Four years after separating its PC business from its imaging and printing group, Hewlett-Packard is planning to merge them, undoing one of Mark Hurd’s first big moves as CEO. “People familiar with the situation” tell The Wall Street Journal that the plan under consideration would combine HP’s printer and PC businesses under Todd Bradley, who currently oversees only the latter.
Perhaps Palm really does have the “special sauce” needed to attain smart phone leadership, as RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky recently claimed. Reporting first-quarter results this afternoon, the company posted a narrower-than-expected loss, said it shipped 823,000 smart phones during the quarter and announced plans for a common stock offering of 16 million shares.
Apple’s latest 52-week high is well on its way to becoming a 52-week low. In a research note to investors this week, Charlie Wolf of Needham & Company lifted his price target on Apple to $235, from $200, largely on the merits of the iPhone and the iTunes App Store.
AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity deal with Apple is set to expire as early as next year, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t be renewed–despite complaints about the carrier’s network. That’s the word from iSuppli, which predicts Apple will extend its agreement with AT&T because it has no reason not to.
The U.S. government broadband stimulus program couldn’t have come along at a better time. Leichtman Research Group said Monday that the country’s 19 largest cable and telephone providers added a net 634,000 broadband subscribers during the second quarter of 2009. That’s 29 percent fewer than were added in the same period a year ago and the lowest number of net additions of any quarter in the last eight years.
No surprise, this: The econalypse continues to weigh heavily on online ad spending. Worldwide spending on Internet advertising declined by five percent in the second quarter of this year, slipping to $13.9 billion from $14.7 billion, according to research firm IDC.
The Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to determine whether exclusive handset deals are promoting or hindering innovation in the wireless market are moving ahead with a focus on rural areas. That’s the word from agency Chairman Julius Genachowski, who says he’s concerned not just with the competitive ramifications of carrier-exclusivity deals but with their tendency to limit customer access to top smartphones.
The econalypse has done great things for Netflix, sending recession-addled customers running to embrace its way-cheaper-than-cable DVD-by-mail and streaming-movie service. The online DVD-rental pioneer posted earnings that beat Wall Street estimates and announced that its subscriber base has grown to 10.6 million.
Cisco’s acquisition of Pure Digital, developer of the Flip digital video camera, may prove an ill-timed one. For while the Flip currently dominates the market that it largely created, it’s about to be taken to the mat by a new and formidable rival: Apple.
The mobile application market is clearly a large and growing one, but will it someday be “as big as the Internet”? According to independent app store GetJar, it will. In an interview with BBC News, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs said the next decade will see such massive growth in the market that apps will rival the Web in popularity.
If Intel’s latest earnings are truly an indication of how the tech industry is holding up in the econalypse, then the tech industry isn’t doing too badly (though, obviously, it has seen better days). After market close Tuesday, the chip behemoth posted second-quarter results far in excess of expectations.
You can’t overtake a market in a month, particularly one dominated by Google. But you can certainly chip away a small foothold. Which is what Microsoft managed to do with its new search engine, Bing, last month. According to StatCounter, Microsoft’s share of the market grew to 8.23 percent in June, up from the 7.8 percent share it held prior to Bing’s launch.
World-wide PC shipments will be lousy in 2009, but not quite as lousy as previously thought. Gartner says they’ll fall six percent for the year, which is an improvement over the 6.6 percent drop it forecast last month and the 9.2 percent decline it projected back in March.
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.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
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.
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