Consumer Electronics Daily News

Mio's DigiWalker C520 Does It All While You're On The Road

The Mio DigiWalker™ C520 is an all-in-one CE device for drivers that incorporates turn-by-turn GPS directions with a full function portable media player and hands-free calling for cell phones.

Complete with a 4.3-inch, full color touchscreen, the C520 is preloaded with maps of the U.S. and Canada. text-to-speech for real-time voice-guidance with actual street names and full codec support for a variety of digital music, movies and photos. The widescreen player also gives users the ability to access a splitscreen display for multi-function media playback and navigation at the same time.

In addition to keeping the family entertained while on the road with movie playback, and keeping you on the road with GPS navigation, the DigiWalker C520 also gives you instant hands-free calling support for any Bluetooth-ready phone.

For more information, click here.

Circuit City Lays Off 200 from Corporate Office

Circuit City Stores Inc., announced more restructuring plans today, shifting about 640 store managers to other locations and trimming nearly 200 jobs from its corporate office.

Part of the larger turnaround plan first announced earlier this year, the company is moving managers from low yield stores to busier ones across the nation, a move that will affect about one manager from each of its stores, Reuters reports.

Circuit City will also cut 200 jobs from its Richmond, Va., headquarters to cut costs. The office currently houses about 3,100 employees and Circuit City employs nearly 46,000 in all. The cuts are in addition to the layoff plan announced in March, in which Circuit City said it would close 65 stores and layoff about 3,400 store employees and fill those spots with lower-paid replacement.

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Intel Demos First TV Chip for Consumer Electronics

Intel Corp., has taken the wraps off its first digital TV dual-channel demodulators, designed specifically for the CE market. The Intel CE 6250 dual-channel COFDM demodulator and Intel CE 6251 dual-channel diversity-enabled COFDM demodulator give TV makers the ability to integrate home entertainment capabilities, such as DVR and home networking functionality, directly into the TV set at the chip level.

In addition to expanding the functionality and simplifying integration for set makers, the chips also promise lower power consumption and small size, Intel reports.

The new chipsets will reportedly be available to OEMs before the end of the year. For more information, click here.

Microsoft CEO: CE is Key to Future Growth

Perhaps taking a page from its smaller rival, Apple Inc., Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said at the D: All Things Digital conference this week that the company is trying to stake out a new position in the consumer electronics market as a key part of its growth strategy in the future. The move, which was sparked by successes in the video game market that the software giant would like to replicate in other areas, will sprout a variety of new devices in the coming years, Ballmer said.

Ballmer said Microsoft will keep "coming and coming and coming" to bring new, powerful CE devices on the market, such as its Zune media player, Vista-powered portable computers and the new Surface Computing device.

In addition to the CE market, the company is also looking to expand its presence in the new media and advertising arenas -- in part to keep pace with rivals such as Google.

“We have interesting things," Ballmer said at the conference, "...and when we have interesting stuff we will make it available.”

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JVC Cuts 1,800 Jobs, Exits Analog Business

JVC (the Victor Company of Japan) has announced plans to cut about 1,800 jobs as it withdraws from the analog audio sector of its consumer electronics business, Forbes reports.

The restructuring plan, which JVC says will return it to profitability by March 2008, positions the company to focus solely on the digital CE market.

The layoffs will reportedly reduce the manufacturer's workforce to about 4,700 and reduce fixed costs by more than 2 billion yen. JVC is part owned Panasonic maker Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd.

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Microsoft's Milan Finally Surfaces

Microsoft Corp., began showing off the Surface computer today -- codenamed Milan -- a coffee-table shaped PC that can respond to individual human touch and a variety of everyday objects.

Debuted by Microsoft founder Bill Gates this morning, the Surface is a Windows Vista-based PC that utilizes a complex input system to revolutionize the way users interact with the machine. During the demonstration, Gates showed how the screen can be manipulated by hand, or with objects such as a paintbrush.

The Surface also has a specialty input system that allows it to recognize and manipulate everyday electronic devices equipped with a special bar-code label. Upon setting a bar-code equipped digital camera on the Surface display, the PC wirelessly began transferring images from the camera to the machine, visually spilling the pictures across the desktop as if they fell out of the bottom of the camera itself.

Similar to the input described by Apple in its forthcoming iPhone, the Surface has multi-touch capability beyond conventional touchscreen displays. Microsoft has said the device will begin popping up soon a host of partner locations, such as T-Mobile stores to assist customers when selecting a new cell phone.

However, at $5,000 and $10,000 apiece, the company says it will be three to five years before the price points drop enough to make consumer versions feasible.

For more information, click here.

VIZIO Moves Into Wal-Mart

Four new VIZIO LCD HDTVs are now available at Wal-Mart stores nationwide, part of the retailing giant's expanded new consumer electronics lineup that includes a variety of new digital, communication and home entertainment items.

The four new VIZIO LCD flat panel HDTV's touting all black designs are available in all of  Wal-Mart's 3300+ US stores include the VW26LHDTV, VW32LHDTV, VW37LHDTV and the VW42LHDTV. The sizes range from 26-inches to 42-inches with prices starting at $448.

"Wal-Mart is an ideal retail partner for VIZIO to further expand its national distribution," says Jeff Schindler, Vice President Marketing for VIZIO, Inc. "Moreover, this partnership is one of shared values, where the success of both companies is based on reputations for providing customers quality products at remarkable prices."

VIZIO attributes much of its growth to notable product performance at breakthrough prices -- coupled with today's most competitive service polices, such as free on-site repairs for a full year after purchase.

For more information, visit www.vizio.com.

Palm Showcases Foleo Mobile Device

Falling somewhere between an ultramobile PC and a smartphone, Palm unveiled the highly anticipated Foleo device tody at the D: All Things Digital conference. About the size of a small laptop, the Foleo is a first-of-its-kind smartphone companion product that provides smartphone owners a larger screen and full-size keyboard with which to view and edit email and office documents residing on a smartphone.

Edits made on Foleo automatically are reflected on its paired smartphone and vice versa. Foleo and its paired smartphone stay synchronized throughout the day or at the touch of a button, and the devices turns on and off instantly and features fast navigation, a compact and elegant design and a battery that lasts up to 5 hours of use.

"Foleo is the most exciting product I have ever worked on," saysJeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, Inc. "Smartphones will be the most prevalent personal computers on the planet, ultimately able to do everything that desktop computers can do. However, there are times when people need a large screen and full-size keyboard. As smartphones get smaller, this need increases. The Foleo completes the picture, creating a mobile-computing system that sets a new standard in simplicity."

Foleo mobile companions work with Palm's Treo smartphones (Palm OS® and Windows Mobile® versions). However, Palm believes that most smartphones based on Windows Mobile should work with little or no modification. Smartphones based on operating systems from Research in Motion, Apple and Symbian likely can be supported with a modest software effort. The Foleo's synchronization architecture is open, and Palm expects to work with third-party developers to support as many smartphones as possible.

For more information, visit www.palm.com/seefoleo.

Samsung Touts 4GB MCP for Mobile Phones

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., has successfully stuffed 4GB into an MCP (multi-chip package) for mobile phones --  a first for the industry that Samsung says will mark the end of the need for an external memory card slot in a cellphone and also eliminate having to develop interface software for all types of NAND memory.

Samsung's new moviMCP is a multi-chip package carrying an embedded (moviNAND) memory solution, which provides a simple-to-design memory package that satisfies the high-speed data transmission needs of mobile phones, while fully supporting the communication features within the handset.

"We've now perfected a memory chip that allows handset manufacturers to significantly reduce development time while deploying an extremely robust design that will result in higher performance for smaller phones, with higher storage capacities," Jim Elliott,  Flash marketing Director, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., says in a statement.

The new moviMCP combines a 4GB embedded memory card, which consists of two 16Gb (gigabit) NAND flash chips and a controller, together with a 1Gb mobile DRAM chip to support the processor and a 2Gb NAND flash chip for general handset operations. This provides a total memory capacity of 35Gbs.

For more information, visit www.samsung.com.

Toshiba Taps AMD For New Notebooks

Toshiba is making the move to AMD with three Satellite notebook PCs based on an AMD mobile platform set to debut later this summer. The expanded Satellite product line from Toshiba will offer systems based on AMD Turion 64 X2 dual-core mobile technology and the AMD M690 Series Chipset. The computer maker says it expects to start shipping the new consumer notebooks in time for the back-to-school season.

Toshiba plans to first launch the AMD-based notebooks in the United States and Europe, the latest in AMD's successful Better by Design program which enables leading global OEMs to design notebook PCs that provide users with better performance and superior graphics and wireless connectivity, while delivering increased energy efficiency for extended battery life.

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