U.S. Notebook PC Sales Surpass Desktop PC Sales in May -- For the first time in U.S. history, retail sales of notebook computers surpassed those of desktops in May, according to research firm Current Analysis. Notebook sales grew from 45.9 percent of the total PC retail market in May 2004 to 53.3 percent of last month. "The past few months have seen an increase in the number of retail notebook players, with lesser-known value players Acer and Medion gaining shelf space at major retailers such as Best Buy, Circuit City and CompUSA," said analyst Sam Bhavnani. "In addition, notebook pricing has dropped considerably." Prices, in fact, have fallen an average of 17 percent over the past year. The firm said that notebooks nearly topped desktops in August 2004, on the strength of intense back�to-school advertising by Toshiba.
Every executive who has approved a connected product roadmap has made a quiet assumption: the network underneath it will still be there. That assumption is about to be tested at a scale the automotive industry has never faced. The global connected vehicle installed base is heading toward a billion units, and the cellular technology most of those vehicles depend on is scheduled to begin its retirement before the end of the decade. For automakers, fleet operators, insurers, and the telecom carriers that serve them, the question is whether the recurring revenue those services promise can survive a connectivity layer with a shorter life than the vehicle carrying it. How Scale Meets an Expiry Date Omdia research forecasts that the global connected vehicle installed base will surpass 1.05 billion units by 2035, up from 473.7 million in 2025. Few installed bases of any kind more than double in a decade, and this one signals that connectivity is moving from premium differentiator to baseline e...