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Nintendo's latest results show that it continues to dominate its gaming competition, in units. But net income is down and a modified forecast shows that even the Wii will face challenges. [caption id="attachment_711" align="alignright" width="240" caption="Nintendo goes Wii, Wii, Wii, all the way h...
Sony has just released its unaudited results for its third quarter ending December 31. While PS3 software unit sales was a slight bright spot, overall the news is pretty bad, due to worldwide PS3 sales trailing Nintendo's Wii and Microsoft's Xbox, decreasing sales of PS2 and PSP hardware and software, and the strengthening of the yen against the euro and U.S. dollar.
Last week I mentioned how Cisco was entering the server market and how this was just the continuation of a diversification trend we've already been seeing. I also mentioned how more examples would be popping up. Another already has: HP is coming out with data switches built for datacenter applicatio...
In recent earnings announcements, the eyes have been on revenues and profits. Who has managed to keep ahead despite economic conditions, and whose star seems to have been waning? But given those very conditions, it may be that there's too much attention on earnings and not enough on cash, which is, after all, supposed to be king in bad times. But check a number of leading high tech companies and you'll find that more often than not they're already down on the money on hand from the same period last year.
T3 files EU complaint against IBM; Microsoft led a PR coalition to scuttle the Google-Yahoo deal; IP litigation drops in 2008, but anti-trust actions go up; Apple and Palm rattle sabers; Apple faces SEC probe; Apple agrees to settle iPod Nano scratch class action; and Limelight successfully defends Level 3 patent infringement suit.
A number of people criticized my previous piece on Sony's PS3 because I didn't have worldwide unit sales numbers. And that was fair (though some of those commenting clearly needed some warm milk and a rest), because you can't reasonable take U.S. sales to represent what the rest of the world might do. So I did some digging and found some numbers for Sony itself. Given that the company has also forecast overall unit sales through March 31, 2009, I think I've got a reasonable handle on just how many game consoles the company is selling. And I also came across some information that helps triangulate, and bring in to question, the spin Microsoft has recently put on the Xbox 360 unit sales.
By now you've probably already heard that Microsoft missed analysts' expectations and will cut up to 5,000 jobs. That's painful, though less severe than had been rumored. But when you look at the financial results, they suggest that Microsoft's real problem is on the desktop and online. Look at the...
The news that Cisco will push into the server market might seem like a big surprise -- and a big departure from its traditional base of networking equipment. But if you think about the direction computing is moving, it's not really surprising, and probably only one of a number of examples of radical diversification that will be coming in the next year or two.
It always seems presumptuous to sound a death knell for an enormous company. So perhaps this is more a bell closing round seven of a fight, but on the gaming front, Sony is looking bad. Really bad. And because of the company's overall financial position, it will take far more than posturing to keep the console division in the game at all.
Watching businesses at times is like sitting through a comedy. You see people doing something so obviously stupid, so clearly set to blow up in their faces, that you want to bury your face and say, "No, stop now!" But they don't and it does. This seems to have popped up in high tech with a ferocious...
EU tells Microsoft to decouple Internet Explorer from Windows; Dell settles with 34 states; Nortel files for bankruptcy, but some analysts think that it ultimately won't help; RealNetworks gets Friskit patents tossed; Global Crossing gives up and licenses Katz Technology patents; USPTO to reexamine TiVo patent; and Xpoint sues Microsoft, HP, and Intel.
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking an unexpected extended medical leave from his position as Apple's CEO is continuing the speculation of whether he'll be able to run the company again and what might happen to Apple as a result. The fascination in the technology world is understandable from one view, as Jobs is one of the personal computer's historic figures and great characters. But from another point, it's an unhealthy obsession and shows that industry maturity has a long way to go.
Century-old Nortel Networks, once a networking behemoth with a whopping market cap of over $300 billion, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Nortel never recovered from dot-com bust. The aftermath included a devastating accounting scandal that resulted in the firing of CEO Frank Dunn an...
It's been clear that Google's focus on ad revenue is a potential weak point for the company and that it rightly continues trying to diversify its business. And the announcement that it will allow "technology solution providers" to resell Google Apps to businesses is just another example. But Google is about to find that working with a reseller channel is far more complicated, painful, and expensive than they have thought.
Seagate Technology, the world's leading disk drive maker, shocked the markets yesterday by announcing the immediate departure of CEO Bill Watkins and president and COO David Wickersham. Chairman and former CEO Stephen Luczo has assumed the president and CEO functions. What made this announcemen...
