It does two things: wraps snugly round your Apple Wireless Keyboard, ensuring it doesn’t scratch, or get scratched by, other objects in your bag. Unfolded, the lid becomes a prop for your iPad in portrait or landscape mode, thanks to a couple of ingenious folds and a simple hook-and-loop fastener.
If you own the Apple Wireless Keyboard you must have been searching high and low for a case, with a reasonable price. The Incase Origami Workstation is both a case for your keyboard and a prop for your iOS device. This is just the thing you’ve been waiting for. I’m thinking of using it with my iPhone. Incase sells it for US$29.95.
Revenues:
Revenues and shipments increased as profits plummeted in the third quarter. LG Display (LGD) revenues increased 3.7% Q/Q and 6.7% Y/Y to ₩6268.73 billion in Q3’11. As you can see from the chart the overall revenue trend since 2003 has been up. Net income is a completely different story.
Net Income:
In Q2’11 LGD posted a net income of ₩21.3 billion, but Q3’11 turned out to be the second worst quarter in LGD history posting a net loss of ₩687.5 billion. Revenues increased but profits took a dive. What happened?
ASP:
The main reason for the poor performance is a persistent decline in ASP shown as ₩000 per square meter. ASP in Q3’11 declined 4.7% Q/Q and 5.2% Y/Y to ₩774,000 per square meter.
Input Capacity:
The main cause for the continued erosion of ASP is the continued increase in manufacturing capacity, which is calculated as glass substrate input capacity in millions of square meters. As you can see input capacity has continued to increase as far back as data is available.
In Q3’11 input capacity increased 2.7% Q/Q and 10.1% Y/Y to 11.5 million square meters. Most of this increase was geared toward large G8 fabs designed for LCD TV panel production. Unfortunately weak economic conditions have led to weak TV demand worldwide.
LGD does not break out profitability by application, but it is safe to assume the continued over dependence on TV led to a disastrous third quarter. Granted LGD has been reducing its dependence on TVs since Q3’10, when 58% of revenues came from LCD panels geared for TV applications. In Q3’11 only 47% of revenues came from TV.
Shipment:
Mature LCD fabs generally hit an overall yield of about 91%. But even so LCD shipments in square meters were only 77% of input capacity in Q3’11. LGD shipped 8.1 million square meters in Q3’11, an increase of 8.8% Q/Q and 12.5% Y/Y.
Generally third quarter is when most profits are made as the entire display supply chain reacts to a surge in demand by brands and retailers to build, ship, and stock what they think people will buy in November and December. Manufacturing activity cools down in the fourth quarter and it’s going to be rough for LCD manufacturers, including LGD.
Here’s Steve Jobs in “Thoughts on Flash”, April 2010:
New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind.
Now that’s money.
JR Raphael, Computerworld, August 2010:
As the Android 2.2 upgrade makes it way to more and more devices (the Droid Incredible is receiving it as we speak and the Droid X should follow any day now), those of us who value choice in technology are getting the opportunity to experience the Flash-enabled mobile world first hand. Having spent some time using it and seeing how it performs, I have to say: Stevie J. and his legions of followers couldn’t be more wrong.
Here’s Danny Winokur, VP & GM of Interactive Development at Adobe on the future of Flash Player for mobile devices, November 2011:
We will no longer continue to develop Flash Player in the browser to work with new mobile device configurations (chipset, browser, OS version, etc.) following the upcoming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and BlackBerry PlayBook.
One year and seven months later Adobe realizes Steve Jobs was right about Flash and HTML5. And Raphael? *crickets*
Sales of iPads at the end market totaled 11.12 million units in the third quarter of 2011, according to data released by Apple. However, inventories of parts and components prepared by the makers in the supply chain for the production of iPad 2 in the quarter are sufficient for the production of 15-16 million iPads, leaving a stockpile of 4-5 million units of iPad 2 in the supply chain, the sources noted.
Apple has reportedly reduced orders for 9.7-inch 1024×768 LCDs from September to October:
Let’s look at iPad sales by calendar year quarters:
Look at the jump in iPad sales in Q4’10. If the brief sales history is any indication we’re looking at 18M-20M iPad sales in Q4’11. All current component inventories in the supply chain should be used up for the manufacture of iPads in Q4’11. And it’s good to wind down component production because Q1’11 wasn’t so good and most likely neither will Q1’12. But there’s an additional reason.
The original iPad was introduced January 27, 2010 and became available three months later in April. The iPad 2 was introduced March 2, 2011 and made available nine days later. I expect Apple to unveil an iPad 3 in March 2012.
The iPad 3, which I think might be called iPad Pro, is expected to sport a Retina Display with a 2048×1536 pixel format. I’ve heard these 263-ppi IPS-equivalent displays are difficult to manufacture in large quantities. DIGITIMES reports that Samsung and Sharp are already shipping these displays in October. These are probably the initial small-quantity batch for EVT (Engineering Verification Testing) or DVT (Design Verification Testing) units.
With a late-Q1’12 launch of the iPad 3 in addition to having enough components to meet expected demand for the iPad 2 in Q4’11 the reported reduction of production levels of the current 9.7-inch LCD is Apple conducting smart supply chain management.
Update: DIGITIMES is reporting one million 9.7-inch Retina Displays shipped in October:
Samsung Electronics, LG Display and Sharp reportedly shipped a total of one million units of high-resolution flat panels for next-generation iPads to Apple in October and will ramp up shipments to two million units in November, according to industry sources.
According to my sources there have been significant challenges manufacturing these displays defect-free in high volume. And this was just a couple of weeks ago.
via John Gruber. Greg Bensinger, The Wall Street Journal:
Verizon Wireless customers may have to wait more than three weeks for the device, according to the carrier’s website. That compares with as much as 21 days at AT&T and up to 14 days at Sprint Nextel. While some tech blogs have suggested Apple’s manufacturing isn’t keeping pace, the carriers point to unexpectedly strong demand for the handset.
Strong demand for the iPhone 4S was unexpected? Unbelievable.
via John Gruber. Edward Tufte:
There is no such hand in touchscreen computer devices. The touchscreen has no texture variation, has no physical surface information, is dead flat, reflects ambient light noise, and features oily fingerprint debris when seen at a raking angle. Also the elegant sharp edges that encase many touchscreens require users to desensitize their hands in order to ignore the physical discomfort produced by the aggressive edges. Last year in Cupertino, I yelled at some people about touchscreens that paid precise attention to finger touches from the user but not to how the device in turn touches the hands of the user (and produces divot edge-lines in the flesh).
I like the feeling of precision. The highly responsive capacitive multitouch glass. The slightest touch initiates a thousand little electrons to respond immediately. The CNC machined stainless steel chassis. They convey high tech.
You can get smartphones with softer and rounder edges, like the Lumia 800. They are usually made of plastic. Gruber mentions the plastic, or polycarbonate as Nokia would say it, “feels like a premium product.” Maybe plastic doesn’t have to convey cheap, but imagine this horrifying picture: a plastic iPhone 4.
One of the first things we noticed about the Folio is that the bezels are relatively narrow, at least compared to what you’ll usually see paired with such a common 1366 x 768 display. [...] As for the viewing angles, well, look at some of our hands-on photos and decide for yourself. Our early take is that they’re on par with what you’d get from other TN displays, which is to say, they’re not great (but not necessarily terrible either).
I think we need to be a bit more nuanced when talking about display viewing angles on notebooks. Horizontal viewing angles aren’t as important. And in some cases you want horizontal viewing angles to be somewhat limited for a bit of privacy. The more important are vertical viewing angles. Not everyone flies economy and not everyone is unfortunate enough to sit behind someone who has his seat tilted back all the way all the time. But more often than not you’ll be looking at your notebook at an angle that’s far from ideal and that’s when a LCD panel with good vertical viewing angles will come in handy. So the HP Folio 13 Ultrabook might be good enough despite the weak horizontal viewing angles.
But the weak pixel format of 1366×768 has got to go. The bar has been set for 13.3-inch ultrabooks by the MacBook Air and that’s 1440×900. But then again the Folio 13 Ultrabook starts at just US$900.
via John Gruber. An excerpt Philip Elmer-DeWitt singled out from Robert X. Cringely’s interview with Steve Jobs in 1995:
You know, one of the things that really hurt Apple was after I left John Sculley got a very serious disease. It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people “here’s this great idea,” then of course they can go off and make it happen.
And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product. And as you evolve that great idea, it changes and grows. It never comes out like it starts because you learn a lot more as you get into the subtleties of it. [...]
Designing a product is keeping five thousand things in your brain and fitting them all together in new and different ways to get what you want. And every day you discover something new that is a new problem or a new opportunity to fit these things together a little differently.
And it’s that process that is the magic.
Ask any magician. The more splendid the magic the more sweat was required.
via Ben Brooks. Rob Beschizza, Boing Boing:
All of these were nice, high-end computers that could have become great designs if they’d stuck with them. But Sony rarely iterates, even when it’s onto something good. Everything is a one-off.
Taste versus design:
Taste often describes flavors, appearances and forms; it blends into fashion, which spins as fast as people can spend their money. [...] Design, however, also concerns itself with function. If a design fails to encompass good taste, the result will be ugly. But if taste fails to encompass good design, it’ll be useless.
Beschizza concludes Apple cares very little about taste. I agree. Apple instead cares deeply about good design and perpetually iterates it toward perfection. And that’s the difference between Sony and Apple. Sony’s designs exhibit long term memory loss; Apple remembers the good stuff, forgets the bad stuff, and keeps at it.
Of course, such high pixel density means that you won’t be able to see pixelation with the naked eye, and it’s obvious with the Rezound’s display. Watching an HD-quality video, as expected, is absolutely stunning; everything appears more life-like, and it’s easier to see finer details such as freckles and little hairs. Text turns out incredibly crisp, and it’s the most noticeable with smaller fonts; when viewing Engadget, for instance, tiny print appears just as smooth as it does when we zoom in. It’s a more satisfying visual experience than seen on the Vivid, which shows more and more jagged edges as the text gets smaller.
4.3-inch Super LCD. 1280×720 pixels with RGB sub-pixels. 342 ppi. The display is a tad big for my taste, but with these display specs I’m expecting nothing but an absolutely fantastic visual experience.
The future when it comes to pixel format is clear: It’s 1280×720. As display manufacturing technology advances expect 1280×720 to be packed into smaller and smaller displays. At some point 960×640 on the iPhone 4/4S will look anemic. The hardware spec will look anemic, not the visual experience. That will remain superb, just not has superb as time goes on and as more and more of the competition incorporates 1280×720. This difference will manifest itself most acutely when viewing 720p HD videos, which will be the next evolutionary step for Amazon, Hulu, iTunes, etc.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.