direction.

“I hope we can gain momentum and expand our business scale starting from 2016. In 2015, we expect to find the right direction for our business and then speed up the momentum in 2016,” said Stan Shih (施振榮), founder for Acer.

Shih said that Acer, the leading Taiwanese PC maker, has expanded from hardware manufacturing into several new business with a profitable outlook, which will pave the way for faster growth of the company in the long term.

“Acer is like a big ship sailing in the ocean, but we lost direction in the past few years. We spent the entire year steadying ourselves last year, and I think now we have found the right direction to a new continent,” Shih said.

Acer’s revenue for 2014 declined to an eight-year low of US$10.49 billion. The PC maker has been moving beyond hardware manufacturing into software and services as the PC industry remains stagnated.

Acer Chief Executive Jason Chen (陳俊聖) said that the company will continue to invest in cloud computing this year, in return of a hope be profitable by the end of 2015.

“Our goal is to keep Acer’s core business and new businesses profitable and growing this year,” Chen said.

After a management reshuffle in January 2014, Acer began to emerge from three consecutive years of operating losses. The company’s new strategy “Build Your Own Cloud” became the hope for the company to increase the gross revenue of its cloud application business in 2015 by acquiring more corporate customers and increasing the payout rate for individual users. Acer said that the company has seen the number of individual users of its free cloud services jump from five million last year to six million as of Jan. 21. Shih said that the figure was estimated to reach 10 million during the first six months of this year.

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Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) and its Taiwan rival Acer (TPE: 2353) finished its fiscal year of 2014 with similar number of shipments for laptops, TrendForce said in its latest research.

Last year, Apple posted a spectacular 46.4% annual growth in laptop shipments, owing to its price-lowering strategy for its MacBook laptops, which resulted in a takeover of the mid-range and premium market segments, TrendForce said.

The high growth boosted Apple’s global market share to 9.3% in 2014, vaulting the company into sixth place in the global rankings, one spot behind Acer, which had a 10% market share.

Acer depended on its remarkable performance of its Chromebook laptops to maintain its shipment volume in the market. Although there was no significant rise in Acer’s total shipments, the company managed to slow its slide, dropping only one place in the global rankings last year, the research firm said.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s Asus (TPE: 2357) expanded its global market share to 11%, leaping into fourth place in the rankings.

Its performance was attributed mainly to the success of its 10.1-inch, 2-in-1 model T100 laptop, which accounted for over 10% of the company’s total shipments in 2014.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) remained the lead in the 2014 global laptop market with a 20.1% share, followed by Lenovo (HKG: 0992) with a 17.5% share, and Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) with 12.3%.

TrendForce said that global notebook shipments in 2014 totaled 175.5 million units, up by an annual 3.6%, boosted by the replacement of the Windows XP operating system and the promotion of low-priced notebooks by Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

“In 2015, the laptop market will only be able to maintain the same overall shipment level as last year, and the growth of some brands will come at the expense of others,” said Caroline Chen (陳虹燕), assistant research manager for TrendForce’s WitsView.

She forecasted that HP and its major rival Lenovo will continue to hold the top two spots this year, while the competition will remain tight between the third and the sixth places.

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IDC’ latest report said that Acer (TPE: 2353) and Asus (TPE: 2357), two of Taiwan’s major computer makers, continued to lose ground to bigger rivals in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions during the fourth quarter last year, despite strong consumer demand over the holiday season.

“PC manufacturers prepared very attractive consumer offers this Christmas, with low price points supported by Windows 8.1 with the Bing edition, which enticed end users to renew their devices,” said Maciek Gornicki, a senior research analyst for IDC. “With the conditions of the promotion about to change, inventories have been built up this quarter, contributing further to higher levels of stock in the supply chain, which might translate into a deceleration in consumer shipments in the first half of 2015.”

IDC said that PC shipments in these regions increased by 2% year-on-year to 25.5 million units in the last three months last year. Acer was ranked as the fourth brand name PC maker among them with a 9.7% market share and recorded an annual shipment decline of 2.5% year-on-year, in part due to a high comparison base over the same period of 2013.

Asus, meanwhile, continued to grow aggressively in the desktop market from a low comparison base, but the company’s success in the tablet market seems to have come at the expense of portable PC shipments, which contracted slightly, IDC said.

IDC’s report showed that Asus’ PC shipments in the markets of the Europe, Middle East, and Africa declined 3.3% year-on-year, giving it an 8.6% market share and ranking it in the fifth place.

In the meantime, IDC said that the top three PC vendors all gained market share. HP (NYSE: HPQ) remained the biggest player, with a 23.3% share of the market, followed by Lenovo (SWX: LEN) with 19.6% and Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) with 9.8%.

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Yes, you heard that right. Newegg’s Black November (because Black Friday and Cyber Monday aren’t enough) has given us a pretty awesome deal. This deal is for an Acer B286HK 28″ 4K monitor that can display 4K video at 60 FPS and does it over DisplayPort 1.2. This monitor’s original price was $699, which isn’t that bad for a 4K monitor, but there are others out there with arguably better panels and design than the Acer at that price.

However, at $349, there is no monitor on earth that can compete with a 28″ 4K monitor at that price. In fact, someone recently pointed out that 4K monitors are starting to sell at lower prices than 1440P monitors and for some reason they are easier to find as well. We can partially thank the Chinese panel manufacturers for that, and we can also thank the fact that 4K gaming is finally starting to take off and people just aren’t interested in 1440P as much as 4K.

The other great thing about this monitor is the plethora of connectivity that it supports, which includes DVI (DVI w/HDCP), MHL, Displayport(v1.2) and MiniDP. It also tilts, swivels and adjusts the height. So you could theoretically have three 4K monitors in portrait mode and not even spend $1,000 which is something that was unheard of until today’s Acer deal. In fact, the reality is that you can have 4K surround gaming with these monitors for under a grand and that’s about as much as it’ll cost you to run three Nvidia G-Sync monitors together.

It does only have a viewing angle of 170 (H) and 160 (V) which clearly indicates that it is not an IPS panel, very likely a TN, but at $349 nobody is going to complain about a 4K TN panel. There are plenty of people out there that would happily buy a TN 4K planel for $349 and I suspect that this monitor will very likely not last until Cyber Monday unless Newegg has some ridiculous amount on hand.

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AMD (NYSE:AMD) and Samsung (KRX:005930) announced a partnership today at the AMD Future of Compute event in held in Singapore.

The partnership will have Samsung making FreeSync enabled displays, and they will begin to appear in March of next year.  The first will be 23.6 inch and 28 inch versions of the UD590 which will both be UHD (4K) displays.  Later will come some more UHD displays in the UE850 line with 23.6 inch, 28 inch , and 31.5 inch models.  AMD’s FreeSync is its alternative to Nvidia’s G-SYNC tech that has been in the market for over a year now. AMD went the royalty free route with its FreeSync technology that is based on the Adaptive-Sync open standard for DisplayPort.  VESA is implementing this technology in the new DisplayPort 1.2a and DisplayPort 1.3 specification.  With the lower costs of FreeSync tech this will no doubt encourage more manufacturers to use it in upcoming models.

It may be fairly late in the game for FreeSync since G-Sync has done well with gaming enthusiasts looking to get a good gaming monitor.  Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has made headway getting companies on the G-SYNC train, such as ASUS (TPE: 2357), BenQ (TPE:8215), Philips, and Acer (TPE:2353).  The 27″ QHD (2560×1440) 144Hz ASUS ROG Swift PG278Q is by far one of the best G-SYNC monitors that is currently available but sells for $799 and isn’t even 4K.  There are also UHD versions available such as the Acer XB280HK that retails for just under $800. But even with a decent amount of monitors on the market, Nvidia’s G-Sync monitors command a serious premium over equally specced monitors without G-Sync. As such, this could potentially put Nvidia at a disadvantage since many monitor manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to differentiate without spending too much money on the bill of materials (BOM).

There is little doubt that FreeSync will do well and that the partnership between AMD and Samsung will do well with the products.  With about four months until the models come out users will have plenty of time to set some money aside each month now that we have a date.  This will be the go-to monitor of choice for the AMD fans and there sure are plenty of them waiting for the next-gen AMD product to pair with a FreeSync monitor. There has also been talk of companies like BENQ and even ASUS potentially releasing FreeSync compatible monitors. The reality of the situation is that adaptive sync is the superior technology and will very likely get adopted by Intel and that will help AMD overcome Nvidia’s overall size and dominance in the graphics market. Once AMD can partner with Intel (crazy to think) to push FreeSync/Adaptive Sync in both companies’ products then G-Sync will effectively be dead. But you can’t blame Nvidia for wanting to improve gaming, even at a fairly high cost.

The partnership will see Samsung releasing new FreeSync monitors in March 2015.

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Here is the daily roundup from Japanese consumer tech and tech business websites for November 19, 2014.

NTS develops fireproofing coating agent
NTS Japan develops a new halogen free, liquid-based coating agent that can be applied on any material to instantly make it fireproof.

Toshiba reveals new Wacom pen-compatible tablet
Toshiba announces a new Dynabook Tab S model that will incorporate Wacom’s Active ES technology. No prices revealed yet, but the new Windows tablet is slated for a mid-December release.

Acer’s Aspire Switch 11 soon to arrive in Japan
Acer Japan finally announces the release date of its upcoming 2-in-1 notebook PC, the Aspire Switch 11 in Japan, which is on the 21st of November.

Sony’s new 4K OLED display set for early 2015 launch
Sony reveals the release date of its new upcoming 4K TV model for business use, the BVM-X300, which will use a 30-inch OLED screen. It will be commercially available around February next year, with a price tag that is equivalent to $33,000.00.

Buffalo releases DLPA 2.0 compliant NAS drives
Buffalo Japan announces its release of its new NAS drive, the Link station MyBox LS411DX. The new HDD will be compliant to the DLPA 2.0 remote access guidelines, and will be released sometime around the end of this year.

Kawasaki to develop an independent hydrogen production system
Kawasaki has recently revealed its plans to develop a new hydrogen production system, which will be used independently on some of its industrial establishments.

The post Toshiba Tablet, Acer PC, Sony TV: The Headlines in Tokyo for November 19 appeared first on VR World.

Here is the daily roundup from Japanese consumer tech and tech business websites for November 12, 2014.

TDK launches high bias voltage, high effective capacitance ‘singing’ capacitors
TDK Corporation announces the release of a new line of CeraLink ceramic capacitors aimed for switching regulators and snubber circuits. While standard ceramic capacitors often sacrifice effective capacitance to achieve high bias voltage, this new capacitor features both high bias voltage and effective capacitance.

Fuji Electric showcases wearable tech for long-distance work support systems
Fuji Electric and Fuji IT have recently opened a reference exhibit for a new glass-type wearable tech at Tokyo’s Monozukuri NEXT 2014 event. The new wearable concept was designed to aid workers at job sites, by combining human instruction and cloud-based data to provide active assistance via transmitted information.

Acer releases new entry-level Aspire E in Japan
Acer Japan announces the launch of a new Aspire E (ES1-512-F14D) notebook PC by the end of this week. This Aspire E is an entry level 15.6-inch screen laptop aimed at casual personal users, and will be catered with an introduction price of about $330.00.

Google opens gadget exhibit at Roppongi
Google recently showcased all of its recent products and developed gadgets at a ‘touch and try’ event, which was held at a café in Roppongi, Tokyo. Among the items exhibited were the Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Android Wear, a few Chromebook models and Chromecast.

IBM proposal introduces new program for Japanese middle school students
IBM Japan held a seminar and workshop earlier this week that centered on the topic of societal and education-based changes in accordance to changes in technology. Together with the Association of Corporation and Education (ACE), the company proposed a new educational program aimed at Japanese middle school students, which introduces big data analytics into the system.

KDDI’s historic trans-pacific feat wins IEEE milestone award
Major Japanese telecom company KDDI (formerly KDD) receives recognition as it is awarded with the IEEE milestone for its participation in the development and deployment of the historical Trans Pacific Cable 1 (TRANSPAC-1 or TPC-1) network.

HP estimates Japan cyber crime losses at $6 million
According to a research made by HP Japan, at least 31 major companies and business in Japan suffered financial losses due to cyber crime. With an increase of almost 76% over the past 3 years, the total losses were estimated to be about $6 million.

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According to Gartner’s latest report on the PC market shipments and marketshare, the company is reporting that overall global PC shipments shrunk 0.5% year over year. However, if you look at the US and EMEA figures, you see that the US grew by a sizable 4.2% and Europe more than doubled that by growing a hefty 9.6%.

What this means is that even though the US and Europe, which are considered developed markets, saw significant growth, the losses in Asia and other global markets (Latin America and Africa) ate up all of those growths in shipments. Also, Gartner’s data does not include Chromebooks or non-x86 tablet PCs, which may even skew the US and EU PC market figures downward where we’re seeing a huge resurgence of Chromebooks.

As you can tell from Gartner’s PC Market table for the entire global market, Lenovo continues to see incredibly strong growth year over year mostly at the cost of ‘other’ PC market vendors who saw their shipments decreasee 15.5%. The reality is that the global PC market last quarter was effectively flat when compared to last year since 0.5% is almost within their margin of error. As such, any gains are very likely at the cost of some other competitor.

In the US, HP still continues to be the number one vendor in the PC market even though Dell seems to be catching up to them, showing the largest growth, a whopping 18.4% year over year. Apple also saw fairly good growth, meaning that their overall marketshare of the US PC market continues to grow. Toshiba was actually the only major vendor to see a significant decrease in shipments, which is very likely due to the fact that the company’s overall product line in the US is fairly weak. Globally, Toshiba is not even ranked top 5.

Europe is a fantastic story for the PC market and overall the top four vendors saw fantastic growth with HP seeing 14% growth while Lenovo and Acer both saw over 40% growth year over year. Even ASUS saw over 33% growth in the third quarter compared to last year, which bodes really well for the Asian manufacturers. In fact, the companies’ contraction in Asia is very likely offset by growth in Europe where ASPs are generally higher.

Overall, it appears as though the PC market is nowhere near finished and that tablets are not having the impact that many would have you believe. The developed markets have had their time with tablets and the saturation of tablets has pretty much reached its peak. The PC Market in Asia and other markets is either struggling due to reduced overall economic demand (like in China) or due to tablets still not having reached saturation levels that they have in the developed markets. If you consider that the developed markets are generally more profitable for most PC manufacturers (regardless of where they’re from) then most PC manufacturers will consider the third quarter a good one that could be better.

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Is it possible that my 2408WFP is already out-dated?

What makes this very interesting is the explanation what Splendid video engine actually is. It is obvious that Splendid is a name for custom design C-Media chips that enhance the sound (on Xonar cards) and video (on selected graphics cards) quality. In case of displays, “Splendid Video Intelligence Technology” is a name for color engine that analyzes and modifies the video playback. There are five presets that should enhance your experience, but one of most important features to us is the fact that this technology clears distortion when playing 4:3 content on these 16:10 screens.
Out of launched displays, we like VK266H the most. This display comes with rotatable 2.0 MPixel camera and those mics that enable seamless internet communication. One of things that pissed me the most was the fact that if you used video conferencing, your notebook would be better equipped than the desktop. I had numerous video conferences where my notebook camera was capturing my face while I watched at 24″ screen, and that just looked odd.
If you haven’t tried working on 24 or 26″ screens, I would personally recommend that you switch from limits of 4:3/5:4. Could any of these four monitors be your ideal candidate? Only time will tell.

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