Before AdMob accepted Google’s $750 million takeover offer, it was approached by Apple. This according to “people familiar with the matter,” who tell Bloomberg that Cupertino was also interested in the mobile advertising company. Odd to learn that Apple was considering such a move. After all, advertising isn’t exactly one of its core businesses.
Given the havoc the econalypse has played with other industries, the smart-phone market is in extraordinarily good shape. Shipments of the devices rose 4.2 percent to 43.3 million globally compared with 41.5 million shipped in third quarter of 2008.
There was more truth than braggadocio to Acer President Gianfranco Lanci’s claim earlier today that his company would soon overtake Dell as the second-largest PC maker in the world. Because according to new reports from Gartner and IDC both, Acer is indeed the No. 2 producer of PCs in the world.
It has been nearly eight years since the U.S. Department of Justice agreed to dissolve its 1956 consent decree with IBM, lifting restrictions that had prevented the company from becoming a monopoly in the market for punch card tabulating machines. But perhaps those restrictions were better left in place. Because on Thursday, the DOJ opened a new investigation into IBM’s business practices, seeking to determine if the company has abused its monopoly position in the mainframe market.
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.
According to IDC, the worldwide market for business analytics software will swell to $25 billion this year. Little wonder, then, that IBM is beefing up its presence in that sector with the $1.2 billion acquisition of data analysis software maker SPSS. Business analytics powerhouse SAS best watch its back.
Domestic Mac shipments for the second quarter of 2009 rose to 1.422 million, a 2.5 percent year-over-year increase. Or, they fell to 1.2 million, a decline of 12.4 percent. All depends on whom you believe, Gartner or IDC.
Well, look at that. Floundering though it is, AMD has managed some gains in the semiconductor market. According to IDC, the company’s share of the chip market hit 22.3 percent during the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 4.6 percent over the fourth quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, Intel’s share fell to 77.3 percent, a decline of 4.7 percent.
The econalypse is playing hell with the mobile phone market. Handset vendors world-wide shipped 244.8 million units in the first quarter of 2009, 15.8 percent fewer than the 290.8 million units shipped during the same quarter in 2008.
More gloomy predictions for the IT market. Market research firm IDC just updated its forecast for world-wide IT spending in 2009, and suffice to say, it’s not pretty. The continued downward spiral of the economy has so hampered growth that IDC now sees world-wide IT spending growing by just 0.5 percent year over year, down from a November 2008 forecast of 2.6 percent growth.
With the Dow near its lowest point in a decade and global PC shipments down for the first time since 2002, according to market research firm IDC, Hewlett-Packard reported fiscal first-quarter earnings today, and though they met Wall Street’s expectations, they were clearly not what the market had been hoping for.
It’s nothing we don’t already know: Undermined by the worst recession in 50 years, PC sales are slowing. Drastically. There will be no double-digit sales gains in 2009. The six consecutive years of rising PC shipments we’ve seen will not be followed by a seventh. Instead, they’re likely to be followed by a decline–the first since 2001.
According to market-research outfits Gartner and IDC, PC shipment growth in the fourth quarter of 2008 was the worst since 2002. IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker shows global PC shipments down 0.4 percent year over year. So much for that annual holiday season uptick.
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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