After a brand rejig, memory products vendor Strontium Technology has announced an exciting SMS Star Contest. Starting from August 23, 2010 till November 23, 2010, the contest for the end consumers is valid on purchase of USB flash drive across India.In order to participate in the contest, customers have to purchase Strontium USB flash drive, in a special packaging with contest sticker, and SMS the serial number inside. The draw will be announced on October 1, 2010 and December 1, 2010 and winners will be notified through SMS.The lucky draw prizes include: Chevrolet Beat car, Hero Honda CBZ X-treme motorcycles, Apple 13-inch MacBooks, Apple iPhones, Sony Bravia LCD TVs, Nano 16GB Apple iPods, Shuffle 4GB Apple iPods, Micromax Q7 or equivalent phones, Ray Ban Aviator Explorer sunglasses, Maxima watches and laptop bags

Speaking on the announcement of the contest, Ajay Kogta, Country Manager, India Sub-continent, Strontium Technology, said, “Strontium SMS contest will definitely bring smile and happiness across both our partners and end consumers. We expect brand awareness from this promotion and our channel partners will be able to capitalize on this brand value in the long run.”To further strengthen its brand position in the memory market, the vendor recently unveiled a new corporate logo and brand identity at its Asia Pacific Partners’ Forum which was held at Bali.

Adata Technology launched a promotional scheme on pen drives exclusively for partners of Ingram Micro, valid until September 15, 2010.This incentive scheme offers gifts to resellers on purchase of C906 and C803 pen drives only, billed from Ingram Micro’s authorized channel partners.Resellers billing 75 units of C906 and C803, will get a free 4GB C802 pen drive. Similarly, those billing 300 units will receive a 16GB S805 pen drive, 600 units will receive a 500GB SH93 external hard disk drive with a wrap around USB cable and 1,500 units will receive a 1TB NH03 USB 3.0 external hard disk drive.

Manufacturer of CTI products and multimedia switches for telecom networks, Donjin announced the appointment of Cyberstar as its national distributor in India.In addition to its extensive partner network, Cyberstar will also provide support and service to Donjin’s customers in India.“Ever since we started our business in India, in 2007, the company has seen a steady growth in revenue year-on-year. We have decided to establish a local presence in three cities, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai,” said John He, CEO, Donjin. “Cyberstar will help us offer direct support to our customers and gain a better toehold in India’s fast growing telecom market.” 

“Our partnership with Donjin will help us achieve our objective of foraying into the VAS equipment business in a big way. We look forward to working closely with Donjin to grow their business in the channel,” added Raj Rathi, Managing Director, Cyberstar.

APC launched the BR600CI-IN, a 600VA PC UPS for home and SOHO users. The BR600CI-IN offers 21 minutes of backup time, with a battery recharge time of 8 to 10 hours. It has a float and boost charger that completely recharges battery even with frequent power cuts with staged battery charging. It offers three surge protected outlets.“Desktop PC sales accounts for nearly two-thirds of total PC sales in India and is showing a significant year on year increase. We are seeing an increase in the PC-UPS attach ratio primarily due to the huge vagaries of power supply in the country,” said Gaurav Burman, Director, Transaction Sales, Asia-Pacific.Priced at an MRP of `2975, the BR600CI-IN is available via 5,000 channel partners across the country. The UPS uses a 7.5Ah battery and is compatible with generator sets. It comes with a 2-year warranty that covers both electronics and battery.

Storage vendor NetApp has signed up Avnet Technology Solutions as its national distributor. With this partnership, NetApp hopes to widen the footprint of its storage and data management solutions for customers and partners in India.“As the market once again gains momentum, the focus at the C-level continues to be driving higher productivity while reducing overall costs. Our partnership with Avnet will help us and our partners deliver to this goal,” said Surajit Sen, Director, Channels, Marketing and Alliances, NetApp India. “We have already established a good working relationship with Avnet elsewhere in Asia, and globally. With Avnet’s proven expertise in helping partners cost-effectively achieve their long-term business goals and develop market specialization, we are confident that this partnership will help translate to success for our customers.”

“Customers are interested in cloud, unified storage, de-duplication, thin provisioning, and the value that these can offer. Partners are seeking ways to rapidly deliver to these needs,” said Naresh Desai, General Manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, India. “With this new partnership with NetApp, we will leverage our extensive partner base across India. We will jointly develop a growth plan that will drive incremental revenue for our partners, decrease their time to market and present them with cutting-edge solutions that deliver proven cost savings.”

Finally, AMD has announced more details of a processor that offer competition to Intel’s Atom series. Codenamed Bobcat, the processor series is capable of sub watt operations, claims the chip maker.Meanwhile, at Hot Chips 22, a semiconductor forum that recently concluded in California, AMD also unveiled details of another new processor series codenamed Bulldozer. The product is targeted at the high performance PC and server market.

Both products are scheduled for release next year, by Q4 FY2010-11.Bulldozer-based CPUs will based on advanced 32nm SOI process technology and utilize a new approach to multithreaded compute performance that, according to media reports, "balances dedicated and shared compute resources to provide a highly compact, high core count design that is easily replicated on a chip for performance scaling." In other words, by eliminating some of the redundancies that naturally creep into multicore designs, AMD hopes to take better advantage of its hardware capabilities, while utilizing less power.
“In my opinion, Bulldozer and Bobcat are not only two of the greatest technical achievements in AMD’s rich history, but two of the most important for the industry as well,” said Chekib Akrout, Senior Vice President and general manager, AMD Technology Development. “With CPUs and APUs built from these core implementations, we expect our customers to deliver a new wave of innovative PC form factors and high-performance computing experiences.”

Cisco reported fourth quarter earnings above Wall Street expectations, despite margins that narrowed for the second quarter in a row.The company celebrated growth in many major product lines and especially in its Unified Computing System (UCS)—whose customers, Cisco said, nearly doubled since its most recent quarter—but it also cautioned that ongoing supply chain constraints, while much improved, would continue through the end of calendar 2010.For its fourth fiscal quarter, Cisco reported profits of $1.94 billion, on 33 cents a share, up about 79 percent compared to $1.1 billion, or 19 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter. Revenue saw a 27 percent boost year over year: $10.84 billion compared with last year's $8.5 billion, which was in line with what Cisco projected in May, but slightly below analysts' most recent projections.

On average, heading into  announcement, analysts were expecting Cisco to earn 42 cents per share on $10.88 billion in sales. Excluding one-time items, Cisco would have earned $2.5 billion on 43 cents per share.August 1 marked the start of Cisco's fiscal 2011. Cisco's profit for the fiscal year 2010 was $7.8 billion, up from the $6.1 billion it posted for its fiscal 2009. Revenues for the year were $40 billion, up from $36.1 billion in 2009.On the company's Q4 earnings conference call, Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers described the quarter as very strong and said Cisco closed its fiscal 2010 in a tremendous position of strength."My confidence has never been higher," Chambers said."We're doing well versus our competitors," he added later in the call. "I'm very comfortable with where we are."Cisco ended the quarter with record revenue and nearly $40 billion in cash, Chambers noted. It also added about 2,000 employees during the quarter, not including employees gained through acquisitions, and of those employees, 70 percent were in US, and of that number, 60 percent were in California, he said.

Overall product orders, Chambers noted, were up 23 percent year over year. All of its major sales theaters grew between 20 and 35 percent, except for Japan, which Cisco described as flat.

Kaspersky Lab recently announced Hara Bhara scheme (Green and Prosperous) for the channel fraternity.The scheme is available from August 7 to September 30, 2010, and is valid only on Antivirus 2011, Internet Security 2011 and Small Office Security.Under the scheme, gifts can be availed on the purchase of a certain amount of the products. The gifts include 2GB pen drive, branded watch, 25gm and 60gm silver coin, 4 and 8gm gold coin, LCD TV, Bajaj Pulsar and Hyundai Santro.The claims for this scheme have to be submitted before 15th October, 2010.“We will be offering exciting incentives and rewards to our committed channel partners as part of our growth strategy. The more committed you are, the more you stand to benefit,” said Jagannath Patnaik, Channel Sales Director, South Asia, Kaspersky Lab India.

GlacialTech recently introduced a series of mini battery chargers—ML30, MM30, and MF30. The 0.6A chargers can be used to power up hand tools, household appliances, and gardening tools.All three chargers incorporate an intelligent microcontroller to monitor and supervise the whole charging process. The specifications include 100-240V AC input and 47-63Hz frequency.A three-stage charging procedure implemented in the ML30 series is suitable for charging lead-acid batteries; a two-stage charging procedure implemented in the MM30 and MF30 series is suitable for charging Lithium Manganese Dioxide and Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries.All battery chargers incorporate an intelligent and versatile microcontroller to detect the battery disconnection, coordinate and dominate the whole charging process as well as control the charging time, enabling you to enjoy a smarter, faster, and safer battery-charging process.

The charging time is well controlled to prevent batteries from overcharging and overheating. The ML30, MM30, and MF30 battery chargers also feature bicolor LED status display, short-circuit and reverse-polarity protection, a fanless and dustproof design to get rid of noise and dust as well as compliance with safety regulations including UL, CE, TUV, etc.

NetApp reported very strong first quarter revenue and earnings growth, and said it expects growth to continue going forward.NetApp's glowing financial report also signaled that it is continuing to be a strong competitor to storage arch-rival EMC, which a couple weeks ago also reported double-digit revenue and triple-digit earnings growth.NetApp said revenue for its first quarter of fiscal year 2011, which ended July 30, hit $1.14 billion, was up 36 percent compared to the $838 million it reported in the same period a year ago.The storage vendor also reported earnings of $142 million or 38 cents per share, which was up 173 percent compared to the $52 million, or 15 cents per share, it reported last year.This compared very well to EMC, which in late July said its first fiscal quarter revenue grew 23 percent over last year to reach $4.02 billion. EMC's earnings grew 108 percent to reach $426.2 million compared to the year before.Looking forward, NetApp also estimated its revenue for the second fiscal quarter 2011 to be between $1.16 billion to $1.21 billion. This compares to the company's actual second fiscal quarter 2010 revenue of $910 million.The company also estimated earnings for the current quarter will be between 35 cents and 38 cents per share, compared to the 27 cents per share it reported last year. "NetApp has begun our fiscal year with great momentum,” said Tom Georgens, President and CEO, in statement. “The NetApp value proposition allows customers to implement more flexible and efficient storage infrastructures at a lower cost. Our results indicate we are achieving clear customer preference as IT organizations transform their data centers.”