Thread: Anandtech News

Today Apple announced its Q2 results, and sales of the iPhone continue to dominate revenue and earnings for the company.
Revenue for the quarter came in at $45.6B – a 4.7% increase year over year, and a down sequentially from the always strong holiday season.
Net profit came in at $10.2B for the quarter, resulting in Earnings per Share of $11.62 – beating the consensus of $10.41. This was an increase of 7.3% over Q2 last year.

Apple Q2 2014 Financial Results (Non-GAAP)
	Q2'2014	Q1'2014	Q2'2013
Revenue	$45.646B	$57.594B	$43.603B
Net Income	$10.2B	$13.1B	$9.5B
Margins	39.9%	37.9%	37.5%

iPhone is far and away the largest product at Apple, with unit sales of 43.7 million for the quarter. This is a 17% increase over the same time last year, and a 14% increase in revenue. iPhone sales accounted for 57% of Apple’s Q2 revenue. The large increase in iPhone sales can be at least partially attributed to increases in sales in both Japan and China, though revenue from the rest of the Asia Pacific region was down.
Software, Services, and App/Music store sales came in at $4.6B for the quarter – up both year over year (11%) and sequentially (4%).
Mac sales were up 5% year over year with 4.1 million Macs sold, but down from 4.8 million last quarter.
iPad sales were down 16% year over year, and 37% sequentially, tempering the increase in iPhone sales. Some of the drop was explained by channel inventory changes, but in the end Apple reports how many devices it sells to the channel every quarter so that is the number that matters. If there was a strong demand for the product, then it’s unlikely there would be a large number unsold in the channel to worry about.
Finally, iPod sales continued their decline with 2.761 million devices sold – down 51% year over year and 54% sequentially. iPod is no longer a billion dollar business for Apple, with only $461M in revenue from the once loved device.

Apple Q2 2014 Device Sales (millions)
	Q2'2014	Q1'2014	Q2'2013
iPhone	43,719	51,025	37,430
iPad	16,350	26,035	19,477
Mac	4,136	4,837	3,952
iPod	2,761	6,049	5,633

Apple CEO Tim Cook also announced more changes to the Capital Return Program. From August 2012 to March 2014, Apple has given $66 billion back to shareholders through the program. As part of this program, Apple’s board has approved an increase in the share repurchasing program from $60B to $90B. On top of this, the quarterly dividend has increased by about 8%, and they have plans to increase the dividend annually going forward.
Finally, Apple announced a stock split of 7-1. Each Apple share at the close of business June 2, 2014 will receive six extra shares for each share held. Trading will begin again on June 9^th, 2014.
Overall, it was another solid quarter for Apple. iPhone sales keep providing them strong revenue, but it is slightly worrisome that the iPad sales have not continued at the same pace. There are likely many reasons for this including strong competition in the space, and people less likely to upgrade their iPads annually or semi-annually like the phone market. It’s obviously too early to call any trends here though, so we’ll have to wait and see how the numbers look in a few months.

More...

Corsair has a good reputation for their PSUs, and today they are among the most popular choices for gamers and enthusiasts. The RM1000 is the first PSU from Corsair to find its way into our new testing lab, and it's an 80 Plus Gold Certified unit with a rated output of 1000W at 40°C ambient. Given the rated power output and $170 retail price, the RM1000 targets demanding users and gamers, and a simple 80 Plus Gold certification only goes so far. Read on for our full review as we see what else the RM1000 has to offer.

More...

Back in 2010 Samsung launched the original Samsung Galaxy Beam i8520. The phone ran Android 2.1 which was a bit outdated at the time as Android 2.2 launched just a few months prior. It was powered by a 720MHz OMAP 3440 processor paired with 384MB of RAM and a PowerVR SGX 530 GPU driving a 3.7” WVGA Super AMOLED display. Next to Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S smartphones the Galaxy Beam seemed comparatively weak. However, the device appealed to a certain group of users with its built in pico projector which could project images up to 50” in size at WVGA resolution.
The phone sold well enough to warrant an updated version which was revealed at MWC 2012. The updated Galaxy Beam i8530 launched with Android 2.3.6 and packed a NovaThor U8500 CPU with two 1GHz Cortex-A9 cores, 786MB of RAM, and a Mali-400 MP GPU. Today it seems Samsung has introduced another device into its Galaxy Beam lineup and based on its frequency support and Samsung’s images it’s destined for China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA network.
Detailed specifications are not yet posted but according to Samsung’s webpage the device sports a 4.66” WVGA LCD display and a quad core 1.2GHz processor with support for 802.11 b/g/n at 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 4.0. Other specifications include MicroSD support up to 64GB, a 2600mAh battery, and Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. On the outside the device sports a metallic looking plastic build that is reminiscent of the Samsung ATIV S Windows Phone.
The site doesn’t list the China launch date and currently there is no information about a wider release. With this sort of niche device it may never see one. However, Samsung seems confident that it is the type of device that can sell in the Chinese market. There is definitely appeal to being able to project photos, videos, and webpages for everyone to see rather than huddling around a tiny device.

More...

This afternoon Microsoft held an earnings call to announce the results of their third quarter for fiscal year 2014.
Overall GAAP revenue was down less than 1% over Q3 2013 at $20.403B, with Non-GAAP revenue up 8% due to Windows Upgrades, Office Deferral, and Video Game Deferral last year bringing down the Non-GAAP revenue last year.
GAAP Gross Margin also fell 8% at $14.462B as compared to $15.702B last year, but Non-GAAP was up 3% due to the same deferrals.
Operating income was down 8% as well year over year, and Earnings Per Share were down 6% at $0.68 per share.

Microsoft Q3 2014 Financial Results (GAAP)
	Q3'2014	Q2'2014	Q3'2013
Revenue	$20.403B	$24.519B	$20.489B
Operating Income	$6.974B	$7.969B	$7.612B
Margins	70.8%	66.2%	76.6%

In the Devices and Consumer lines, Windows OEM revenue was up 4%, mostly driven by a 19% increase in Windows OEM Pro which was attributed to Business PC growth likely due to the retirement of Windows XP. Non-Pro revenue was down 15% for the quarter, with China accounting for 6% of that total.
Office Consumer revenue was up 15% for the quarter. This refers to the full license of Office, and not the subscription based Office 365 Home.
Even with the increases in revenue, Gross Margin was down about 1% year over year for this group.
On the consumer hardware side, there was a large revenue gain of 41%, with Xbox platform revenue up 45%. 1.2 million Xbox One consoles, and 800,000 Xbox 360s were sold in the quarter. Surface revenue was also up more than 50% with Surface revenue now at almost $500 million for the quarter however no actual device sales numbers were announced.
Once again, even though revenue was up, Gross Margin was down 34% which was attributed to the increase in Xbox One console sales and their high BoM.
The final piece of the Devices and Consumer group is the aptly named “Other” category, which includes Office 365 Home, Bing, and Xbox Live revenues. This group was up 18% in revenue over Q3 2013 driven by strong subscriptions for Office 365 Home – now at 4.4 million subscribers and up 1 million for the quarter. Bing search advertising revenue was also up 38%, and Xbox Live revenue was up 17% contributing to a strong 18% total increase for this business segment, and unlike the other Consumer lines, Gross Margin was also up 26%.
On the Commercial side, Microsoft announced a 7% increase in revenue and 6% increase in Gross Margin which came from a slight increase in Commercial Licensing at 3%, and a 31% increase in the cloud services of Office 365 and Azure which had 100% and 150% revenue gains for the quarter. Microsoft’s commercial cloud services fall into the Commercial “other” category.

Microsoft Q3 2014 Segment Overview
	Q3'2014	Q2'2014	Q3'2013	Revenue for quarter
D&C Licensing	$4.38B	$5.38B	$4.35B	21.3%
D&C Hardware	$1.97B	$4.73B	$1.40B	9.5%
D&C Other	$1.95B	$1.79B	$1.66B	9.4%
Commercial Licensing	$10.32B	$10.89B	N/A	50.5%
Commercial Other	$1.90B	$1.78B	N/A	9.3%

*note - Q3 2013 data not available due to company reorganization
Also in commercial, Microsoft announced that around 90% of enterprise desktops worldwide are now running Windows 7 or 8 which is impressive considering how many were running XP not very long ago.
Corporate Vice President and CFO Amy Hood also stated that the Nokia acquisition will close Friday April 25 which was four months later than they initially expected. Once completed, all of Nokia’s assets will fall under the Devices and Consumer lines, with license and platform payments falling under the D&C Licensing, and Nokia Devices and Services falling under D&C Hardware.
Overall, strong results in the Commercial segment and great demand for Microsoft cloud services such as Office 365 and Azure were not enough to overcome the consumer segments with Xbox One and Surface margins pulling down the overall result. Xbox One sales are obviously razor thin on margins at the moment which is not unexpected in a new console, and Surface sales are still very low. Next quarter should be interesting to see how the Nokia acquisition fits in, and to see if any headway can be made in the Consumer Hardware segment.

More...

Back on September 3rd 2013, Microsoft announced its intentions to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business, and after several extra months of waiting for regulatory approval, that deal officially closes today.
Microsoft has acquired almost all of the Nokia devices and services segments, as well as an agreement to license patents from Nokia, and to license the HERE mapping technology.
Nokia’s devices and services will now be known as Microsoft Mobile Oy (Oy being a Finnish abbreviation of Osakeyhtiö which translates to Limited company ala Wikipedia) and for the time being, Microsoft Mobile Oy will be run as a subsidiary of Microsoft.
Though the final price was not officially announced yet, it is expected to be slightly higher than the $7.2 billion originally announced. As part of the deal, Microsoft now employs about 25,000 former Nokia employees, as well as owning most of Nokia’s manufacturing. Several of the plants did not transfer ownership due to various factors – the manufacturing facility in India which employs 7500 workers is subject to an asset freeze over ongoing taxation proceedings and therefore will still be owned by Nokia but a service agreement has been reached with Microsoft to allow them to keep the plant active. Also, one plant in Korea which employs about 200 people will close rather than transfer.
Former Nokia CEO Stephen Elop will now report to Satya Nadella as executive vice president of the Microsoft Devices Group – now expanded to include Lumia smartphones, Nokia mobile phones, and the recently forked ASOP versions of the Nokia X phones in addition to Xbox hardware, Surface, Perceptive Pixel products and accessories.
What this brings to Microsoft is quite a lot of experience in building not only mobile device hardware, but also software and imaging. It’s been clear to see the influence Nokia had on Windows Phone since they initially signed on as exclusive partners in 2011. Obviously the hope by Microsoft is that bringing this experience tighter into the organization will allow them to add features at a quicker pace.
Also the manufacturing component is something that Microsoft as a software company has never had direct control over, and it may help them in other areas with the move to a devices and services company last year. Surface 2, for example, has been in short supply and while it’s far too early for Microsoft to move production of their own products to the former Nokia manufacturing facilities, it is possible they can leverage that for future products.
Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft was moving from being a traditional software company to a Devices and Services focus, and with this acquisition, they have fleshed out the devices side. Now they need to execute that strategy and try to kick start their mobile efforts which have struggled in the marketplace so far.
Source: Microsoft, Nokia

More...

Intel has recently been awash with news about upcoming processors. In March, Intel released information on an upcoming unlocked Haswell Pentium processor, an upcoming Haswell-K processor with overclocking enhancements, an unlocked Iris Pro processor coming to Broadwell, and some details regarding an 8-core Haswell-E processor due later this year. This is a bit of an odd article – various motherboard manufacturers have posted new product images online for an upcoming platform, with all the juicy bits redacted. Here is our analysis of some of those products.

More...

After our brief motherboard roundup, it was brought to our attention that some of the next generation of Intel motherboards are now up for pre-order in China. From tmall.com, it seems that motherboards described as being from MSI’s 'Z97' Gaming line up are on offer for pre-order from ¥999 ($160) to ¥2199 ($350). Given that these seem to be ahead of any official launch, the translated text states that these motherboards will be shipping in May. Almost ironically, the images used for these motherboards were taken from media reports on the MSI range with the chipset markings covered up.
In the sale are the:

• MSI Z97 Gaming 3 (¥999 / $160)
• MSI Z97 Gaming 5 (¥1399 / $225)
• MSI Z97 Gaming 7 (¥1799 / $289)
• MSI Z97 Gaming 9 (¥2199 / $350)
• MSI Z97-I Gaming (¥1299 / $209)

Not many specifications are given above and beyond what we know already from the images MSI has allowed the media to publish. The seller does liberally put ‘Haswell Refresh Z97’ on most of the products. We do have the phrase ‘Expected delivery time May 30’ on each of the items as well.
The advantages of putting items up for pre-order mean that early adopters can ensure a copy and know what is coming. It happens in the video game industry, where users know what is coming months in advance, or even in mobile phones where a big press event is held a month before launch - but not in the computer hardware industry. Normally motherboard retailers should be holding back from selling until launch, however if any of them get stock you might imagine that it would be beneficial to business to sell it now (or take preorders) than keep it in their storehouse.
Source: tmall.com

More...

In June of last year Samsung released the Galaxy S4 Zoom. The phone was related most closely to the Galaxy Camera and the Galaxy S4 Mini. While its specifications were seen as a step down from the Galaxy Camera, it was equally as much a smartphone as it was a camera and it included support for voice calling and SMS. Today Samsung has revealed the first device in a new lineup of camera-centric smartphones. It is a successor in form but not in name; it is called the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom. Like its spiritual predecessor, there’s a big focus on the camera, with the phone packing a new 20.7MP sensor with support for 1920x1080 video recording at 60fps. The full specifications are below with the previous Galaxy S4 zoom and the Nokia Lumia 1020 alongside it for comparison as all three are devices with a heavy focus on the camera.

	Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom	Samsung Galaxy K Zoom	Nokia Lumia 1020
CMOS Resolution	16.3MP	20.7MP	41.3MP
CMOS Format	1/2.3", 1.34 micron pixels	1/2.3", 1.12 micron pixels	1/1.5", 1.12 micron pixels
Optical System	Focal Length: 4.3 - 43mm (35mm equiv: 24-240 mm) F/3.1-F/6.3 aperture 10x zoom + OIS	Focal Length: 4.4 - 44mm (35mm equiv: 24-240 mm) F/3.1-F/6.3 aperture 10x zoom + OIS	Focal Length: 7.2mm (35mm equiv: 25mm) F/2.2 aperture OIS
Dimensions	125.5 x 63.5 x 15.4 mm, 208g	137.5 x 70.8 x 16.6mm (20.2mm max), 200g	130.4 x 71.4 x 10.4 mm, 158g
Video Recording	1080p30 max	1080p60 max	1080p30 max
Display	4.3” 960 x 540 Super AMOLED	4.8" 1280x720 Super AMOLED	4.5" 1280x768 Super AMOLED
SoC	1.5 GHz Exynos 4212	1.7GHz/1.3GHz Exynos 5 Hexa (5260)	1.5 GHz MSM8960 Qualcomm Snapdragon S4
Storage	8GB + MicroSD	8GB + MicroSD	32/64GB
Battery	2330 mAh (8.85Whr)	2430 mAh (9.23Whr)	2000 mAh (7.6 Whr)
OS	Android 4.2.2	Android 4.4	Windows Phone 8
Connectivity	2G / 3G (Intel XMM6262) 802.11a/b/g/n, NFC, BT 4.0, GPS/GNSS	2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Intel XMM7160 Category 4 LTE) 802.11a/b/g/n, NFC, BT 4.0, GPS/GNSS	2G / 3G / 4G LTE (Qualcomm MDM9x15 Category 3 LTE) 802.11a/b/g/n, BT 4.0, GPS/GNSS

On the outside we see that the Galaxy K Zoom has a similar outer shell to the Galaxy S5. It is made of dimpled plastic that mimics the feel of leather. On the back we have a 4.8” display that matches the 1280x720 resolution of the Galaxy Camera 2, although it is an AMOLED panel while the Galaxy Camera 2 sports a Super LCD display. On the front we have the camera lens and a Xenon flash. The lens protrudes a few mm farther than Samsung has listed as the average thickness of the phone and the phone is actually 20.2mm thick at its thickest point. In comparison the Nokia Lumia 1020 is only 14.5mm at its thickest point. The device also sheds a tiny bit of weight, dropping from 208g to 200g.
On the inside we have Samsung’s Exynos 5 Hexa (5260) SoC which employs ARM’s big.LITTLE architecture and has support for HMP (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing) to take advantage of all six cores simultaneously. It sports two ARM Cortex-A15 cores with a max frequency of 1.7GHz and four Cortex-A7 cores with a max frequency of 1.3GHz. There’s also ARM’s Mali-T624 GPU and 2GB of RAM.

For the camera itself it looks like Samsung has stuck with 1/2.3” for their sensor format but has increased the resolution from 16.3MP to 20.7MP. While keeping the same sensor format as the Galaxy S4 Zoom was likely done to maintain device size and thinness, the increase in resolution results in smaller pixels and a corresponding decrease in low light sensitivity. With the rumors that Samsung would outfit the Galaxy K Zoom with a 20.7MP sensor I had hoped that they would at least increase the sensor size to maintain similar low light performance. The camera still includes OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) to reduce shake when taking photos and videos.
Like the Galaxy Beam, the Galaxy K Zoom doesn’t quite have the mass market appeal that Samsung’s flagship smartphones have. However, Samsung does not appear afraid to to take risks in entering new subcategories of smartphones and they seem confident that they will be able to market these devices. Clearly there is an appeal to camera oriented smartphones and manufacturers like HTC, Nokia, and Samsung are all going with a different approach to bring high quality photography to the smartphone form factor. For now we’ll have to wait and see how things evolve before we can decide which approach to the problem was best.

More...

When AMD launched its Kabini and Temash APUs last year it delivered a compelling cost/performance story, but its power story wasn’t all that impressive. Despite being built out of relatively low power components, the nearly all of AMD’s entry level APUs carried 15W TDPs, with a couple weighing in at 8 - 9W and only a single 1GHz dual-core part dropping down to 3.9W. By comparison, Intel was shipping full blown Haswell Ultrabook parts at 15W - offering substantially better CPU performance, in a similar thermal envelope (although at a higher cost). The real disruption for AMD was Intel’s Bay Trail, which showed up with a similar looking micro architecture running at substantially higher clock speeds and TDPs below 8W.
AMD seemed to have all of the right pieces to build a power efficient mobile SoC, but for some reason we weren’t seeing it. Today that begins to change with the the successors to Kabini and Temash.


More...

Synology's j-series NAS units have traditionally provided consumers with a very budget-friendly entry-level window into the DSM (Disk Station Manager) ecosystem. As the amount of user-generated data in the average household keeps increasing, the demand for more resilient storage keeps going up. With drive capacities on the increase, we have seen people move to 4-bay NAS units in order to take advantage of RAID-10 (despite the loss of effective storage space). This helps to avoid (to a certain extent) risk-prone rebuilds associated with RAID-5 arrays.
Entry-level 4-bay NAS units are important for any NAS vendor, evidenced in part by Western Digital's decision to launch the 4-bay WD EX4 ahead of the 2-bay WD EX2. The ix4-300d is also a popular member of LenovoEMC's ix-series. Synology is updating its entry in this price range market with the launch of the DS414j today, and appears to be an interesting alternative to the EX4 / ix4-300d.
Gallery: Synology DS414j


The DS414j sports the Mindspeed Comcerto C2200 dual-core communications processor. It has two Cortex-A9 cores running at 1.2 GHz. There are plenty of hardware acceleration engines in the SoC.

Mindspeed Comcerto C2200

The block diagram above doesn't provide full details of the peripheral I/O. Fortunately, we do have some documentation (PDF) which indicate that the C2200 sports two SATA II ports, two PCIe 2.0 lanes, one USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port. This looks like a good platform choice, since the two additional SATA bays should get full bandwidth through the SATA - PCIe bridge (if implemented that way on the board). A look at the gallery above shows that the unit has only one USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 port, pointing to the likely fact that there is no USB 3.0 - PCIe bridge in the equation. The SoC does have support for up to three GbE ports, but the 414j uses only one. Even though we have seen dual LAN ports making their way into a few ARM-based units, it looks like the j-series will tend to stress its entry-level credentials by sporting a single network interface only.
The DS414j brings in all the exciting features of DSM 5.0 (along with its acclaimed apps for quick and easy remote access, private cloud features and backups) to the entry-level market. The unit is now shipping globally with a retail MSRP of $390.

More...