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

The HMV group reports a 40.8% Y-o-Y decline for the half-year period ending October 2011, with revenues totalling £443.3M-- a net loss of £40.6M, up from £37.8M over the same period in 2010.

Total sales for the retailer are also down by 17.6% Y-o-Y, reaching £364.9M.

HMV warns of "material uncertainties" causing concerns for the future, as the current economic situation remains one best described as "wobbly." Earlier this year HMV also sold off Waterstones and HMV Canada.

However HMV says sales are up by 42% in 144 refitted retail outlets focusing on CE retail-- while headphone, speakerdock and tablet sales in such stores are up by 147% since refitting.

As a result the retailer will push the restructuring program throughout 2012, with hopes to deliver a "reshaped store portfolio" while reducing costs.

Go HMV Group Interim Financial Results

Global tablet shipments grow by 264.5% Y-o-Y (and 23.9% Q-o-Q) to reach 18.1M units in Q3 2011 according to IDC-- slightly lower than earlier forecasts from the analyst of shipments reaching 19.2M units.

However IDC still predicts "strong demand" for Q4 2011 and the holiday season, increasing 2011 WW shipment forecasts to 63.3M units (up from previous projections of 62.5M) due to new challengers shaking up the tablet battlefield.

Apple still leads the tablet market, even if it loses market share-- Q3 2011 iPad shipments total 11.1M (up from 9.3M in Q2 2011) with 61.5% market share, down from 63.3% in Q2. The analyst predicts the iPad will "have its best-ever quarter in Q4 2011," thanks to a strong tablet-specific app portfolio and growing physical store presence in emerging markets.

HP entered-- and exited-- the tablet market in Q3 2011, managing to grab 5% WW market share with the ill-fated TouchPad. Shipments total 903354 units, making HP 3rd in the global tablet vendor rankings, behind Samsung (who has 5.6% market share). IDC does not believe webOS will continue to appear in the tablet market, even after HP's "contribution" to the open source community.

The analyst says Android lost tablet market share in Q3 (down to 32.4% from 33.2% in Q2), but forecasts the Google OS will "make dramatic share gains" in Q4 and reach 40.3% thanks to the new kids on the block, the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.

"Amazon and Barnes & Noble are shaking up the media tablet market, and their success helps prove that there is an appetite for media tablets beyond Apple's iPad," IDC says.

According to IDC eReaders also see strong growth in Q3 2011-- shipments total 6.5M units (up from 5.1M in Q2) with 165.9% Y-o-Y growth. IDC says Q4 2011 shipments in Europe will rise to the "highest volume levels" in the holiday season, but the lack of local language content and a still-uncertain eurozone climate will continue hampering growth.

Go IDC WW Quarterly Tablet and eReader Tracker

According to IHS iSuppli, the Thailand floodings will disrupt the global PC supply chain further-- causing a 3.8M unit shipment shortfall in Q1 2012 due to HDD shortages.

As a result, the analyst revises 2012 forecasts and now says WW PC shipments will grow by only 6.8% Y-o-Y to total 376M units (down from previous estimates of 399M units and 9.5% Y-o-Y growth).

Q1 2012 shipments will be hit badly, reaching 84.2M with a -11.6% Q-o-Q decline (from 95.3M units in Q4 2011)-- a far sharper decrease from the historical average decline of -6% for the period.

iSuppli says notebook PCs will be worst hit by the HDD shortage, revising 2012 notebook growth forecasts from 13.8% to 10.1% Y-o-Y growth.

“The PC supply chain says it has sufficient HDD inventory for the fourth quarter of 2011. However, those stockpiles will run out in the first quarter of 2012, impacting PC production during that period,” the analyst continues.

The situation should improve after Q1 2012, but the HDD industry will only manage to meet demand by the end Q3 2012, as the major HDD suppliers are already shifting production to locations outside of Thailand.

Ironically, the combination of such a move and Thailand returning to full production could cause an inventory surplus by end 2012-- Thai HDD operation recovery "could result in excess supply."

Go IHS iSuppli: Thailand Flood Spurs Nearly 4M Unit Shortfall in Q1 2012 PC Shipments

IBM calls it "Racetrack Memory" even if it has nothing to do with neither cars nor horses-- but it might lead to future memory chips with the capacities of HDDs and the performance and durability of SSDs.

The company recently announced it has a working Racetrack Memory circuit at the IEEE International Electron Devices conference, with a chip consisting of 256 Racetrack "cells." Each cell consists of a nanowire 240nm wide and 20nm thick, with "spin currents" (electric currents, in other words) manipulating the magnetic state of the nano-scale magnetic regions within the nanowires.

IBM claims the test chip reaches DRAM-level I/O speeds, with greater durability than even current NAND flash technology, leading to "a new type of data-centric computing that allows massive amounts of stored information to be accessed in less than a billionth of a second." Exciting.

Other kinds of future memory technologies researchers at IBM (and elsewhere) are working on include graphene (a derivative of graphite, the stuff inside the humble pencil) and the fantastically named "carbon nanotubes." The name which might suggest something out of Buck Rogers, but it actually refers to transistors of sub-10nm channel lengths IBM says beat silicon-based devices of the same sizes.

The development of new non-volatile memory is vital-- the smaller the technology gets, the further NAND flash development is (potentially) limited. As silicon memory cell walls become increasingly thinner, electrons start leaking out to other cells, causing data errors and demanding more sophisticated error correction code.

Go IBM Researchers Demonstrate Future of Computing