Servers and business storage

Apple has acquired Israel-based flash memory startup Anobit, a report claims.

The deal, according to Israel's Calcalist business news site (Google Translate), is in the $400 million to $500 million range. Earlier today, Anobit apparently informed its employees that Apple had made an offer that it had accepted and that they were on their way to being employed by the iPhone maker.

Today's report follows a claim made by Calcalist last week, saying that Apple and Anobit were nearing a deal.

Anobit's flash memory technology is found in Apple's iPhone, iPad, and MacBook Air. The startup … Read more

Intel is doing a sweeping reorganization in its mobile device group in order to make the company more competitive in small devices like smartphones and tablets, where its chips are virtually absent.

The chip giant has created a new business unit, the mobile and communications group, Intel spokesman Robert Manetta told CNET. The move was earlier reported in Fortune.

The group is composed of four existing divisions: mobile communications, Netbook and tablet, mobile wireless, and ultra mobility.

Mike Bell and Hermann Eul--both current Intel employees--will lead the group. Eul is a former member of the Infineon technologies management board (Intel … Read more

A chip analyst has written a sobering assessment of Intel's chip prowess vis-a-vis Apple in the mobile device race, an odd underdog position for the largest chipmaker.

In the brave new world of tablets and smartphones, chip competition isn't so much about Moore's Law but rather how the "blocks" of circuits are put together and the nexus with the software that runs on those circuits, Gus Richard, a senior research analyst at securities firm Piper Jaffray, wrote in a research note this week.

More specifically, tablets and smartphones use silicon called system-on-a-chip, or SoC, that … Read more

Intel's market-moving statement today that it expects a fourth-quarter revenue shortfall of roughly $1 billion has crystallized the impact of the hard disk drive shortage. So how bad is it?

A report last week from IHS-iSuppli said it's pretty bad--a preview of what Intel said today. That is, the flooding in Thailand will hit PC shipments in the first quarter. iSuppli says the shortfall will be about 3.8 million PCs.

And it will knock down PC numbers for the whole year. Global PC shipments for the whole of 2012 are now expected to expand by only 6.… Read more

Recently, I've noticed a meme spreading through Silicon Valley that questions whether Amazon Web Services' (AWS) current dominant position will hinder the cloud. The short answer: not at all.

I was in a venture capital meeting last week where we were told by one prominent VC that, "Two years ago Amazon was a blessing to startups. Today it is neutral. In two years it may well be a curse." How so? By building up Amazon Web Services to include many services currently offered by other vendors.

And while Amazon does continue to roll out new services, it'… Read more

Samsung could beat Apple to market with a tablet packing a high-resolution display, as the two bitter rivals vie to be the first on the block with a next-gen tablet.

Sammy's tab, running Google's Ice Cream Sandwich, would have an 11.6-inch display that is "barely" larger than a 10.1-inch design because of a redesigned bezel, according to a report at BGR.

But most importantly, it would use an eye-popping 2,560x1,600-pixel resolution display, putting it in the same league as Apple's upcoming iPad 3, which is expected to sport a Retina Display. … Read more

PC shipments will take a hit in the first quarter next year to the tune of about 4 million units as a result of the continuing hard-disk drive shortage, IHS-iSuppli said today.

Flooding in Thailand has wreaked havoc on hard-disk drive (HDD) supply, as manufacturers try to recover from inundated component plants. This will result in a shortfall of 3.8 million PC shipments in the first quarter of 2012, according to IHS-iSuppli.

Worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter of 2012 will amount to 84.2 million units, compared with the earlier forecast of 88 million, the market researcher … Read more

At year's end, it's customary--or at least common--for prognosticators to trumpet the predictions they got right and to ignore the rest.

However, I've decided to break with tradition and review my entire list from last November. There aren't any howlers, but I must admit I was a bit impatient on a few fronts. (I'd like to note that fellow ex-analyst Andi Mann also did so recently.)

Less focus on definitions (and dare we say hype?). Grade: B. There's been incremental advance in user education, but I find I still need to keep a NIST definition (… Read more

BlazeMeter, a new cloud-based service for load and performance testing of Web apps, today announced $1.2 million in venture funding.

BlazeMeter--based on the Apache JMeter open-source project is a load-testing application designed to measure the response of putting demand on a system or device.

Load testing typically simulates heavy usage (among other things) to stress the Web application to see how it responds. The aim, of course, is to release into productions Web applications that don't break or degrade--two things that drive away users quickly.

BlazeMeter's founder and CEO Alon Grimonsky told CNET that he built … Read more