Mobile phone sales fallingABI Research estimates that worldwide handset shipments will fall by at least eight percent in 2009 and that flat growth in 2010 is the best the market will deliver. Even if global shipment numbers hold steady at essentially 2009 levels, there will be regional variations. Some regions such as the Middle East and Africa will fare comparatively better, but volumes in those geographies are too low to have major impact.
The Asia-Pacific region will suffer most in 2009, primarily as a result of its huge volume of shipments – roughly triple the next largest region. And stabilization – if it comes – will arrive there a little later than in North America and Europe, resulting in a 2010 forecast that still shows a minimal decline in shipments, while other regions may enjoy a minimal positive growth.
“There are telltale signs that at least some parts of the handset ecosystem may be starting to steady,” said ABI practice director Kevin Burden. “Many handset vendors are replacing component inventories after reducing them to very low levels in recent months to keep from overextending as the market dropped. This doesn’t necessarily mean the whole market is doing better, but it is good news at least for the component suppliers, some of which were really suffering.”
Indian SMBs holding back
Effects of the worldwide economic recession have trickled down to developing nations – and India is not impervious to the consequences. A significant proportion of India’s small and medium businesses (SMBs) have experienced tighter cash flow and sharp declines in revenues brought on by canceled orders or investment plans. Business has been put-on-hold by SMB customers. Inventory constraints are another key problem that SMBs in India face — as they are burdened with a glut of excess products.
PC shipments within any country have a very close relationship with GDP and other economic indicators. Based on the current economic situation and Indian SMB spending in the last 3 months, global strategy consultants AMI-Partners forecasts that in the next quarter, almost 23 percent of SMBs in India are likely to invest in basic IT products such as desktops — a marginal drop from the purchase propensity exhibited in the last 3 months. Other consequences of the somewhat bleak outlook are lower employee hiring rates and a near-freeze in the addition of branches.
According to AMI-Partners, Indian SMBs have been adopting a wait and watch policy for new technology adoption. AMI-Partners’ in-depth research among these SMBs reveals that most have not canceled or shelved their new technology adoption and purchase plans; rather they have merely postponed them.
Advanced tech used in 3-D
It might look like a kid’s film, but the just released “Monsters vs. Aliens” shows how computing power is being used to generate amazing virtual realities. The movie joins the creative strength of DreamWorks Animation and HP’s technology to deliver stereoscopic 3-D action never seen before. In “Monsters vs. Aliens,” audiences will experience monsters that move like liquid, whose arms and mouths disappear and whose bodies are transparent. “Monsters vs. Aliens” required more than 40 million computing hours to make – more than eight times as many as the original “Shrek” and nearly double what it took to create “Kung Fu Panda.”
HP technology aided DreamWorks Animation in utilizing the largest number of moving cameras on any of its films to date. The company was able to take creative elements in “Monsters vs. Aliens” to new levels by using several hundred HP xw8600 Workstations plus the largest and most powerful “render farm” ever set up by DreamWorks Animation. The render farm for Monsters vs. Aliens was a grouping of HP ProLiant blade servers that quickly worked in concert to process the animation sequence. Over 100 terabytes of disk storage was required for the movie.
To help create visual effects for 3-D animation, DreamWorks Animation had to re-work its production pipeline and design tools to enable its artists to fully utilize the capabilities of 3-D. In stereoscopic films there must be separate rendering for left- and right-eye images, which meant that rendering requirements for “Monsters vs. Aliens” doubled those of its nonstereo predecessors. The increased push of pixels to the render farm also doubled the demands placed on the HP workstations of the studio. The results are spectacular. So if you get a chance, don’t miss “Monsters vs. Aliens.”
HPC for Africa
Sun Microsystems has initiated the roll out of South Africa’s largest high performance computing solution at the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC) in Cape Town, with local partners Eclipse Networks and Breakpoint Solutions. This follows from the award of the CHPC second phase tender to Sun Microsystems and its partners to provide the infrastructure for Phase II of this world-class high performance computing facility in South Africa. The CHPC is funded by the South African Department of Science and Technology, and managed by the Meraka Institute.
The proposed end-to-end solution is based on a hybrid architecture that provides an estimated 27 teraFLOPS of peak computing power. At the core of this computing power, is a Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000 server with 64 SPARC64 VII quad-core processors, and a cluster of four Sun Blade 6048 Modular Systems, to be delivered in two stages. Stage one consists of one Sun Blade 6048 Modular System with 48 blades based on Intel Xeon E5450 processors, and stage two consists of three Sun Blade 6048 Modular Systems that house 144 blades based on the next-generation Intel Xeon processor.
At the front-end, Sun will be providing the CHPC with the Sun Visualization system which allows for users to assemble and view 3D models of their data. The Open Storage solution is based on 10 AMD Opteron-powered Sun Fire X4540 Open Storage servers, providing 480 Terabytes of data with the Lustre parallel file system for extreme I/O performance and reliability. Rounding out the hardware part of the solution, all of the components will be connected via a Voltaire Infiniband switch. Software for the solution consists of Sun HPC software, Linux Edition, Sun xVM Ops Center and software from Totalview.
Hardware for the CHPC is being assembled in Scotland and the United States and will then be shipped to South Africa for installation and integration by Eclipse Networks and Breakpoint Solutions. The CHPC is an invaluable resource for research in Africa, bolstering work being done in energy alternatives, weather prediction, healthcare and other key areas of research. Once the CHPC is operational later this year months of computing time on many research projects will be dramatically reduced.
Unexpected postings cause concern
Much has been written about the invasion of digital cameras in public and private spaces. It can be embarrassing when “private” moments are found posted online. And now images from old photo prints are turning up online also.
In February, the online photo sharing service Shutterfly, conducted a survey which found that nearly half of all respondents are concerned about the rise in pre-digital images being scanned and openly shared over the Internet. Additionally, 87 percent of people think they should have control over which photos are shared online of them and their families, and the majority of respondents do not share photos over the Internet unless they are password protected.
People should keep the following points in mind when it comes to posting photos online:
• Share with care. Openly posting old photos from high school may be fun for you, but embarrassing for others.
• The Internet is a public place. Be mindful of your privacy settings when you post photos.
• Share wisely. Nearly half of the survey respondents were bothered by people sharing too many photos at one time.
• Think before you post. These days, many sites downsample your images or keep your content after you’ve deleted your account. Since family photos are the leading type of photos shared, consider whether it would be acceptable for this content to be permanently controlled by others.
• Conduct regular searches. Just as many people use search engines to check what information has been posted about them online, use image searches to discover if any unacceptable images have been made public.
