Categories
technology

Intel quits mobile

intel phone

Paul McLellan writes on Semiwiki about a leaked internal memo inside Intel talking about Intel getting out the mobile race. They would be merging the tablets/phone business back into the PC business.

To me, this sounds like a reasonable move. The mobile market is a very consumer driven market and requires a lot of ground level push. Opinionated users and fan-boys galore. It is a riot down here. We thought it was down to Samsung and Apple, and suddenly there are now a host of Chinese manufacturers who are into the game – like Xiaomi. The Indian mobile manufacturers, who are still satisfying only the local market though, are no less formidable -like Micromax. Taiwan is not far behind with Asus.

Having seen Intel (from the outside though) and knowing it as an EDA customer, they are not the kind of people to roll their sleeves and get into this mud fight.

Not sure when Amazon will take the cue and get their Fire phone out too. This is not their market either, IMHO.

Source article: http://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/4040-intel-quits-mobile.html

Categories
misc

China’s college entrance examination – Gao Kao

There is an article in NYTimes about how the Chinese population is obsessed with a certain examination called the gao kao – which is the entrance examination to the 1900 or so, institutions of higher learning. Parents pull out all stops for their children to get a good score on this, based on which you can get an admit into the different tiers of universities (top tier, second tier etc). Does sound familiar does it not ? Like the IIT, DoT, DoM, CET, or whatever regional test that Indian students go through to get into the various engineering and medical colleges. Except, there are so many of them in India, vs, one unified gigantic examination for the entire chinese population. More than 10 million Chinese students take the test.

A lot of the article seems to be like the regimen that a lot of students go through in India as well, but one thing blew mo over. Check this out:

Families pull out all the stops to optimize their children’s scores. In Sichuan Province in southwestern China, students studied in a hospital, hooked up to oxygen containers, in hopes of improving their concentration.

Wow and look at this picture.

pic courtesy: news.163.com
pic courtesy: news.163.com

Read the NYTimes article here.

Some more pictures of oxygen studying here.