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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness.   REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pictures of the year: Technology

A look at the year's best science and technology photos.   Slideshow 

    Notebooks outship desktops for first time: iSuppli

    SAN FRANCISCO
    Tue Dec 23, 2008 5:26pm EST
    A man shops for computers and LCD monitors inside an electronics shop in Taipei November 20, 2008. Taiwan's economy contracted by 1.02 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, missing expectations and posting the first contraction since 2003, government data showed on Thursday. REUTERS/Nicky Loh

    SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Worldwide notebook computer shipments topped those of desktops for the first time ever in the third quarter, research group iSuppli said on Tuesday, calling it a "watershed event" for the industry.

    Technology

    Shipments of notebook PCs surged nearly 40 percent to 38.6 million units, while desktop shipments fell 1.3 percent to 38.5 million.

    Overall, PC shipments rose 15.4 percent in the quarter to 79 million units.

    Acer Inc shipped almost 3 million more notebooks in the third quarter than in the previous quarter, with the majority being netbooks, iSuppli said. The Taiwanese company is now the third largest PC company by market share at 12.2 percent, less than two percentage points behind second-place Dell Inc.

    Hewlett-Packard Co maintained its lead at No. 1, shipping 14.9 million units for an 18.8 percent market share.

    Apple Inc lost nearly half a point of market share from the second quarter. The company's 3.2 percent share places it seventh overall in total shipments.

    ISuppli raised slightly its 2008 unit growth forecast. It now expects 13 percent growth this year, up from its previous 12.5 percent forecast.

    For 2009, the group expects unit growth of 4.3 percent.

    (Reporting by Gabriel Madway)



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