Sometimes big news comes in small packages–especially in the world of high tech. This week, AllThingsD covered some little changes that mean serious consequences for the companies that make the stuff and consumers who rely on it.
“The decrease in _____ revenue was primarily due to _____” and “uncertainty associated with the proposed acquisition by Oracle and increased competition.” That refrain is repeated over and over again in Sun’s latest grim earnings report, which was filed without much in the way of announcement Friday afternoon.
The fight for Skype has ended. After weeks of nasty legal sparring, the Internet telephony service’s founders agreed to join the investor group purchasing it from EBay and dropped the lawsuit that had threatened to bollocks the deal.
Microsoft’s new Windows 7 operating system is selling quite well, according to CEO Steve Ballmer. In remarks at a press conference in Tokyo Thursday, Ballmer said that Windows 7’s first 10 days at market have been more successful than those of any of its predecessors.
Investors expecting NetSuite to break even on a per-share basis for its third quarter were given a pleasant surprise this afternoon when the company beat estimates by a penny.
When it launched on July 10, 2008, Apple’s iTunes App Store held just 552 apps. Today, Apple tells us, it boasts more than 100,000. Astonishing, really, when you think about it. The App Store isn’t even two years old yet. Nor is the iPhone SDK.
“We are mostly but not all done” with layoffs. So said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in May at the start of a second round of cuts that claimed the livelihoods of some 3,000 employees. Now, six months later, the company is finishing the job. Sources tell TechFlash that Microsoft will make additional job reductions this week–beginning as early as today.
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is famous for his admiration of “The Art of War,” Sun Tzu’s sixth-century treatise on battle tactics. And the ancient wisdom has served Ellison well in Oracle’s long-running battle with SAP and its hostile bid for PeopleSoft. But it may get him in trouble when it comes to Oracle’s dealings with the European Commission and its inquiry into the company’s planned acquisition of Sun. The Financial Times reports that Oracle’s refusal to offer any concessions to European antitrust regulators may lead them to issue a formal complaint objecting to the deal.
The long-rumored data center partnership between Cisco, EMC and VMware is at last a reality. The three companies have formed a new joint venture called Acadia. Its purpose: To sell and support V-Block, an integrated data center product that combines Cisco’s Unified Computing System, EMC’s storage equipment, and VMware’s virtualization technology.
Cisco’s fall acquisition binge continues unabated. Late Monday, the company announced plans to buy the set-top box business of China’s DVN Holdings for up to $44.5 million. This after spending $3 billion on videoconferencing system maker Tandberg, wireless infrastructure outfit Starent Networks and software-as-a-service security vendor ScanSafe–all in quick succession.
Here’s an interesting data point from Apple’s recent 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: The company has budgeted $1.9 billion in capital expenditures for fiscal 2010. That’s 70 percent more than the $1.1 billion it spent in 2009. What does Apple plan to do with those additional funds?
With Palm’s shares up more than 900 percent since January, they were destined to suffer a correction someday. And now it seems that day has finally come. Shares in the handset maker fell some 23 percent last week amid concerns about increased competition from Google’s Android operating system, which is being rolled out on a number of devices at a variety of carriers, including Palm partner Sprint.
BoomTown’s week began onstage in front of thousands of chanting women. No, Kara wasn’t filling in for Oprah; she was doing something much cooler.
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.
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.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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