They Will Print Money Like the United States: Dr. Doom Warns China’s Economy Is Worse Than We Think

Investment analyst, entrepreneur, and author of “The Gloom Boom & Doom Report” Marc Faber warned Friday that China’s deteriorating economic situation is not only worse than we think it is, but that it‘ll soon force the country’s government to print more money.

“What is your warning and what do we do about it?” asked the CNBC hostess.

“Well, I think first of all, investors must realize that the impact of a slowdown in the Chinese economy, which in my view is much larger than what the government has been reporting,” Faber responded.

“The [Chinese] government says GDP [Gross Domestic Product] has been growing at 7.8 percent. In my view, it’s much lower because we have very reliable statistics, say, export figures from Taiwan, export figures from South Korea. Where the largest export destination is China, they’re down year on year. Electricity consumption in China is hardly growing and so I think the economy in China is rather weak,” he added.

But why did stocks rally last Friday when these less-than-stellar reports on China’s economy were released?

“[T]he markets have rallied because they think that because of weak economic growth in China, they will stimulate, they will print money like in the United States and Europe and — it will boost prices for a while,” Faber explained.

Simply put, as one CNBC host said, investors took an almost “perverse” joy in China‘s economic data because it boosted their hopes that the country’s government would print more money — just like the U.S. and Europe.

China has no economy, except selling stuff to Walmart. Do you think there are enough Chinese that has any money to buy things with? Where is their middle class?

Desktop Vendors Not Keen on Using Chrome OS

DigiTimes reports that desktop computing endors seemingly turned their nose up at Google’s Chrome OS during executive chairman Eric Schmidt’s speech in Taiwan on Wednesday. He was reportedly promoting Chrome OS as a high-profile option to Windows 7 and Ubuntu, focusing on the software’s fast boot time, a lack of virus issues and the fact that it will be offered free of charge. He urged vendors to give Chrome OS a try.

But unnamed vendors on Wednesday said that if Google really wants to cut into the PC sector, then it will need to provide more resources and support than it has with the current crop of Chromebooks. As it stands now, there has been very little demand for Chromebooks since Acer and Samsung launched their versions back in June. The former company reportedly only sold 5,000 units by the end of July, and the latter Samsung was said to have sold even less than that in the same timeframe.

According to the unnamed vendors, the problem Chrome OS faces is that it’s still too idealized. Consumers and businesses have yet to fully embrace cloud computing, storing documents and media locally on their physical drives. Popular applications are just now shifting over into the cloud by way of HTML5, but most highly-used and long-standing applications like Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite are still installed locally and used offline.

The vendors also indicated that Google is mainly pushing Chromebooks in the enterprise market, yet its cloud-based Google Docs applications doesn’t meet the needs of enterprise users. On a consumer front, Chromebooks become problematic for users who have a poor connection to the internet, or don’t have a connection at all — the “lite” cloud-based advantage suddenly becomes a huge disadvantage.

That said, it’s no surprise that vendors aren’t too keen on using Chrome OS as a major desktop platform. While many services and applications are indeed moving up into the cloud, the majority of the enterprise and consumer base hasn’t quite shifted away from physical media even though cloud computing is the “trend of the future.”

Global tablet PC shipments down 30%, says Digitimes Research

Getting Ready For iPad 3? The economy?

Vendors will ship 14.97 million tablet PCs in the first quarter of 2012, dropping 30.6% on quarter but rising 77.6% on year, according to forecasts by Digitimes Research.

Shipments will consist of 11 million iPad 2 and iPad 3 units as well as 3.97 million non-iPad tablet PCs which will decrease by 50.8% on quarter and include 1.5 million Kindle Fires and 300,000 Nook Tablets, Digitimes Research said.

Of tablet PCs to be shipped in the first quarter of 2012, 13.3% will be equipped with processors developed by Texas Instruments and 26.3% will be based on Android.

Taiwan-based ODMs will ship 13.51 million tablet PCs for a global share of 90.25% in the first quarter. Foxconn Electronics will account for 83% of Taiwan-based makers’ total shipments, followed by Quanta Computer with 9.6%, Digitimes Research indicated.

NAND flash demand to soar in 2012 due to eMMC, SSD, Wi-Fi mobile storage

Global demand for NAND flash is expected to drastically increase due to fast growing demand for eMMCs, SSDs (solid-state drives) and Wi-Fi wireless mobile storage devices, according to sources with memory product makers.

More than 600 million smartphones will be shipped globally in 2012 based on projections by market survey companies and if eMMC penetration reaches 60%, there will be demand for 360 million eMMCs, the sources indicated. Some market survey companies forecast global demand for 400-500 million eMMCs used in smartphones in 2012, the sources noted.

The adoption of SSDs for ultrabooks will take off in 2012, the sources noted. Although SSD cost has yet to fall to US$1/GB, NAND flash prices are expected to drop much in 2013 due to more advanced manufacturing processes, with SSDs eventually becoming the mainstream storage for ultrabooks, the sources said.

Wi-Fi wireless mobile storage devices, such as Wi-Drive launched by Kingston Technology and StoreJet Cloud launched by Taiwan-based Transcend Information, are NAND flash applications that see increasing demand and will be extended from iOS to Android operating systems in 2012, the sources indicated.

Capacities of a Wi-Fi wireless mobile storage device are 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, while SSDs used in ultrabooks range from 64GB to 256GB, the sources noted. An eMMC used in a smartphone is expected to have a storage capacity of 16GB at least in 2012, the sources indicated.

For NAND flash manufacturing, the 19nm process is expected to be increasingly mature in 2012, and this will help reduce NAND flash production cost and broaden its application, the sources noted.

Google Tablet PC Believed To Be Targeting Kindle Fire

This is very interesting. First the Kindle Fire sells a million a week, then google let slip their version is coming.

As Google reportedly may launch an own-brand tablet PC to compete against Apple’s iPad, sources from Google’s upstream supply chain believe that Google, instead of Apple, may actually be targeting Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire as its major competitor. However, Google Taiwan commented that the company has never heard about plan of launching own-brand tablet PC.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has recently revealed that the company plans to launch a high quality tablet PC within the next six months, but since he did not provide any further detail about the device, it has left many players to believe that Google will copy its strategy from Nexus smartphone to help expanding Android tablet PC’s market share.

The sources believe that Google will launch the own-brand tablet PC in March-April, featuring a 7-inch panel and Android 4.0 with a price less than US$199 to compete against Amazon.