Man oh man! You show me a business that isn’t taking a hit in this economy, and I’ll show you (probably) a corporation guilty of price fixing and underhanded dealings. If AMD is feeling the hurt, laying off people left and right, at least they can be comforted by the fact that NVIDIA just announced that quarterly revenues will be down “40 to 50 percent” over the same quarter last year. → Read More
If you enjoyed the article from a few months back about the untold story of how the 360 was rushed to market, then this new book is probably right up your alley. It’s about the unique situation IBM was in when working with both Sony and Microsoft and helping design rival hardware. Sounds juicy! → Read More
There’s a lot of money going out the door for the auto makers (well, maybe) and more so for the finance business, so I think it’s wise for some of the less bubble-orientated sectors to point out now just how little they need to establish or reinvigorate themselves. Public radio could use a boost, space programs are comparatively cheap, and now a consortium of battery makers is asking… → Read More
Apple’s shares took a little bit of a hit today, after a Wall Street analyst lowered his rating in the short term on their stock. The analyst said that while Apple is still strong, in the short term they may find it difficult to reach sales targets on the MacBook Pro, and the ever popular iPods. He also said that it’s appearing unlikely that Apple will release a new product at MacWorld… → Read More
Man, you’d think the government would have caught on sooner! South Korea has to be the biggest gaming nation on the planet, and yet we see so little Korean IP exported successfully to the US. Their culture and tourism minister wants to spur growth in the gaming sector and hit $3bn in exports within a couple years — a pretty ambitious goal. But if there’s as much talent waiting… → Read More
Panasonic is trying to sweeten the deal on the Sanyo buyout offer it proposed back in November 7th by offering ¥140 per share instead of ¥130. They must really want to settle this. In order to completely take over, Panasonic must buyout the 3 largest shareholders. Goldman Sachs, owner of a 29 percent stake, exited merger talks after seeking at least ¥250 per share. Both other firms, Daiwa… → Read More
I’m not a vindictive man. I believe in sweetness and light. But I would encourage anyone with a brain who travels, especially in these trying economic times, to buy an unlocked GSM phone and purchase pay as you go SIM cards or a MaxRoam SIM and a Rebel SIMCard for the iPhone 3G. I also encourage you to use Boingo for Wi-Fi roaming in airports and, increasingly, cities. Why? Because I just… → Read More
Panasonic is looking to lay out more than $5 billion to take a controlling stake in Sanyo. What does the consumer tech giant see in the smaller, less successful company? Diversification. Panasonic has had great success in consumer tech but has no division for solar tech and only a limited stake in electric vehicle batteries. For Sanyo it’s vice versa — they’re each the… → Read More
Good lord, sir. There are so many lawsuits about that you can’t swing a cat without hitting a lawyer. IBM is suing Papermaster, Papermaster is suing IBM, Apple and Psystar are suing each other, the US is suing LCD makers, Spansion is suing Samsung, and god knows what else just from the last couple weeks has escaped my memory. And now Kodak is getting in on the feeding frenzy, and is suing… → Read More
Yeah…a play on “Boston Legal” probably would have been better (and easier) The ongoing drama between Apple and IBM in which would-be iPod and iPhone division head Mark Papermaster is charged with breaching a non-competition contract with IBM is getting more complicated. On the Apple side, it’s no great surprise to find out that he was considered rather a “long… → Read More
Such shameful conduct! It looks like from 2001 to 2006, LG, Sharp, and Chinese OEM Chunghwa were conspiring to keep the prices of LCD screens high and agreed on pricing floors to guarantee cash flow for everybody involved. Over five years of first- and second-party sales (Dell and Apple were among the buyers), they must have run up quite a tab, although no one’s done the math yet. The… → Read More
Seagate are the hard drive guys. They make some of the best HDDs out there but they’ve never gotten into the SSD game. Why is that? Everybody’s doing it, right? Yes, says CEO Bill Watkins, but nobody’s making any money and nobody’s making anything that different from one another. Why get into a business where there’s no money or reputation to be made? He said the same… → Read More
Yet another big, successful company feels the crunch; 500 people were eliminated from AMD’s worldwide operations today, although AMD did not say what jobs were cut or where. We haven’t heard similar announcements from the other major players in AMD’s game, Intel and NVIDIA; the former may be banking on the its new Core i7s to buoy earnings, the latter probably made a packet on… → Read More
It’s always interesting when industries collide. And despite games becoming bigger and bigger every day, the money flowing around Hollywood is probably bigger by an order of magnitude. When you see a major critical and commercial success like Gears of War, is it even comparable to the success and money generated by something like The Dark Knight, which was produced by Legendary? Still… → Read More
Oh, these multi-billion dollar companies and their flings! I thought they would have made such a cute match, too. Actually, probably not, but still. Was Samsung’s game just not good enough? Was SanDisk playing a little too hard to get? Romantic conceits aside, it looks like SanDisk just wasn’t willing to give in and give up control of such a strong brand to the beast that is Samsung. → Read More
After that sun-seeking planter robot, I figured you guys could use something a little drier. So without further ado: it seems that SanDisk and Toshiba are “reallocating” the output of a couple fabs (Fab 3 and Fab 4 if you must know). Essentially, it comes down to SanDisk selling off 30 percent of a joint venture in manufacturing flash memory to their partner, Toshiba. I don’t… → Read More
In one of these multi-part shuffles that characterize high-level business dealings, it looks as if Lenovo is going to be taking over the consumer PC part of the Fujitsu/Siemens joint venture. It seems Siemens has had enough and is selling its part to Fujitsu, and Fujitsu (not really loving the “end-user” market) will spin off that part of its PC business and sell it to whoever. → Read More
Not much to say here. It’s a change in leadership, and maybe it’s for the better. OQO makes some cool stuff but we haven’t heard from them in months. Perhaps the new guy (Andy Popell, a co-founder of the company) will take OQO in some crazy genius new direction, like Ultra-Miniature Bumper Cars or something. I’ve heard they’re hot. Dennis Moore, who’s leaving… → Read More
According to some research done by the Financial Times, employees at Nintendo have generated an average of $1.6 million each during this last year of business. For comparison, the high-powered stockbrokers at Goldman Sachs each brought back a paltry $1.24 million each, and unlike Nintendo employees, ended up actually keeping almost half of it. Of course, this is a somewhat skewed measure due to… → Read More
BlackBerry and iPhone users are getting a mobile version of Quickbooks. The new app from Intuit allows users to view real-time financial data. Beyond compulsively checking credit card and account balances, biz owners can also browse vendor, customer and employee date. Expanded features also include some basic accounting allowing users to track income and expenses. With all these features, now… → Read More
Aside from the scented notebooks, Asus also announced two gaming notebooks, a quick boot notebook available in five shades and the best business notebook available, so they say. We’ll start with the gaming platforms, the G50V and G71V. The G50V is available with a 15.4- or 15.6-inch widescreen while the G71V sports a 17-inch display. Both include a 1600dpi gaming mice and Siberia Steel… → Read More
The Yankee Group has a new report out that says Macs are increasingly being found at the office, with enterprise adoption now at the highest levels since the late 1980s. The report polled 740 IT admins and C-level execs, and found that 80 percent of them have some sort of Mac and/or OS X presence. The report cites the likes of Time Machine and File Vault as reasons why Mac adoption is on the up… → Read More
Apple’s success with the iPod, iPhone and Mac is finally starting to worry Microsoft, according to the company’s recently filed 10-K form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (10-K forms summarize a publicly traded corporation’s performance, as required by the SEC.) In the filing, Microsoft says the following about a certain vertically integrated rival: A competing… → Read More
Pretty soon both of these suckers are going to bottom out, and since there’s really no other players in the consumer video card game, at least one of them is going to bounce back. NVIDIA is at around $11, down from almost $25 a couple months ago, and AMD has been steadily declining for a long time and is on its way to becoming a penny stock. Have a little extra cash? There’s nowhere to… → Read More
What’s the Swedish phrase for “we’re screwed”? Quick, someone ask Sony Ericsson, it must know. Right, so Sony Ericsson said today that its second quarter pre-tax net income and sales would be “negatively affected by moderating demand of mid-to-high end mobile phone.” It seems people would rather spend their dollars and euros and pounds (oh my!) on actual necessities rather than… → Read More
In the next few weeks, Lenovo is expected to formally announce its SL series of notebooks aimed at small-to-medium sized businesses. According to IDG News Service, the machines will be priced between $699 and $1,199 and will feature online backup services and LoJack anti-theft technology. The SL series also looks to loosen its necktie "with a more stylish look and multimedia features such as… → Read More
Good God, yet another publication chiming in on the question, “Will the iPhone 3G be a hit in the enterprise crowd?” Fortune examines Apple’s prospects in the business world, and comes away with the opinion that Apple will have its work cut out for it. It seems Apple has a bad reputation among business for several reason. Its flashy image isn’t necessarily what big business… → Read More
Good show, old bean! Everyone knows that Apple is gaining market share in pretty much every sector, but even in their niche (the luxury market) who knew they had such a commanding lead? Fortune reports via Apple Watch (or vice versa) that Cupertino has increased their share of the $1000-plus computer market from 15% in January of 2006 to 66% by last count. What could have precipitated this… → Read More
The long-running dispute between AMD and Intel, in which the former alleges anti-trust violations by the latter, has a new wrinkle. A key point in the battle is coming up, and AMD has released to the public its laundry list of accusations. Or, at least, something like that. It seems they (or more likely Intel) feel that the public is not ready to hear what AMD has to say, so → Read More
AMD is targeting the small- and medium-sized business pools with its “Business Class” platform, to be sold by a handful of AMD’s partners, including Dell, Acer, Fujitsu, HP, and Lenovo. What’s interesting is that AMD’s taking an open approach, so systems will be available with graphics chips by ATI, whom AMD purchased in mid-2006, but will also support graphics… → Read More
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