Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) unveiled Tuesday two new low-cost Chromebooks that will make the Google laptop platform much more competitive against the low-end Windows laptop space.

The two Chromebooks are from Hisense (SHA:600060) and Haier (HKG:1169),two China-based OEM/ODMs known best for providing budget electronics to specific retailers. Both Chromebooks are priced at $149 and are powered by the quad-core Rockchip RK3288 SoC clocked at 1.8GHz.

Each laptop is virtually identical with 11.6-inch LED-backlit display, 2GB of DDR3L SDRAM, 16GB of eMMC flash storage, and a 720p webcam. The only difference between the two is battery life.

First up is the Hisense Chromebook, which will be exclusively sold at Walmart (NYSE: WMT). It promises 8.5 hours of battery life. It’s 0.6 inches thick and weighs 3.3 pounds.

The Haier Chromebook 11, an exclusive to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), has 10 hours of promised battery life.

What’s in a Rockchip?

Rockchip is probably best known for its deal with Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) to bring x86 to the next-generation of cheap tablets for the Chinese market.

Aside from that Rockchip is a fairly run-of-the-mill low-end ARM (LON: ARM) manufacturer that would one day like to challenge the incumbents such as Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and MediaTek (TPE: 2454).

The Rockchip RK3288 has four 1.8 GHz ARM Cortex A17 cores and a quad-core ARM Mali T760 GPU.

Benchmarks on the RK3288 are scant, but one from January from a firm called CNX Software shows that its around 18% faster in Antutu than an Intel Atom Z3735F.

Chromebook on a stick

The other Rockchip RK3288 powered Chrome device is the Chromebit, and HDMI dongle that brings full Chromebox (a set-top Chrome computer) to a dongle. It’s powered by a Rockchip 3288 SoC, has 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, and 802.11ac connectivity.

One obvious use case for the Chromebit is presentations. Instead of trying to get one’s laptop connected to the venue’s projector, someone could just plug in the Chromebit into the projector’s HDMI port.

Pricing of the Chromebit will be less than $100.

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Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) hasn’t been as successful as Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) in the LTE modem segment, but that may all change in 2016 as it is being rumored that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is leaning toward the chip vendor’s XMM 7360 LTE modem in lieu of Qualcomm’s offerings, which have been in use in iPhones for several generations now.

Venturebeat, citing anonymous sources, revealed that a variant of the next-generation iPhone — aimed at Asian and other emerging markets —  will feature Intel’s new XMM 7360 modem:

Intel has been gunning hard during the past year for a place in the iPhone and now appears to have succeeded, at least partly. The 7360 chip will ship inside a special version of the iPhone that will be marketed to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America, the sources said.

Like Qualcomm’s X12 modem, the Intel XMM 7360 offers LTE Category 10 connectivity, which is achieved through 3x carrier aggregation. The cellular modem can attain download speeds of 450 megabits per second. The modem was announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month, with commercial availability slated for the second half of 2015. Apple engineers have allegedly traveled to Intel’s R&D facility in Munich, Germany to work with the chip vendor on the modem.

One of the major issues with Intel’s LTE offering in 2014, the XMM 7260, was finding manufacturers that were willing to use the modem in their SoCs. Samsung and LG used the modem in a few of their products, with a few versions of the Galaxy Alpha and Galaxy Note 4 featuring the XMM 7260 module, as well as LG’s first in-house SoC — Nuclun.

Managing to get its cellular modem on the iPhone will be a major win for Intel, and will be yet another blow for Qualcomm, which has already lost Samsung as a customer for its Snapdragon SoCs — at least in high-end devices — this year. Intel is readily acknowledging that it is far behind Qualcomm in the mobile application processor segment, but by making power efficient LTE modems and offering integrated solutions for mid-tier devices aimed at emerging markets, such as the Zenfone 2, it is turning into a credible threat in this space.

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In what may turn out to be a vital move for MediaTek (TPE:2454) in its bid to challenge Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) in the mobile segment, it is believed that the Taiwanese manufacturer is set to license AMD’s (NASDAQ:AMD) graphics technology for its SoCs.

There are no concrete details on the alleged partnership, which is said to have occurred at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Siding with a vendor such as AMD would be beneficial to both companies as it would give MediaTek leverage a significant advantage in the realm of mobile graphics, and AMD would stand to gain a foothold in the ultra low-power market.

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) already has the Tegra X1 in this segment, and even if AMD does not create an SoC by itself, siding with a manufacturer such as MediaTek would ensure that its offerings are seen in a wide variety of hardware, a feat that Nvidia has failed to achieve thus far with its Tegra chips.

MediaTek is set to up the ante this year with its range of 64-bit octa-core SoCs that offer LTE connectivity, and while its offerings are slowly gaining traction — particularly in markets like China and India — the Taiwanese vendor does not manufacture a custom graphics solution. Options in this segment include ARM’s Mali GPU and Imagination’s PowerVR offerings, both of which MediaTek has used in the past.

Qualcomm, meanwhile, holds a significant lead with its in-house Adreno GPUs, the foundation of which was built on by ATI, which AMD acquired in 2006. AMD finally sold the technology — branded Imageon — to Qualcomm for a meager $64 million in 2009. A deal with MediaTek would bring about a re-entry into the world of mobile graphic solutions for AMD.

A collaboration between the two would also lead to an increased focus on HSA/GPGPU products, considering that MediaTek is a founding member of the HSA Foundation. There’s no mention as to when we will see a MediaTek SoC powered by AMD graphics, and seeing as how Computex is where AMD is said to launch its next-generation desktop video cards, it is likely we’ll hear more about the vendor’s re-emergence into the world of low-power graphics at the event.

VR World has reached out to MediaTek for comment and will be updating this post if the company chooses to respond.

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During its keynote at the 2015 Mobile World Congress, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) gave a few more details on its upcoming Snapdragon 820 flagship SoC.

While the details during the keynote were rather sparse, we did learn a few important things. First the chip’s CPU will be Qualcomm’s new Kyro 64-bit architecture using ARMv8. Dubbed Kyro, this will be fabricated on a 16nm process node likely from TSMC (TPE: 2330). No details on the chip’s GPU or CPU speed were announced.

However the most talked about feature of the Snapdragon 820 will not be the Kyro CPU, but rather the machine learning integrated into the chip called Zeroth. Qualcomm says Zeroth will allow the device to learn more about its surroundings by collecting data from all of its sensors such as its microphone and camera. All of the processing and machine learning will be done locally on-chip rather than in the cloud.

Qualcomm said that Zeroth’s capabilities will evolve over time. Its first use cases will be simple but things will improve as time goes on. Qualcomm said that it will have a number of technology demos on the show floor later this week.

For Qualcomm this is a way to differentiate its chips from the competition. Having lost the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge to the competition (in this case Samsung’s (KRX:005930) home-grown SoCs), Qualcomm needs something spectacular to set its chips apart from the competition. Progressively faster CPU and GPU speeds just won’t cut it anymore.

The Snapdragon 820 will start shipping in the second half of this year. Qualcomm did not say when devices containing it will be available to consumers.

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After extolling the virtues of “faster cores over more cores” for years, Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) has ceded to market demands by launching four new Snapdragon SoCs that will be aimed at entry-level and mid-tier segments, with three offering eight-core CPUs and one with a hexa-core processor. With MediaTek steadily gaining momentum and Samsung stepping up its efforts in this segment, Qualcomm is facing more competition in this segment than ever before.

The new announcements include two new SoCs in the Snapdragon 400 line, the Snapdragon 415 and the Snapdragon 425, and two additions to the Snapdragon 6xx line in the form of the Snapdragon 618 and the Snapdragon 620. The latter two SoCs are the first to include ARM’s (NASDAQ:ARMH) latest Cortex A72 CPU, which is claimed to offer double the performance of the now-standard Cortex A57.

The new entry-level Snapdragons

Let’s take a detailed look at the new SoCs on offer. The Snapdragon 415 and Snapdragon 425 launched as successors to the Snapdragon 410, and as such feature the same core, Cortex A53, although the number of cores has doubled from four to eight. Core clock has also largely remained the same at 1.4GHz, with four cores in the Snapdragon 425 clocked slightly higher at 1.7 GHz. Memory clock has increased from 533MHz on the Snapdragon 410 to 667MHz on the Snapdragon 415 and 993 MHz on the Snapdragon 425, with LPDDR3 as standard on both SoCs.

The GPU side of things sees the introduction of Adreno 405 in this series, with the GPU itself unchanged from the one available in the 615. That means we’re looking at a clock of 550 MHz and a GFLOPS count of 59.1. In terms of connectivity, the Snapdragon 415 features Qualcomm’s rebadged XLTE 4 series modem, which delivers LTE Category 4 connectivity. What this essentially translates to is that if you’re on a network that can provide the bandwidth, you can access data at 150 Mbit/sec from your device.

The Snapdragon 415 also features a 13MP ISP and a H.264 codec  as well as HEVC decode. The Snapdragon 425 also comes with the same hardware decoder and codecs, but also has a dual-ISP feature that allows handset vendors to use the SoC in a device to drive two 21MP cameras. LTE connectivity has also been enhanced in the Snapdragon 425, with Qualcomm offering what it calls the X8 LTE modem. The modem delivers LTE Category 7 connectivity with a maximum bandwidth of 300 Mbit/sec, achieved through carrier aggregation.

High-end comes to the mid-tier

With the introduction of the Snapdragon 618 and the Snapdragon 620, Qualcomm has enabled several features that have thus far been reserved for the high-end chips to the mid-range segment. First among those is the ability to drive 4K resolutions, with both the Snapdragon 618 and Snapdragon 620 coming with hardware encoders and decoders that can handle a resolution of 3840 x 2160, which is a feature taken from the Snapdragon  810. Also included is the X8 LTE modem that delivers LTE Category 7 connectivity and a bandwidth of 300 Mbit/sec, and dual-ISPs that can facilitate two 21MP camera sensors.

While the Snapdragon 415 and Snapdragon 425 featured single-channel LPDDR3 memory, the Snapdragon 618 and Snapdragon 620 come with dual-channel lanes clocked at 933 MHz, resulting in a bandwidth of 14.9GB/s, or roughly double that of the Snapdragon 425.

A major highlight with the Snapdragon 6xx SoCs is the inclusion of the Cortex A72 CPU. The Snapdragon 618 is a hexa-core offering with four Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1.2 GHz and two Cortex A72 cores at 1.8 GHz, with the Snapdragon 620 coming with the same clock speeds but offering two more Cortex A72 cores, making it an octa-core offering with four Cortex A53 cores and four Cortex A72 cores. The GPU that is in use has not been detailed as yet, with Qualcomm only mentioning that the new chips feature a next-generation Adreno.

As for availability, Qualcomm has announced that the Snapdragon 415 will be making its way to consumer devices in the first half of this year, with the other three SoCs set to launch sometime in the latter half. With no mention of an upgrade to the Snapdragon 2xx series, it is safe to assume the Snapdragon 415 will be the entry-level offering from Qualcomm this year.

More competition

TSMC’s delays with the 16nm FinFET process have led to Qualcomm sticking with the 20nm process for this year, and possibly into 2016 as well. With Samsung (KRX:005935) shifting to 14nm with its latest Exynos 7 SoC — which in early benchmarks was shown to outdo the Snapdragon 810 considerably — Qualcomm is now at a disadvantage. Also, the vendor has not yet mentioned as to when ARM v8-based Krait cores will be available. Traditionally, the latest iteration of Krait cores are seen in the high-end segment, and in that regard, Qualcomm has been very quiet thus far, with no mention as to when we’ll see the next flagship chip. With the Cortex A72 being featured in the mid-tier segment, it is likely the next-generation Snapdragon 8xx will feature a custom CPU that is more powerful than what is on offer with the Cortex A72 so as to better differentiate the high-end offering.

In the mobile space, Qualcomm now has a lot of competitors. MediaTek (TPE:2454) has gained a lot of ground in markets like China and India with affordable entry-level solutions that offer LTE connectivity and eight-core CPUs, and the Snapdragon 415 is essentially Qualcomm’s answer in that segment. By offering features that were limited to the high-end segment in its mid-tier Snapdragon 6xx line, Qualcomm is highlighting its intent to consolidate its position in the mid-tier category.

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Samsung (KRX:005935) is set to continue the momentum it built last year with its in-house Exynos line of SoCs with the first Exynos 7 chip to be built on a 14nm FinFET manufacturing process.

The next-generation Exynos will be first seen in the Galaxy S6, with Samsung likely fielding the Exynos 7 exclusively in the device, unlike earlier years where the South Korean manufacturer went with a combination of Qualcomm-based (NASDAQ:QCOM) hardware for LTE markets and an Exynos solution for its home market and non-LTE countries.

This time around, Samsung is confident in its abilities of delivering a robust LTE modem, which is possibly the reason behind going with an Exynos-only model of the Galaxy S6. The Exynos 7 SoC that was introduced today will likely be called the Exynos 7 7420, and like Qualcomm’s high-end Snapdragon 810, the Exynos 7 uses eight cores in a big.LITTLE configuration. These include four ARM v8-based Cortex A57 cores clocked at 2.1 GHz along with four Cortex A53 cores. The big.LITTLE configuration allows the availability of all eight cores for intense workloads.

Samsung mentions that by going with a 14nm manufacturing process, it is able to achieve an increase in performance to the tune of 20%, along with a productivity gain of 30% while using 35% less power at the same time when compared to its 20nm SoCs built on an HKMG process.

With the 14nm exynos 7, it looks like the goal for Samsung is to maximise energy efficiency while maintaining a similar performance as the 20nm chips. Samsung is set to unveil the Galaxy S6 on March 1 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The South Korean vendor has announced that its 14nm Exynos 7 will be featured in other devices that are set to launch later this year. We’ll have to wait for consumer-ready hardware to launch before we can determine the prowess of the 14nm SoC, but early benchmarks suggest that the Exynos 7 is faster than the Snapdragon 810 by a healthy margin.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) is facing more legal trouble in Asia.

According to reports by the Maeil Business Newspaper from Seoul, later confirmed by Reuters, Qualcomm may be facing an investigation by the country’s Fair Trade Commission. The reports are not very specific, but it appears that regulators would be investigating whether Qualcomm is abusing its “dominant market position” in the country.

While this comes just days after Qualcomm wrapped up a similar case in China, it would not be the first time that Qualcomm earned the ire of regulators in South Korea. In 2009 regulators fined the company $207 million for charging higher royalties to phone manufacturers that decided to blend Qualcomm’s processors with a competitors baseband. At the time this was the largest fine the South Korean regulator had ever administered.

Qualcomm needs a new strategy

While there’s an argument that regulators should take a hands off, laissez-faire approach to situations such as this the reality is regulators will want to get involved to ensure that a foreign company doesn’t have a commanding control of such an important part of the mobile industry.

The vast patent library, combined with Qualcomm’s sheer size, makes it a target for regulators. In some ways it’s a victim of its own success. Qualcomm does make a number of key 3G and 4G related patents available for FRAND licensing, but it appears to be the opinion of regulators around the world that this is simply not good enough.

It isn’t Qualcomm’s fault that it is in such a dominant market position. The free market has failed to provide a worthy competitor. Taiwan’s MediaTek (TPE: 2454) shows potential, and has proven to be innovative with its work on HSA, but it has not provided a steady stream of hardware wins — even in the low-end sector — to take the momentum away from Qualcomm. Plus, it will be fighting for marketspace with up-and-coming vendors from China.

Qualcomm would be wise to consider spinning off a strategic selection of its patent library into some sort of holding company, unrelated to Qualcomm, and using that as a vehicle to engage in patent licensing. That way Qualcomm could continue to receive the funding that it earned from developing the patents, while having an unrelated company managing the respective licensing — thus reducing the ability of regulators to claim that it is “abusing its market position.”

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MediaTek (TPE: 2454) will enjoy a bigger share this year of the high-end smartphone chip market because of a better product mix, a European brokerage said on Feb. 10.

The brokerage cannot be identified due to Financial Supervisory Commission’s regulations, now that the information and forecast it shared may have impacted local bourse.

The brokerage said that MediaTek is planning to finish its designs for three generations of high-end smartphone integrated circuit products in 2015 by using 28-nm, 20-nm and 16-nm process technologies. It may end up with higher operating expenses but it will also end up with higher gross margin, the brokerage said.

“Overall, we expect MediaTek to enjoy its high-end and mid-end smartphone IC share gain. In addition, MediaTek is improving its position among China’s 4G smartphone makers in the mid-end to high-end market,” the brokerage said.

MediaTek remains the leading chip supplier to Chinese smartphone vendors. On Feb. 9, the company reported lower-than-expected earnings of US$0.21 per share for the fourth quarter last year. The company forecast a 10% to 18% sequential decline in its revenue for the first quarter this year, with an estimated profit margin of 12% to 18%, which is below market expectation of 21% because of rising research and development expanses.

On Feb. 9, an anonymous Japanese brokerage kept its “reduce” rating on MediaTek shares and cut its price target from US$14.5 to US$12.9. It said that MediaTek might have been struggling with a “learning curve” for 4G chips as it has been trying to catch up with bigger rival Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM).

“The operating expenses hike in 2015 showed MediaTek’s strong ambition in catching up with Qualcomm, but also implied that narrowing the technology gap is not easy, which reinforced our view that MediaTek remains in a transition period,” the Japanese brokerage said.

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Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ: QCOM) legal battle with China’s National Development and Reform Commission came to an end Monday with the US semiconductor giant being hit with a $975 million fine and having new patent licensing rules imposed upon it.

In addition to a $975 million fine, Qualcomm agreed to offer new terms for standards essential patents related to its 3G and 4G technology. Qualcomm also agreed to change its royalty schedule to only receive 65% of the net selling price rather than the full selling price. Qualcomm also agreed to remove elements in its licensing contracts that Chinese authorities

Chinese authorities began investigating Qualcomm over allegations that the company was using its library of patents in China in a monopolistic fashion, and refusing to come to fair licensing agreements with local companies. The investigation began in late November 2013 and heated up late 2014.

While Qualcomm executives said they were “disappointed” with the sheer size of the fine, they also said that they were glad to have put any uncertainties behind them with regards to the company’s ability to conduct business in China. Analysts quoted in media reports say this agreement opens doors for further and new cooperation between Qualcomm and major handset players in China.

All-in-all this move by Chinese authorities was merely a play to extract money from Qualcomm in order to make its position in the market slightly less competitive when compared to local companies in the same business. This has become a common tactic in China in order to give local firms an edge (read more about that here). But Qualcomm paid the price, and it appears to be smooth sailing for the company now.

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Qualcomm’s (NASDAQ:QCOM) recent earnings report could be categorized as an unexpected misstep, as the San Diego-based semiconductor reported that it beat analysts’ expectations for the quarter but revealed that it had lost a “major customer” for its Snapdragon line of SoCs.

This revelation from executives that a major — and unnamed — customer was defecting to the competition dragged down an otherwise healthy quarter. Qualcomm reported that revenue estimates came in higher than expected $7.1 billion, which represents 7% growth year-over-year, against the $6.94 billion that analysts had projected. Earnings per share hit $1.34 compared analysts’ estimates of $1.25 a share.

However, the company’s outlook going forward is lower than initially expected due to “expectations that our Snapdragon 810 processor will not be in the upcoming design cycle of a large customer’s flagship device.” The possibility that Samsung (KRX: 005930) was ditching Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor for its home grown Exynos line of chips was the subject of a number of reports and rumors over the past few weeks, and this comment from Qualcomm all but confirms it.

During the earnings call Qualcomm’s CEO was quick to dismiss the idea that Samsung’s decision was because of some inherent flaw in his company’s silicon.

“[The Snapdragon 810] is working as we expect it to work,” said Steve Mollenkopf during the call. “We’re pleased how it’s performing. There is concern really related to one OEM.”

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The 2015 Consumer Electronics Show wrapped up Friday in Las Vegas, giving consumers a glimpse of what’s to come from the consumer electronics sector over the next year.

For as much as some like to lament how CES isn’t as relevant as it once was, or even how it’s “dead”, it still is the biggest electronics trade show in the world’s largest economy. That by itself makes it important. It’s not just where the public, via the press, gets to see new products, it’s where industry alliances are formed and where merchants decide what will be on store shelves next year.

CES is also where the world is given a glimpse of what to come in the long-term, not just in the near future. This matters because ecosystems need to be built around this technology, the process of which starts during closed-door meetings during the show.

Without further ado, here are three things that mattered the most from this year’s CES.

Broadwell on the market

At this year’s CES we got our first glimpse at the next-generation of ultrathin notebooks powered by Intel’s (NASDAQ: INTC) Broadwell processor.

Broadwell promises a substantially reduced power draw, allowing for thinner, lighter and fanless designs.

To of the most exciting Broadwell-powered notebooks that made an appearance on the show floor were the LaVie Z from Lenovo (HKG: 0992) and the refreshed XPS 13 from Dell.

Exact specs of the LaVie Z have yet to be finalized, but it’s said to have a 13-inch screen with a 2,560×1,440 resolution, a 128GB SSD and either a 44Whr or a 29.9 Whr battery depending on the model. Exact pricing and a release date have yet to be determined.

Dell’s refreshed XPS 13 features a variety of display sizes, an incredibly low battery life and an aggressive starting price of $799. For display options, Dell is offering a non-touch 1080p display (which comes with a longer battery life) as well as a touch-enabled QHD+ (3200×1800) model. These come with a  Broadwell 15W Core i3, i5, and i7 processor options and the option of either 4GB or 8GB of memory.

Unfortunately, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Broadwell was absent from Intel’s keynote at CES. The chip itself is quite the achievement for the company, and it was rather remiss to leave this product out of the big spotlight.

Quantum dots: The road to 8K starts today

One could call this year’s CES the year that 4K reached maturity. Prototypes of 4K displays have been on the showfloor of CES since 2012, and now they are relatively mainstream. But while 4K is just starting to get off the show floor and into the homes of consumers, a far more impressive technology made an appearance at this year’s CES: 8K.

As its name implies, 8K provides a substantial jump in resolution when compared to 4K or 1080p. On a large screen, the amount of detail one can pick out is beyond remarkable. Of course, 8K is suffering from a content problem — there isn’t much of it available — but what was demonstrated on the show floor proves the potential of the resolution.

For a resolution that large, standard LCD technology won’t cut it. Cinephiles and imaging professionals have long complained that standard LED backlit LCD sets don’t provide the rich blacks and colors of OLED or plasma based screens. This is a tradeoff of LED’s; image quality is sacrificed for power efficiency and thinness.

A diagram of how a quantum dot layer works

Quantum dots are the solution to this problem. Quantum dots are an extremely thin layer of nanometer sized crystals applied to an LCD. Depending on their size — between 2 to 10 nanometers — they emit light at a different wavelength thus glowing green, red, or blue depending on their size. On an LCD, they augment the display’s capability to reproduce the full color gamut: on paper they will allow an LCD to display proper blacks, whites and remove the blueish tint that plagues some displays. All this is done at nearly a third of the cost of producing an OLED.

Quantum dots were in many of the 4K LCD-based displays on the CES show floor. In order for LCDs to mature and jump into the 8K era, quantum dots are a must. Without the color accuracy that they provide, the benefits of the enhanced resolution of 8K would be lost.

Automotive is the next big thing

In the technology world, sometimes rivalries fade. One year two companies might slug it out at the show, and other years there could be nothing.Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) and Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) have found themselves more and more becoming rivals as Nvidia shifts focus from its traditional markets to mobile with Tegra.

CES 2015 was an example of this new rivalry between the two companies. The keynotes from both Nvidia and Qualcomm focused heavily on automotive. On stage Nvidia CEO Jen Hsun Huang promised that the self-driving cars of the future would be powered by his company’s Tegra X1 SoC, showcasing its ability to power collision detection and other sensing systems.

Nvidia has struggled to build enthusiasm amongst mobile vendors for its Tegra platform, and it’s now up to its sales team to see if it can score some hardware wins in automotive. The biggest complaint amongst vendors was that previous iterations of Tegra draw too much power, but this complaint is a moot point in automotive.

However, Nvidia has to act fast to make inroads in this market. While Nvidia has yet to announce any hardware wins for automotive Tegra, at its keynote Qualcomm was able to announce two.

Automotive will prove to be a interesting and competitive market for these chipmakers, and future CES expos — especially CES Asia in Shanghai — will no doubt have more from this field.

The post 3 Things That Mattered The Most at CES 2015 appeared first on VR World.

Taiwan’s leading integrated circuit designer MediaTek (TPE: 2454) said on Jan. 9 that it has reached its sales target for the fourth quarter of last year, which was also an achievement it attributed to solid global demand for smartphone chips.

MediaTek reported US$1.73 billion in consolidated sales for the period between October and December last year, down 3.51% from a quarter earlier in reflection of the year-end slow season, the company said in a statement. The fourth-quarter sales figure, however, was well within MediaTek’s forecast of the amount between US$1.6 billion and US$1.77 billion.

During last December, MediaTek said that its consolidated sales totaled US$517 million, up 1.8% from a month earlier and 30.46% year-on-year. The leading IC designer company of its kind said that strong demand for 4G smartphone chips helped offset the effects of the year-end slow season.

MediaTek said that during 2014, a 56.6% annual increase was posted in consolidated sales to US$6.45 billion, breaking the US$6 million mark for the first time. The significant annual growth was attributed not just to strong smartphone chip shipments but also to the company’s acquisition of a smaller competitor MStar Semiconductor (TPE: 3697) last February, MediaTek said.

For 2014, MediaTek said that its smartphone chip shipments have totaled 350 million for its global market, while 30 million of them were 4G ships. In the meantime, the company forecasted that its global 4G ship shipments will rise to at least 100 million units before the end of this year.

On Jan. 8, MediaTek President C.J. Hsieh (謝清江) said that the company will try hard to seek 4G smartphone chip orders from customers outside China. He also said that the company is confident in the competition against its major rival – the U.S.-based Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM).

Qualcomm’s share of the China market in 2014 was estimated at about 50%, while MediaTek’s was around 25%, according to Strategy Analytics.

Shares of MediaTek on the Taiex rose 0.62% to close at US$14.79 per share on Jan. 9, Taiwan time, outperforming the broader market, where the weighted index ended down 0.24% at 9,215.58 points.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) kicked off its keynote at the 2015 Consumer Electronics Show by unveiling the Snapdragon 810 flagship SoC.

This announcement came just hours after LG (KRX:066570) announced the G Flex 2, a 5.5-inch smartphone with a curved display and the Snapdragon 810 inside.

The SoC, which will find its way into many of 2015’s flagship smartphones, was first announced last year. Qualcomm gave the world a sneak peak of the chip in December, though it chose CES for the first big official unveil of the chip. Like many other vendors, Qualcomm is choosing to use a Big.LITTLE configuration for the chips packing together ARM Cortex A57 and A53 cores in a power efficient setup. As far as a GPU goes, Qualcomm continues to use its homemade Adreno 430 GPU which has a full spectrum of APIs such as DirectX 11.2, OpenCL 1.2, and OpenGL ES 3.1.

Like other chip vendors, Qualcomm is looking beyond the traditional tablet and smartphone markets for this chip. During the keynote Qualcomm highlighted potential use cases for car infotainment and IoT.  One of the vehicles that will be powered by the upcoming chip is Cadillac’s new XTS due out next year.

“Over the course of our history, we’ve invested $33 billion in R&D,” said Qualcomm’s president Derek Aberle on stage. “Many invest in R&D, but we do it differently. We anticipate industry trends before anybody knows they’re coming, making fundamental investments and driving the industry forward.”

Qualcomm everywhere

While Qualcomm’s press conference didn’t have anything too new in the SoC space for those that watch the company closely, Qualcomm chose instead to highlight the investments it has made in getting its technology virtually everywhere from IoT, wearables to automotive. Unlike Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), which had the first press conference of CES, Qualcomm has a solid track record of getting its silicon in products.

Qualcomm has its competitors, but none have the momentum that it does. For all Nvidia’s bluster about the speed of Tegra, the company doesn’t have the record of hardware wins that it should. If Qualcomm can get the momentum for Internet of Things and automotive, it will be a real challenge for its competitors to reach its level.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) announced that it has finalized testing of LTE Category 9, with the Snapdragon 810 set to be the first SoC to offer the modem. The chipset also comes with an eight-core 64-bit CPU and will be featured in high-end devices next year.

With LTE Category 9, customers can expect download speeds of 410 Mbit/sec, which is achieved through Carrier Aggregation. The technology involves combining different spectrums to provide more bandwidth.

Qualcomm has been testing the new modem with carrier EE, which was able to deliver the bandwidth by combining a 20MHz channel of 1800MHz spectrum with another 20MHz of 2.6GHz, followed by a third 15MHz channel of 2.6GHz . The major advantages touted by Qualcomm with the new modem are increased reliability and higher bandwidth, and while LTE Category 9 does come with a theoretical limit of 410 Mbit/sec, it would be difficult for users (at least in the next year or so) to reach anywhere near that figure in real-world testing conditions.

While Qualcomm is facing an increased pressure from the likes of MediaTek (TPE:2454) in the LTE segment, it still enjoys a majority of the market share when it comes to baseband modems. As for when LTE Category 9 enabled devices will be available to customers, it is possible that we’ll see the official announcements at the Mobile World Congress in February, followed by a launch sometime in the early second quarter of 2015.

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Looking very similar to the BlackBerry Bold, the beleaguered company has announced its new BlackBerry Classic. It’s smaller and most importantly, sports a full QWERTY keyboard and navigation buttons that are not virtual. That’s right; you can do your input on physical keys once again.

Nicely designed keys let your fingers know where they are and increase the accuracy of input.

Aimed at diehard fans who held on to the original BlackBerry which had been considered the best game in town, the Classic is reminiscent in design. If the newer, bigger touchscreen devices are too bulky for your shirt pocket, the Classic’s touchscreen is only 3.5 inches leaving room for the retro keyboard. The sculptured keys are backlit and come with a click so you know where you are and when you strike a key. Overall, it is 5.1 inches x 2.8 inches x 0.4 inch.

Easy to reach on the right side are the mute and volume control buttons. Call, Menu, Back, and End buttons are conveniently above the keyboard. You can set shortcut keys too. There is no telling if this move is a shortcut to a better company outlook. Currently, BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) is trading at the high end of its 52 week range of $6.08 – 12.54. Hoping to increase its bottom line, the company has made inroads with the auto industry with a recent partnering with Ford. The car company replaced its Windows based MyFord with Sync 3 using a BlackBerry QNX platform.

Neither the stock, nor the Classic’s technology is spectacular, but the device is serviceable. Its front and rear facing cameras are only 2 and 8 megapixels respectively. Video is pretty standard 1080p HD recording at 30 fps (frames per second). Qualcomm’s 1.5GHz 8960 dual core processor powers the Classic with BlackBerry 10.3.1 for its operating system. RAM consists of 2GB and16GB Flash. With SD cards you can expect 144 GB of storage. It promises 22 hours of battery life from its 2515 mAh non-removable Lithium Ion battery, depending on usage.

John Chen, CEO, smiles as he introduces the BlackBerry Classic. Photo Credit: CTV

BlackBerry telegraphed its focus by unveiling the Classic in New York in the financial district, hoping to catch the attention of the business-based consumer. BlackBerry World, the company’s store, offers secure, enterprise level apps to entice businesses back into its fold. Its motto is “Serious Mobility for Serious Business”. An added plus, you can run Android apps now.

The phone supports several multi-media formats, as well as network and connectivity for Europe, Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Canada,Latin America, and the US (LTE/HSPA+ ). The bummer disclaimer says this version only currently works on GSM carriers, which does not include popular Verizon and Sprint CDMA based networks in the United States. It also requires a nano SIM card which will add slightly to the going $449 price tag.

The company is attempting to retain faithful customers with its old/new form factor while trying to draw new devotees in with its Passport.  Classic comes in old-fashioned black but you can get Passport in red or white. This writer, for one, prefers the old-fashioned, manual approach of a physical keyboard rather than a “touchy,” sometimes spastic, touch screen. If you prefer voice interaction, you can use BlackBerry Assistant, Siri’s  distant cousin.

There are several demo videos  on YouTube if you want to learn how to use many of the functions of the BlackBerry smartphone.

With BlackBerry’s choice of a name for its new release, you can’t help but draw a parallel with the soda company that returned to its successful roots. Will BlackBerry Classic be a hit with the retro crowd who loved their earlier model just as cola drinkers returned to their favored Classic Coke?

The post BlackBerry Tells Loyal Fans: Rejoice appeared first on VR World.

Lenovo (HKG:0992) has announced that it will be using Intel-based (NASDAQ:INTC) hardware on two of its 4G-enabled devices in 2015. The phones will be powered by a 64-bit Atom CPU and will also feature Intel’s LTE-A modem. Both devices will be announced in the first quarter of 2015, with one device catered to a Chinese audience while the other aimed at emerging markets.

This will be the first 4G phone for Intel in China, a key global market for the vendor. This isn’t the first time Intel’s hardware was seen in a 4G device – the Asus PadFone X Mini featured a dual-core Atom Z2560 CPU – but this will be seen as a catalyst for Intel’s 4G push in China.

The inclusion of Intel’s LTE-A modem is also seen as a win in a segment which is largely controlled by Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM). Aicha Evans, a vice president and general manager of Intel’s platform engineering group, said that Intel was stepping up its efforts in the modem segment. “We think that we are one of the few companies that can do that,” she said. “We just think diversity is extremely important.”

Lenovo hasn’t detailed the hardware the upcoming phones will feature, and has only revealed that at least one device will be targeted at the mid-tier segment. Meanwhile, Qualcomm does not seem too concerned at Intel securing a win with Lenovo: “We are like on our fourth or fifth generation of LTE,” Raj Talluri, senior vice president of product management for Qualcomm’s chip business. “We have a sizeable technology advantage, and we like our position.”

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In what may turn out to be the first major drawback for Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM) in recent memory, the vendor’s upcoming Snapdragon 810 SoC is said to be running into overheating issues, which may cause significant production delays. The Snapdragon 810 is the frontrunner to power the innards of next year’s flagships from Samsung (KRX:005935), LG (KRX:066570), HTC (TPE:2498) and others.

The Snapdragon 810 boasts a lot of firsts: it will be the first high-end 64-bit SoC to come out of Qualcomm, and also the first to be built on a 20 nm manufacturing process. However, it looks like there may be serious issues with the SoC as Business Korea states that handset manufacturers are running into overheating issues when the Snapdragon 810 reaches certain voltages. These issues said to be “hard to solve,” and are said to be negatively affecting the performance of the chip.

Problems with the RAM controller and driver errors in the Adreno 430 GPU have also been cited by the publication. With Qualcomm becoming the go-to vendor for the high-end market, any setbacks in meeting its mass production deadlines would result in a significant delay when it comes to the launch of next year’s flagships. In a strange move, Qualcomm has decided to stick with stock ARM Cortex A57 and A53 cores in the Snapdragon 810 instead of offering a tailored version of these cores in the Krait series, as it has in the past.

News of Qualcomm’s delay may turn out be beneficial for Samsung, who is said to be considering its own GPU to its in-house line of Exynos SoCs. Samsung has been continually tweaking its Exynos line over the years, and if it is able to successfully create a viable contender that offers anywhere near the performance as that of Qualcomm’s Adreno GPUs, it will have a winner on its hands.

As for other contenders, LG’s Nuclun efforts are yet to bear fruit, and while MediaTek (TPE:2454) is seeing a lot of traction in the entry-level and mid-tier segment, it does not have a foothold in the high-end market. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has left the smartphone market entirely, and Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) is also said to be considering an exit following a failure to secure significant hardware wins.

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The 2015 Cadillac ATS Coupe was a much awaited and highly hyped vehicle that many thought would deliver an added boost to Cadillac’s already wildly popular and successful ATS line of vehicles. The ATS was the brand’s first wholly new platform and promised to deliver an entirely new Cadillac experience. In our review, we found that it was a very good vehicle and impressed us on many levels, so we were very interested to see how the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe could improve upon the ATS’ success.

Cadillac’s New Mobile Tech

Other than simply being a coupe version of the 2015 Cadillac ATS, the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe also adds some features that had not been found in the Cadillac ATS line of vehicles or most other Cadillac vehicles. Those two primary features are the car’s ability to enable wireless charging through a Qi charger inside the infotainment system as well as the ability to be a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot.

Qi Wireless Charging with the Google Nexus 5

The Qi wireless charging will only work for devices with built-in Qi charging capability (Nokia devices or Google Nexus devices) or devices with cases/adapters to allow for Qi charging like some Samsung phones. It also only exists within the cavity within the CUE infotainment system, which means that it doesn’t work anywhere else in the car (not in glovebox or center console). In addition to only working in the CUE infotainment’s ‘secret’ compartment, it also require that the device be very snug and stay in one spot because Qi charging is fundamentally very finnicky and has very tight tolerances for movement away from the charging coil. As such, the Qi charging functionality is designed to hold the phone ins a very specific part of the compartment and also causes users to lose some storage space in the compartment due to the height lost to the charging pad. The nice thing is that the car will let you know on the CUE system if your phone is charging as well as the charge level (while it’s connected via Bluetooth) so you don’t really have to worry about it not being charged.

Cadillac’s OnStar LTE Wi-Fi hotspot powered by AT&T’s LTE Network

The 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot feature is powered by Qualcomm’s LTE chipsets and AT&T’s LTE network, as such, users can expect fairly good LTE coverage across the US and fairly decent speeds. Obviously, we had to test this feature out as well and because this is running on AT&T’s network we got fairly good speeds, even though, they aren’t necessarily fast by any standard. The nice thing about having this feature is that if you already have an active AT&T LTE share plan, you can simply add this vehicle to your data pool without needing to have a separate data plan for it. If you aren’t an AT&T customer, you do have to subscribe to the OnStar LTE service powered by AT&T’s LTE and you do get the first 3GB of data on the car for free. This is very similar to how they give SiriusXM satellite radio to users for free and once they’ve gotten used to it, they start charging for it. This feature has already shipped on previous vehicles like the 2015 Cadillac Escalade we reviewed, but it was not activated yet at the time of review.

Twitter text message notifications

The third and less known feature is the ability to receive text messages via smartphone on the car’s infotainment system in order to prevent the driver from looking at their text messages while driving. They can also have their text messages read aloud, but they cannot respond to their text messages without making a phone call, looking at their phone or using one of the pre-defined responses built-into the CUE system. This is probably the biggest downfall of this feature because the point of SMS is to be able to respond to messages and not just see them. There is currently no way of responding to SMS messages outside of the pre-defined responses built into CUE and as such it makes the SMS feature of this car one that does not necessarily improve safety. iOS users with Siri should be able to use their voice features without any problems, but that completely goes around the car’s SMS functionality. Windows Phone also has voice to text capability, as does Android, but Siri seems to work the best.

If you’d like to see a video of these features in action, we’ve got them for you in the video below:

Design and Functionality

The 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe has a very aggressive look, which is increased from the standard ATS sedan in the sense that the grille has been changed and the rear of the car is also quite different. Cadillac did keep the same headlights, which are without a doubt a signature look for many of Cadillac’s vehicles now.

When compared side by side to the 2013/2014 Cadillac ATS sedan, the differences appear much more drastic than simply looking at the cars individually. Many of the stylistic influences between the two cars are very obvious and it isn’t much of a stretch to think that the two are part of the same line of vehicles. However, there is no denying that the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe is an updated look to the ATS’ design, especially when you consider it includes the newly redesigned Cadillac logo.

2013/2014 ATS Sedan (left) and 2015 ATS Coupe (right)

In addition to the exterior design changes and the logo redesign, there are some interior design changes as well, albeit fairly minor.

The changes mostly come in the form of the use of suede in the interior in addition to the already available wood trim, which in my opinion isn’t as nice as the stitched carbon fiber that Cadillac also offers. They also moved the trunk release to the back of the driver’s door rather than the side of the door where it was difficult to find. They’ve also put in a type of bucket-style seat in the back for seating people, but the lack of leg room is going to make that back seat virtually useless unless the driver is very short or the people in the back are small children. This is technically a four-seater two-door vehicle, but really only comfortably seats two.

Possibly one of the biggest mistakes that Cadillac made in building the 2015 Cadillac ATS coupe was the reduction of the mirror size from the ATS sedan to the ATS coupe. Cadillac have decided to reduce the height of the rear view mirrors by about 30 to 40% and as a result, the mirrors are virtually useless for checking for vehicles and cannot accommodate a blind spot mirror either. That’s also one of my biggest complaints about almost all of GM’s luxury vehicles in the Cadillac brand, they all lack the built-in blind spot mirror that their lower-end Chevrolet vehicles have. Even the Chevy Sonic has a built-in blind spot mirror, yet none of the Cadillacs do. Also, in addition to having a smaller rear view mirror there is virtually no room for the driver to look over his or her shoulder to check for vehicles in their blind spot due to this car being a coupe and the second window being too tiny to see through. At least in the ATS you can see vehicles in your blind spot through the rear passenger’s window. Cadillac could have remedied this with a blind spot warning system like most luxury brands (and non-luxury brands) already have, but none of their current vehicles have such a system even though they do have adaptive cruise control, lane departure and collision avoidance systems.

One of the other things about the design of the 2015 ATS coupe is that if you get the rear wheel drive version, you cannot have the sunroof and the track performance package. But if you get the all wheel drive version of the vehicle, then you don’t have the track performance package and you can have a sunroof.

Read about our driving experience and conclusion on the next page.

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Today, Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) followed up yesterday’s Cat9 carrier aggregation interoperability announcement in conjunction with Ericsson with its own Gobi Modem announcement.

Gobi is Qualcomm’s own branding for its modem line of products, separate from its Snapdragon line of products. Gobi Modems are standalone modem products that are generally found in devices that do not have a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip inside or have a Snapdragon applications processor that doesn’t have a modem built-in. This new line of modems, the Gobi 9×45 line of LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) modems follows in the path of the 9×35 family of modems which has yet to even take hold in the market. The MDM9x45 is a successor to the Cat6 MDM9x35 family of 20nm modems from Qualcomm. In fact, the MDM9x35 family of Gobi modems were Qualcomm’s first 20nm products and still are to this day the only 20nm chips Qualcomm has in devices now, until they start shipping Snapdragon 810 and 808 chips in phones in early 2015.

The 9×45 family of Gobi LTE modems are classified as LTE Category 10 modems which are technically classified as LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), which means they are the exact same downlink speed as Category 9 LTE, but with double the uplink speed. This means that if someone were to have a Cat9 modem and got perfect speeds out of it, they would get 450 Mbps download and 50 Mbps upload, a pretty uneven performance number. Now, with Cat10, you are doubling the uplink speed to up to 100 Mbps, meaning that with Cat10 you see no downlink speed increases, but rather a doubling of the uplink speed to up to 100 Mbps. In addition to announcing the new Cat10 9×45 modem, Qualcomm also announced their second generation RF360 envelope tracker, the QFE1300 which is also sampling to customers along with the MDM9x45 modems and should be in devices in 2015.

Much like the Cat9 announcement yesterday, in order to achieve these 450 Mbps speeds, the MDM9x45 modems will need to utilize 60 MHz 3X CA (carrier aggregation) by combining three different 60 MHz bands in order to deliver such blazing speeds. It also requires 40 MHz 2x CA in order to be able to do the 100 Mbps uplink speeds. The QFE3100 is designed for a 30% smaller board area and enhanced power efficiency as compared to the previous generation, as well as allows improved calibration and implementation tools to ease Envelope Tracking design-in for OEMs and accelerate commercial deployment. This new generation of envelope tracker is once again designed to bring down the overall power consumption of the phone when using cellular data when paired with the Qualcomm MDM9x45 modem, much like the QFE1100 when paired with the MDM9x35.

And all of these speeds are fantastic to have, but one of the biggest problems is that even if there is a carrier in the US remotely capable of having three 20 MHz blocks of LTE in a single market, they also have to have the backbone to support anything remotely close to 450 Mbps downloads and 100 Mbps uploads. Right now, the carriers are severely hampering the speed of innovation, much like the ISPs do in the wired world. In fact, most of the current modems shipping in phones like the iPhone 6, LG G3, Sony Xperia Z3, Galaxy S5, Galaxy Note 4 and many other flagship phones all have modems capable of speeds up to 150 Mbps with CA. Yet, the highest speeds I have ever seen in the US have been 80 Mbps, just slightly over half of the speed that our phones are capable of. And if you were to take most flagship phones around your city and test it virtually any time of day, the fastest you’ll realistically get is around 30-40 Mbps up or down.

So, even though Qualcomm is clearly leading the pack with LTE innovations and LTE-A, the carriers are really limiting the value of Qualcomm’s innovations as now Qualcomm’s competitors can merely come out with Cat4 LTE modems and still achieve similar speeds with minimal effort.

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Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) and Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) have jointly announced that they have successfully tested the world’s first inter-company interoperability between Qualcomm’s Cat9 LTE (Category 9) MSM mobile chipsets and Ericsson’s LTE-A (LTE-Advanced) network infrastructure.

This test was done between the two companies in order to prove that interoperability is already possible on Cat9 hardware from both companies. Since, Qualcomm is both an infrastructure and client chipset company while Ericsson is only infrastructure since the company folded up the ST-Ericsson’s joint venture that produced competing products to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processors.

The two companies were able to achieve the Cat9 450 Mbps speeds thanks to carrier aggregation (combining multiple frequencies/bands) that Qualcomm’s chipsets and Ericsson’s infrastructure are both capable of doing. Ericsson actually even tells us which hardware they accomplished this on, their RBS 6000 family of base stations for macro and small cell networks. Which means these are fairly small base stations and fairly short distance connections. Additionally, thanks to Ericsson’s specs of the RBS 6000, we know that Qualcomm and Ericsson used 60 MHz 3x carrier aggregation in order to deliver the Cat9 LTE speeds of 450 Mbps.

Qualcomm, unfortunately, doesn’t tell us which Snapdragon chipset this is that’s running the new 450 Mbps speeds, but they do say that it is a future chipset which could be something coming next year or something 2 or 3 years from now. We simply can’t know. But what we do know is that the carriers are very very unlikely to deliver anything anywhere near these speeds. The unfortunate reality, however, is that right now there are no carriers in the US even technically capable of delivering three 20 MHz different bands of  LTE based on their spectrum allocation. And even if they had the spectrum holdings to enable Cat9 LTE with carrier aggregation, they wouldn’t even have the backend to support it.

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