supply

It's now becoming increasingly clear that the global supply chain for electronics is going to be far more affected by the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear crisis still unfolding in Japan than previously thought.

Take for example the attention today on lithium ion batteries used in notebook PCs. Demand right now is not terribly high--it's a time of the year when consumers are buying fewer PCs--but consider what happens if the crisis persists. As Taiwan's Digitimes observes, a good bit of the world's production ecosystem for lithium ion batteries used in notebooks are not only located in Japan, but many … Read more

When Apple put the original iPad under the knife, it yielded a fetchingly slimmer iPad 2. IHS iSuppli shows how they did it.

"Thinner is better" is an Apple mantra. And the popularity of the MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPod proves that consumers agree. The iPad is no exception.

By shaving off a sizable 34 percent of the original iPad's body fat--to 8.8 millimeters from 13.4 millimeters--Apple got the weight down to 600 grams, down 15 percent from 700 grams for the iPad 1.

How did it do it? The biggest reduction in thickness came in the iPad 2's battery subsystem, wrote Kevin Keller, a teardown analyst at IHS iSuppli, in a research note today. This part of the iPad 2 is 2.5 millimeters thick, a 59 percent reduction from the 6.1 millimeters of the original iPad, according to Keller. … Read more

I remember, last year, waiting on line one morning for an iPhone 4. I was on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and I gave up after an hour and a half. The lines were too long and had formed hours before.

This was two months or so past the iPhone 4's launch, and it was still impossible to buy one of the phones at a store. Lines would form every morning, scoop up whatever little stock there was, and leave the Apple Store once again drained of its supply. The cause? Grey-market resellers.

Sound familiar?

We're less … Read more

Beyond the devastating loss of life and property, the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan last week are likely to shorten the supply and increase prices of key electronic components, according to a report released yesterday by IHS iSuppli.

Most of the factories for the major electronics makers managed to escape severe damage as they were located far enough away from the epicenter of the quake and the areas affected by the tsunami.

However, the disaster has severely affected the country's transportation and power grids, leading to problems shipping and receiving parts, getting people to work, and maintaining production.… Read more

The battle between LTE and WiMax for 4G dominance may soon be over with LTE declared the champ, according to a report out today from IHS iSuppli.

Though WiMax still enjoys a slight edge for now, adoption of LTE (long-term evolution) will surpass that of its 4G rival sometime next year. By 2014, the number of LTE subscribers will hit 303.1 million versus only 33.4 million for WiMax, said IHS.

"With WiMAX enjoying a two- to three-year head start in next-generation network deployments, it presently enjoys a major advantage in market share in the 4G segment," … Read more

The glory days of the digital camera market are coming to an end.

So concludes analyst firm iSuppli, which forecasts modest growth in coming years followed by decline as camera phones take over.

It'll still be a huge market, with tens of millions of units sold annually--just not as big as it once was after it peaks in 2013, the firm forecast.

"During [2014], shipments are expected to decline by 0.6 percent to 135.4 million units, with low-end DSC [digital still camera] models expected to encounter stiff opposition from the cameras in cell phones, which increasingly … Read more

It's time to digitize power supplies to make them smart enough to work with multiple devices and draw only the power that electronics need, according to start-up Green Plug.

Green Plug today at the Consumer Electronics Show introduced its Green Power Processor, which it said will be available in the second quarter.

The Green Power Processor is a chip designed for digital power supplies, which are meant to be more versatile and efficient than existing analog power adapters.

When built into a power supply, the processor can detect how much voltage and power a device, such as a PC … Read more

Microsoft isn't intentionally making it hard to get your hands on its Kinect motion-gaming peripheral, a company spokesman said in a recent interview.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Neil Thompson, Microsoft's Xbox manager in the U.K. and Ireland, said Microsoft is not intentionally offering a low supply of Kinect to drum up demand for its motion-gaming peripheral, which allows users to control on-screen action with only body movement. Rather, he said it's simply a matter of demand being extremely high.

"It's absolutely not a strategy," Thompson told the gaming publication. "We want to … Read more

Consumer electronics have staged a recovery this year.

Consumer electronics makers are expected to grab sales of $340.4 billion for 2010, up 6.2 percent from the $320.7 billion seen in 2009, according to data released yesterday by iSuppli. That contrasts with last year when sales dropped 4.4 percent compared with 2008.

"As shown in the early results from Black Friday, consumer confidence levels in 2010 are higher in all regions of the world than they were in 2009, and buyers are more inclined to acquire new devices or upgrade old electronics equipment," Jordan Selburn, … Read more