Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Was the iPhone’s Launch in China Really a Bust?
Apple’s internationally coveted iPhone finally arrived at market in China last week and by most accounts its debut was uncharacteristically muted. There is “no sign of the sort of sellout reception that greeted the smart phone at its introduction in other countries,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Clearly, the device’s Chinese launch wasn’t the rousing success to which we’ve become accustomed. That said, it probably wasn’t quite the bust it’s been made out to be, either.
The broader advertising recovery may take time, but search advertising is clearly beating a hasty path back toward normalcy. Or it is in Google’s case anyway. Reporting third-quarter results after market close Thursday, the search giant posted revenue of $5.94 billion, an increase of seven percent compared to the third quarter of 2008.
Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney says Google’s Android OS will claim 14 percent of the global smart-phone market by 2012, putting it ahead of Apple’s iPhone but behind Symbian, which currently runs on about half of all smart phones. While this might seem optimistic, it’s not entirely unreasonable given the distribution deals Google has been lining up. Yesterday, the search giant announced a deal to bring Android-based devices to Verizon Wireless. Now comes word that Dell is building an Android handset for AT&T.
Brocade investors are smiling into their coffee cups this morning after reports that the networking-gear maker has put itself up for sale sent the company’s shares soaring. People familiar with the matter tell The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg that Brocade is seeking a buyer and that both Hewlett-Packard and Oracle are among its potential suitors.
If you’re going to claim in an advertisement that Transaction Processing Council benchmarks show that a hybrid Sun-Oracle server runs faster than a competing product from IBM, it’s probably wise to make sure you have the TPC benchmarks to back up your claim. Not if you’re Oracle, though. 
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata likes to say that game console price cuts aren’t the cure-alls many believe them to be. “People often talk about the price cut as if it’s an almighty weapon,” he said this past summer. “The fact of the matter is what a price cut can do is rather limited.” But Nintendo is cutting the price of its Wii videogame system just the same.
Thirty years at Intel was evidently more than enough for Pat Gelsinger. He’s giving up his job as senior VP of the company’s Digital Enterprise Group to run EMC’s storage-products operations, The Wall Street Journal reports. 
Oracle has a message for CIOs concerned about its plans for Sun’s hardware, Solaris and SPARC businesses: Relax. In a full-page ad published in The Wall Street Journal today, the database giant made a very public commitment to all of them.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the latest iteration of Apple’s operating system, arrived at market today–about a month earlier than originally anticipated. And while it doesn’t really deliver the GUI enhancements we’ve come to expect from Apple and some incompatibilities are riling people up, Snow Leopard’s under-the-hood improvements and price point appear to have struck a chord with critics. After the jump, a selection of early reviews.
With a combined share of over 20 percent of the Japanese handset market, a joint cellphone venture between NEC, Hitachi and Casio might be a wise move for the companies, which are struggling in an increasingly saturated domestic market. So reports that the three have decided to consolidate their mobile-phone operations aren’t wide of the mark at all.
Looks like News Corp. was a little too optimistic when the company told investors in May that it expected a decline of around 30 percent in fiscal-year-adjusted operating income. Reporting earnings this afternoon, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal and this Web site instead posted a decline of 32.5 percent.
Add Melissa Hathaway to the list of cybersecurity experts who don’t want the job of White House cybersecurity czar. Hathaway, a former Bush administration official who led President Obama’s recent 60-day review of the federal government’s cybersecurity efforts, was thought to be a leading contender for the position. But according to The Wall Street Journal, she asked not to be considered for that post about two weeks ago, citing personal reasons. And now she’s resigned her current post as well.
