In terms of tech, Myanmar is heating up. It’s uncharted territory. It’s a digital wasteland. And everybody wants to get in on the action before their business rivals can do so.

Singaporean, Norwegian, Malaysian and Vietnamese telcos are already rushing in – and the latest is Cisco, the networking and telecoms giant.

Cisco revealed today that it’s planning to open up two network training centers in Myanmar by an unspecified date. It’s very possible that these training centers will be targeted at getting SME’s and large businesses set up with networks.

Foreseeably, by the end of next year, the technosphere of Myanmar will explode – in a good way.

Today, SIM cards cost anywhere from $300 to $500, leaving only one in every ten people in the country with mobile access. Internet penetration sits far below ten percent, and most people in Myanmar still only have a laptop if someone brings one in from abroad. And yet, at the same time, BarcampYangon is the biggest technology conference in the world. That means Myanmar is ripe for the pickings and the big tech companies know it.

With over 90 companies bidding for telco licenses to operate in the country, and companies like Google, Microsoft, HP, Intel, and Cisco visiting and possibly planning to open offices, by the end of 2014 we’ll be looking at a completely different Myanmar. It’s hard to imagine how a country will fare with extremely rapid technological development. If, for example, SIMs come down to a regular Southeast Asian level of pricing, about $5 each, we’ll see Myanmar’s citizens joining the mobile web. By 2014, I’m guessing eight out of ten people in Myanmar will have a mobile, and they’ll be keen to jump on social networks and try out mobile commerce.

(Source: Associated Press)

RiTeng was also found to be responsible for noise pollution and other environmental infractions, and as a result environmental authorities have shut down some aspects of its production in addition to fining the company.

Readers with a sharp memory may recall the name RiTeng from back in 2011, when an explosion at the company injured 57 workers during a trial production run of Apple’s iPad 2. It’s clear that a few years later, RiTeng hasn’t quite worked out the kinks, and the promise on its website to provide “world-class green [environmentally friendly] products” hasn’t exactly been fulfilled yet.

It’s not clear whether the partial shutdown will affect production of any of the devices RiTeng provides supplies for, but the spill comes at a particularly bad time for the company in terms of PR, as Sina Weibo is currently in the midst of a high-profile clean rivers campaign.

(via Xinhua, image via Engadget)

A Foxconn plant in China (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

HP will mandate that Chinese students of age may go onto factory lines for temporary periods so long as the work “must complement the primary area of study” of that individual. Plus, according to HP, the vocational worker must be free “to leave work at any time upon reasonable notice without negative repercussions, and they must have access to reliable and reprisal-free grievance mechanisms.”

These student intern workers are often in demand by factories during peak periods such as summer vacations. This year, HP will also stipulate that student workers make up no more than 20 percent of labor at a plant. Tony Prophet, HP’s senior VP for worldwide supply chain operations, told the paper that the company plans to reduce the ratio to 10 percent at an undecided future point.

Apple has also said that it’s putting pressure on manufacturers on this issue. Student workers from schools and colleges, mixed with corruption and fake IDs, sometimes lead to child labor where the worker is under 16, which is a specific problem that Apple is tackling with its recent joining of the Fair Labor Association. Apple’s most recent supplier report highlighted one Chinese supplier that had a shocking 74 underage workers.

Of course, both corporate rules and labor laws can be bent and broken when corruption comes into play, with some dubious manufacturers bribing school principles to shepherd students onto factory lines for temporary work even though it might be irrelevant to their college course.

Foxconn is one of HP’s final assembly manufacturers, so Foxconn will, in theory, be held to these new rules.

(Source: New York Times)

China’s Lenovo (HKG:0992) has passed HP (NYSE:HPQ) to become the world’s leading PC maker in 2012 Q3, according to research firm Gartner. HP has held top spot in the industry since 2006, but Lenovo has been edging closer in recent years – noticeably and dramatically boosting its market share since early 2011.

But another research firm, IDC, begs to differ and reckons that HP holds the lead for now by the slim margin of just 0.2 percent – 15.7 percent for HP, 15.5 percent to Lenovo.

Lenovo, however, takes the throne of a shrinking kingdom. Global PC shipments fell 8.3 percent last quarter from the same point a year ago. Here’s Gartner’s top five:

We usually follow IDC’s data on this blog, so this is the updated scene from their numbers:

[Download image version of chart]

Speaking of Asia-Pacific, IDC said:

The region continued to contract on a year-on-year basis, though growing sequentially from 2Q12. China was mostly on target but the rest of the region came in below expectations as ongoing economic sluggishness and competing device distractions weighed on PC spending this quarter.

While it’s a major milestone for Lenovo, which bought IBM’s PC business back in 2004, the larger battle for the firm will be to transition to the next wave of computing with its smartphones, tablets, and hybrid touchscreen laptops – such as the ThinkPad Edge Twist Windows 8 device that was debuted yesterday. Lenovo also has Android-powered phones and tablets, and is said to be China’s second-largest mobile brand.

HP is in more of a pickle, having killed off its own mobile OS and platform, WebOS, last year – and so has no mobile gadgets to offer. HP’s new-ish CEO Meg Whitman warned analysts recently that there’ll be no real recovery or expansion in its business until 2014. The launch of Windows 8 might give HP a boost in the final quarter – unless consumers decide they prefer Lenovo’s offerings. Note that HP has said today that it prefers IDC’s numbers because they include workstation sales.

Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) remains in third place, says Gartner, though its share of PC shipments dropped to 10.5 percent from 11.2 percent a year earlier.

[Sources: Gartner, IDC; via Bloomberg]

The latest quarterly report from global market intelligence firm IDC shows that the second quarter of 2012 isn’t the happiest one for the PC market in both the Philippines and particularly Indonesia. The PC market in the Philippines saw a little growth of only 1.5 percent (total shipments of 551,000 units); but the country didn’t record any decline on the previous quarter.

The report showed that the growth in the Philippines’ market can be mainly attributed to the smaller PC vendors’ growth in the country. They were able to take advantage of in-demand mini notebooks not yet fully fulfilled by the top two vendors, Acer and Samsung. The trend is predicted to continue with the top two vendors facing stiff competition for the rest of the year.

What to expect in the third quarter? The launch of Windows 8 soon will affect the Philippines market quite significantly. Vendors would want to hold their old stock because of that. But modest growth could still be recorded, IDC reckons, as a result of projected government and enterprise spending.

In Indonesia

The same can’t be said for Indonesia as the country suffered a decline of 6.5 percent (total shipments of 1,300,000 units), as there was a fall in demand in the market, as much as 22 percent. IT project delays by the government in the education sector and the volatile currency also did not help much during Q2. Deddie Sionader, the client devices market analyst at IDC Indonesia, said that consumers’ attention was also distracted by the mobile phone and tablet markets.

Acer and Asus are still the number one and two PC vendors in Indonesia. HP was able to take the third position from Toshiba, which now drops to fourth place.

[Source: IDC #1 and #2 via Kompas, Original picture source]

The Top Brand Awards 2012, conducted by Frontier Consulting Group and Marketing magazine, wrapped up last night at Hotel Mulia, Jakarta. The award lists extensive brand categories in Indonesia ranging from food products to automotives. Here we bring to you a brief overview of the tech category winners:

Online Shopping Category

The winner for the new category ‘online shop’ is Tokobagus.com with an astounding 47.5 percent of the vote, making it a clear winner compared to runner up Kaskus with 15.6 percent. It’s quite interesting that e-commerce giant Multiply didn’t make it into the top four. Third place goes to Berniaga.com with 9.2 percent and fourth place to Bhinneka.com with 3.3 percent.

On this occasion, Ichwan Sitorus, the PR manager of TokoBagus shared some of their recent stats via Kabar Bisnis:

• There are millions of advertisement listings, with about 70,000 to 100,000 new daily ads.
• Daily number of visitors is 800,000 to 1,000,000.
• Monthly transaction value is reaching IDR 1.4 billion ($148,000) to 1.5 billion ($158,000) in 2012.

Mobile and Smartphones Category

In the mobile phone category, Nokia is champion with an impressive 54.2 percent, leaving the rest of the pack behind. The other runners-up didn’t even reach ten percent. They included second place Huawei with 8.5 percent, third place Samsung with 4.8 percent, and fourth place Nexian with 4.6 percent.

Now on to the smartphone category, did Samsung or the iPhone win it? No. Indonesia definitely loves Blackberry as it is the victor against Nokia in that category with 40.7 percent and 37.9 percent respectively. Samsung and Nexian took third and fourth places with 6.6 percent and 3.9 percent. Apple’s iPhone was fifth place in the vote with 3.8 percent.

The winners didn’t change much for both the mobile phone and smartphone category from the 2011 awards. The only difference in the mobile phone category is that Sony Ericsson fell from third spot in 2011 to fifth spot in 2012. iPhone had a similar fate in the smartphone category, dropping from third place in 2011 to fifth place in 2012, overtaken by new player Nexian.

Notebook Category

In this category the resounding champion is Acer with 42.1 percent. Second and third places go to Toshiba and HP with 15.9 percent and 13.8 percent respectively. Apple is in fourth place with a meager 6.1 percent. They’re all in the same exact positions as in 2011.

About the Top Brand Survey

The Top Brand survey was conducted among a total of 3,250 random respondents from eight big cities in Indonesia: Bandung, Jakarta, Makassar, Medan, Semarang, Surabaya, Balikpapan, and Pekanbaru. Respondents are aged 15 to 65 with an average expendable income per month of between IDR 750,000 ($79) and IDR 3,500,000 ($370). For the complete list of winners, you can see it here.

Earlier this year we noted that according to IDC figures, Lenovo is already shipping the most PCs in the Asia region by a large margin. While Lenovo (with 14.9 percent market share) sits just behind global leader HP (15.5 percent) it’s interesting to take a look back and see how it got there. I’ve isolated the two companies in the interactive chart below so you can get a better picture. As you can see, the most recent quarter has seen Lenovo and HP converge, with Lenovo poised to overtake them in the next quarter.

[Download image version of this chart]

Reuters points out that Lenovo’s joint venture with Japanese manufacturer NEC (January 2011) as well as its acquisition of German consumer electronics maker Medion (June 2011) has helped its progress. But the report also notes that Lenovo’s profit margins at 1.4 percent are lower than HP and Dell (7.4 and 6.2 percent respectively) for the most recent quarter.

It’s also important to note that Lenovo announced earlier this month that it would be investing $30 million into a manufacturing and distribution center in Brazil. And progress in that large market will certainly help Lenovo in the PC wars since Brazil was the world’s third largest PC market in 2011.

Disclosure: As per our ethics policy, I should note that I’m a former HP employee.

Lenovo jumped to take 14.9 percent of the market for Q1 2012, way up from the 9.7 percent that it held in the same period one year before (see chart below). The report notes that consumer buying was actually down three percent on the previous quarter, and Lenovo’s leap was largely due to a large contract with the Tamil Nadu government for 912,000 laptops, which was won by Lenovo, HCL, and Acer.

Following Lenovo in second spot was Dell, which dropped from the top position the year before. It now holds 14.0 percent of the market, just ahead of HP which has 13.7. Acer and HCL round out the top five with 11.8 and 5.8 percent respectively.

Of course HP is still the global leader in PC shipments, but Lenovo is expected to steal that crown during the second or third quarter of this year. HP, as you have likely heard by now, is planning to cut 27,000 jobs by 2014 in an effort to turn around the company.

*Disclosure: I’m a former HP employee (see our ethics policy), as well as a former Thinkpad owner.

Download image version of chart

Samsung says these unused components are "old" and dumped by an unknown customer, not the company itself. (Image credit: ShanghaiScrap).

Yesterday we looked at photographic evidence that suggested that some manufacturers – namely Samsung, HP, Panasonic, and AMD – were dumping new but defective gadgets and parts in the notorious Guiyu landfill in southern China. Now Samsung (005930:KS) has reached out to us, and denied that it was done directly be the company, and that the semi-conductors found in the dump (pictured above) were “old” and ditched there by an unknown user – not by Samsung or its “recycling partners.”

We still have no explanation for this sent for "repair" Panasonic PC display found at the Guiyu landfill. Click to enlarge. (Image credit: ShanghaiScrap.com).

The Samsung-branded parts were the ones most difficult to pin down, as they lacked documentation that explained how the apparently unused components got to the toxic landfill. But there was paperwork attached to items from HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Panasonic (TYO:6752) which still suggest a more direct path from the factory or repair center to the trash heaps at Guiyu. Neither HP nor Panasonic, however, have explained how the “out of warranty” and sent for “repair” parts made it to the vast and dangerous landfill.

To give Samsung a full right-of-reply, here’s the Korean manufacturer’s official response to us from its Seoul HQ:

Samsung Electronics actively promotes the take back and recycling of electronic products as part of its commitment to environmental stewardship. As an inaugural E-Stewards Enterprises member with the Basel Action Network, Samsung is committed to enforcing strict global standards for proper e-waste management to protect the environment, people, and developing countries from the hazards of electronic waste. Samsung has established recycling programs all over the world to comply with global recycling laws, and we are expanding voluntary programs, regardless of legal requirements, to continue to minimize electronic waste.

Based on our internal investigation, we confirmed that the boxes were not discarded by Samsung Electronics or by one of Samsung’s recycling partners. Furthermore, the semiconductor components contained in the boxes were manufactured in 2004 and had been shipped to a customer overseas. In the case of components – unlike finished products – all rights and ownership are transferred to the customer after a sales transaction has been completed.

That last part is the most crucial, claiming evidence that the components were not put there by the company itself. Samsung also promised it “will continue to investigate this matter and share new information as it becomes available.”

We’re reaching out to HP and Panasonic as well, and hope that they can shed some light on all the documentation attached to the dumped items, which seem to suggest a more direct link to those companies.

Note that the original discovery was made on the Shanghai Scrap blog, which is worth reading if you’re interested in e-waste as a global consumer and environmental issue.

These HP hard-drives went straight from HP to the dump at Guiyu in China because they were defective. (All images from shanghaiscrap.com).

An investigation into what makes up the e-waste that’s piling onto China’s massive Guiyu landfill has found that it contains not just old computers and gadgets from consumers around the world, but also nearly-new but defective items from HP, Samsung, and Panasonic; some of them were returned for repair, but seem to have been scrapped instead. In addition, there were unused or returned parts from chipmaker AMD (NYSE:AMD). The find was made by Adam Minter, author of the Shanghai Scrap blog, in a visit to the vast dump in southern China’s Guangdong province.

[UPDATE on April 19th, 24 hours after publishing: Samsung has responded, saying that the parts found at the landfill were "old" and put there by a third-party, not directly from the company. See the full story here].

[UPDATE on April 23rd, 5 days after publishing: HP has now also responded to the images of its "out of warranty" hard-drives at the dump (albeit with no supporting evidence of its own), stating that it "remains committed to the responsible disposal of e-waste and is thoroughly investigating this matter. HP aims to prevent e-waste from entering landfills through a variety of vendor reuse and recycling programs"].

The blogger, who’s researching for a book on the global scrap trade, was able to photograph the bar codes and other paperwork attached to some of the nearly-new parts. In a box of HP (NYSE:HPQ) hard-drives, many had been labelled as “Disqualified: Out of warranty” (pictured above), while on a Panasonic (TYO:6752) computer monitor there was a hand-written pink slip (pictured below) saying that it had come in for repair due to display issues. In both those cases, the origin seemed to be Singapore:

From Samsung (005930:KS) there were countless boxes of semi-conductors still in the original Samsung-branded boxes in which they left the factory [Update: Samsung says it has investigated, and the parts are old and were dumped by an unknown third-party. See more here]:

According to the Wikipedia page on the Guiyu landfill, the recycling methods (if they can be called that) used on the vast site are “toxic and dangerous to workers’ health” and cause “88 percent of children suffering from lead poisoning” in neighboring villages. Essentially, workers at Guiyu salvage whatever’s worth money in the gadgets and parts – such as gold, copper, silver, scrap metals – using primitive acid baths and other simple tools, with pretty much no protective equipment. To clarify: Guiyu is not a reprocessing factory – it’s just an ad-hoc outdoor dump spread across four villages where some of China’s poorest forage through the parts and make a living from what they can sell off.

This revelation of new but somewhat defective parts going straight to the dump raises many questions, principally why HP, Samsung, Panasonic, and AMD can find no better method to make use of the working parts that exist in these new components and gadgets. Also, does the dumping not contradict their own so-called green policies? With a great deal of media attention always focused on what Apple does at its Foxconn partner plants, it’d be a media disgrace for this to go ignored simply because some less headline-grabbing brands are involved in this.

Lamentably, HP and Samsung evaded questions from the Shanghai Scrap blogger for months, and did not respond to our queries today.

See the full report with more photos over on the Shanghai Scrap site.

EXTRA: So you can see the full horror of Guiyu, here are three images of the wider landfill area taken from across the web:

Gartner has released its estimates of worldwide PC shipments for the fourth quarter of 2011, and Chinese maker Lenovo (HKG:0992) posted the best growth among the top vendors, with 23 percent more shipments in the quarter.

With 14 percent market share, Lenovo still ranks second in global PC shipments just behind market leader HP (NYSE:HPQ), having leapfrogged Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) earlier in the year. HP retains a 16 percent market share despite a 16 percent shipment decline on the previous year. The afore-mentioned Dell sits behind in the third spot with 12.6 percent market share. We don’t hear too many headlines from Dell these days, but the company put up an impressive 30 percent growth in Asia according to the report.

Taiwanese vendors Acer (TPE:2353) and Asus (TPE:2357) rounded out the top five with 10.7 and 6.8 percent market share respectively. Although in terms of growth, the companies went in opposite directions with Asus’s shipments growing by over 20 percent, and Acer’s declining by 18.4.

Globally, PC shipments were down by 1.4 percent, but here in Asia there was an 8.5 percent increase on the same period last year.

Continuing a recent trend of labor strikes at foreign enterprises in the country, more than a thousand workers in Shanghai went on strike after their Hi-P Electronics factory announced suddenly that it was moving. Workers told China Enterprise News they were striking because they hadn’t been warned of the move or offered fair compensation.

The report names Hi-P as a supplier to both Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and HP (NYSE:HPQ), but it also quotes an Apple rep in Shanghai as saying that she isn’t familiar with the company, and that it is likely a minor supplier. Apple does not publicly name its suppliers.

The Hi-P factory move is a reflection of a number of issues that are affecting small and mid-range factories across China. The economic troubles in the West, coupled with rising materials and labor prices in China, have made it tougher for these companies to do business.

As China transitions to a consumer economy, tech companies like Apple may be forced to look to new locations and companies to supply parts and manufacturing for their devices.

[China Enterprise News via Sina Tech]

See the second-to-last row on the bottom, price is on the far right.

So, it turns out the Chinese government doesn’t know crap about computers. Or maybe they don’t care about money? Perhaps there’s some kind of corruption going on. Whatever the reason, Southern Metropolis Daily is reporting today on an invoice from the government-run Chinese Academy of Science that lists a 128 MB memory stick (for a printer, apparently) as costing 6,247 RMB ($979). Uh, what?

Of course, the same exact product costs about 300 RMB ($46) on the open market, according to Southern Metropolis Daily, and we’re betting you could find it for even cheaper than that. Heck, for $979 you might as well buy the latest iPod and use that for data storage! That might sound hyperbolic, but actually the Jianyang county archiving department was found to be using iPod Touch 4s as their “portable hard drives” some time ago.

Anyway, back to the memory sticks; apparently, a vendor told reporters it was possible to find ones that cost that much, as buying an “original” HP stick that has since been verified and tested by HP technicians apparently costs about 6,000 RMB. But when a reporter spoke with HP, they said that these “original” memory sticks went for around 600 RMB, not 6,000, and that the 600 RMB sticks were their most expensive product in that category.

A worker at the Chinese Academy of Science that reporters spoke to confirmed that they indeed purchased and used that kind of memory stick, but would neither confirm nor deny that the invoice posted online was authentic. The worker did say that their purchases were all legal, and that anyone with doubts about the prices could check a website where central-government-approved purchase prices are apparently posted. But when reporters attempted to check the site, they discovered it was not accessible to the general public and required “authentication of government ID” to log in.

Whatever’s going on here, it’s hard to imagine that the extra $850-or-so the government is dishing out isn’t ending up in someone’s pocket, so take your pick: is it corruption or incompetence? Either way, it’s pretty damn embarrassing.

New numbers from research firm Gartner on the PC market in India say that there’s an increase of nearly 13 percent in the units shipped for the third quarter over the same period a year ago. What’s interesting about this report is that PC growth in India appears to be almost 10 percent higher than the worldwide market growth, which Gartner says is just 3.2 percent for the same period.

It’s also interesting to note that with 15 percent market share Dell (NASDAQ:DELL) edges out HP (NYSE:HPQ) as the dominant PC maker in India, while the company has dropped to third spot behind HP and Lenovo (HKG:0992) globally. [1] But while Dell holds a lead, its share has falled one percent from the previous quarter, while HP’s rose almost two percent. As for Lenovo, it was up 1.7 percent on Q2.

According to Vishal Tripathi, principal researcher at Gartner, the growth comes due to the success of the mobile PC market, up 29 percent in the quarter. He adds:

A number of festivals helped drive demand in the consumer market in India. The third quarter was the best quarter in the history of the Indian PC industry as overall PC shipments crossed 3.15 million units for the first time. The consumer segment accounted for 55 percent of PC shipments.

Looking at the market share breakdown, one might be surprised to see HCL accounting for 5.6 percent. This local technology company is based in Noida, India and according to the report was the only vendor to see a decline in shipments in the third quarter.

[Photo: Dell on Flickr]

Photo: hktdc.com

Last month we looked at second quarter figures from iSuppli that indicated Lenovo (HKG:0992) had jumped to third spot in the personal computer market. And now today, research firm Gartner estimates that the company’s third quarter shipments are enough to vault it past Dell into the number two spot.

According to Gartner’s preliminary worldwide shipment estimates (which do not include tablets), Hewlett Packard remains the top PC vendor with 17.7 percent market share (up from 17.3 last year). This despite recent news that it might be looking to spin off its PC business, although today The Wall Street Journal says HP is rethinking that plan.

Lenovo’s strong showing was helped by its tie-up with Japan’s NEC. The Chinese PC maker took 13.5 percent of the market, up from 11.1 percent last year. This was enough to overtake Dell, which sits in third spot with 11.6 percent. Taiwanese vendors Acer and Asus round out the global top five at 10.6 percent and 6.2 percent respectively.

Looking at the big picture in Asia, Gartner says that PC shipments grew six percent over last year, reaching 31.8 million units shipped in the third quarter of 2011. In Japan, shipments were up three percent, with 3.9 million units moved.

A close-up of the lid of the Lenovo IdeaPad Z370 laptop.

Chinese hardware maker Lenovo (HKG:0992) has moved up into third place in terms of global market share of PC shipments, with world-beating annual growth to match. The new stats from iSuppli (see the table below) this week show preliminary Q2 2011 data, and highlight Lenovo’s move up one rank from the previous quarter.

This is Lenovo’s highest ever-ranking, taking it up to the late-IBM heydays of over half a decade ago. Its year-on-year growth of 23 percent beat even Apple’s rate of acceleration (13.6 percent). The Chinese firm shipped 25.6 percent more PCs than the previous quarter. iSuppli’s Matthew Wilkins said:

Beyond the continuing strength in its home market of China – where both the economy and PC demand continued to expand vigorously — Lenovo’s performance in the second quarter was boosted by rising sales in other regions. These regions included the broader Asia-Pacific area, as well as the United States, with Lenovo performing well in those places because of demand from the enterprise segment.

Here are the new figures, which we took the liberty of putting into a prettier table:

Not shown on the table is another Chinese PC vendor, Haier (HKG:1169), which reportedly saw a recent, rapid rate of growth. Samsung (SEO:005930) secured the strongest surge in shipments this quarter, up 31.3 percent.

The WSJ reported last week that Lenovo had hired Acer’s (TPE:2353) former CEO, Gianfranco Lanci, as an advisor, in a bid to strengthen its consumer hardware (and hopefully style and design, too).

Asus Up, Acer Down; PCs Not Dead

Speaking of Acer… There were wildly contrasting fortunes for the two Taiwanese contenders. Acer was down 4 percent this quarter; sliding 20 percent over the previous year. Asus (TPE:2357), meanwhile, entered the global top five for the first time.

In other news, the PC industry is not dead, despite a very shaky start to the year. Of course, all the global top eight have tablet products – oh, wait… except for HP – as a back-up in case the bottom falls out of the already margins-squeezed consumer computer market. Lenovo’s own is the IdeaPad, which doesn’t look to be the killer Android slate that some people have been waiting for.

HP (NYSE:HPQ) managed to eek out a small amount of growth – an amusing extra three PCs this quarter! It’s still not clear if the American giant plans to sell off its PC division – which is why last month we looked at five Chinese hardware makers that might want to buy it up.

[Source: IHS iSuppli]

A report from Digitimes is claiming that Samsung is considering buying Hewlett Packard’s webOS in order to strengthen its position against Apple and Google. As you’re probably aware by now, HP recently announced it was looking to offload its Personal Systems Group (PSG), which is responsible for the development of webOS devices.

Digitimes adds that the Korean manufacturer has already brought on HP’s former VP of PSG marketing Raymond Wah for its own PC sales.

Many speculate that Google’s recent pickup of Motorola could mean that many vendors – including Samsung – are uneasy about the future of the Android platform.

WebOS could make for an interesting contingency plan for either Samsung or HTC, both of whom have a lot riding on Android. According to an IDC report earlier this year, Samsung and HTC led the smartphone industry in year-on-year growth after the first quarter, improving 350 and 229.6 percent respectively over the same period last year. That growth, of course, directly coincided with the explosive growth of the Android platform.

There have been some shock announcements coming out of HP headquarters after its Q2 2011 earnings call. Aside from the supposed abandonment of its newly-acquired mobile and tablet software platform, WebOS, it seems that HP might also exit the not-exactly-thriving consumer PC business. And that’d be great news for some Chinese and Taiwanese PC makers.

With word that HP is likely looking to spin-off and sell-off its PC division, it’s inevitable we think of who might profit from HP’s apparent shift in strategy, away from the reported seven percent profit margins of the PC industry to the healthier cuts to be made from enterprise solutions.

Chinese and Taiwanese companies will be key among them, eyeing a buy-out of the world’s biggest PC maker, which last quarter shipped 9.7 million computers to take a 15 percent global share.

We’ve been here before, of course. In late 2004 the Chinese firm Lenovo, then little-known in the wider world, bought IBM’s PC group for US$1.75 billion. At the time, IBM was the world’s third-largest PC vendor, with a 5.3 percent market share. Since then it has slipped down to be the fifth-biggest, but with a 7.5 percent cut. So it has become more dominant despite selling fewer units. It’s a telling tale of how new hardware makers have cropped up, selling budget machines such as netbooks, undercutting some more ‘premium’ brands such as HP, Dell, and Lenovo. That’s why Acer has vaulted over Lenovo in the past two years.

The buy-out, nonetheless, helped Lenovo to rebrand – it anglicised its moniker from ‘Lian Xiang,’ which remains as its Chinese name – and gave it an immediate space on global retailer’s shelves. Lenovo still makes IBM’s signature ThinkPad brand, and did not perceptibly disturb consumers in the way the American brand suddenly turned Chinese.

So, with IBM-Lenovo as a working model, who might be up for grabbing HP’s PC division? Here are five feisty candidates:

Foxconn

If Foxconn fancied taking its integration vertical, then HP would be a great buy. The Taiwanese OEM manufactures parts for numerous major brands, such as Apple, Dell, Nintendo, and HP itself.

Foxconn has in recent years even been experimenting with retailing, as a literal store-front for the many brands it manufactures for. All that’s missing is a brand of its own.

Lenovo

Are we really in the post-PC era, where desktop and laptop computers are encumbrances, not desirable gadgets? Could some households forego a PC completely, and instead enjoy his’n’hers tablets? If that’s not the case – as Mashable recently affirmed – then Lenovo might like to make itself into the world’s largest PC producer by acquiring HP’s segment. Looking at the most recent Q2 figures, it’s clear to see that Lenovo’s 4.8 million units plus HP’s 9.7m equates to 14.5m computers as a HP-Lenovo mega corp – outselling Dell (7.5m) and even all of Apple’s Macs and iPads to be the planet’s biggest.

True, Lenovo doesn’t really need HP’s brand or know-how, unlike the four other Chinese/Taiwanese contenders, but being the biggest computer hardware maker in the world is suddenly quite easily within its grasp.

Great Wall

One of the many PCs and laptops from the Great Wall computer company.

Who? Well, exactly. China Great Wall Computer Shenzhen (SHE:000066) – catchy, huh? – is the biggest computer maker in the world that you’ve never heard of. In fact, most Chinese might’ve even forgotten that this old name still exists, after likely getting their first taste of computing on one of its machines in the early 1990s.

When we looked at China’s updated Fortune 500 list for 2011, Great Wall Computers was up there in 33rd place, with 83.4 billion RMB in annual revenue. Lenovo was in 22nd place.

Part of the Great Wall industrial empire, the Great Wall computing division has made baby steps towards going international in recent years, such as fully buying up its Hong Kong subsidiary, which is its export-point to the world. But, for now, Great Wall’s machines are popular mainly just in rural areas. Also, the company, in its words and its ethos, sounds more like a Communist bureaucracy, with its “Five Year Plans” and “glorious” products, which makes it look not very ready to go global.

Haier

Haier is a company that has ambitions to be China’s Samsung, but it’s missing a properly viable PC business. It does manufacture PCs, but they have about as much credibility among China’s consumers as those from Great Wall.

Haier does better at home appliances, such as air-con units and fridges. But its gadgets are somewhat improving, with a nice-looking new reiteration of the HaiPad Android-powered tablet launching this summer NBA fans will recognise the name from its big-spending basketball sponsorships.

Acer

Yes, Taiwan’s Acer Inc is now the world’s fourth biggest selling PC maker, one step ahead of Lenovo. But it’s in a precarious position at the lowest end of the food chain, selling mostly laptops and budget devices, where the margins are thinnest. Acer has already done some shopping, snapping up Gateway in 2007 in order to get back into the US market.

Buying-out HP’s PC business would take Acer more upmarket, and get them into more offices. It’d also give them a chance to battle Dell. The company knows that it takes a big investment to operate in the US and Europe, so I get the feeling that the word “HP” is bouncing off the walls of Acer’s Taipei and Californian HQs.

Of course, there are some non-Chinese contenders, such as the Korean brands Samsung or LG, which both have PC-making divisions that lack global traction. Hit the comments to tell us what you think of HP’s move, and any likely suitors.

A user's personal ebook on VSLook.com

The Chinese start-up VS Look is a personal photobook publishing platform that’s aiming to do something a bit old-fashioned with our modern digital photo mementos – print them out.

VS Look’s in-browser photobook editor allows users to pick out a template – anything from a traditional scrapbook to a mock-up of contemporary magazines – and populate it with photos, text, and even music. All but the music, of course, can then be ordered and crammed into a printed photobook or magazine, to keep as a keepsake, or give as a present.

Necessitating a user to work with the Flash-powered in-browser editor (pictured below, using a magazine layout) isn’t ideal, compared to the ease and speed of an app. But, from a practical, proprietary perspective, it at least allows the company to prevent piracy of its app technology, and also stops people creating full-size mock-ups and then printing them out manually.

Trying out VSLook's in-browser photobook editor web app.

Apple has a nice range of print products that can be made from its iPhoto app, but it’s limited to a handful of countries – and, almost inevitably, one of those is not mainland China.

HP might well be VS Look’s biggest rival operating in China. Its Chinese version of Snapfish – at kachayu.com – offers printing of individual photos as well as posters and photobooks.

In addition to offering printed items, VS Look is aiming to be social, too. Users can browse and read through others’ finished ebooks – replete with background music – and post comments as well as share the page with friends via Sina or Tencent Weibo, Douban, Baidu Tieba, or Kaixin. For photo enthusiasts, it also offers 10 GB of free photo storage, even without printing out any books.

Ordering, payment options and delivery are limited to mainland China, but anyone can register at the VS Look site and play around with it.

By interviewing dozens of workers at each of the ten factories – spread across China’s two main industrial hubs in Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces – CLW got a clear picture of improving or deteriorating conditions, as well as seeing patterns of abuses and dishonorable behavior by management that’s designed to wring every last cent from workers.

There’s such a litany of penny-pinching, conniving, greedy, amoral inhumanity on display at these factories – at many, for example, a worker being just one minute late for a shift will result in them being docked a half day of wages, in addition to a further monetary fine – that the minutiae of corporate callousness takes on a systematic and almost torture-like relentlessness.

Some of the major name brands whose products are manufactured at these 10 factories.

Most depressingly, there’s no area of major improvement over the arc of the past few years, not even with tightened labor laws in China, or supposed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) campaigns by Microsoft or Apple. Indeed, the five main types of violations according to CLW – “overtime, wages, labor intensity, contracts, and discrimination” – are all in grim evidence in this year’s report.

As someone who has followed these reports over recent years, it’s alarming to see specific violations crop up again this year, such as:

Forcing workers to work overtime; arbitrarily fining workers; discriminating against workers on the basis of their gender, age, and status as Hepatitis B carriers; adopting methods of production that required high levels of labor intensity; and, finally, using militant management strategies.

The worst plant proved to be that of Hongkai Electronics, based in Dongguan in southern China, which makes precision instruments and various cables for IBM, ASUS, Konka, Apple, HP and some others. Almost all of its CLW scores (as seen in the interactive graph, below) were so low that they approached being the worst in the industry. CLW observed that “monthly overtime exceeds 142 hours,” there were no sick days offered, workers often had no time to use the bathroom during a shift, the workshops were filthy and not regularly cleaned, the lighting was insufficient, and… Well, it goes on and on. If you’re having a bad day at work, you can now be thankful you don’t work at Hongkai.

One tiny sliver of good news is that Foxconn – which manufactures a great deal of Apple’s products, and has been under the most global scrutiny in recent years – has shown improvements, and one of its two investigated plants emerged from this report as the top facility. But CRW warns:

When Foxconn came under intense international scrutiny, its competitors, Flextronics, BYD, ASUS, Quanta and other supplier factories, benefited. If under public scrutiny and criticism, Foxconn improves the labor conditions inside its factories, but brand companies are unwilling to increase their order prices, these labor reforms will not be sustainable. In this situation, buyer brand companies will inconspicuously place their orders with other factories that are not under such intense public scrutiny.

CLW also graded the ten OEM firms according to various working condition factors, with a score of 1 representing the worst such conditions in the industry, and a score of 5 being the best. Instead of showing you their table, we made this interactive graph instead:

The entire 123-page PDF from China Labor Watch is embedded here. I’d recommend clicking the fullscreen icon to read it; or download the PDF at the source link below:

[Source: China Labor Watch]

(Our logo suggestion)

A new draft policy has been passed down in India indicating that all computer hardware and connecting devices used for new e-government projects have to be run on open source operating systems, The Economic Times reported. Besides the hassle of making the change (for both the government and hardware makers), both parties have several options to choose from, most notably Linux and its many available distributions.

The new policy aims to help the Indian government save costs by using open source systems. And with that, it also essentially rules out versions of Windows or the increasingly popular Mac OS. The report elaborates on the new draft and what it means in India:

In general, India has always supported use of open source operating systems, but it is the first time a policy is being framed on the use of operating systems and device drivers in government projects. The policy is expected to open a Pandora’s box, as most companies, including makers of PCs, servers, chips, and operating systems, have arrangements to make their products talk to each other.

Yes, even the big boys including IBM, HP, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems will have to follow this new policy, whereas before those companies were under no such obligation to provide drivers for open source systems. This could result in an increase in cost for the computer hardware and gadgets suppliers, but it seems inevitable if the policy is passed.

Nonetheless, suppliers will have to follow the new policy. In India, e-governance is a whopping $20 billion industry, equivalent to the total value of gold found in Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple.

Currently, the United States is the largest PC market in terms of shipment figures. China is ranked second but is poised to overtake United States within the next decade. Shipments are expected to rise 14 percent to 74 million units next year, outperforming the other markets with single digit growth rate.

“This is going to be battle royale,” Amit Midha, head of Dell’s China operations, told the Reuters China Investment Summit. “This is not for the faint-hearted, and it’s only the first inning of a very long game.”

Every business wants a piece of China

Even after the China-Google saga (which left Google in an awkward position in China) Google still considers China as the heart of the Internet. Google may not be able to challenge in search but advertising and maps are some areas where Google still has a role to play.

Groupon also has one eye on China. The social group buying website has acquired several copycat sites in Asia and is looking to do the same in China. On the other hand, companies like Facebook and Twitter, which are banned in China, are facing uphill battle to enter this lucrative market. The result is the rise of Facebook and Twitter clones in China, which has further heightened the barrier of entry.

It was explained that the video used the consistent and reliable printouts from its Photosmart printers to narrate a little story, speeding them up until they animate.

The creative execution is good and it provides peripheral cues that the printer is smooth and fast. But we’re unsure if the video hits the right audience.

According to YouTube’s data, most of the viewers are male aged 25 – 54. Is HP’s printer dominantly purchased by males? Only HP would know. But it definitely worth a share for its creativity. Enjoy the video.

Well, it seems like HP wants a share in this tablet market too. It recently released its “HP Slate” video ad, and boy, is there a major similarity with iPad’s ad. In fact, the product on the video looks like an iPad stamped with a HP logo.

And guess what? The HP Slate doesn’t even have an official name or a launch date. But it does have something that you might like: It offers full Adobe support (air & flash) and allows multiple applications to run simultaneously, as according to The New York Times Bits Blog. Could that threaten iPad’s sales growth?

This seems like an advertising war between HP and Apple. Both companies are trying to be on top of consumers’ mind even before the product is fully unveiled. As usual, Apple has done a great job to keep fans in suspense. First, the iPhone and now the iPad.

On the other hand, HP’s timing and ad visual effects are far from apt. Maybe, Apple is just the more sociable brand among the two, which further emphasizes the importance of brand engagement in today’s marketing era.

HP Slate Ad

This video is basically about slides and glides. It doesn’t tell the viewers anything else. Compare that with Apple’s? Though similar, Apple’s ad does a better job in intriguing the viewers.

Apple iPad Ad

HP has worked hard on this product for 5 long years and it is still one step behind. From HP’s Blog:

“FCC want us to let you know that this device has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. This device is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease, or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained”

I wonder what is the official name of this HP tablet. HPad, anyone?