Week in review: Chips down for AMD?

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The LCD TV maker has quickly staked out a place in the flat-panel market and has elbowed aside some of the biggest names in electronics in the process. The biggest reason for Vizio's sudden rise is its distribution strategy. At the beginning of the second quarter, the company expanded its list of retailers to include Wal-Mart Stores, Sears, Kmart and Circuit City, providing a huge boost to its shipment total.

Many of the sales have been generated by word-of-mouth endorsements. Vizio has done little in the way of advertising. But that's about to change come this fall, Vizio CEO William Wang said in an interview with CNET News.com. The company is prepping for a big marketing push when the new National Football League season kicks off next month.

Meanwhile, we've been hearing about the potential advantages of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) TVs for several years now, but when will TV manufacturers actually start selling OLED TVs and, more important, will those TVs cost way too much for the average consumer? So far, Sony has indicated that it will be the first out of the gate with an OLED TV, sometime next year, and the panels will likely be small, in the range of 11 to 27 inches wide. No one is saying how much they might cost, but some pundits think that an OLED TV of that size could cost somewhere between $800 and $1,000. Toshiba is expected to start selling 30-inch OLEDs in 2009.

There's another problem: unlike LCD (liquid crystal display) and plasma, which were completely new display technologies compared with cathode ray tubes when they first debuted, OLED TVs are a variation on the ingredients and manufacturing process used to make LCD panels. The fact that it's not a drastically new technology could mean it will have a more difficult time gaining a foothold with consumers, particularly when the price for a new OLED TV will be relatively high, at least initially.

Late-season Apple harvest
Yes, they've been on sale for only two months, but refurbished iPhones are now available for purchase on Apple's Web site. You can get both versions at a $100 discount with free shipping. That puts the 8GB model at $499 (17 percent off the original price) and the 4GB model at $399 (21 percent off). All the features are the same, including that required AT&T two-year contract--unless, that is, you can get around it. While the $100 discount may be good news to wannabe iPhone owners with smaller budgets, it sparks an interesting question: just where are the refurbished iPhones coming from?

Apple, which has said it wants to launch the iPhone in Europe by the end of this year, has reportedly chosen T-Mobile, O2, and Orange as its European launch partners for the iPhone after wrangling a revenue-sharing agreement. The four companies are set to announce their partnership by the end of the month, according to the Financial Times. The deals would require the carriers to share 10 percent of all revenue from voice and data services over the iPhone with Apple, according to the report.

Several different reports have surfaced over the past couple of days regarding revamped iPods that Apple may or may not have in the works. Other than adding color to the iPod Shuffle line, Apple hasn't done anything with the traditional iPods this year, and it looks like that's about to change.

AppleInsider believes that Apple will release Mac OS X-based iPods in September, citing unidentified sources. This particular theory has surfaced before, with many believing that Apple will introduce an iPod that looks just like the iPhone, just without the ability to make phone calls. These new iPods would have features very similiar to the iPhone but would retain the familiar click-wheel interface.

Also of note
With their new joint digital music initiative, MTV Networks, RealNetworks and Verizon Wireless are taking direct aim at Apple's iTunes powerhouse...Instead of asking participants in a test group how they liked Frontlines, game maker THQ hired technology specialist EmSense to measure their brain waves, heart rate and sweat responses while they played the military-theme game...Skype fixed a software bug that made the Internet telephony service almost unusable for two days last week.