industry

The wireless industry isn't celebrating a victory yet, despite a federal appeal court ruling that struck down San Francisco's attempt to force cell phone retailers to distribute radiation warning materials with each phone purchased.

The CTIA, the industry's trade association, remained quiet on the ruling. A spokesperson for the CTIA said that the group had no comment on the ruling, which came down yesterday. The court said the city couldn't make merchants promote a message they disagree with.

The CTIA is no doubt waiting to see what San Francisco is going to do next.

The city … Read more

Forget, for a moment, that shares of tech stalwarts Apple and Google are trading as if investors are out of their minds. They may well be, but that doesn't mean the giddiness ought to extent to the rest of the tech world.

In fact, Citigroup semiconductor analyst Glen Yeung offered an outright buzz kill of a prediction about the third quarter in an interview broadcast on CNBC on Friday.

"We were looking into the supply chain over the course of August, and really everywhere you looked, PC data points are bad. What we're ultimately going to end … Read more

Hon Hai Precision Industry, the Apple supplier better known as Foxconn, couldn't reach a final agreement to acquire a stake in Sharp, according to a new report.

Hon Hai Chairman Terry Gou met with Sharp in Japan recently to try to hammer out a deal that would see his manufacturing company take a minority stake in Sharp. However, according to Reuters, which cited reports out of Japan, the companies could not reach an agreement.

Under terms of the so-far failed deal, Hon Hai would have become Sharp's largest shareholder.

The companies revealed in March that Hon Hai would … Read more

More than a billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water, and some 300 million of them are in Africa. Industrial design students Ryan Lynch and Marcus Triest have an interesting approach to tackling the problem in sub-Saharan African with his Solar Bag.

This design concept is both a shoulder bag-style container to transport water from a distant source, as well as a tool to purify it.

The container is made of polyethylene, which allows UV rays to pass through the clear outer layer and kill most of the bacteria in the water. It's similar to … Read more

Mecha-heads rejoice: A Gundam-style giant robot has come to life in Japan, promising joyrides aplenty in this 13-foot humanoid machine on wheels.

Suidobashi Heavy Industry showed off its Kuratas mecha bot over the weekend in Makuhari just outside Tokyo.

Kuratas is a four-wheeled, 30-joint exoskeleton that can be piloted from its cockpit or remotely with a 3G touch-screen phone. It was demoed at the Wonder Festival, where legions of robot fans gathered.

Kuratas can move its massive torso, arms, and hands, and has a few "weapons" like a "LOHAS launcher," but it actually shoots BB pellets and fireworks. It can also grab things (like humans) with its claw-like fingers. … Read more

If you're looking to give your HDSLR movies more of a cinematic look, you should definitely check out the Aviator Travel Jib Kickstarter project.

The ultracompact camera crane lets you smoothly sweep your dSLR (or other camera up to 6 pounds) through a scene or change perspective like a traditional jib. But, because it's so small and lightweight -- it weighs less than 3.8 pounds -- it can be set up in places you can't use other cranes. The jib arm extends to 6 feet and collapses down to 2 feet.… Read more

Sources in the industry speaking with DigiTimes (via AppleInsider) have reportedly been expecting the competition in the smartphone world to heat up around the adoption of quad-core processors as early as this year's holiday quarter.

HTC, Samsung, LG, and China's Meizu already have quad-core processors in their phones, leading industry sources to believe that indeed, Apple will have to include a new chip to stay competitive.

That new iPhone is largely expected to be released this fall.

While its competition is mostly using Qualcomm's dual-core technology (quad-core is forthcoming later this year), Apple is expected to use … Read more

Break off a piece of that BlackBerry and friend some strangers on Facebook:

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has long been struggling to turn the company around. With thousands of layoffs ongoing, it could be time for the company to try something drastic. One report says RIM is considering spliting itself into two companies by diving the messaging network from the hardware side, and possibly selling the hardware division. RIM didn't comment on specifics of this report by The Sunday Times. But RIM did say it is examining a wide-range of strategies. Perhaps new BlackBerry 10 devices can shake … Read more

The Recording Industry Association of America wants to put an end to software and services that enable people to rip songs from music videos.

Two days after YouTube-MP3.org, a site that takes music videos and converts their songs into MP3 files, was blocked from accessing YouTube, the RIAA has asked CNET to remove software from Download.com that performs a similar function. CNET, which is owned by CBS, is the publisher of this news site.

The RIAA, the trade group representing the four largest record companies, began pressuring Google to start cracking down on the MP3-conversion services about a … Read more