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After struggling in 2009 with a yearly world growth rate of just 2.9 percent, market research firm IDC says the PC market is on a pretty big rebound, one that will see double-digit growth in 2010. Not ony that, but 2009 wasn’t so bad when you consider a few factors. “PC volume continued to grow in 2009 — faring much better than in 2001, when a smaller recession produced a decline in PC volume. The positive 2009 results reflects lower prices and the fact that PCs are increasingly a must-have product,” said Jay Chou, research analyst at IDC. Now that a recovery is under way, IDC says it expects the PC market to rebound to the tune of 12.6 percent, and grow 18.5 percent in emerging regions

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In what ranked as a poor month in overall console sales, analyst group NPD reports Microsoft’s Xbox 360 outsold Nintendo’s Wii console in February. In doing so, the Xbox 360 claimed the top spot in U.S. monthly sales, a feat it hasn’t achieved in over two years.

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While the debate about the future of ebooks rages on, with authors and book publishers alike concerned about how a well-worn business model is rapidly changing, a new academic study claims that giving away free electronic versions of your books can boost sales of the printed version. The study has been conducted by John Hilton , a doctoral candidate in Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University who is researching issues around open education and open access. Free ebooks for all Hilton coauthored a study published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing titled ” The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales ,” where he and his colleagues examined Bookscan sales for dozens of print titles before and after they were released online for free.

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While there is no gainsaying the fact that the Pre did lend a fatally rudderless Palm some direction, the much anticipated forward thrust is an entirely different matter. The impetus that Palm hoped to receive from its dapper webOS products hasn’t materialized. The Sunnyvale-based company has lowered its guidance for the current fiscal . It blamed the move on lower-than-expected sales of its new webOS-based phones

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In a recent presentation to music and tech industry executives, NPD Group’s Russ Crupnick had some interesting things to say about music streaming. According to Crupnick, on-demand streaming services like Spotify result in a 13 percent decrease in paid downloads. He went on point out that services that follow the “radio” model, like Pandora, increase sales 41%. Pandora doesn’t allow users to select specific songs like Spotify, but instead plays music in a chosen genre more or less randomly

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Dell should be on the lookout for a ‘thank you’ card from Gigabyte, which saw  strong on-month and on-year revenue growth rates to the tune of 55.1 percent and 41.1 percent, respectively, in January 2010 mostly because of server and storage system orders placed by Dell. The mostly short-term orders won’t do much to bolster Gigabyte’s long term outlook, but according to some analysts, it will help Gigabyte see better revenues performance than nearly all of its motherboard competitors. The server and storage orders came at a good time. Gigabyte has struggled a bit in the notebook sector, shipping only about 300,000 units in 2009 and failing to meet the company’s expectations. Meanwhile, Gigabyte’s handset subsidiary is seeing losses, though the vendor expects both of these segments to see significant improvement in 2010

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Despite all the hype over the GPU’s prowess, the inventory of retail PCs show consumers aren’t buying it The GPU might be hailed as the new heir to the computing throne, but a stroll through any big-box PC retailer doesn’t bear that out—very few PCs under $900 even have discrete graphics cards. Instead, in the vast majority of machines for sale, the lowly, spat-upon integrated graphics rule the roost. According to John Karabian, a product manager with No.

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Qualcomm has continued the war of worlds with a German company over the use of the word ’smartbook’ for devices that fall between smartphones and netbooks. The ’smartbook’ term has become widely used for a new wave of connected devices, many of which are using Qualcomm’s well-received Snapdragon processor, but German company Smartbook AG has engaged in what Qualcomm labels ‘an aggressive campaign to prevent the continued use of the term “smartbooks” by journalists, manufacturers and consumers’. “Qualcomm does not claim and has never claimed to own the term “smartbook” which it believes is a descriptive and generic term,” insists Qualcomm in a statement. “The term is used by a number of companies, consumers and industry commentators to describe a class of devices that combine attributes of smartphones and netbooks enabled by various technology companies, including but not limited to Qualcomm. “Smartbook AG has obtained a Temporary Restraining Order in Germany against Qualcomm.

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Apple’s iPhone has been phenomenally successful, with mobile gaming leading the charge in the sales success of the iTunes App Store and an increasing number of hardcore gamers adopting the iPhone as their mobile format of choice. This month sees the announcement of Apple’s tablet computer, with a launch event planned in San Francisco for 27 January. Interestingly, Apple is inviting leading videogame journalists in the US, with Kotaku reporting that it has received its invite to the launch.

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LG has officially announced the arrival of its first Android phone: the InTouch Max GW620 which is available from T-Mobile or Virgin Media. Announced back in September , the LG InTouch Max GW620 is the company’s first foray into Android mobile OS territory, an increasingly powerful force in the mobile phone industry. The phone itself boasts a full qwerty slide-out keyboard and resistive 3-inch touchscreen, 5MP camera and built-in ‘LinkBook social networking manager’. Symbolic launch John Barton, Sales and Marketing Director for LG – Mobile, comments: “This is a symbolic launch for us

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