Lenovo Group Ltd., China’s biggest maker of personal computers, said it’s counting on its LePad tablet computer and LePhone smartphone to fend off Apple Inc.’s expansion in the country.
“We have an extreme focus on the innovation of LePad and LePhone because these products will dominate the future market,” Chairman Liu Chuanzhi said in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos yesterday. “Anyone who loses this battle will be phased out from the history of this industry.”
Lenovo, which gets half of its sales in China, faces competition from Apple …

A new form of computing memory which could lead to faster starting, user-friendly computers has been developed by US researchers.
The device, developed by a team at North Carolina State University, claims to combine the advantages of two commons forms of memory used today.
The “unified” memory device, outlined in the journal IEEE Computer, is still undergoing testing.
But the team believe it could form the basis of PCs that start immediately.
Permanent speed
Currently, computers rely on two distinct forms of memory: volatile and non-volatile.
The type of memory used depends on whether data needs …

Apple plans to introduce services that will enable iPhone and iPad users to make purchases, say US reports.
The services will be based on near-field communication (NFC) technology, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, citing consulting firm Envisioneering Group.
NFC technology is to be embedded in the next version of the iPhone for carrier AT&T and in the iPad 2, which Envisioneering expects to be released later this year.
Apple’s service will tap into consumer payment information already on file, including credit card numbers, iTunes gift-card balances and bank data.
Industry analysts believe Apple’s …

Neil Berkett has an announcement to make: Virgin Media’s battle with Sky for the pay-TV market is over.
“This is not a zero-sum game any more,” says the New Zealand-born media executive. “We have different players in the marketplace with different competitive advantages.”
Not long ago, it was a race to attract the most pay-TV customers – until that is, the realisation that fighting to attract Sky’s loyal customer base was near impossible. Virgin has 3.8m customers; BSkyB has just topped 10m.
Speak to Jeremy Darroch, BSkyB’s chief executive, and it is almost …

Two GCSE students from Newry have come up with a way to prevent people making phone calls while driving.
Abeer Shahid and James McCartan developed the jamming system for this year’s BT Young Scientist of the Year competition at the RDS in Dublin.
The two 16-year-olds are students at Abbey Christian Brothers in County Down.
James said the pair came up with the invention because of the number of people who still use their mobile phones while driving.
“There are about 170,000 incidents where people were caught using their mobile phone while driving in …