With a handful of new Android handsets arriving at market in the coming weeks, including Motorola’s much anticipated Droid, Palm’s prospects for blowout winter holiday sales are dimming. Earlier this week, analysts at Citigroup and CL King voiced their concerns about the company in the wake of another ugly quarter from carrier partner Sprint. Now, Standard & Poor’s is doing so as well.
According to comScore, Web traffic to Amazon in the U.S. rose 14.8 percent, far outstripping that of overall U.S. Internet traffic, which grew just 3.5 percent. “It appears that Amazon is gaining share the old-fashioned way,” ThinkEquity analyst Ed Weller noted last week, “by acquiring more and more customers…and selling more to each of them.” Judging from the nice gain in third-quarter earnings the company posted after Thursday’s closing bell, that would seem to be the case.
“[If the price were any lower] I’d lose money on every PlayStation I make.” So said Sony CEO Sir Howard Stringer last month. And while that remark might seem to preclude a price cut on the PlayStation 3, a price cut might be exactly what we get come tomorrow.
Though there was no reason to expect otherwise, sales of consumer electronics in the states fell dramatically during the holiday season. While online sales rose 7.1 percent to $1.7 billion for the five weeks that ended Dec. 27, sales at brick-and-mortar stores fell 8.1 percent to $7.5 billion, according to research firm NPD Group. End result: an overall decline of 5.7 percent for what NPD analyst Stephen Baker says was “by far” the worst holiday season the firm has seen.
Add Hewlett-Packard to the list of companies extending their annual holiday shutdown to cut costs in a souring economy. The company said this week that it is doubling its normal weeklong holiday hiatus. Said an HP spokesperson, “Shutting down during a period when many employees traditionally take vacation helps HP achieve operational savings and allows employees to enjoy more time with their families.” And more time with their jobs as well.
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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