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Nexus 7 and Android Convertibles Drive Massive Asus Profit
rtfa-troll writes "The collapse of the PC market has had much discussion on Slashdot with a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them. Now Asustek's most recent results show that there may be a way out for those that can move away from their standard markets. Concentrating on Android tablet devices, the Google Nexus 7, with a help from ASUS transformer tablets has driven the company to massive $230 million profits. Asus gross revenue also climbed 9 percent to around $3.8 billion. We have discussed related issues recently: Where companies like HTC have lost their focus on open Android devices and suffered from devastating collapses, ASUS has managed to differentiate it's tablets by providing the most open tablet experience possible via with Google's Nexus program and branding."
Build stuff people want to buy, make a profit
a 'great' era to get all excited about.. or not.
1. they're all locked down in some way compared with the existing x86 desktop.
2. they're simplified to the point of uselessness for anyone who knows what they're doing (the vendors' competition).
3. the result of 1 and 2 is that they're consumer-hostile devices disguised as 'convenience' network-dependent platforms rather than empowering tools one can own and retain control over (ie trust). I see little of interest here for the same reasons I don't care about my cable box.
So far I've seen little innovation other than rehashes/dumbed down versions of existing software, just with ads or with 'subscription' hooks and simplified interfaces. The closest thing we have to open is android and even that's riddled with binary only drivers and userland. bleh..
oh and spare me the 'all users want is convenience so you should just learn to deal with it' posts.. just don't bother. I've heard it all before. There's no reason why they can't have their convenience along with the power to tinker if they choose to. It's just too bad that today's users don't understand that gaining advantage with powerful tools requires a learning curve. It's also too bad that I along with tomorrow's crop of 8 to 14yos won't have the opportunity to really learn to command tomorrow's computer technology without a licensed sandbox.
The collapse of the PC market has had much discussion on Slashdot with a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them.
The PC Market was collapsing? Apple is now the biggest PC manufacturer? We will all now use iPads instead a Desktop-PC? ... ... ... WHAT THE...
Many people do have similar concerns about their DVD players, as region locking renders most of them useless. Ones that have configuration options exposed can play multiple regions. In this case it's the manufacturers telling you how you can use your media rather than your device, but the concept is similar.
"...a common opinion that, now that Apple is the largest personal computer manufacturer, a loss of sales combined with Apple's iPad will completely eliminate most of them."
How on earth can someone describe the opinion that Apple's tablet is going to "completely eliminate" most PC manufacturers as "common"? (!?!)
Only someone who ignores reality completely could come to such a misguided conclusion... let me guess.. big Apple fan?
News flash: nearly 90 million PCs sold in Q3. 8 times the number of tablets sold. The PC is already commonplace and suffers from it's own success in that they have become so reliable and so capable that upgrades and replacements just aren't that common. The tablet is brand new and new models with compelling improvements come out every few months. Yet still we see massively more PCs sold than tablets.
A single manufacturer of tablets is going to completely eliminate the PC industry?
Sorry, no.
-Lod
While I agree with the sentiment mostly, DEMANDing security is not in the spirit of that quote. Freedom comes with responsibility, not security. You really cannot have freedom in a perfectly safe system, that is precisely why the quote talks about trading one for the other. The very power and flexibility that lets you experiment also lets you do stupid things that compromise security. Rather than demanding things, I think it's high time we accept that personal education and personal responsibility are the only way to provide both freedom and the safety that a walled garden claims to provide.
-Lod
A lot of people didn't worry about committing their work to closed document formats in the nineties too, and people are still paying for it.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol