By Edward Lim
COVID-19 is hijacking life. From Facebook News Feed to printed newspapers, it’s everywhere. And it just seems to get worse with countries taking measures to prevent spread. Telecommuting has now become necessary for many.
Category: Opinions
Hold the predictions
By Edward Lim
Research firms have played a vital role in providing the industry with vital information on market trends and technologies. Reports based on past quarters contain valuable analysis that helps enterprises and consumers make better sense of the numbers.
Intel regains top spot as semiconductor market dips in 2019
Despite a 0.7 percent drop in revenue, Intel climbed to the top of the global semiconductor market in 2019, according to Gartner.
China to lead in global robotics systems and drones spending in 2020
China will lead in drones and robotics systems (US$46.9 billion) in 2020, according to IDC. Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) (APeJC) will be the second largest region with US$25.1 billion in spending, followed by the US (US$17.5 billion) and Western Europe (US$14.4 billion).
Huawei grows while smartphone market slumps in Q3
Amid a 0.4 percent contraction in the global smartphone market in Q3 compared to the corresponding quarter last year, Huawei continued to stride ahead with 26 percent growth. It has narrowed the gap with Samsung at the top while pulling away from Apple in third spot.
Lenovo retains pole position in India PC market in Q3
India’s PC market shipped 3.1 million units, rising 15.8 percent year-on-year in Q3, according to IDC. The key growth driver was the second phase of shipment to the Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu (ELCOT) under its ongoing initiative of free distribution of laptops in the state. The coming end of life of Windows 7 in early 2020 also contributed to the growth as corporate and enterprise users accelerated their upgrades to Windows 10.
5G: US$13.2t sales and 22.3m jobs by 2035
5G is expected to have more impact that originally predicted. According to the IHS Markit 5G Economy Study, the new mobile technology will generate US$13.2 trillion is sales enablement by 2035 — that’s a near US$1 trillion increase from the estimate in 2017.
Computer and machine vision market to hit US$26b in 2024
Expanding range of applications and more powerful hardware are expected to drive growth in the computer vision and machine vision market in the next five years, according to BCC Research.
Avast survey: 1 in 5 smartphone photo is terrible or a duplicate
The average person stores 952 photos on their smartphone, of which 22 percent are of bad quality, blurred, dark, or duplicates, according to an Avast survey.
Singapore: Most ready for AI
As a city, Singapore is the world’s most ready for the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, according to research firm Oliver Wyman Forum. London, New York, San Francisco, and Paris made up the rest of the top five with Sydney slotting in at 10th.
India server market dips in Q2
The server market in India dropped one percent year on year, driven primarily by a dip in x86 server sales.
Watch your bin — the rubbish version!
Your rubbish bin could be a treasure trove for thieves. What you deem as garbage may contain a repository of sensitive information that could come back to haunt you.
China and Brazil buck trend as smartphone sales slump in Q2
The signs are not good for smartphone sales as Gartner reports a 1.7 percent decline in Q2. Bucking the trend among the top five markets are China and Brazil. China clocked up 101 million smartphone sales, up 0.5 percent year on year in Q2, to maintain its top position.
Japan to lead APAC in smartphone decline in 2019
It’s not going to be a good year for smartphones. The global market is expected to dip 2.5 percent year on year, with Japan leading with a 6.5 percent drop.
APAC GPUaaS market poised for 40 CAGR by 2025
The global GPU as a Service (GPUaaS) market is expected to jump tenfold from around US$700 million in 2018 to US$7 billion by 2025, according to Global Market Insights. The Asia-Pacific (APAC) region is expected to lead this charge with a compounded annual growth rate of more than 40 percent between 2019 and 2025.
The future of database is in the cloud
Unsurprisingly, a Gartner report is predicting that three quarters of all databases will reside in the cloud by 2022. Only five percent of migration will remain on premises.
Robots to replace 20m jobs by 2030
Nearly one in 10 jobs will be replaced by robots by 2030, according to a paper released by Oxford Economics. Entitled How Robots Change the World, it highlights that up to 8.5% of the global manufacturing workforce could be displaced by industrial robots just 11 years down the road.
Goodbye and good riddance, iTunes!
By Edward Lim
Apple’s announcement that it is killing of iTunes is music to my ears. It’s about time!
India PC market slides in Q1
Weak consumer demand, high inventory from previous quarters, and supply issues for Intel chips are among the reasons why the India PC market slipped in Q1. According to IDC, the segment dropped 8.3 percent to 2.15 million units that quarter.
Google fires first salvo at Huawei
By Edward Lim
It was only a matter of time before the spat between the US and China went up another level. And this week, Google joined in the fight by pulling out support for China’s world number 2 phone maker Huawei.
Huawei bucks the trend as global smartphone shipment shrinks in Q1
While its competitors struggled, Huawei strode ahead and emerged the winner in the worldwide smartphone market in Q1. Though it’s still behind market leader Samsung, the China-based smartphone giant narrowed the gap with an astounding 50 percent growth in the quarter, according to IDC.
Worldwide cloud services to grow exponentially through 2022
Cloud services are really hot with projected growth of 17.5 percent to US$214.3 billion in 2019, according to Gartner. The momentum is expected to continue through to 2022 with the research firm projecting the market size and growth of the cloud services industry at nearly three time the growth of overall IT services.The day my Google Pixel died
By Edward Lim
When my trusty Google Pixel froze last week, I took it as a case of overuse and attempted a reboot.  It proved to be a series of fruitless attempts as the Android-based smartphone simply could not be revived. The furthest I got was to the opening screen (see above) but there was absolutely nothing I could do there — the screen just froze again before launching into another reboot.
OnePlus 6T: Impressive, nifty and fun
By CY Lim
The OnePlus 6T has been out in the market for a couple of months now and as one who received it as a gift within the first few days of its launch, I am definitely glad I made the switch from my sluggish Oppo A77. Setting up and transferring data was a breeze especially since it was an intra-Android migration. Within an hour or so, I was ready to go.
Global wearable market to grow 26% in 2019
Worldwide shipment of wearable devices will touch 225 million in 2019, an increase of 25.8 percent from 2018, according to Gartner.
Global smartphone shipment slides 6% in Q3
Smartphone vendors shipped 355.2 million units in Q3, down six percent from the corresponding quarter last year, according to preliminary estimates by IDC. This is the fourth straight quarter of year-on-year decline.
Samsung and Xiaomi neck-to-neck in India in Q2
Xiaomi and Samsung shipped 9.9 million smartphones each to India in Q2. Together they account for 60 percent of the total shipment that quarter, according to Canalys.
PC market inches up 2.7% in Q2
Global traditional PC shipment posted the strongest growth in more than six years during the past quarter, according to IDC. Total shipment was 62.3 million units, which translates to a 2.7 percent year-on-year growth.
100m smart speakers by end of 2018
Smart speakers are picking up steam with the installed base expected to hit 100 million by the end of this year, according to Canalys. That’s 2.5 times the size of end 2017.
China tops IDC’s smart cities awards
China has emerged tops with five out of 19 winners in the 2018 IDC Smart City Asia Pacific Awards (SCAPA). Taiwan and Singapore were next with four and three awards respectively across 12 functional categories.
