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Recently, Tom Krazit at CNET pointed out that Microsoft had played into Apple's hands with the company's latest advertising campaign. The approach effectively conceded that Macs offer a better computing experience and that all that PCs have to offer is a price advantage -- at least one on initial purchase. But rather than maintain its market position, Apple has decided to fight back, undercutting its brand and historically effective competitive strategies.
Now that YouTube has reached an agreement with several TV producers and movie studios, including Sony, CBS, MGM, Lionsgate, Starz, and the BBC, to deliver their content on a premium channel, it can get started on the really big challenge: turning Web programming into a viable business. YouTube al...
Microsoft is trying to earn respect as a security applications vendor, a difficult proposition for a company best known among IT administrators and security experts as the company that gets around to patching vulnerabilities in its software on the second Tuesday of every month. Microsoft is makin...
Infosys, second only to Tata Consultancy Services among Indian outsourcing firms in terms of revenues, gave the markets a double dose of bad news yesterday, forecasting its first-ever drop in revenue for the financial year ending next March, and revealing the extent of the decline in its overall mar...
First Skype, then StumbleUpon. What's next -- PayPal? One thing is certain: a year from now, eBay will look like a very different company. It's unclear whether eBay will actually go through with its plan to launch an IPO for Internet telephony vendor Skype next year or simply sell it back to its ...
IBM has been flogging Web-based collaboration tools for the better part of three years, but despite its valiant attempts at Web 2.0-style hipness, comes off less like the Fonz than Mrs. Cunningham. The problem for IBM isn't the quality of its products, or the impressive amount of research it ...
IBM outlined a vision--and of course a new services unit to go with it--that takes a little time to grok. Big Blue talked about the "information journey," fact-based enterprises and nudging out gut calls in everyday management for decisions based on hard, cold facts. But when you boil it all d...
Software vendors are blackmailing customers, misleading them about future product releases, and selling them consulting services that are nothing more than sophisticated product pitches, blogs Ray Wang, a leading enterprise software analyst with Forrester Research. Wang protects the identities of...
The other day I compiled a series of questions for the Associated Press, given that the organization has indicated that it plans some strategy to deal with sites that "walk off with our work under misguided legal theories." One of the questions was essentially what AP wanted to get. The obvious answer was money, and a new partnership is showing one of the ways AP wants to get it.
Being popular can be dangerous if the attention brings liabilities. Microsoft found that true when, back in 2005 and 2006, many of the new Xbox 360s developed the "red ring of death," eventually forcing the company in 2007 to extend the product warranty and take over a billion dollar charge to cover the necessary repairs and replacements. Now there's a new problem, called the E74 error, that is also causing a hardware failure and shaping to be not just another public black eye, but, given the volume of Xbox 360s that have sold, possibly the source of another massive charge to cover unit replacements.
If you paid attention at all to industry news yesterday, chances are you heard about Amazon's book de-ranking kerfuffle. A large group of books, including many with gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender (GLBT) themes all lost their Amazon sales ranks. Supposedly all is again where it was and the company ...
Tight corporate budgets have some enterprise IT vendors looking longingly at the consumer market, no doubt inspired by the ease with which many consumer applications, from instant messaging to social networks, have crossed into the enterprise space. One case in point is EMC, which is hoping its m...
Last week, the Associated Press put the online publishing world on notice about the organization's new "content protection initiative" . AP's idea is to protect news content from misappropriation online. Unfortunately, when I asked to interview someone from AP about the intent, the response from the media relations department was to point to its "AP Intellectual Property site," which had just been "freshened up." Talk about a standard corporate response. But this is an issue that could cause major disputes online, so even if they won't take the following questions, I thought it would be good to get them out into the open.
The Federal Communications Commission has just kicked of a public comment period seeking input on how exactly to implement the $7.2 billion of stimulus dollars earmarked (oops) for broadband. One the main bones of contention is whether to allocate funds to projects run by public-private partnerships...
Given the dual interests in global warming and economics, it's easy to understand why many tech companies would focus on double-green marketing messages. Lower power consumption and you give customers the double benefit of being kinder to the environment and to their wallets. Unfortunately, in their quests for self-promotion, some businesses are straining credulity and common sense.
