Cupertino (CA) - In a move that is believed to help Apple to secure low NAND flash memory prices as well as create artificial shortages for competitors, Apple has ordered 50 million flash memory chips for its iPhones and iPods from Samsung Electronics.

A Digitimes article posted yesterday suggests that Apple huge order is in place to support an increase in iPhone production. The Cupertino-based company already ordered 25 million 8GB NAND flash chips from Samsung in June.

Analysts believe think that such a huge order not only guarantees a certain supply for Apple, but almost certainly will create a shortage of memory for Apple’s competitors. Digitimes suggests that Samsung already informed its customers it will cut supply to them in July. Apple’s order is also believed to amplify the effects of a reduced production of flash memory during April and May because of an oversupply in the preceding months.

Samsung was estimated to be dedicating more than 40% of its NAND Flash memory output for Apple’s iPod products in November 2005. That year, Apple announced that it had reached a long-term supply agreement with flash memory makers (Hynix, Intel, Micron, Toshiba and Samsung) to secure the supply of NAND flash memory throughout 2010 with a pre-payment of $1.25 billion.

Apple’s order also sparked speculations that the company is readying new iPods for September

Analysts are generally very optimistic the iPhone 3G’s future. FBR Capital Markets analyst Craig Berger, for example, now estimates that Apple may have placed an order of more than 15 million iPhones for the remaining two quarters of this year. RBC Capital Markets’ analyst Mike Abramsky said that Apple’s well-thought market strategy could lead to a "breakout" in iPhone shipments, in a way reminiscent of 2005 when Apple more than doubled its iPod holiday sales.

Abramsky predicts that iPhone shipments will triple during the summer to 5.1 million units. "We believe investors are underestimating the upside to Apple from lower iPhone pricing, 3G speeds and expanded global distribution," Abramsky said. The analyst thinks that 150 million existing iPod owners may add to sales by trading up to iPhone due to its lower price point, instead of replacing their iPods with newer models.

If any of the analysts is close to what will really happen, Apple is set to shoot well past its self-imposed target of moving a total 10 million iPhone units by the end of this year. The 50 million NAND unit order that Apple secured with Samsung certainly reveals that the company remains very confident in achieving and topping its goal.

New York (NY) - Despite Nvidia’s admission of faulty notebook chips and the subsequent stock plunge, several semiconductor analysts are maintaining ’BUY’ ratings on the stock.

Big shots at JPMorgan and Thompson Financial showed traditional conservatism on this negative news, but analyst firms like Wedbush Morgan and Oppenheimer & Co. did exactly the opposite. In essence, the analysts believe the chip/chipset problems are easily surmountable near-term issues.

Michael Lucarelli from Wedbush Morgan Securities maintained a BUY rating for NVDA stock. In a research note sent to clients, Michael stated that "Nvidia clearly made a poor design decision in the not too distant past, in our opinion, which ultimately led in a price/performance gap large enough to warrant significant price cuts ultimately resulting in the pre-announcement."

Lucarelli did not spare leadership of Nvidia, claiming that they’ve clearly failed to execute on the chipset side, but a lot is expected from Tesla and Tegra product line-ups: "Management’s recent missteps lead us to have increased concerns about execution and we are taking a more cautious view on the company. However, we believe risk-reward looks attractive given limited downside and the potential to right the ship several quarters out, particularly with Tesla/Tegra growth on the come."

When it comes to target prices, Wedbush expects that stock will be back at $18, with the new revenue estimate of $4.4 billion: "Given the unbalanced nature of Nvidia’s model today, we think that price to sales is a more accurate way of valuing shares. As such, we arrive at an $18 12-month price target by applying the 5-year price to sales average for Nvidia of about 2.5x to our new FY10 revenue estimate of $4.4bn."

Rick Schafer from Oppenheimer & Co. changed his rating to "Outperform," setting identical price target - $18. In a note sent to his clients, Rick stated that "Nvidia’s issues are well understood and near-term, and we would use expected weakness today as an opportunity to build positions in a still solid long-term story".

At the time of writing (10:12AM PST, 1:12PM EST), NVDA stock is floating between 12.45 and 12.61, down 30.7% since yesterday. Market capitalization dipped to around seven billion USD, which is first sub-10B market cap Nvidia had for a very, very long time. Three billion USD were erased between 5PM EST yesterday and 9AM EST today.

Despite growing concerns of an economic slowdown worldwide, most Taiwan network-equipment makers, including Accton Technology, Alpha Networks, D-Link and Gemtek Technology, expect revenues to continue to post healthy growth in the third quarter of this year, according to sources at the makers. D-Link said that it is positive about back-to-school demand in the third quarter and the company is now building up its inventory in order to meet the projected demand.

More here at Digitimes.

BenQ could possibly completely quit the handset market and shift focus to the Mobile Internet Device (MID) segment instead, according to industry sources. However, company sources refuted the claims, and although admitting that business focus will shift to MIDs, noted in saying that the company will not completely quit handsets.

More here at Digitimes.

The results are in; the downloads have been counted and verified to bring you a result we’ve known for weeks was coming: Mozilla has successfully made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most downloads in 24 hours.

Mozilla announced at the end of May that the company was shooting for a Guinness World Record with its latest Firefox, version 3.0, and provided ideas on how one could encourage friends to download Firefox within those 24 hours as part of “download parties.”

Mozilla whipped us into a frenzy over the release of the updated browser, while some people raised eyebrows when the record attempt had overloaded the download servers. That’s right, so many eager souls tried to download Firefox 3 that the Mozilla servers ground to a halt and for periods of time through out the day, eager users couldn’t download the update at all.

Well, despite that little hiccup, Mozilla has “officially” announced the record via its website, stating that over 8 million people downloaded the release in the first 24 hours.

“Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and better Web.”

Mozilla experienced another bump in the Firefox 3 road in the form of a security vulnerability just hours after it was released. The day Mozilla shipped, Tipping Point announced that its researchers had already found a vulnerability in the browser. While the company said it would not disclose any details of the bug before Mozilla had released a patch, it rated the vulnerability as “high” and said it affected both versions 2 and 3 of Firefox. Mozilla is investigating the vulnerability and working on a patch.

Earlier in the week Sony released the much awaited v2.40 firmware update for the PlayStation 3. While some gamers have installed the update and are living happily ever after, others got into a spot of bother when trying to install it. Sony has since pulled the update from its servers.

Reports began to trickle through just hours after the update was released. There was a whole range of problems with crashed consoles, black screens and frozen games being just a few. Posts on the PlayStation forums show that the problems are affecting various different models rather than one specific type and Sony has taken the update offline until the problems are solved.

However, while PlayStation forums and game websites across the internet are buzzing with the news of the firmware glitches (the thread on the forums alone is 81 pages long), Sony seems to be trying to play down the problems as much as possible.

In the official PS3 blog Patrick Seybold, Director of Corporate Communications and Social Media said, “As has been reported on many gaming blogs and websites, we have temporarily taken Firmware v2.40 offline. We’ve received a limited number of calls from consumers experiencing an issue with installing the system software update on their PS3."

"While our consumer services department has seen a low volume of calls on this topic, we are committed to providing the PS3 community with XMB access features delivered in the v2.40 update," Seybold continued. "We are working diligently to isolate the problem for those few consumers and to identify a solution before we put the firmware back up.”

So far there is no news on when the firmware will be back up and running but Manager of Social Media at Sony, Jeff Rubenstein, has said the company hasn’t received any complaints from users having trouble after the update has been successfully installed.

So, what can you do to fix your crashed PS3? Well, the answer is, unfortunately, not much for now. There is no news from Sony about what’s causing the problem or how to fix it and many gamers are saying the only way out is to reformat your hard drive. However, to do so would mean losing all your saved games. Backing up your hard drive is an option however many users say their console is completely dead, the only sign of life being a flashing red light. We’ll bring you more on this once Sony release details of the glitch and information on how it’s going to assist customers who have been affected.

The PS3 firmware update v2.40 included the long awaited in-game XMB, which allows users to access menus and settings during game play. Aside from XMB it also included the addition of Trophies, and similar to the PSP update released last month, Google Searching.

Tokyo (Japan) - A USB flash drive containing valuable deployment maps of Japanese and US military forces was stolen last year and the culprit has been caught. At first, the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force claimed the drive was merely lost, but investigators discovered a 33-year-old captain actually stole it along with 2000 yen in cash (about $20 USD) and a 10,000 yen airline coupon. After the theft the captain tried to commit suicide by swallowing a massive amount of drugs, probably in modern version of seppuku to restore his honor. Fortunately, he was found in time and taken to the hospital.

Amazingly the captain has only been suspended for 60 days.

Read more ... Mainichi Daily News

Washington DC - Travellers lose nearly 637,000 laptops a year at U.S. airports every year, according to a new survey by the Ponemon Institute. At 36 of the largest airports, a staggering 10,278 laptops are lost/stolen every week. Medium-sized airports have approximately 2000 lost or stolen laptops at week. Amazingly, the survey showed that 65% to 69% of the missing laptops are never reclaimed, but that’s probably because 77% of the victims say they have no hope in recovering the laptop.

That’s A LOT of missing laptops, but here in the office were asking ourselves how do you lose a laptop in the airport? Ponemon analysts say most of the laptops go missing at security checkpoints and I can understand the highly stressful situation of taking off all your belongings while nervously waiting for your upcoming flight, but when you pop your laptop on the conveyor belt, it has to come out the other side right?

Read more ... PC World