David Richards

Apple is set to launch a brand new mobile phone that will featuring music, video, email, and Internet functions. It will run on a unique Apple network called Mobile Me.

 Apple Computer has requested a set of trademarks for a mobile telephone service featuring music, video, email, and Internet functions, according to applications at the US Patent and Trade Office.

The maker of the iPod music players filed this month to trademark the name ‘Mobile Me,’ for devices and services combining features of the iPod with Motorola’s ROKR telephone and the Blackberry portable communications device.

Appled has asked the patents office to lock in the ‘Mobile Me’ name for handheld devices as well as accompanying mobile telephone service, according to the trademark applications. The telephone service would provide ‘digital music from local or global communications networks’ as well as online databases ‘in the fields of music, concerts, videos, radio, television news’ and more, the applications state.

maker of the iPod portable music player, could be planning to launch its own mobile-phone venture, recent federal trademark filings indicate.

The filings reinforce speculation that Apple would wade deeper into mobile phones in the wake of a partnership with Schaumburg, Ill.-based Motorola (NYSE: MOT) , the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker.

Motorola’s Rokr phone, introduced last year, was the first to feature Apple’s popular iTunes digital music store. The phone has been criticised for inadequacies, but it has still underscored the growing importance of music to mobile phones.

 “I think they will have a device and an MVNO,” said Albert Lin, an analyst with American Technology Research. MVNO is short for “Mobile Virtual Network Operator.” MVNOs don’t own physical networks; instead, they buy wireless time from major networks like Sprint Nextel, and operate under their own brand.

An MVNO would be a good way for Apple to spur downloads of songs from iTunes through a wireless network, Lin said: “They have to find a way to get over-the-air downloading of iTunes.” The first iTunes phone doesn’t have that capability; users can only download songs directly from their personal computers.

By operating its own MVNO, Apple would have more control over distributing and pricing its music services than it would in a traditional relationship with a wireless carrier. “They have to take a more proactive role in developing the [over-the-air] market,” Lin said. Apple’s iPod, known for its style and functionality, has become a consumer electronics icon. The Rokr phone was criticized for lacking the iPod’s style and for holding only 100 songs, about 900 less than the new iPod Nano.

If Apple chooses to make its own phone, it will likely contract out much of the engineering to a firm that specialises in mobile phones, said Ed Snyder, a stock analyst with Charter Equity Research. One Company tipped to pick up the contract are BenQ an OEM manufacturer that recently aquired the Siemens brand. during the recent CES event in Las Vegas a senior BenQ executive did admit that they were talking to Apple about OEM manufacturing. Snyder doesn’t see an Apple phone as a threat to Motorola or other established mobile phone makers. “The mobile phone business is enormously complicated,” he said.

Phones are primarily sold through carriers. Carrier/manufacturer relationships can be tricky. Lin also said he didn’t see an Apple phone venture as a threat to Motorola: “I think Motorola would view it as positive.” Apple might market an MVNO in tandem with a Motorola phone. And Motorola is likely looking for a better outcome from its Apple relationship than it has gotten from the first Rokr phone, Lin said

Seagate Technology plans to pay US$1.9bn in stock to acquire Maxtor in a deal that would create a company with 40% to 45% of the hard drive market, and combined annual revenue of more than US$11bn.

Craig Davis regional Marketing Manager of Maxtor in Australia said” The merging of the two operations brings together two storage Companies with a wealth of experience. In Australia Maxtor has a stronger retail precence than Seagate and this an advantage to Seagate”. On the distributor front both Seagate and Maxtor use Ingram Micro and ACA Pacific.

Maxtor’s shares leapt 45.13% to $6.56 on news of the deal, though Seagate’s fell 2.04% to $19.20. Under terms of the agreement, Maxtor shareholders will receive 0.37 shares of Seagate common stock for each Maxtor share. This will give them 16% of the combined company, leaving the remaining 84% in the hands of Maxtor shareholders.

Seagate said the combination will create significant synergies and add 10%-20% to Seagate’s earnings per share after the first full year of combined operations. This will not be until 2007 because Seagate does not expect the agreement to close for at least six to nine months. While it expects to save $300m on expenses a year after the process of integration, $500m has been earmarked for costs, including severance payments.

Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said: “With the increased scale of the combined company, we can reduce overall product costs and provide more innovative products at more competitive prices.” For his part, Maxtor CEO Dr CS Park, who will join the Seagate board, would not be drawn on whether it had discussed a merger with any other vendor, insisting it is committed to the Seagate deal. Maxtor will get a $300m payment if Seagate pulls out of the agreement.

Seagate acknowledged that revenue-attrition will result from the merger as OEMs look for alternative suppliers. However, it said the merged company would still be accretive even if it lost half of Maxtor’s revenue. While Seagate is in good financial health, loss-making Maxtor has seen revenue stagnate. While Seagate spoke encouragingly about the quality of Maxtor’s engineers and its production facilities in China, there is little doubt that most of the cost savings will come from Maxtor’s side.

Seagate said it is sticking to its prediction that revenue in the December quarter will grow 17% to $2.2bn, with earnings per share in the range of $0.53-$0.57. It is also retaining its target of earnings per share of $2 in 2006.

Though Seagate’s acquisition of rival Maxtor means one less hard-drive supplier, system builders say there’s not much to worry about. In fact, the deal may just ensure more quality supply as hard-drive makers work to meet rising demand from the consumer electronics market.  Seagate, the No. 1 provider of hard drives in the

“This will mean less choices for us,” said Doug Phillips, senior director of emerging technologies at Seneca Data, but he noted that Seagate, with its five-year product warranty, has been a primarily supplier along with several other manufacturers. Maxtor drives aren’t used often in Seneca products, he said.

Brian Dexheimer, a Seagate executive vice president who runs the company’s channel operations, said the acquisition was less about acquiring specific technology from Maxtor and more about adding manufacturing capacity, particularly in China, and tapping Maxtor’s retail prowess. Maxtor makes about 60 percent of its own media but buys its heads from other suppliers, he said, adding that Seagate makes most of its own components. Seagate will decide which Maxtor products to keep based on customer input, but Seagate won’t be releasing that information until after the deal closes in about six months, he said.

Seagate will need the new manufacturing assets as consumer electronics makers continue demanding more storage. Dexheimer said the hard-drive industry has been growing at 15 percent for the past three years, while storage products for the consumer electronics segment has been growing at 60 percent for the past three years.

“The growth is where it traditionally hasn’t been before, and we are being asked to make different types of products in these spaces,” Dexheimer said.

Todd Swank, director of marketing at Nor-Tech,based system builder, said he has seen no shortages resulting from the growing demand by consumer electronics manufacturers but added that advances in technology will increase pressure for products. He said. more manufacturing capability from Seagate, one of Nor-Tech’s main suppliers, would be welcome as consumers start gobbling up digital video recorders and other technology that allows them to store gobs of movies, pictures and music on a various devices.

“Video will be huge demander of digital storage,” Swank said.

Moving forward, Seagate plans to focus more R&D efforts on rugged one-inch drives with high storage capacities, as well as on drives for cars that can withstand high temperatures and drives with security features like full-disk encryption, Dexheimer said.

According to researcher iSuppli, Seagate is the leading manufacturer of hard drives worldwide, with 28.1 percent of the market in the third quarter. Western Digital had 18 percent of the market in the quarter, followed by Hitachi at 15 percent, Maxtor at 13.8 percent, Toshiba at 9.5 percent, Samsung at 7.7 percent and Fujitsu at 6.4 percent.

Maxtor had been suffered significant losses over the past few years. For its third quarter ended Oct. 1, the company reported a net loss of $17 million on revenue of $927 million, compared with a net loss of $95.1 million on sales of $927 million a year earlier. For its fiscal year ended Dec. 25, 2004, Maxtor reported a loss of $182 million on revenue of $3.8 billion, and in 2003 the company generated $103 million in profit on $4 billion in sales.

Projector sales are starting to take off again according to GFK with a core market being the office and the purchase of short throw projectors. Sean Fellows, Account Manager at GfK Retail and Technology said “Projectors are now likely to become the flipchart of the digital age consequently demand is likely to continue to rise in the future.”

Projector sales are starting to take off again according to GFK with a core market being the office and the purchase of short throw projectors. Sean Fellows, Account Manager at GfK Retail and Technology said “Projectors are now likely to become the flipchart of the digital age consequently demand is likely to continue to rise in the future.”

He also said that changing working practices and budgets are resulting in a need for greater flexibility within the office. As a lot of work is done digitally, when coming to share this information the need for Projectors and other Audio Visual Equipment has increased.

While GFK Australia does not track office or SMB sales other than via mass market retailers research from IDC and Gartner does show that the SMB and large enterprise market are buying a new generation of projectors.

In the UK projectors have witnessed growth of 38% against the same period last year.Despite the impressive sales of Projectors in 2008, there has however been a noticeable slowdown in unit sales over the past couple month as business cut capital budgets.

Whilst businesses may aspire to equip all their meeting rooms with fully fledged AV suites, within the current trying economic climate this may be no more than a pipe dream. Many meeting rooms are simply too small to deploy a traditional projector with any real success and with a workforce becoming more mobile with the adoption of increasing numbers of Laptops, Netbooks and Smartphones, business technology is becoming more flexible and data projectors are certainly not slacking.

The value of a Portable Data Projector in the mobile workplace is incredibly advantageous, even more so for the new generation of Short Throw Projectors coming onto the market. A Short Throw Projector is defined by GfK as being able to produce an image larger than 1.5M from a distance of less than 100cm. With the benefit of portability and the added bonus of being less reliant on having boardroom sized meeting rooms in which to present, the flexibility of Short Throw Projectors makes them desirable to 21st Century business. This also has benefits within the home as living rooms are getting more compact and space is limited for large screen Televisions.

The latest GfK figures for the UK show that the volumes sold of Short Throw projectors are indeed on the rise, growth increasing on a month by month basis. In September 2008, 2.3% of all projectors sold within the UK were Short Throw models. Interestingly this growth is fuelled by new LCD Projectors, with 5.6% of all LCD Projectors sold in September being Short Throw models, compared to DLP models which contributed to only 0.2% share in the same period. This goes completely against the trend when one looks at the prevalent technologies in the total Projector market. DLP Projectors, which have the greatest volume share standing at 61% in September 2008, have grown massively from the position 12 months ago where they accounted for only 43% of volume sales and LCD Projectors dominated the market.

Sean Fellows said  “The adoption of Short Throw Projectors within the consumer channels are yet to be felt – probably due to the high average selling price. The price elasticity of demand is less elastic within a business than in the consumer market. Consequently the average consumer is unlikely to see the intrinsic benefits when they are able to purchase a large screen Television at a lower price. Nevertheless as the technology becomes increasingly price competitive, a fall in price by a couple of hundred pounds could see the adoption rate rise within the consumer channels”.