Five Tech Concerns for 2021

2020 is coming to a close, and I will be glad when this annus horribillis, as Queen Elizabeth proclaimed at the end of 1992 after the fire that damaged a large portion of Windsor Castle, is over. The world of tech in 2020 had mixed results. It made video conferencing and Zoom, in particular, a … Continue reading Five Tech Concerns for 2021

Podcast: Cisco WebexOne, Marvell Open RAN, Facebook Antitrust, T-Mobile 5G, Windows Arm 64, Google Workspace

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi and Bob O’Donnell analyzing the news from Cisco’s WebexOne conference, discussing new chips from Marvell for the 5G Open RAN market, debating the Facebook antitrust news, talking about T-Mo’s new 5G Mobile hotspot and related plan, Microsoft’s addition of support for 64-bit Windows app emulation on Arm-based PCs, … Continue reading Podcast: Cisco WebexOne, Marvell Open RAN, Facebook Antitrust, T-Mobile 5G, Windows Arm 64, Google Workspace

Looking to 2022 It Could Be a Big Year for IT Hardware Purchasing

Thanks to the Covid-19 boost, demand for PCs and laptops has been surprisingly strong in 2020. At the beginning of this year, most PC forecasters suggested that unit sales of PC’s and laptops in 2020 would be down anywhere from -3% to -5%. It now looks like sales of PCs and laptops could be in … Continue reading Looking to 2022 It Could Be a Big Year for IT Hardware Purchasing

PC Technologies and Product Categories to Watch in 2021

As the year winds down, I’ve been thinking a lot about the big product announcements and technology shifts we’ve seen inside this tumultuous year. While we’re all hoping 2021 will at some point bring our lives back toward something more like normal, the impact of COVID on the technology markets will carry on throughout the … Continue reading PC Technologies and Product Categories to Watch in 2021

Intel: From Market Leader to Underdog

Before I dive too deep into the point I want to make here about the challenges Intel faces, and it is worth calling out that my initial theory about Intel’s long-term position turned out to not play out. In 2016, I wrote this article titled Intel and the last foundry standing theory. My intro paragraph … Continue reading Intel: From Market Leader to Underdog

Podcast: Verizon-Apple, Apple App Store, AMD RX6800 GPUs, Microsoft Pluton, Apple Diversity

This week’s Techpinions podcast features Carolina Milanesi and Bob O’Donnell discussing Verizon’s recent 5G Swap offer with iPhone 12, Apple’s changing of their App Store fee for developers, reviews of the new M1-based Arm Macs, reviews of AMD’s latest Radeon 6800 GPUs, analyzing the potential impact of the Microsoft’s new Pluton security processor for PCs … Continue reading Podcast: Verizon-Apple, Apple App Store, AMD RX6800 GPUs, Microsoft Pluton, Apple Diversity

Gaming Consoles’ Battle Royale

I lost count of how many times, over the weeks leading into the release of Microsoft Xbox Series X and Series S and Sony PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, I was asked which model will sell more. Sales figures often make the headline, but I think this year, there is much more interesting … Continue reading Gaming Consoles’ Battle Royale

Custom Mac Silicon Frees Apple to Iterate, or Not, as it Pleases

Apple’s event this week brought a few surprises (three new Apple-Silicon based Macs, not just one) as well as some frustrating nonsurprises (no touchscreens, no LTE or 5G, and no new entry-level starting prices for notebooks). Based on Apple’s deliberately vague testing proclamations, the M1 system on a chip (SoC) certainly appears to be a … Continue reading Custom Mac Silicon Frees Apple to Iterate, or Not, as it Pleases

Apple’s One More Thing Turned Out to Be Three

Apple announced its transition to Apple Silicon back in June. Since then, industry watchers have been formulating a hypothesis on which Mac will be the first model to sport Apple’s new silicon design. Over the past few events, leakers had left only a few surprises for the official event, but for the “one more thing” … Continue reading Apple’s One More Thing Turned Out to Be Three

Why Intel Should Open Their Fabs for Outsourcing Processors

In a meeting I once had with former Intel CEO Paul Otellini, he told me that Intel had to have all of their fabs running at full capacity for Intel to stay profitable. Intel is still profitable, largely due to solid ASPs and margins, but it appears not all the fabs are running at full … Continue reading Why Intel Should Open Their Fabs for Outsourcing Processors

Arm Based Macs and Mac Growth, Apple Updates 10-K Risk Factors for Services

Arm Based Macs and Mac Growth Apple yesterday announced the news of their November event, where Arm-based Macs are likely to debut. My conviction is Apple has multiple agenda’s in moving from Intel to their own Arm-based Apple Silicon, but one of those agenda items is to grow the Macs share of the premium PC … Continue reading Arm Based Macs and Mac Growth, Apple Updates 10-K Risk Factors for Services

Why PC Vendors are Watching Mac Sales Closely

For many years, Apple’s Mac has had a solid run in customers buying computers from Apple. In the last year, Apple has continued to sell over 5 million units per quarter. On the other hand, Windows PC sales dominated pretty much the rest of the market. In the last quarter, according to Gartner, Lenovo sold … Continue reading Why PC Vendors are Watching Mac Sales Closely

Microsoft Expands Surface Lineup; Announces Updates to Windows on Arm

This week the Surface Team at Microsoft announced a new, more affordable notebook called the Laptop Go and an update to the Qualcomm-based Surface Pro X. The former fills a gap in the company’s lineup and is going to appeal to many buyers. The latter reaffirms Surface’s commitment to Windows on Arm and will take … Continue reading Microsoft Expands Surface Lineup; Announces Updates to Windows on Arm

How WFH Could Spur Always-Connected PC Adoption

As the fall semester begins with many k-12 and college students still learning from home, while many parents are still working from home, a technical issue looms for many households: slow broadband. Many home Internet connections are not up to the task of supporting multiple concurrent Zoom and Teams calls, along with the other broadband-taxing … Continue reading How WFH Could Spur Always-Connected PC Adoption

Surface Duo: Windowing Is The New Lapability

Yesterday I participated in a press and analyst briefing during which Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, Windows + Devices and the Surface team spent about an hour going over the Surface Duo, its specs, some key features, but most importantly, in my mind, the thought process that brought the team to this device. We first … Continue reading Surface Duo: Windowing Is The New Lapability

Chromebooks and Macs Enjoy Huge Quarantine Quarter in the U.S.

The entire PC industry experienced a very good second quarter. And here in the United States, we saw exceptionally strong results with a year-over-year growth rate of 18.8% in the traditional PC market comprised of desktops, notebooks, and workstations, according to IDC’s latest data. Inside that monster quarter, all the major platforms—Windows, ChromeOS, and macOS—saw … Continue reading Chromebooks and Macs Enjoy Huge Quarantine Quarter in the U.S.

Samsung #Unpacked2020: Strong High-End Portfolio & Deeper Collaboration with Microsoft

The Samsung Galaxy Unpacked part one, back in February, was the last live event I attended. Hence, as we approached this week’s Unpacked, I was as curious about the products to be announced as I was to see how Samsung would pull off their first digital launch. Overall, I thought Samsung did a good job … Continue reading Samsung #Unpacked2020: Strong High-End Portfolio & Deeper Collaboration with Microsoft

Two Brief Takeaways Post Apple Earnings

There is no shortage of summaries on Apple earnings, but there are two specific things that struck me I wanted to share. iPhone SE Irony While management commentary that the iPhone 11 is the volume seller the surprise, to me at least, was the clarity that the iPhone SE was a significant contributor to iPhone … Continue reading Two Brief Takeaways Post Apple Earnings

AMD’s EPYC Quarter

AMD posted better than expected earnings on the back of two significant points and milestones. The first was the increased share gains of their EPYC server chips. AMD, for the quarter, saw double-digit share gains in server thanks to the continued adoption of EPYC. Notable is the revenue increase for AMD in servers came almost … Continue reading AMD’s EPYC Quarter

Covid-19’s Impact on Tech Will Last Well Into 2021

This week, Google announced formal plans to keep employees working remotely through to Summer 2021 in the coronavirus’s persistent presence globally. The decision will impact more than 200,000 full time and contract workers and has made Google one of the first technology firms to extend remote work privileges through much of next year. While Twitter … Continue reading Covid-19’s Impact on Tech Will Last Well Into 2021

The Shifting Semiconductor Sands

There was a time—and it wasn’t really that long ago—when if you asked anyone who tracked the chip business about Intel, they probably would have said they were invincible. After all, they owned 99% of the datacenter CPU market, close to 90% of the PC CPU market and even made ambitious acquisitions in other “alternative” … Continue reading The Shifting Semiconductor Sands

China’s Robotic Edge

On a trip to Beijing in 2005, I was shown a manufacturing facility making PCs that even then had moved mostly to robotic automation. It was awe-inspiring. I had been in PC manufacturings facility before this, and so much of what was done had minimal automation involved in their programs. After viewing this PC operation … Continue reading China’s Robotic Edge

The Chip Industries Changing of the Guard

There was an interesting milestone passed last week in the semiconductor industry when NVidia’s shares rose 2.3% in afternoon trading to a record of $404 that put their market valuation at $248 billion. This is $2 billion more than Intel’s market value was on the same day at $246 billion. While this is more of … Continue reading The Chip Industries Changing of the Guard

New Study Highlights Pandemic-Driven Shifts in IT Priorities

At this point, everyone understands that the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on all aspects of society, including our personal and professional lives. But just as our understanding of how the virus spreads and its impact has shifted over time, so too has our perception of exactly how that impact is being felt … Continue reading New Study Highlights Pandemic-Driven Shifts in IT Priorities