China Says No to Bing, Baidu Ups Lead Over Google

Google’s share of the Chinese online search market dropped slightly in the second quarter as market leader Baidu took more search volume, according to market research companies.

Google has fought for years to win Chinese users away from Baidu, a Chinese Internet search company. Their rivalry has led the two companies to release directly competing products such as search services for free music downloads.

Users went to Baidu for 75.7 percent of their online searches in China in the second quarter, a rise of 1.6 percentage points from the first three months of the year, according to iResearch, a Chinese Internet consultancy.

Google drew 19.8 percent of the searches, down 1.1 percentage points from the previous quarter, the iResearch numbers showed.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine also attracted a fraction of Chinese users after it went online in early June, but Microsoft will have to continue improving the service to retain users, the researcher said. Bing drew 0.3 percent of the searches in China in the second quarter.

Microsoft’s recent search deal with Yahoo, under which Bing’s algorithm will drive Yahoo searches, does not include Yahoo China. Yahoo’s China operations are controlled by Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba Group, which has not announced any similar deal with Microsoft. Yahoo China competes with local search engines for the small portion of the market not dominated by Baidu and Google.

Google is popular mainly among some urban Chinese users, while users in China’s rural areas almost always turn to Baidu. Some users go to Google for searches in English but switch to Baidu for searches in Chinese.

The growth in Baidu’s market share reflected growth in the overall number of searches being done in China, iResearch said.

Another Chinese research outfit, Analysys International, found a similar rise for Baidu and drop in market share for Google in the second quarter. But it noted that Google’s search volume was still up almost two-thirds from a year earlier.

Google’s share of user searches was down 1.5 percentage points from the previous quarter, while Baidu’s was up 2.6 percentage points, Analysys said.

“The situation in the Chinese online search market is relatively stable, Baidu holds an absolutely dominant position, and there is limited room for other companies to play,” Analysys said.

Google China hit a setback in June when the government punished it for allowing pornographic links to appear in its search results. China at one point blocked Google.com and other Google services, and the company changed its algorithm to filter porn from search results.

Lenovo Sales Recover, but Still Under Pressure in Q2

Lenovo’s PC sales began to recover in its latest fiscal quarter, but the world’s fourth-biggest PC maker warned that the recession was not over as it posted a net loss Thursday.

Demand for PCs is still suffering in the West, and price competition has combined with rising component costs to pressure Lenovo’s margins, executives said in a conference call.

“The operating environment continues to be challenging for PC makers,” said Wong Wai Ming, Lenovo’s CFO.

Lenovo reported sales of US$3.5 billion in its first fiscal quarter, ended June 30. The number was down 17.9 percent from a year earlier, even though PC shipments were up slightly over the same period.

Lenovo posted a quarterly net loss of $16 million, compared to a net profit of $110 million a year earlier.

The company has been hit by falling PC prices and rising costs for parts like LCD screens and memory, said company CEO Yang Yuanqing. Large enterprises in the U.S. and Western Europe are also continuing to delay new IT purchases, preventing recovery in the biggest market segment in those countries, Yang said.

Lenovo’s quarterly sales figure was up about 25 percent from the previous three months, and its net loss was down substantially from $264 million in the previous quarter.

Lenovo this year began restructuring to enhance its focus on China and other rising economies. The company split its product groups into high- and low-end lines to separately target developed and emerging markets.

China is by far Lenovo’s biggest market, but the company is also building a focus on India. Lenovo posted sequential sales growth of 23 percent in India, which is “still an underperforming market,” Wong said.

Lenovo last month said it would triple its sales coverage in India to reach 300 cities this year.

While Lenovo released a series of netbooks to tap the growing demand for them in the last year, it does not expect that demand to continue rising, said Rory Read, chief operating officer for Lenovo.

The company has instead placed its hopes on a class of laptops powered by Intel’s consumer ultra-low voltage (CULV) microprocessors. The laptops are ultra-thin, but bigger and more powerful than netbooks.

Read called CULV laptops “exciting,” but said it was too early to speculate if demand for them could surpass demand for netbooks.

“We believe we’re going to see significant growth in this segment,” Read said.

Lenovo is open to merger and acquisition opportunities that align with its strategic goals, the executives said, declining to give details.

Sony’s Party-shot Can Aim the Camera, Snap Pictures for You

Auto focus, auto flash, scene selection and even smile detection. Today’s cameras have automated just about everything involved in snapping a picture but still require someone to point them. Not any longer. Sony has developed a base unit for cameras that swivels them around through 360 degrees and tilts them up and down to follow people in a room and, when the time is right, snap a picture.

The device, called Party-shot, runs on a pair of AA batteries and is compatible with two new digital cameras that Sony will begin selling in September. The dome-shaped device includes some motors but all of the tracking is done by the digital camera.

Aiming is done by facial recognition software that works off the image coming through the camera’s lens. The camera monitors the image and scans for faces and, when it finds one, sends instructions to the base so that it can continue to track someone who might otherwise go out of the frame.

It then judges when the composition or pose is right and snaps a picture.

In a demonstration on Thursday the camera coped quite easily with tracking a small number of people close by although sometimes got confused when a greater number of people were in range or people were further away. The automatically snapped pictures were a mixture of good, funny and bad. Owners probably wouldn’t want to keep all of the photos but during the limited demonstration it did snap some that would probably be worth keeping.

The Party-shot will go on sale in Japan on Sept. 4 and costs ¥14,910 (US$157). It will launch simultaneously with one of two cameras that can be used with it.

The Cyber-shot TX1 is a stylish and slim model at 14 millimeters thick and comes with 4X optical zoom and a 3-inch touchpanel screen. The second camera, the Cyber-shot WX1, has a conventional 2.7-inch display and 5X optical zoom.

Both cameras use Sony’s 10-megapixel “Exmor R” image sensor, which has better sensitivity then previous sensors so works better in low-light conditions. With the new sensor the cameras can manage 10 full-frame pictures per second so you can burst shoot a short scene.

They also have Sony’s “Sweep Panorama” feature that allows for super-wide panorama shots. The camera takes up to 100 pictures as the user swings it from one side of the panorama to another and automatically matches and stiches the images together so the result is a very wide picture.

The TX1 will launch on Sept. 4 in Japan and cost around ¥43,000 and the WX1 will go on sale on Sept. 18 and cost ¥40,000. In the U.S. the TX1 will be available in September for $380 and the WX1 in October for $350.

Kinpo Puts Via Nano in New 3G/WiMax Netbook

Kinpo Electronics, a Taiwanese electronics maker, debuted a new netbook on Thursday with a Via Nano microprocessor and integrated 3G/WiMax chipset to make sure users are always connected to the Internet.

The Kinpo N03 appears to be aimed at China, since its 3G options include TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), the home grown 3G standard in China.

The company did not say when it would be available nor its price.

The company’s choice of a Via Nano microprocessor over Intel’s popular Atom processor shows the battle between the two processor maker continues to rage in the netbook arena. Via has made a number of important product wins in netbooks bound for China, but Intel has stepped up its China activities.

Kinpo’s N03 netbook comes with an 11.6-inch screen with 1366×768 pixel resolution, either Microsoft Windows XP or Vista Home Basic, and up to 2GB of DDR2 (double data rate, second generation) DRAM and a 1.3-megapixel Web cam.

The Via Nano processors inside run at either 1.2GHz or 1.3GHz, depending on the configuration, according to Kinpo.

The netbook comes in a variety of configurations, including with either a hard disk drive (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD).

It also includes a variety of high end wireless communications technologies due to an integrated chipset, according to Kinpo. The device can handle WiMax, the Intel-backed technology meant to someday replace Wi-Fi, as well as a range of mobile telecommunications technologies, including HSDPA/HSUPA (High Speed downlink/uplink packet access), TD-SCDMA, W-CDMA, and EVDO.

The device also includes 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.

The N03 weighs around 1.3 kilograms depending on the configuration and can run for 3-hours in normal use, Kinpo said. It is 281-millimeters long, 198mm wide and 27mm thick.

Hitachi Punts 2TB Desktop Hard Drive

Hitachi became the latest vendor to offer a 2TB hard drive for desktops on Thursday, but the equivalent for laptops may still be some way off.

The 2TB Deskstar 7K2000 from Hitachi Global Storage Technologies operates at up to 7,200 RPM, providing fast access to data. It’s aimed at gamers and other users who want a big, fast hard drive. It will go on sale worldwide Friday and is priced at $329 in the U.S.

It will be one of a handful of 2TB drives available. Others include Western Digital’s Caviar Green Drive, which was announced earlier this year and can be bought for $229.95 on Amazon.com.

Desktop hard drives still offer up to twice the capacity of laptop drives, which reached 1TB last week with the release of Western Digital’s Scorpio Blue.

Laptop drives are smaller and therefore typically hold less data. Hitachi is working to make the platters denser, said Roger Cowles, product manager at Hitachi GST, but the company isn’t ready to say yet when a 2TB laptop drive might hit the market.

Hard drives are being challenged by solid-state drives based on flash memory chips, which operate faster but are more expensive. There was some early momentum behind solid-state laptop drives but users have been drifting back toward standard hard drives, Cowles said.

Hitachi is also focused on SSDs for environments that require a lot of I/O, and the company has partnered with Intel to push SSDs into the enterprise.

T-Mobile offering iPhone upgrade to UK big spenders

T-Mobile has started offering the iPhone in the UK, according to insiders at the firm’s Merthyr call centre. V3.co.uk has been contacted by two separate sources, both claiming that T-Mobile was trialling limited stock of the iPhone 3G, having purchased a number of units from Germany, and would start offering UK customers an upgrade from 30 July.

Only a few select T-Mobile call centre operators have been authorised to give the upgrade and customers need to meet strict criteria to qualify, including being a heavy mobile user, the sources both said.

One of the sources sent us an email with an advisory note from T-Mobile labeled Action for All Advisors: T-Mobile UK’s Churn Challenge, indicating that the iPhone deal is part of a strategy to stop customer churn.

The note states that T-Mobile wants to reduce churn from 27 to 20 per cent, which would still put the operator at several percentage points higher than O2; and that high value customers are leaving because of their desire for an iPhone.

To stop the customer churn, T-Mobile has decided to introduce special deals on the iPhone and the G2 Touch (aka HTC Hero), the note continues. This would be limited to eligible customers either on or willing to move to a Flext 2009 plan, who are lucky enough to get through to a member of the ‘Save Desk’ team based in Merthyr.

V3.co.uk contacted T-Mobile in the hope of getting a confirmation or denial on this information, but was given the standard “no comment” response.

So for any T-Mobile customers wanting to move onto an iPhone, the advice is to call T-Mobile, threaten to leave unless they give you the iPhone, and hope you’ve spent at least £1,000 on your mobile bills over the last two years.

If any V3.co.uk readers get anywhere with this, please get in touch and let us know. Though we wouldn’t be surprised to hear that T-Mobile has pulled the offer now that the details have gone public, as demand could well outstrip supply if the iPhone handset was going to be thrown in for free for those customers already paying hefty mobile bills each month. Also Apple and O2 might want to put a stop to the offer, as their iPhone exclusivity deal is still supposed to be in place in the UK.

Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is already available in the UK

As of 1st August one of the most anticipated handsets of summer 2009 is available across the UK. And along with that news there two more: one of them positive and one – negative.

If you live in the UK you can get the Pixon12 for free but you’ll have to pay Orange at least 35 GBP (approx. 41 euro) a month during the next year and a half.

Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is the first Samsung GSM phone to feature a 12 megapixel camera and it also comes with a 28mm wide-angle lens, Xenon flash and additional power LED flashlight.

If the specs sheet alone is not enough to attract your attention, our recent detailed review proved the Pixon12 is the ultimate cameraphone to date.

A new dual-SIM phone down the road – budget Samsung C3212

The C3212 DuoS is a new dual-SIM device from Samsung, which is one of the few major manufacturers bringing dual standby phones on the market. The C3212 DuoS has a basic feature set but will cost only 135 euro.

The new Samsung C3212 DuoS has a standard bar form factor and targets the low-end budget class. It is expected to feature only basic functions, but at this point there is no further information available. We don’t even know if that’s a color screen on that press photo there.

Previous dual-SIM devices from Samsung are the C5212, which costs only 15 euro more than the C3212 DuoS suggested price tag, and the slider B5702 featuring bigger screen and better camera. Let’s don’t forget the luxury S9402 Ego, which impresses both with its unique looks and high price. If you’re into touchscreens, you can also go for Samsung D980.

If you haven’t seen any of these in your local store, we’d guess that’s only because you don’t live in Eastern Europe and especially Russia, where all these 3G-less phones are all headed to.

The Samsung C3212 DuoS will probably be the cheapest of them all with its expected price of 135 euro. It’s expected later this summer on the Russian market.

HP Pavilion Elite e9120f

HP takes the word “elite” seriously with even the lower range of its Pavilion Elite desktop line. Though priced well under $1,000, the HP Pavilion Elite e9120f ($819.99 list) is a well-equipped multimedia machine, albeit not a gamer’s delight. As with its Elite sibling, the HP Pavilion Elite e9160f ($999.99 at Staples), you’ll have to budget separately for a monitor and speakers.

Design
The e9120f shares the same glossy black minitower case with the e9160f, with a top-mounted power button and four-slot, 15-format flash-card reader, Pocket Media Drive and Personal Media Drive bays for HP’s house-brand USB hard drives, and an HP Easy Backup button that helps steer users through the job of backing up to removable media.

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With only one PCI Express x16 slot (no hope for an Nvidia SLI or ATI CrossFire multi-card setup) and only a 300-watt power supply, the e9120f can’t be upgraded into a fire-breathing gaming rig, nor is it intended to be. Indeed, under-the-hood expansion is pretty much limited to a vacant internal hard drive bay—as if the standard 1TB, 5,400-rpm Western Digital Caviar Green hard drive wasn’t ample enough for most users—and a pair of vacant PCI Express x1 slots (an Atheros 802.11a/b/g/draft-n Wi-Fi card occupies a third). Happily, despite the presence of several sizable cooling fans, the Pavilion is almost silent in operation.

Features
Camcorder owners will be pleased to find that the e9120f has the FireWire port that was missing from the e9160f—actually two, one front and one rear, along with three front and four rear USB ports and front-mounted microphone and headphone jacks. The back panel also provides Ethernet, S/PDIF digital audio, and six analog audio ports, plus a trifecta of video ports—VGA, DVI, and HDMI—on the graphics card. Both the mouse and keyboard are USB-based, as there are no PS/2 ports provided. External storage shoppers will have to stick with USB rather than eSATA.

Both the front bay labeled “Multimedia Optical Drive” and the one labeled “Expansion Bay” contain multimedia optical drives—a BD-ROM and DVD+/-RW drive, respectively, so you can enjoy both Blu-ray and conventional DVD movies and burn CDs and DVDs (with LightScribe label etching on compatible media), though you can’t record your own Blu-ray discs.

If you choose to snub Windows Media Center, HP provides its own MediaSmart suite of DVD, music, photo, and video perusing and playback software—simple but handsome applications for enjoying your multimedia collections. Other preinstalled software ranges from the predictable (the 60-day trial versions of Norton Internet Security 2009 and Microsoft Office Home & Student 2007) to the paltry (HP’s Snapfish calendar/coffee mug/tchotchke photo-printing service; NetZero and Juno dial-up access).

Performance
While the e9160f has an Intel Core 2 Quad CPU and Nvidia graphics card, the e9120f features an AMD Phenom II X4 910—a 2.6GHz quad-core processor with 512K of Level 2 cache per core and 6MB of Level 3 cache shared among the four—and an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card. A full 8GB of DDR3 memory gives the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium room to maneuver.

The processor performs admirably, helping the less expensive Elite edge its costlier sibling’s PCMark Vantage and Cinebench R10 benchmark scores, though it can’t compete with the potent Core i7 CPU in our Editors’ Choice Dell Studio XPS 435. But the 512MB Radeon card is no match for the 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GT230 card in the Elite e9160f: The system’s 3DMark Vantage score trailed by 13,056 to 5,116, and it fell short of playability even with modest resolution and detail settings in our Crysis and World in Conflict game tests.

Though it falls south of the line between a good image- and video-editing and a good gaming system, the Pavilion Elite e9120f is a solid value for both working and relaxing with Blu-ray and other multimedia content.

Nikon’s Digital Camera is the First with a Projector

That LCD on the back of your camera can get a little crowded when family and friends are all clamoring at once to view your images. Nikon is intent on changing that with the introduction of the Nikon COOLPIX S1000pj, the world’s first camera to a feature a built-in projector.

The COOLPIX S1000pj will capture 12-megapixel images, use a 2.7 inch LCD and offer 5x optical zoom. It will sell in September for $429.95 MSRP.

The S1000pj shoots 12-megapixel stills and standard-definition video, and can then project the images and video on a screen up to 40 inches in width at a resolution of 640×480 at 30 frames per second (standard definition). (A 40-inch screen size requires a throw distance of 6 feet between the camera and screen.) Nikon’s built-in software allows for themed slideshows, featuring transitions, effects and music to compliment the images.

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A speaker also embedded in the camera will play back audio. To round out the projector experience, a wireless remote and projector stand and screen will also be included.

The LCOS-based projector in the S1000pj is actually Nikon’s own pico-projector technology.

Nikon also announced a major upgrade to its S60 touch-screen camera. The new S70 features a 3.5-inch OLED display, promising improved color and contrast. The S70 will also be Nikon’s first compact point and shoot that will be able to capture high-definition video (1280 X 720 at 30 progressive frames per second, or 720p30.) The camera will capture 12-megapixel still images, offer 5X optical zoom and be available in September for a suggested price of $399.95.

Nikon also introduced two cheaper cameras: the speed-oriented Nikon COOLPIX S640, which can start up in .07 seconds and the economically priced Nikon COOLPIX S570. The S570 lacks optical image stabilization but includes digital image stabilization. Both will be available in September for a suggested price of $249.95 and $199.95 (respectively).

Detailed specifications for each camera can be found in the chart below. Check back at www.pcmag.com for full reviews.

Specifications	S1000pj	S70	S640	S570
Megapixels	12	12	12	12
Optical Zoom	5x	5x	5x	5x
LCD	2.7 inch	3.5 inch OLED	2.7 inch	2.7 inch
Video	Standard-Def	High-Def (720p30)	Standard-Def	Standard-Def
Image Stabilization	Optical	Optical	Optical	Digital
Price	$429.95	$399.99	$249.95	$199.95