July 15th, 2009

Intel is the world’s major maker of microprocessors, the electronic brains of laptop computers. More than three-quarters of the world’s laptop computers use Intel chips. The company on Tuesday has posted second-quarter sales substantially stronger than Wall Street expected, and its outlook suggests there’s more good news to come. The stock jumped 7 percent in after-hours trading. In second-quarter, Intel Corp.’s results bolster the company’s position that the computer business is on the mend after its roughest patch in years.

Nevertheless company doesn’t say that personal laptop computers are soaring off the shelves. Personal laptop computer makers are still hurting, which shows how hurried business for Intel might take months to interpret into better numbers for its clientele.

For example, Dell is No. 2 PC maker warned this week that the U.S. laptop computers market might have hit bottom, but its sales to businesses remain weak. CEO Michael Dell said penny-pinching computer buyers become visible to be holding on to their obtainable machines for longer than is typical.

Intel’s in sequence show that laptop computers makers bought additional chips than expected in the quarter that ended June 27. Fraction of the reason is a pickup in end user command, but another big reason is that clientele have burned through huge amounts of inventory to save money, and now need to fill up on.

A $1.45 billion antitrust well from the European Union, which Intel had to shell out while it appeals the case, gave the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company its primary periodical loss since 1986. As well as the all right, Intel lost $398 million, or 7 cents per share, compared with year-ago proceeds of $1.6 billion, or 28 cents per share. But excluding the EU fine, Intel earned $1 billion, or 18 cents per share, in the second quarter.

Sales fell 15 percent to $8.02 billion in the most current quarter but also topped Wall Street’s $7.28 billion standard forecast by a wide margin. “I’m in shock - it’s great news,” said Kevin Cassidy, a semiconductor analyst with Thomas Weisel Partners. “It’s just amazing the market can snap back this quickly. The question is, is it sustainable?”

Intel’s numbers are intimately watched since they reflect the health of the laptop computers market and technology expenditure in general. Interest in the second-quarter numbers was chiefly acute because CEO Paul Otellini predicted in April that laptop computers sales had “bottomed out” after their worst holiday season in six years.

The trends so as to helped Intel should as well help its smaller rival, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., AMD has racked up billions of dollars in wounded over the past few years under force from Intel, and is trying to bounce back by spinning off its chip-making factories.

Intel obtainable a third-quarter sales outlook of $8.5 billion, plus or minus $400 million, which is significantly better than the $7.8 billion average, the numbers helped drive Intel shares up $1.27 to $18.10 in extended trading. Before the earnings report, the stock closed at $16.83, up 2.1 percent on the day.

Legions of Japanese robots, which are the largest fleet of mechanized worker in the world are now idled as Japan suffers its deepest economic recession in more than a generation as consumers throughout the world cut expenses for buying cars and gadgets.

At Yaskawa Electric Factory, the largest robot manufacturing plant in Kyushu on the southern island of Japan, robots used to turn out more robots. But today a lone robotic worker with its steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. At the same time, its immobile co-workers stood with silence in rows, many of them with arms frozen in midair.

Those robotic workers may be out of work for a long time since Japanese industrial production has tumbled by nearly 40% , and at the same time, the demand for robots has also stepped down.

In short, the future is not so bright. Tighter cash is being injecting a dosage of reality to some of Japan’s more fantastic projects, such as pet robots and cyborg receptionists that may hamper innovation later after the economy recovers.

Yaskawa’s profit plunged by two-thirds at 6.9 billion yen, or approximately US$72 million in the year that ended on March 20, and the company expects a loss this year.

Japan’s robot association said, shipments of industrial robots dropped 33% throughout the industry during the last quarter of 2008, and 59% in the first quarter of 2009.

Research firm Fuji Keizai expects the market to stumble by as much as 40% this year as investment in robots has been the first to go as companies protect their human workers.

Robots may be cheaper than flesh-and-blood workers in the long term, but the upfront investment costs are much higher.

In 2005, more than 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan or about 40% of the global total, representing 32 robots for every 1,000 manufacturing employees. In 2007, the government planned for a technology policy that called for one million industrial robots to be installed by 2025. That will almost certainly not happen because the recession has set the robot industry back years. That goes for industrial robots and the more cuddly toy robots.

In fact, several of the lovable sort have already become casualties of the recession. Robot maker Systec Akazawa filed for bankruptcy in January, less than a year after it introduced its miniature PLEN walking robot at the Consumer Electronics Show(CES Show) in Las Vegas.

Roborior by Tmsuk - a watermelon-shape house sitter on wheels that rolls around a home and uses infrared sensors to detect suspicious movement and a video camera to transmit images to absent residents - has struggled to find new users. A rental program was scrapped in April because of lack of interest.

Though the company will not release sales figures, it has sold less than a third of the goal, 3,000 units, it set when Roborior hit the market in 2005, and there are no plans to manufacture more.

That is a shame, because busy Japanese in the city could use the Roborior to keep an eye on aging parents in the countryside. Roborior is a kind of robot Japanese society needs in the future.

Japan’s aging population had given the development of home robots an added imperative. With nearly 25% of citizens 65 or older, the country was banking on robots to replenish the work force and to help nurse the elderly.

But sales of a Secom product, My Spoon, a robot with a swiveling, spoon-fitted arm that helps older or disabled people eat, have similarly stalled as caregivers balk at its US$4,000 price.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries failed to sell even one of its toddler-size home-helper robots, the Wakamaru, introduced in 2003. Surely, less practical, novelty robots have fallen on even harder times in the downturn and that goes also for robot makers outside Japan.

Ugobe, which is based in Idaho, is the maker of the cute green Pleo dinosaur robot with a wiggly tail, it filed for bankruptcy protection in April.

Despite selling 100,000 Pleos and earning more than $20 million, the company racked up millions of dollars in debt and was unable to raise further financing.

Sony pulled the plug on its robot dog, Aibo, in 2006, seven years after its introduction. Though initially popular, Aibo, costing more than $2,000, never managed to break into the mass market.

The US$300 i-Sobot from Takara Tomy, a small toy robot that can recognize spoken words, was meant to break the price barrier. The company, based in Tokyo, has sold 47,000 since the i-Sobot went on sale in late 2007, making it a blockbuster hit in the robot world.

But with sales faltering in the last year, the company has no plans to release further versions after it clears out its inventory of about 3,000.

Research and marketing firm Seed Planning says many of Japan’s robotics projects tend to be too far-fetched, concentrating on humanoids and other leaps of the imagination that cannot be readily brought to market.

Japanese scientists grew up watching robot cartoons, so they all want to make two-legged companions, but the questions will be: Are they realistic? Do consumers really want home-helper robots?”

Robot Factory, once a mecca for robot fans in the western city of Osaka, closed in April after a plunge in sales. In the end, whose store, Jungle, took over some of Robot Factory’s old stock, robots are still expensive, and do not really do much. But that is not true for industrial robots - at least not when the economy is booming.

Fuji Heavy Industries argues its robots are practical and make economic sense. The company sells a giant automated cleaning robot that can use elevators to travel between floors on its own. The wheeled robot, which resembles a small street-cleaning car, already works at several skyscrapers in Tokyo.

Companies are able to regain the six million yen investment in the cleaner robot in as quickly as three years, Fuji said. The manufacturer has rented out about 50 so far.

A robot will work every day and night without complaining, while we can even save on lights and heating, because robots do not need any of that.

Microsoft Corp. has testing of software technology to introduced Office 2010, company plan to free Web-based versions of programs such as Word and Excel, but still on track for release in the early part of next year, news widespread after “technical preview” of Office 2010 on Monday.

Majority of corporations, private office and of course governments, it’s a fact, most of people in the world using Microsoft Office to work in any documents, for that, Microsoft is updating the highly profitable laptop computers software package to add more ways for people to work simultaneously on documents, organize their e-mail and edit videos and photos, among other changes.

Based on the fact, Microsoft is adding up free companion versions that run in a Web browser, the most popular software package worldwide for making presentations, spreadsheets and other documents, and its supremacy is in no immediate risk. Nevertheless, the company is trying to protect against a long-developing trend in which software is moving from the laptop computers to the Web. Google Inc. has been pushing its Chrome own free, Web-based programs for more than two years, though it has yet to gain much traction with any corporations in the world.

Microsoft maybe has decides how much Office 2010 software can give away online without undermining its lucrative laptop computers software business. If it doesn’t make the right calculation, the software maker could find itself in the same position as newspapers that gave online content away and now are struggling to replace print revenue.

Company step by step to cut price Microsoft’s case, the “Home and Student” version of Office 2007, the division responsible for Office logged $12.4 billion in profit on nearly $20 billion in revenue in 2008. Microsoft launched something called Office Live Workspace in 2007, which let people view and comment on document, but it lacked tools for creating and editing files.

The Office 2010 web based programs, will be free to consumers, in a version supported by publicity. Microsoft will let companies with long-term Office licensing agreements install the online programs on their servers for no extra charge. Companies will also be clever to buy subscriptions to right to use the programs through Microsoft-operated data centers, but no word about Office 2010 will cost.