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Strategies & Market Trends : Joe Copia's daytrades/investments and thoughts -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Bishop who wrote (25547)	5/3/2006 1:16:27 PM
From: Joe Copia	Respond to of 25711

ATI acquires mobile specialist Bitboys ATI this week announced the acquisition of Finnish company Bitboys, a graphics chip developer specialized in mobile phone GPUs, for 35.2 million euros. The exact ammount is subject to unspecified performance-related condi tions. The deal will add personnel and OpenGL ES 2.0 3D and OpenVG 1.0 2D vector graphics technologies to ATI's handheld business unit. Bitboys is best known for claims made in the 1990s that it would ship desktop graphics processors capable of outperforming products from both ATI and Nvidia. The so-called Glaze 3D lineup was first slated to come out in e arly 2000, but never actually hit the market, while the company decided to focus on low-power mobile chips. Read More: ir.ati.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Worldwide chip sales up 7.3% in Q1 Worldwide chip sales totalled USD 59.1 billion in the first quarter, up 7.3% year on year, but down 1.3% in comparison to the previous quarter. The small sequential reduction, however, was considered normal by the Semicon ductor Industry Association (SIA) and attributed exclusively to seasonal patterns. SIA forecasts sales of USD 245 billion in 2006. Cell phone sales, up 31% year on year thanks to a shorter replacement cycle and robust demand in China, were a major contributor to the first quarter results. The PC segment also saw a strong performance with a 13% increa se. "Competition was very intense, with the result that consumers are finding extremely powerful notebook and desktop systems available at very attractive prices", said SIA president George Scalise. Read More: sia-online.org ----------------------------------------------------------------- 6. Warning about pre-standard 802.11n Consultancy firm Farpoint Group advised users to be cautious about recently released pre-standard 802.11n wireless products. Tests with routers and clients from Buffalo (based on Broadcom chips) and Netgear (using Broadco m or Marvell) showed limited throughput at longer distances and interoperability issues. Other negative factors pointed out by Farpoint include lack of guarantee on upgradeability, possible interference with existing WLAN equipment and current high prices. The new 802.11n standard, set to be finalized only la ter this year, is based on MIMO and OFDM technologies and will allow speeds of up to 600 Mbps. ----------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Gartner says Vista might take longer Users might have to wait a little more to check on Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista. Market research firm Gartner this week reported that the new operating system, which recently saw its launch delayed from the end of t his year to January 2007, is likely to be postponed again. "Microsoft's track record is clear. It consistently misses target dates for major operating system releases", a group of analysts wrote. Gartner does not expect broad availability of Vista until at least the second quarter of 2007. It specifically stated that Microsoft will need more time to address some reported problems. The software giant, however, said it was on track to deliver the final product to volume-license customers in November and to the general public in January 2007. A beta 2 is set to be made available this quarter. Read More: gartner.com