Intel, Rockchip partner in tablet chip bid
Intel Corp., struggling to break into the market for chips that run tablets, is teaming up with China's Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. on a new product for mobile devices.
The chipmakers signed an agreement to jointly offer a quad-core processor and integrated modem called Sofia, which will be available in the first half of 2015, Intel said Tuesday. Rockchip will market the chip to its Chinese customers, Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich said on a conference call. The U.S. company isn't investing in Rockchip or providing financial support, he said.
Intel's partnership with Rockchip, which now sells chips based on ARM Holdings PLC's rival technology, is an effort to jump-start its entry into the growing market for tablets in China, now dominated by smaller, local companies including Rockchip and Allwinner Technology Co. The agreement will produce chips designed for inexpensive tablets running Google Inc.'s Android operating system.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel will get faster access to Chinese customers, and will contribute to the design of a chip that's tuned to meet these clients' needs, Krzanich said. The new product will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. until the end of next year, when Intel will begin a shift to its own plants, he said.
Of the 88.3 million tablet processors shipped in the fourth quarter of 2013, Rockchip sold 9 million, according to market researcher IDC. Allwinner accounted for 18.2 million, more than three times what Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, shipped in the same period.
-- Bloomberg News
Microsoft, Salesforce to work together
Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce.com Inc. have agreed to make some of their business-software products work better together, signaling a thaw between two longtime rivals.
Salesforce's customer-management programs will become available for Microsoft's Windows and Windows Phone operating systems, and will work with Office 365 online productivity software, the companies said Thursday.
The agreement marks a shift in what has sometimes been a fractious relationship. In 2010, Microsoft sued Salesforce for patent infringement, setting off a countersuit before the companies settled later that year. Microsoft in 2005 also announced plans to "give Salesforce a very effective run for their money" with a competing product, and in 2010 ran an anti-Salesforce ad campaign with the tagline, "Don't Get Forced."
Under new Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft has been looking to bolster its Internet-based cloud software and corporate programs. Software makers are looking for more ways to let applications, even from rivals, work together as customers seek to use multiple products and share information.
Terms of the accord weren't disclosed. Microsoft and San Francisco-based Salesforce both also agreed to use some of each other's programs, including expanding Salesforce's use of Microsoft's database and Azure cloud software.
-- Bloomberg News
Spotify Android users upgrade for safety
SAN FRANCISCO -- Spotify is requiring people listening to its popular music service on Android devices to install new software as a safeguard against a recent security breach.
The break-in so far has only resulted in unauthorized access to one user's account, according to a Tuesday disclosure posted online by Oskar Stal, Spotify's chief technology officer. He said passwords and financial information were not stolen.
Spotify has more than 40 million users. A substantial number of them rely on Android, the world's most popular mobile operating system. Spotify users streaming on iPhones, iPads and Windows devices don't have to upgrade at this time.
Some users will be required to re-enter their passwords to log in.
And Android device users prompted to upgrade their Spotify application may have to deal with another headache: All previously saved offline playlists must be downloaded again.
The Spotify breach is just the latest intrusion into a prominent company.
Just last week, e-commerce company eBay Inc. required its users to change passwords after its database was hacked. Thieves stole 40 million credit and debit card numbers from customers shopping at Target stores in November and December. The personal information of about 70 million Target customers was also snatched. The breach prompted many consumers to shop elsewhere.
-- The Associated Press
U.S. solar-power installation rises 79%
Homeowners and developers installed 1.33 gigawatts of solar panels in the first quarter, the second-largest total on record, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Installation increased 79 percent from the same quarter a year earlier with utility-scale projects making up almost two-thirds of the total and homeowner demand surging, the Washington, D.C.-based trade group said Wednesday.
Total installations may reach 6.6 gigawatts this year, driven by residential rooftop systems and more than 12 gigawatts of utility projects under development, said Shayle Kann, vice president of research at Boston-based GTM Research, which publishes the quarterly market reports with SEIA. This was the first quarter when residential systems exceeded commercial and government solar.
Residential solar has "nowhere to go but up," Kann said. Installation increased 38 percent to 232 megawatts as financing models such as leasing make it easier for homeowners to afford rooftop panels. "The economics just keep getting better."
Utility-scale solar farms accounted for 873 megawatts, up from 322 megawatts a year earlier, and there were 225 megawatts installed at commercial, government and nonprofit projects.
The first-quarter total was lower than the record 2.1 gigawatts installed in the fourth quarter, mainly because of seasonal trends, Kann said.
California accounted for about 72 percent of all installations at 959 megawatts, followed by New Jersey in distant second at 64 megawatts and Arizona at 52 megawatts.
-- Bloomberg News
Samsung unveils digital fitness device
Samsung Electronics Co. unveiled a prototype heath-monitoring wristband connected to a cloud-based service, which would allow consumers to share their statistics with developers of new mobile fitness applications.
The company demonstrated the device called the Simband, which can measure health indicators like heart rate and blood pressure, at an event Wednesday in San Francisco. The Internet-based data platform is designed to promote consumer wellness and to create a pool of information for digital-health researchers, the Suwon, South Korea-based company said.
"This is the beginning of our journey, the beginning of our platform," said Young Sohn, president and chief strategy officer of Device Solutions at Samsung. "What we need is a community of developers and disruptive technology players to work with us."
Samsung, dominant in the maturing smartphone market, is now seeking to broaden its technology in wearable devices and is racing to put its stake in the ground in other new consumer technology areas like digital health. Global sales of smartwatches, glasses and medical products were about $10 billion last year and are forecast to triple by 2018, according to researcher IHS.
The wristband hardware platform would be open to other manufacturers to develop their own products, in the same way that chipmaker Intel Corp. and software maker Microsoft Corp. provided components to companies like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. in the PC industry. Samsung said it also would create a $50 million fund to support third-party development for the device.
On the software side, a cloud data service called Samsung Architecture for Multimodal Interactions would be a repository for information that consumers could opt to share with mobile app developers and that could deliver software recommending exercise regimes or diets, among other things.
-- Bloomberg News
Online retail sales in China surge 52%
China's Internet sales are surging as Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and rivals lure more of the nation's 618 million users to shop online, suggesting conventional retail-sales figures understate the strength of consumer demand.
Online retail sales, first reported by the statistics bureau in April, jumped 52 percent in the first four months of 2014 from a year earlier, compared with a 12-percent gain in the broader gauge that represented the weakest start to a year since 2004. Shanghai-based iResearch Consulting Group sees annual growth of 20 percent to 30 percent in Internet purchases over the next three to five years.
The data, a bright spot for an economy projected to grow this year at the weakest pace since 1990, also help to improve the reliability of Chinese consumption statistics that JPMorgan Chase & Co. questions. The numbers underscore the shift in citizens' spending habits as Alibaba, the world's biggest online bazaar, prepares for a U.S. initial public offering with an estimated market value of $168 billion.
iResearch measured a 40-percent increase last year to about $295 billion in online retail sales, including purchases on mobile devices.
Broader retail-sales gains have slowed amid anti-extravagance and anti-corruption campaigns started by Xi Jinping after he took over as head of the ruling Communist Party in November 2012. The data include purchases by the government and companies, distorting the picture of spending by consumers.
China's online shoppers reached 302 million in 2013 and more than double that number were using the Internet, according to China Internet Network Information Center figures cited in an Alibaba stock-exchange filing this month.
-- Bloomberg News
Business on 06/02/2014