In life, it helps to have someone who can hold you accountable for your actions. In the case of electronics companies, it seems that Greenpeace is their accountability partner. The organization has recently released the current company rankings in its Greener Electronics Scale. To find out how certain companies fared, get "green-minded" and turn to the full article after the jump.

Research group Gartner has released the preliminary results of their Q3 2007 marketing report, which indicates Apple Inc.'s share of the U.S. computer market to be at 8.1%. As a point of comparison, Apple's market shares from the same time frame last year were at 6.2% - this indicates that the company enjoyed a 37.2% boost in growth compared to last year's figures.

Delving into these figures further, we find that Apple's U.S.-based Mac shipments for Q3 2007 totalled at around 1,338,000. The figures for last year are recorded to be 975,000 shipments. The Gartner report marks Apple as holding the third largest share among the U.S. PC market's top five vendors, although the company has experienced the biggest year-to-year growth among its competitors.

Hewlett-Packard experienced similar growth, with its market share increasing by 16.5% as compared to its figures from last year. Toshiba, just below Apple in Gartner's top five, reports 16.3% growth, while current market leader Dell experienced a 5.5% drop.

It'll be interesting to see how far Apple will go in the near future, or how the recently announced  Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 will affect their future sales.

"Made in Vietnam" could be the newest thing you'll see printed on the back of your iPhones or Nintendo Wiis in the near future. Taipei-based Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry), the world's largest contractor for electronics, announced that they will be expanding their operation to Vietnam.

Responsible for the production of products such as Apple's iPhone and iPod, as well as Nintendo's Wii console, Foxconn decided to continue to diversify their plant operations to Vietnam to maintain their cost-efficient business practices within the most efficient manufacturing area outside of China.

A deal was already signed last August 29 with Foxconn's chief executive Terry Gou and Vietnam's Ministry of Planning and Investment investing a US$ 5 billion contract into various high tech and supporting industries projects. Also, Foxconn has invested US$ 160 million in two plants in the Que Vo Industrial Zone, as well as hiring about 500 local university graduates with plans of hiring up to a maximum of 300,000 employees.

Tung Kim Nguyen, a partner at Indochina Capital, had this to say about Vietnam:

Vietnam is the next outsource manufacturing centre of Asia, this is because of a China-plus-one strategy that manufacturers are adopting and a response to anti-dumping suits that will be hitting the Chinese point of origin manufacturers hard over the next few years

Intel has already had their eye on Vietnam for some time. They announced that they would build a US billion plant near Ho Chi Minh, prompting other manufacturing giants such as Toshiba and Matsushita to pledge future investments.

According to numbers released by the NPD Group, the worldwide market of laptop notebooks saw a 14% rise in Apple shipments since last month. And better yet for the Cupertino-based company, 14% of all notebook computers sold last month were also Apple-branded.

Analysts believe that this may be an indication that the laptop community is embracing more and more of Apple, despite being only fourth place in the current generation laptop race in the U.S. Hewlett-Packard, Gateway, and Toshiba sit at spots above Steve Jobs' company, as reported.

Further consideration of Apple's year-on-year growth, however, may drive the company to steal the third spot. The May figures actually represent a 65% jump from Apple's figure last year, and if Apple can keep that year-on-year rate up for the next month, the numbers would spring the modest 14% to a proud 20% in just thirty days.

Apple grabbed 9.9% of the laptop market last March besting Compaq which only posted an 8.5% showing. This feat has put the company at fourth place in NPDs list of highest selling vendors of retail notebooks.

The companies that were ahead of Apple are Gateway(13%), Hewlett-Packard (23.9%) and Toshiba (26.2%). Apple's sales posting is up from its February sales but lower than their figures from January which was at 10.1%. The company has been posting good numbers as of late because their desktop sales have also put them on the top five list of NPD. They took a respectable 7.7% of the market in that respect.

This should not be any surprise, since Apple really has established itself in the notebook field. Will their upcoming new releases be enough for them to claim the top spot on the ranking? We will have to wait and see.

The launch of the loudly-trumpeted Windows Vista and the relative market success that followed it did little, if any, damage to the sales performance of Apple computers, says a report by Apple Insider.

Apple sales are down by a mere tenth of a point, which is quite a feat considering that many analysts assumed a market storm by the new Microsoft operating system. The storm has passed and Apple still stands. The Mac's 30 percent annual growth was unaffected this year as it remained at a solid 30 percent.

Apple's computer hardware department is in the US top five of dealers, only slightly behind market leaders Dell and Hewlett-Packard. It faces some tough competition, though, as Southeast-Asian manufacturers Lenovo, Acer and Toshiba also posted strong shipment figures.

"Microsoft's official consumer launch of Vista in January, [sic] had very limited impact on overall worldwide shipment demand on a quarterly basis," says research firm Gartner.

Apple is set to release its own next-generation operating system called Mac OS X Leopard edition, which it claims is easily superior to the Windows Vista. The Leopard is slated to arrive late this year.

LED backlit notebooks are the new fad for notebook manufacturers, the forerunners being Sony, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Asustek. Now Apple and Hewlett Packard (HP) are going to release their models with the said technology in Q2 2007.

Even when big notebook makers are using LEDs, Taiwan LED manufacturers are unlikely to profit from the innovation, according to DigiTimes.com

The use of LED backlights has become more popular, but LED manufacturers in Taiwan would unlikely supply the demand since their LEDs simply don't cut it. The specifications of a backlit notebook is 1,680 nits, and Taiwan LED makers have yet to reach that brightness level. Patent restraints would also be a hurdle since notebook makers consider that better than cost competitiveness.

However, they will continue making the LEDs for handsets though they are constantly under pressure to be cost competitive.

Computer and electronics companies including LG, Panasonic, NEC, Samsung, Sony, and Toshiba are planning to come up with a set of standards for WiHD or WirelessHD. WiHD is a high-definition digital interface - it will let devices communicate with each other to share high-definition audio/video streaming and also to allow high-speed data transmission.

Basically, it's like a WiFi standard, only more robust and manly. WiHD aims for 5 gigabits of data per second - and up to a distance of 30 feet. Transmission will take place at the 60GHz frequency. To compare, WiFi operates at around 2.4GHz to 5-point-something-GHz.

60GHz! That's a high frequency usually only used by the military or in ship-to-ship communications!

The companies plan to have a standard drafted and ready by early 2007. Then they'll put WiHD into all their HDTVs and all their audio video gadgets. So...

• Will the PS3 take advantage of WiHD in the future? Did somebody mention HDTV? Yeah, Sony is one of the companies (that's their old Bravia ad in the YouTube vid; we chose it for this article because we love the music).
• Where's Microsoft and Apple? Will they follow suit, team up, or make their own standards? Like WiFi, will we end up with several standards - will there be a WiHD.a and WiHD.b and other standards?
• The Nintendo Wii shunned HD, right? Will this new development make Perrin Kaplan eat her words?

Consumer Reports (November 2006) conducted a computer reliability survey of "127,800 computers" among their readers and Mac got the top spot. It left behind desktop and laptop models from Compaq, Dell, eMachines, Gateway, HP, Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba. However, the organization chose to withhold its "Best Buy" stamp of approval from Apple's machines because of its hefty price tag.

Among the criteria that the Mac aced are speakers and expansion. Out of the 77,000 readers surveyed only 11% reported problems with their Macs. Sony PC users experienced more bugs (15%). Gateway desktop PCs got the dubious honor of King of Lemons with 19% of users reporting technical glitches with their machines.

In the laptop category, 18% of the 50,100 respondents reported Apple troubles while Sony received a better (but not significantly different) 15%. As for tech service, Apple's service was +20% ahead the first runner-up despite the company's limited 90-day free warranty and its pricey extended warranty.

An article in Playful asks whether Microsoft would be wise to unveil a portable entertainment device, which would reportedly compete directly with the Apple iPod. Though Microsoft has made a splash in the gaming world with its Xbox and now with the Xbox 360, the author questions whether Microsoft has what it takes to compete in the portable arena.

After 6 years, the iPod continues to dominate the MP3 players market, despite the efforts on more entertainment-focused companies, such as Creative, Philips, Samsung, iRiver or Toshiba. For Microsoft, the digital entertainment market is still something new and even the fate of Xbox 360 is still unclear, until Sony will unveil its gaming console, PlayStation 3.

According to Peter Moore, one of the big-wigs at Microsoft, the company is poised to compete in the portable video game world as well, competing against Nintendo and Sony in a very competitive market. I don't know myself, but with shortage problems still plaguing the Xbox 360, and Microsoft with its hands plenty busy launching Windows Vista, I just can't see them launching a portable to compete with ANYBODY at the present time. What do you guys think?

[Via, Playful]