Recession Archive

  • Confirmed: Fujitsu and Toshiba to merge cell phone units, go international

    Confirmed: Fujitsu and Toshiba to merge cell phone units, go international

    Posted on June 17, 2010 | No Comments
    We reported last week that two of Japan's top cell phone makers, Fujitsu and Toshiba, were in talks to merge their cell phone businesses. And today, we have the rumor confirmed. Under the agreement, Toshiba will spin off its handset unit and Fujitsu is expected to take the majority stake in the joint venture (between a whopping 70 and 80%, according to reports in Japanese media).

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  • Report: Laptop sales are rocking fueled by netbooks sales

    Report: Laptop sales are rocking fueled by netbooks sales

    Posted on May 25, 2010 | No Comments
    People might not be buying houses and cars at the pre-recession levels, but laptops are flying off the shelves led by netbook sales. (Quiet, don't tell John. He hates netbooks.)

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  • Zettabyte = really big number

    Zettabyte = really big number

    Posted on May 4, 2010 | No Comments
    One number that wasn’t affected by the recession was the size of the digital universe, which grew 62% in 2009 to around 800,000 petabytes. However, the petabyte, or 1000 terabytes, is quickly becoming an obsolete unit for measuring the amount of information in the world. To remedy this we will begin to use the zettabyte, or a million petabytes (we skipped the exabyte, or 1000 petabytes). According to IDC, humanity’s total digital output is expected to pass 1.2 zettabytes this year, or 1,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes.

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  • Circuit City brick and mortar stores might live again

    Circuit City brick and mortar stores might live again

    Posted on March 25, 2010 | No Comments
    We all know the story: Circuit City Stores spiraled down from its high point in the late 90's to bankruptcy in 2008 and then liquidation in 2009. Systemax then bought the rights to the brand a few months later and quickly relaunched CircuitCity.com. Since then Systemax has been racking in the cash. So much cash in fact that Systemax is thinking about opening some Circuit City retail locations. Seriously.

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  • Kaufladen $500 fruit stands for kids

    Kaufladen $500 fruit stands for kids

    Posted on February 23, 2010 | No Comments
    =These clever little German kids toys from Kaufladen cost about $400 and are pretty silly but I think the best part is when DaddyTypes writes:
    Kids in the US get play kitchens. Kids in Germany get play sales kiosks. Which country has a childhood obesity problem and which one has already pulled out of the recession? That's what I thought.

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  • SSD sales up last year, despite recession

    SSD sales up last year, despite recession

    Posted on January 20, 2010 | No Comments
    So it wasn't all bleak last year, SSD manufacturers experienced a 14% increase in sales, along with a total of over 11 million drives sold. That's a whole lot of memory chips.

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  • December was the best month ever for video game sales

    December was the best month ever for video game sales

    Posted on January 15, 2010 | No Comments
    Looks like the recession is helping at least one industry. NPD Group reported that the video game industry turned in $5.53 billion dollars in sales for December, topping the results from last year by 4 percent! Boring as all these statistics are, the bottom line is people spent a whole lot of money on video games last month. The previous record was set in December of 2008, which was the first time that sales went over $5 billion.

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  • Mophie iPhone credit card reader coming to a CES near you

    Mophie iPhone credit card reader coming to a CES near you

    Posted on December 31, 2009 | No Comments
    iPhone accessory maker and recession antidote regular Mophie is about to make the most buzzworthy move of its short history by offering a credit card reader and accompanying transaction app for the Apple handset. Positioned as a direct competitor to Jack Dorsey's Square iPhone Payment System, Mophie's solution looks to be integrated into an iPhone case -- making it possible to keep the reader on permanently, albeit at a slight cost to your device's aesthetics. The decidedly cube-shaped Square system has a less ergonomic design, but we suspect that the winner (if either of these two succeeds) will be primarily determined by the usability of the app and affordability of the service. Look out for more info to emerge at some point during the maelstrom that will be CES 2010.

    Mophie iPhone credit card reader coming to a CES near you originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 04:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Online Holiday Spending Reaches $25 Billion; Shows Strong Growth In Consumer Electronics Sales

    Online Holiday Spending Reaches $25 Billion; Shows Strong Growth In Consumer Electronics Sales

    Posted on December 30, 2009 | No Comments
    The numbers are in. And they look good. It appears that online holiday spending rose slightly this year, by 5 percent, to $27 billion for the shopping season from November 1 through Christmas Eve, according to comScore. For the time period from Black Friday through Christmas Eve, sales showed a slight uptick, rising 3.5 percent. With respect to individual product categories, consumer electronics saw yearly sales growth of slightly over 20 percent, while sales of jewelry and watches also rose. From reports over the past few months, the numbers indicated that the total online spending would be higher this year than last, when the U.S. spending was blindsided with a crippling recession. The final shopping weekend before Christmas saw a 13 percent growth rate in online spending from the previous year, thanks to the wintry mess that hit the Eastern Seaboard. And the full week posted a 6 percent yearly increase in spending, setting a one-week sales record with more than $4.8 billion in spending. Online sales numbers from Black Friday and Cyber Monday also appeared to be stronger than last year.

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  • Hollywood made $10 billion in 2009. In better news, only 5 billion years till the sun runs out of fuel!

    Hollywood made $10 billion in 2009. In better news, only 5 billion years till the sun runs out of fuel!

    Posted on December 28, 2009 | No Comments
    On the face of it, today's story that 2009 was Hollywood's best ever (so thanks for rewarding creativity, America), raking in some $10 billion, should be good news for a few people. It should be good news for the movie studios, which will now invest that money in yachts, caviar, human growth hormone, and sequels to today's sequels. It should be good news for theatre owners, who were concerned that people would stop going to the movies as a result of the recession. Not so! (As if they didn't have a precedent to cite...) It should be good news, in a weird way, to people who pirate movies and bleat that their doing so isn't harming the industry one bit.

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  • Because of the recession, y’all watched a lot of TV this year

    Because of the recession, y’all watched a lot of TV this year

    Posted on December 15, 2009 | No Comments
    The Media Democracy Survey tries to ascertain America's entertainment habits. It comes out every year, and this year's edition just went live. As you might image, the terrible economy played a major role in the way Americans went about their business this past year. In fact, it turns out that Americans now watch (well, watched in the past year) an average of 18 hours of TV per week, which is up from 16 hours from last year. And this is TV on TV, not Hulu or anything like that.

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  • Vertu V makes no concessions: $730 BT headset, $490 card reader, and $330 ballpoint pen

    Vertu V makes no concessions: $730 BT headset, $490 card reader, and $330 ballpoint pen

    Posted on December 11, 2009 | No Comments
    Because nothing says "I ain't afraid of no recession" like plopping down an excess amount of Benjamins for a Bluetooth earpiece, Vertu has unveiled its V accessories collection. $780 gets you a Bluetooth 2.1-compliant earpiece with 6 hours of charge time (same one we saw hit the FCC recently, we suspect), $490 for a USB memory card reader that as a consolation prize comes with a 2GB microSD card, and as for the ballpoint pen, asking price is a cool $330. For all three purchases, it's recommended you purchase the special leather case for protection -- and if these gifts are already comfortably in your price range, hey, why not?

    [Thanks, Shayjd]

    Vertu V makes no concessions: $730 BT headset, $490 card reader, and $330 ballpoint pen originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Luxury wine vending machine

    Luxury wine vending machine

    Posted on October 15, 2009 | 1 Comment
    It's not really a secret: Japan loves vending machines. So it's not really surprising this newest (and quite unique) model is made in Nippon, too: A vending machine that lets you buy luxury wines through a pre-paid card. The machine is supposed to soften the negative effects the current recession has for wine lovers.

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  • CrunchDeals: 25% off select Verizon QWERTY phones

    CrunchDeals: 25% off select Verizon QWERTY phones

    Posted on October 13, 2009 | No Comments
    Verizon Wireless is offering 25% off a trio of its QWERTY-equipped phones: the Motorola Rival, LG enV3, and the Samsung Alias 2. For the mathematically challenged, that works out to to a recession-friendly price of $37.49 ($99.99 w/ 2yr agreement – $50 online discount – 25% off = $37.49) for either the Motorola Rival or the [...]

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  • PS3 Slim: Too little, too late, or dy-no-mite!

    PS3 Slim: Too little, too late, or dy-no-mite!

    Posted on August 19, 2009 | No Comments
    Watching the news come in yesterday about the PS3 Slim, I said to myself, “Man, this is great for Sony, especially if we're still in 2006.” Harsh, perhaps, but the sentiment is spot-on: had Sony released the PS3, Slim or otherwise, at $299 back in the autumn of 2006, we could well have seen an effortless transition between the PS3 and PS3. As it turned out, three years later, we're left wondering this: Is the PS3 Slim enough to, say, re-ignite the Console Wars?

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