ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

Dixons' UK and Ireland operations make profits in fiscal H1 2013 for the first time in 5 years as the entire group sees pre-tax losses worth £22.2 million, down from £25.3m a year earlier.

Total losses before taxes reach £79.5m after one accounts net-underlying charges of £57.3m, £45.2m of which come from the writedown in the "goodwill value" of a struggling PIXmania.

The retailer claims it had an "encouraging" start to the fiscal year, even if total group sales remain flat (at £3.29 billion) for the period. Dixons blames such results on S. Europe (Italy, Greece, Turkey) and PIXmania, where sales drop by -13% and -15% respectively.

Group CEO Sebastian James however promises the retailer is "taking action to improve [PIXMania's] poor performance.

According to Infonetics Research the global Q3 2012 IP router and switch market "roughly reflects economic conditions," dropping by -5% Y-o-Y to reach around $3.4 billion.

“EMEA posted another negative quarter amid the ongoing fiscal crisis in Europe," the analyst continues. "We may not see much of the usual Q4 budget flush, as it seems just as the European Commission gets closer to economic steadiness, more negative reports arrive.”

Cisco leads the router-only (IP edge and core routers) segment, while Juniper takes the #2 spot from Huawei, who drops to #4 as Alcatel-Lucent holds on as #3.

Combined the top 4 vendors account for 88% of total IP router revenue, Infonetics concludes.

Go Service Provider Routers and Switches Report (Infonetics Research)

If one is to believe a supposedly leaked Intel roadmap on Japanese website PC Watch, Intel might kill off a CPU standard-- the current Land Grid Array (LGA) socket will give way to Ball Grid Array (BGA).

The current LGA socket is an 8-year old technology where the actual contacts are on the motherboard while the contact points are on the CPU.

On the other hand BGA technology involves directly attaching chips on circuit boards via small balls of solder.

BGA is already used for DRAM, embedded CPUs and other surface-mount chips, but is more difficult to troubleshoot and repair-- and does not allow for PC CPU upgrades.

It would also mean the end of selling separate Intel CPUs and 3rd party motherboards, since OEMs would have to hard-mount CPUs themselves.

Microsoft believes Windows 8 sales are already going stronger than those those of Windows 7-- the company reveals Windows 8 licenses already total 40 million since the end October 2012 launch.

These are the first Windows 8 sales figures since CEO Steve Ballmer said Microsoft sold 4m Windows 8 upgrades in 4 days. For history's sake, Microsoft sold 60m Windows 7 licenses in the first 2 months following launch back in 2009.

One has to keep in mind the reality of the above figures-- Microsoft refers to license numbers, not how many Windows 8 copies belong to customers. Meaning a (possibly large) percentage of those 40m Windows 8 copies went to OEMs and PC makers.

Microsoft also fails to provide Surface with Windows RT talbet sales figures.