Samsung Electronics has decided to ditch its unprofitable desktop PC business and devote itself to tablet computers and all-in-one laptops, company officials said Monday.

Between March 2012 and October 2012, the proportion of people who used a desktop or notebook computer for tweeting fell from 77% to 64%. In the same period the proportion who used a mobile phone for tweeting rose from 53% to 64%.

or most of the last two decades personal computers have accounted for a third or more of annual IC sales, but standard PCs are now on the brink of being replaced as the largest end-use product category for ICs.

Apple's iPad is the bane of computer-memory makers, worsening the industry's losses as consumers choose the hand-held device that uses about 75% fewer of the chips than a typical laptop.

Sometime in 1998 or 1999, Internet Explorer (IE) became the number one Web browser in the world. In October 2011, according to NetMarketShare, IE is barely above the 50% mark of desktop browsers with 52.63%.

This monitor doesn't require a power or VGA connection, but instead gets its power/video feed from a USB port on a laptop or desktop.

According to Samsung South Korea, the smartphone maker "will be releasing a smartphone that boasts performance levels matching desktop PCs." That's because this upcoming device will come equipped with a dual-core processor running at 2GHz.

The TI OMAP 5 offers quad-core computing at up to 2GHz with power consumption barely breaking into double-digit wattage figures. In terms of raw figures, that level of performance is very near that of current Intel and AMD desktop chips.

The US$2.5 billion chip factory is producing chips on 12-inch silicon wafers, mainly chipsets to be used in desktop computers, laptops and servers. The factory is already fully operational.