Jon Peddie Back Pages - It's all about the pixels
AS CES goeth, so goeth the industry
Posted by Webmaster on February 3rd 2012 | Discuss
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For those of you who went to CES this year, you should have recovered by now. And if you suffered through 2011, you should be seeing some little rays of sunshine and hope for the on-coming year. And if you accept my premise about CES being a leading indicator, then you should feel pretty good about 2012. I first proposed CES as a leading indicator about eight or nine years ago. If you look at the following chart which covers the past ten years you can see definite correlations. What I think the data really represents is the manufacturers and dealers…
The morning after pill
Posted by Webmaster on January 12th 2012 | Discuss
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gpu
market
ces
tablets
computers
Did you ever wake up the morning after having had too much fun the night before and wonder if anyone got the license plate of the truck that ran over you? Everyone has, even if they won’t admit it. Well 2011 was like that for a lot of folks. After the melt down in 2009, 2011 was a lot like stone skipping only to end up with a deadening and disappointing plop. I haven’t heard anyone say they’ll miss it. It’s been wose than partying all year and then having to pay the piper. Instead, it was a kind of okay…
The Last Editorial of 2011
Posted by Webmaster on December 27th 2011 | Discuss
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It’s been quite a year for all the computer segments from mobile phones and tablets to game consoles, PCs, servers, and supercomputers. Mobile phones with two and four cores running at a GHz or higher were introduced during the year, tablets and phones got thinner, phones got bigger and they got higher resolution displays and full HD capability. Game consoles got S3D, and PCs got thin and light notebooks, all-in-one desktops and killer powerful game machines. Servers got four to sixteen core processors, GPU-compute sub-systems, and Japan’s K Computer hit 10.5 PetaFLOPS and Oak Ridge said their Titan will exceed 20…
What’cha get me for Christmas?
Posted by Webmaster on December 11th 2011 | Discuss
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market
mobile
facebook
tablets
games
In the US there is a shark-like feeding frenzy just after our stuff-yourself-till-you-bust national holiday to celebrate the pagan Indians teaching the Protestants how to grow corn. They were thankful for the lesson and so they declared the day Thanksgiving, a holiday, they ate the corn, and as fable has it, wild turkey. That was before Best-buy, Costco, and Walmart. For reasons unknown the day of shop-till-you-drop has been named Black Friday and is the leading indicator of the holiday shopping volume. Holiday shopping in the US accounts for about 40% of a retailers annual sales, and so if its flat…
Sometimes a tablet is just a tablet
Posted by Jon Peddie on November 18th 2011 | Discuss
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market
apple
tablets
amazon
media
ipad
kindle
In the past month and half we have visited three major CAD company conferences in various parts of the world, plus a dozen clients and you want to know what we found? Tablets. Mostly iPads but that’s only because it was the only choice when these companies and clients took it up. All the execs had one (except the CEO of course because as everyone knows CEOs don’t do any real work). The tablets were being used to show design concepts, power point presentations, photos, and AR. Audience members were even using them as cameras. In the not too distant past,…
Of forecasts and thinking about Steve
Posted by Jon Peddie on November 3rd 2011 | Discuss
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We’ve just finished a round of reports, our semiconductor quarter shipments and forecast report Market Watch, our quarterly AIB shipments and forecast report, the mobile devices report, and the HPU/EPG report and forecast. Forecasting is a tricky business and even though we’ve been at it longer than most, it never gets easy, and it’s always scary. We had some brilliant seminal moments where we called the future correctly and one or two where we missed it. Thinking about the future and what trend might happen next, or what technology will come next got me thinking about Steve Jobs. The future is…
Batteries are my best friend
Posted by Jon Peddie on October 27th 2011 | Discuss
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I have referred to the smart phone as a PC—personal companion. But now have expand that title to include the tablet, it too is a PC. So, maybe a smartphone is a PPC—personal pocket companion. As a matter of fact, we have lots of personal companions, battery powered mobile devices. The demand for these devices has exploded creating a market for over two billion processors.: Over three quarters of a billion smartphones will ship in 2016 Feature and other phones will hit 869 million units in 2016 Almost 300 million tablets will ship in 2016 E-book readers shipments could reach 100…
Of hammers, horseshoes and tablets
Posted by Jon Peddie on October 10th 2011 | Discuss
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Do you have a hammer at home? Of course you do, everyone does. You might even have two, maybe three (I have four). When was the last time you bought a hammer? If you’re 40 years old, and you have four hammers, then your average buy-cycle is one hammer every ten years. Doesn’t sound like a growth market, and yet you find a hammer in every hardware store and most general purpose stores, even Walgreens sells hammers. There are websites dedicated to hammers—just hammers. So if hammers are such low volume almost zero CAGR products, why are there dozens of hammer…
The new modality of acquisition
Posted by Jon Peddie on September 24th 2011 | Discuss
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In the 1960s the idea of building a larger company through acquisitions took hold. The model was to build a conglomerate which would be immune to market variations in various segments. Litton Industries, Ling-Temco-Vought, and, ITT were some of the pioneers of the concept. A conglomerate is a multi-industry company, large and usually multinational. The concept although still with us (e.g., GE) has diminished in popularity as investors sought greater ROI and faster stock price appreciation. Whereas a conglomerate can protect you from industry sector ups and downs, it is also is a basket of companies and not all of them…
Party like it’s 1984
Posted by Jon Peddie on September 13th 2011 | Discuss
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The industry is dominated by followers and just one leader Remember the famous ad Apple ran at the Super Bowl in 1984? It featured a woman with the sledge hammer. That was the beginning and the end of innovation for the PC cloners. That was when Apple took the leadership position in PC design, and has never looked back or given it up. Sony couldn’t challenge it, Dell couldn’t do it. The closest the industry came to a contender was HP, but HP lacks one important characteristic—courage—with one notable exception—the all-in-one category they created. Oh wait, Apple did that first too…
