Logitech Announces Q3 2009 Results

Romanel-Sur-Morges, Switzerland-based Logitech International has announced the financial results for Q3 2009.

The company has reported total sales of USD 627 million for Q3 2009, which is a decrease by 16% in compared to Q3 2008. Operating income dropped by 63% from USD 116 million in Q3 2008 to USD 43 million in Q3 2009 this year. This has yielded a gross margin of 29.9%, which is again less than the 36.9% achieved in Q3 2008. The net income has therefore slumped to USD 40.5 million for this quarter, compared to USD 133.5 million reported in the same period last year. The company has a positive cash flow of USD 480 million on its balance sheet, which according to the press release was made possible by scaling back operating expenses.

Amongst its products, pointing devices continue to be the biggest seller, with sales in the latest quarter touching USD 149 million, or about 24% of total sales.

In order to meet the challenges of recession, the company has planned to layoff between 550 and 600 employees worldwide.

Read more about Logitech’s latest financial results, here.

Amazon Announces Q4 2008 Results

Seattle, Washington-based Amazon.com has announced its financial results for Q4 2008.

The company, America’s largest online retailer, has reported an operating income of USD 272 million for Q4 2008, which is just a million more than that reported in Q4 2007. The net income of the company in Q4 2008 was USD 225 million, which translates to USD 0.52 per diluted share. This is again more or less flat in comparison to Q4 2007, when the net income was USD 207 million.

For the full year ending December 31, 2008, the company witnessed a net sale of USD 19.17 billion, compared to USD 14.84 billion for 2007. Operating income showed an increase of 28% to USD 842 million, while net income jumped by 36% to USD 645 million.

The latest quarter also saw Amazon introducing a concept called “Frustration-Free Packaging”, which eliminates plastic from packaging materials used by the company. Another initiative was the launch of “Amazon CloudFront”, which is a self-service, pay-as-you-go web service that delivers content and integrates with Amazon S3 service.

Amazon’s Kindle Store service now holds the largest collection of e-books in the world. Q4 2008 saw an addition of 45,000 titles to the store, taking the total collection to 230,000 titles.

Read more about Amazon’ financial performance, here.

The Palm PRE

Mobile Smartphone’s are becoming more and more advanced and Competition is tough, so where does that leave you? Everyone seems to be in the touch screen market. Palm is the newest contender in the market with their pre Smartphone. But will it succeed, in the pre palm is using many of the iphone’s technologies to create a better user experience.Palm is using a web interface meaning applications aren’t coded the traditional way. You now use web technologies such as JavaScript to create applications. Palm is doing this to make it easier for developers so new languages aren’t required and it takes developers less time to create apps. The operating system is based on linux and created by palm. So what does this mean for you? It means you should see more applications and see them quicker if palm is right. Not only that we should also see some different applications not seen before.

I am glad though that palm is keeping things simple yet also being innovative at the same time. While it does take a lot of the iPhone’s multi touch gestures, it has some other tricks up it’s sleeve.  Palm is creating a device that will not have syncing software but rather it will sync within the “cloud”. Not only that, but the device is one of the first to use wireless charging through electromagnetic induction and a wireless charging dock. Price however is the next issue, this all sounds great right? Well we are unaware of pricing. The only response was why make it cheaper when it’s a better product.

Overall I’d say the device looks pretty impressive and I’m glad someone isn’t afraid to change the game a little. The iPhone is nice but I’m getting pretty sick of it.

Microsoft Explorer Mouse Review

Reason for purchase, I bought the mouse, because I had a Microsoft Natural Wireless 6000 and it had one of the old Huge Receivers that never really quite worked. I have been using the Explorer for about a week now and I have to say it’s very easy to get used to and I love the rechargeable batteries.

Bluetrack technology is a new technology invented by Microsoft for use on irregular surfaces, the technology does work very well and just as advertised. I tried it on granite, Jeans, Leather, non Finished wood and even glass. It worked really well on everything but glass, mind you it did work a little but not well. The mouse has 5 buttons including the scroll wheel. The Microsoft drivers work well on mac and in windows. I’d like to mention that Microsoft has beta drivers for windows 7. These drivers allow you to quickly changes and configure your buttons.

The mouse remains comfortable throughout extended use and buttons are well placed, The scroll wheel is made of metal and is very smooth, Microsoft doesn’t use the notches on their scroll wheels so it doesn’t have incremental scrolling like your probably used to, I however like the way Microsoft does it better. It’s silent and moves nicely. The mouse has a snap in USB receiver which makes it easy to take it with you. Since the mouse is rechargeable Microsoft includes a nice little charger with it that goes into the bottom of the mouse.

Overall I’m pleased with the mouse, I wish they had some more buttons maybe, but for most people 5 is more than enough. Bluetooth would have been nice, I wish more mice and peripherals supported this technology.

Dragon From AMD Captures Popular Imagination

“DRAGON” – that is the name AMD has given to its latest platform technology offering for desktop PCs.

The new technology is a combination of some high-end hardware gizmo that has been manufactured and / or sourced by AMD and worked out a price that makes the final product peg at lower than USD 900 for the retail customer.

The Dragon package features GIGABYTE GA-MA790GP-DS4H motherboard, AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition processor, 4x 1GB Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066 RAM, 1GB Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card, and 300GB Western Digital VelociRaptor hard drive. This product costs USD 895.

The Phenom II X4 CPU operates at a frequency of 3.0Ghz. The ATI Radeo HD 4870/4800 series graphics and AMD 7-series chipsets deliver DirectX 10 graphics for good-quality gaming experience. Read more

Next Page »