If you can’t beat ’em, sue ’em. That seems to be the thinking at Nokia. Today, the Finnish cellphone giant, which has been struggling to develop a worthy competitor to the iPhone, filed suit against Apple, claiming the popular smart phone infringes upon a number of Nokia patents.
The deal went unnoticed until this week, but Apple evidently bought mapping outfit Placebase this past July in an acquisition that may have undermined its relationship with Google, which provides mapping technology for the iPhone.
David Johnson, the mergers-and-acquisitions specialist Dell hired away from IBM earlier this year, has clearly been busy these past few months. This morning, the PC maker announced plans to buy information technology services outfit Perot Systems for about $3.9 billion.
Online ad spending in the Middle East is expected to increase between 35 and 45 percent this year. Little wonder then that Yahoo is pushing hard into the market there. This morning, the company said it is acquiring Maktoob.com, an Arabic online portal that boasts some 16 million users.
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.
If China Unicom and Apple haven’t already inked a deal to bring the iPhone to China, they’re very close to doing so. This morning, a report in Shanghai Securities News claimed the two companies had reached an agreement that grants China Unicom three years of exclusivity.
Well, this is unexpected. Amazon has agreed to purchase online shoe retailer Zappos.com in a deal valued at about $850 million. Under its terms, the retailer will acquire all outstanding Zappos shares in exchange for roughly 10 million shares of Amazon common stock, valued at about $807 million, and some $40 million in cash and restricted stock. If the shoe fits, right?
Palm’s Pre may compete with Apple’s iPhone on a feature-to-feature basis, but judging from the latest search stats from comScore, the Pre has some way to go before it matches the iPhone in mindshare. According to the research house, Palm Pre search activity, which more than doubled in late May thanks to Sprint’s “Now Network” advertising campaign, suffered a significant decline in mid-June, right around the debut of the new iPhone.
What’s Sun going to do now? Shares in the company dropped more than 27 percent percent to $6.48 in premarket trading following reports that Sun’s board rejected a formal acquisition offer by IBM. After weeks of negotiations, the two companies were thought to be finalizing a deal for about $7 billion. But IBM lowered its offer over the weekend and then withdrew it after Sun balked at the price and terms of the sale.
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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