Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has again raised its bid for 3Par (PAR), trumping a superior bid made by Dell (DELL) just hours before. HP offered $33 a share for the data-storage company, surpassing Dell’s counter-offer of $32 a share and pushing the total value of the deal to $2.4 billion.
Apple events are typically heavy on metrics and yesterday’s affair was no exception. In fact, it was more abundant with the stats than most I’ve seen, with CEO Steve Jobs trotting out quite an array of big milestone numbers with which to mark the company’s achievements. After the jump, a list of most of them.
Steve Jobs may call Apple TV a hobby, and it certainly hasn’t met with the runaway success of some of the company’s products. But Jobs is an avid collector of both users and cooperative media companies, and with that in mind, Apple, as widely rumored, announced a new version of the gadget today, equipped to stream videos rented from iTunes.
Apple’s refreshed lineup of iPods, introduced by Steve Jobs today, looks pretty much as anticipated–snazzed-up revisions of the touch, nano and shuffle.
Steve Jobs held court this morning at Apple’s traditional September music event, unveiling goodies like a refreshed lineup of iPods; Ping, a new social network built into iTunes 10; and an updated Apple TV, with support for TV and movie rentals. Also announced was iOS 4.1, with a multiplayer Game Center, High Dynamic Range photos and HD video uploads over Wi-Fi.
A fair bit of time has passed since “antennagate” and Apple’s unprecedented response to it. So how’s the iPhone 4 been selling after all that criticism? As well as ever, says Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore.
Interesting. For the first time in five years, Apple will stream one of its media events live. Late Tuesday afternoon the company said it would broadcast tomorrow’s affair to anyone with a Snow Leopard Mac or iOS device like the iPhone and iPad–live.
Research in Motion’s strength has long been in the enterprise market, which favors the BlackBerry for its robust security and data-management features. But that may be changing according to some dismal prognostications from Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu.
August has been a rough month for Hewlett-Packard. Its beginning saw the resignation of CEO Mark Hurd amid allegations of business standard improprieties. And now, with the month drawing to a close, comes word of the company’s settlement of a long-running U.S. Department of Justice probe into its handling of government contracts.
Former Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Mark Hurd has lost another board seat–this one with News Corp. A director with the company since 2008, Hurd has not been nominated for re-election to the board, according to a proxy filing released Tuesday. News Corp.’s next annual meeting, scheduled for Oct. 15., will be his last. Evidently, Hurd’s ignominious ouster from HP following an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment did not sit well with the company. News Corp., which owns this site, has not nominated anyone to replace him.
With its $2 billion bid for storage vendor 3Par last week, Hewlett-Packard began to skirt the line between a rational proposed buyout and an irrational one. At $30 per share, the offer represents a staggering 310 percent premium over 3Par’s stock before the bidding war between Dell and HP began.
QOTD: As Long as Steve’s Happy… 
“Steve was very happy. The industry was abuzz that this business unit was on the market, and there were a number of companies competing for it. I think [Apple] is very happy that Intel won the bid.”
– Intel CEO Paul Otellini on Apple CEO Steve Jobs’s reaction to Intel’s acquisition of Infineon’s wireless business.
Another small gaming company engulfed by Google. Just weeks after acquiring Slide for a reported $182 million, the search company has purchased social game developer SocialDeck.
Global chip sales continue to grow, though clearly not as quickly as some manufacturers–cough, Intel–would like. Though semiconductor sales rose to $25.2 billion in July–up 37 percent from a year ago–their month-over-month growth wasn’t nearly as impressive.
It’s taken the better part of a year, but Google’s discussions with major movie studios about a YouTube pay-per-view movie service are coming to fruition. The Financial Times claims that by year’s end we could see YouTube transform from an online destination for user-generated content into a full-fledged, international on-demand movie service.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
“I specialize in a very specific type of insobriety—unconscious insobriety.”
What an excellent day for an exorcism …
“Who makes a station with proto-punk and late-’90s jam bands?” said Davis, explaining how an effort to split the difference by playing the MC5 followed by the String Cheese Incident had failed disastrously. “There are what, maybe two songs ever recorded that fit those criteria? And he just keeps skipping them.”
“Don’t play in abandoned ice boxes – they are death traps!”
“Keyboard cat wants more money…”
Not safe for those offended by cursing in either English or Korean.
“MOM! BETHANY WON’T LET ME PLAY DOODLE JUMP!”
Loot … I am your robber.
… a “Talking Carl” Scream Fight
