Notebook News: Gateway sales down, MousePad Power, Intel pushes generic notebooks

Gateway Sales decline in the 4th Quarter

Gateway PC sales in the fourth quarter fell 27 percent from the year-ago period, a decline Gateway attributed to stiff competition in the lower end of the PC market and constrained supplies of its Media Center PCs, as it had previously announced. It also cited store closures for the decline. Revenue for Gateway fell to $875.1 million from $1.06 billion.

Competition from larger, and obviously more successful,PC rivals Dell and Hewlett-Packard has hit Gateway's revenue, profit and market share since the end of 2000. In the fourth quarter, promotions from Dell and HP hurt Gateway's sales, especially in the notebook market.

A MousePad with Power -- 10 hours of Power

VoodooPC (http://www.voodoopc.com/), a leader in the design and manufacturing of high-performance personal computer systems, has announced the launch of the world’s first powered mousepad. The following blurb is an excerpt froma VooDoo PC press release, they dont' say how this mousepad works exactly, but they claim it can boost your battery life to 10 hours -- a 250% gain.

from the press release:

The Voodoo ATOM Speedpad is a brushed aluminum mousepad that also happens to extend the battery life of select models of Voodoo ENVY notebooks by over 2.5 times. By simply plugging a wire between the mousepad and your notebook the Voodoo ATOM Speedpad is a power users dream come true – you can use your Voodoo ENVY notebook for up to 10 hours on a single charge.

“There are multiple ways to use it” says J. Desmond Brown, Media Designer, VoodooPC “The ATOM Speedpad can be left in your notebook bag, and you can run a wire from the bag to your notebook if you are on a plane, or if you are stationed at a desk you can use it as your mousepad. It’s fully compatible with all optical mice, and being aluminum, the surface will last for years.”

This "Speedpad" is only compatible with certain versions of VooDoo notebook PCs, we'll report more on this as details arise.

Generic Notebook market to grow and Intel is Helping

Non-branded PC makers holdmore than a quarter of the desktop market, and are now in a position to take advantage of an improving economy to boost their share of notebooks and servers sold in the U.S.

While so-called "white-box PC" (generic)vendors suffered in the economic downturn with the rest of the computer industry over the last three years, they also benefited from better prices and marketing support from component vendors hungry for their business.

Intel and five Taiwanese notebook makers (Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron, Asustek Computer and First International Computer) will promote a new Mobile Value-Added Distributor (MVAD) program initiated by Intel.

The move is designed to attract distributors worldwide to configure and sell notebooks directly from the manufacturers, the sources said. The Taiwanese makers will be responsible for design, assembly, logistics control and service for notebooks sold under the MVAD program, while distributors will be encouraged to buy barebone systems from the five makers and complete the final stages of assembly before selling fully-configured notebooks to customers.

Intel is offering 1,000 CPUs free of charge to each of the five participating makers to develop and produce samples of the new notebooks. The first models will be released in September this year.

http://www.digitimes.com/NewsShow/Article.asp?datePublish=2004/01/30&pages=A1&seq=1