On CE - For Dealers, Distributors and OEMs of Consumer Electronics throughout EMEA

Toshiba presents a wearable computing solution-- the dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses, a combination of the dynaEdge Mini PC with an AR100 Head Mounted Display, making a Windows 10 machine with a headset display.

Aimed mainly at enterprise customers, the dynaEdge AR Smart Glasses looks cumbersome compared to the likes of Google Glass. The AR100 is not technically a headset, since it actually is a single arm customers can attach to glasses, safety googles or a hard hat. It features an integrated 640 x 360 quarter-inch display, GPS, head-tracking accelerometer, 5MP camera, touchpad, dual noise-cancelling microphones and an ear speakers, and provides a custom control interface for Windows 10.

Customers want to mine for cryptocurrency and keep their house warm? French startup Qarnot provides the opportunity to do both using one piece of hardware with the QC-1, a combination of heater and mining-optimised PC.

As one might recall, back in pre-notebook days, desktop towers would produce enough heat to keep a room fairly toasty. Heat is also the main issue datacentres have to deal with, leading to the development of elaborate cooling solutions. Enter Qarnot, who leases out datacentres to construction companies as heaters for new buildings-- while, in turn, companies such as BNP Paribas and Société Générale rent the servers for their number-crunching needs.

Hopes for saving Maplin fade further, as administrator PricewaterhouseCooper announces it has made 63 head office staff from the retailer's London and Rotherham HQ redundant.

“It is with real regret that we have made this decision," PwC says. "We are grateful for the support of the employees during this difficult period and we will make every effort to help the affected staff, working with the Maplin HR team over the coming days. The company is continuing to trade but due to a lack of interest we may be required to initiate a controlled closure program.

Intel does not want Broadcom to buy Qualcomm, the Wall Street Journal-- leading Chipzilla to consider stopping the merger by... buying Broadcom, a company analysts estimate is worth over $100 billion.

Why would Intel want to stop the acquisition from taking place? Anonymous sources tell the WSJ Intel considers such a combined company a "serious competitive threat." And just as well, since a merged Broadcom-Qualcomm would make the 3rd biggest chipmaker in the world, following Intel and Samsung.

A Broadcom-Qualcomm would be a powerhouse in smartphone chips with a strong presence in datacentres. In addition Qualcomm is in the process of buying NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch specialist in automotive chips, another area of interest for Intel. Finally, according to analyst Bernstein Research combined Broadcom-Qualcomm revenues total nearly $40 bn for fiscal 2017, "formidable" even compared to Intel revenues of $63bn for the same period.