AllThingsD » corrections

Must Have Been Thinking About That Other Game, "Angry Pigs"

John Paczkowski — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:20:45 +0000

Correction: October 22, 2011

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the premise of ‘Angry Birds,’ a popular iPhone game. In the game, slingshots are used to launch birds to destroy pigs and their fortresses, not to shoot down the birds.

The New York Times sets the record straight

Chip Sales: Bottoms Up?

John Paczkowski — Fri, 01 May 2009 15:37:19 +0000

No big surprises here. The souring economy and related uncertainty in consumer and enterprise technology markets continue to drag the chip sector into the mud. While world-wide sales of semiconductors in March rose 3.3 percent from February, they were down nearly 30 percent from last year, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a report today.

Another ugly SIA metric in a parade of them, though optimists will say that slight uptick in March is a sign that the industry has finally found a bottom from which to scramble upward. “The modest sequential rebound in worldwide sales in March suggests that demand has stabilized somewhat, albeit at substantially lower levels than last year,” SIA President George Scalise said in the report. “While all major product sectors showed month-on-month growth, there continues to be limited visibility in end markets. There are some bright spots such as ‘smart phones’ and ‘netbook’ PCs, but there are no clear signs of early firming of demand in other major end markets such as automotive, corporate information technology, and consumer electronics.”

So, perhaps we’re not on our way to the depths plumbed back in 2001-2002. And perhaps we are. The SIA doesn’t quite seem to know.

February Chip Sales: I Call Bottom… Until the Next Bottom

John Paczkowski — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 22:00:58 +0000

If it is chip sales that will lead the recovery, don’t expect one for quite some time. World-wide sales of semiconductors slumped 30 percent to $14.2 billion in February, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Friday. That’s down 7.6 percent from January levels. (Click on the chart below for the gruesome details.)

Clearly, chip sales are tanking and we’re now well on our way to the depths plumbed back in 2001-2002. “The global semiconductor industry is going through one of the steepest corrections in its history,” said SIA President George Scalise. “While it would be premature to conclude that the sales decline has hit bottom, there are some indications that the rate of decline has moderated from the final quarter of 2008.”

Well, that’s reassuring…

Palm: Put a Sock in It, McNamee

John Paczkowski — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:37:04 +0000

“You know the beautiful thing: June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people will still be using an iPhone a month later. Think about it–If you bought the first iPhone, you bought it because you wanted the coolest product on the market. Your two-year contract has just expired. Look around. Tell me what they’re going to buy.”

– Elevation Partners founder Roger McNamee

Roger McNamee’s hyperbolic predictions about iPhone-to-Pre conversion rates didn’t go over too well at Palm. Appalled by McNamee’s inflated, indecorous claims about its forthcoming smartphone, the handset maker on Monday filed a Free Writing Prospectus with the SEC that distances the company from McNamee’s claims and categorically refutes his your-next-iPhone-will-be-a-Pre foolishness. There are 10 “clarifications and corrections” in the prospectus, among them these two little gems:

5. With respect to the statements in the tenth paragraph of the transcript that the Palm Pre is “going to be a million times–well, not a million times–several times faster” than Apple, Inc.’s iPhone products and is “going to run rings around them on the web,” the Palm Pre is still under development and it is premature to state the speed at which the device accesses the web or the relative speed of the Palm Pre compared to the smartphone products of competitors.

8. The statement in the second paragraph of the article that “not one” person who bought an Apple, Inc. iPhone on the first shipment date “will still be using an iPhone a month” after the two-year anniversary of that day is an exaggerated prediction of consumer behavior pattern and is withdrawn.

Ouch. That was CRAZY talk, Roger.

An embarrassing retraction for McNamee and for Palm (PALM), which was understandably uncomfortable with the silly levels to which the investor raised expectations for the Pre. The next time McNamee appears on Bloomberg TV, he’ll be accompanied by two Pinkerton guys with tranq guns….