PCR Tech and IT retail, distribution and vendor news
Five for Friday is a weekly feature to give a brief roundup of our top five stories from the week that you might have missed. Think we left anything out? Let us know your favourite stories of the week by pinging us a tweet @pcr_online.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise is planning to cut dozens of jobs in the UK and is considering shutting down one of its engineering offices in Northern Ireland. The US tech giant is apparently ready to offload a number of staff from its Belfast 3PAR engineering office and is considering shutting down the facility altogether, according to the Belfast Telegraph.
Last week, it emerged that HPE was set to slash 5,000 jobs globally.According to Bloomberg, the reductions are expected to begin before the end of the year and will finish within the first quarter of 2018. Job cuts are expected to encompass all areas of the business with managers roles also under threat. Although unconfirmed the cuts will affect both the US workforce as well as those working abroad.
Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman has been pushing for cuts since 2015, slimming down workforce in departments such as personal computers, printers, business services and key software units. She claims that the cuts are essential to making HPE more competitive against other cloud providers such as Amazon and Google.
Samsung will make more money from the iPhone X than its own Galaxy S8
In something of an ironic twist, Samsung is set to make more money from Apple’s upcoming iPhone X than its own flagship Galaxy S8.
That’s according to analytics firm Counterpoint Technology, which reckons that the Cupertino Mac-maker is so reliant on Samsung components that the Korean giant will net more cash from the parts in the new iPhone. This is largely thanks to Apple’s dependency on Samsung’s NAND flash memory chip and DRAM chip which has been ongoing for years, but in this year’s model the phone includes a pricey Samsung OLED display as opposed to the Retina screens used for the past few iterations.
With the iPhone X jammed full of its parts, Samsung will reportedly pocket a profit of about $110 (around £85) per unit sold. That means if Apple sells, as believed, 130 million phones in the first 20 months that Samsung will make roughly $14.3 billion (around £10.8 billion) in profit. By contrast, while Counterpoint claims Samsung makes $202 (around £155) from each Galaxy S8 sold, it’s expected that only about 50 million units will be sold in the first 20 months
IT spend to rise in 2018 across all segments
According to industry-leading research firm Gartner, worldwide IT spending is projected to total $3.7 trillion in 2018, an increase of 4.3 per cent from 2017’s estimated spending of $3.5 trillion.
Enterprise software and IT services continue to exhibit strong growth, with communications services continuing to drive the majority of spending. Software spending is projected to grow 8.5 per cent in 2017, and it will grow another 9.4 per cent in 2018 to total $387 billion. IT services spending is on pace to grow 4 per cent in 2017 to reach $931 billion, and increase 5.3 per cent in 2018 to reach $980 billion.
Optoma opens new European HQ in the UK
Optoma has opened its new European headquarters to celebrate 20 years of making projector and audio products. Attended by the UK’s secretary of state for Work and Pensions David Gauke MP, the Hemel Hempstead HQ was officially opened on September 29.
Since it opened in 1997, Optoma EMEA has grown market share and outgrown its premises in Watford. It moved to the new site on September 8, creating job opportunities for people across Hemel Hempstead and the wider area. The region now employees around 140 staff and is looking to recruit more in the coming 12 months.
Amber Rudd slams ‘patronising’ tech experts as she admits she doesn’t understand encryption
Amber Rudd has hit out at ‘patronising’ technology experts, in a bizarre interview that will have those very same experts simultaneously scoffing into their cornflakes and shaking in their boots. While the Home Secretary openly admitted that she doesn’t understand the technology behind encryption services such as WhatsApp, she reiterated her aim to ‘combat’ the technology.
Rudd – along with prime minister Theresa May – has repeatedly suggested banning apps like WhatsApp or adding in a back door to encryption services. In fact, Rudd went so far as saying that ‘normal people do not care about or need encryption’, earlier in the year, after it emerged that a number of terror attacks were co-ordinated via WhatsApp.
