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The French legislature killed an Internet antipiracy bill; Microsoft ordered to pay $388 million in a patent suit and $11.8 million for price fixing in Germany; a Taiwanese company sues Apple over alleged infringement of two touchscreen patents; online marketing expert Jeremy Shoemaker sues a Google employee over using his trademark in Google AdWords; and HP appeals a Cornell patent infringement victory.
In my previous article about Apple, Skype, Kodak, Adobe, and others paying to have Twitter users pretend to use their products and services, there was one question I realized I didn't even consider. Companies are taking big risks to their brands and reputations to promote themselves through something that is no better than Belkin paying for reviews. But what are they getting out of it? A little research suggests that not only should the marketing people at those companies be smacked about by their CEOs for dangerous risk, but for taking risks without a significant reward, as hardly anyone uses the links.
It was only back in January that we saw Belkin make itself look like a fool by advertising to pay consumers who would write glowing product reviews, whether they had used the products or now. Well, it seems that companies never learn, and now there's a veritable flock of magpies -- Apple, Skype, Kodak, Cisco, Adobe, Roxio, PC Tools, and Box.net, to name a few -- trying to snag some good will for themselves by paying consumers to say nice things about them on Twitter.
Last week, the U.S. Product Safety Commission announced a recall of Insignia brand 26-inch flat panel LCD televisions because of two reports that power supply had caught on fire. The interesting part: Best Buy was the manufacturer. The appeal for retailers to either become manufacturers through outs...
Apple is going to start charging higher prices for hit songs, a sharp reversal to a policy it had maintained despite vociferous opposition from the music industry since launching the iTunes music store in 2003. Apple is introducing a three-tiered pricing scheme, with price points at 69 cents, 99 ...
In its current anti-Apple marketing thrusts, Microsoft is creating a dangerous dilemma. Slowly but surely, the PC software giant is building the argument that PC prices should drive downward as fast as possible, and that its own considerable revenue cut should dwindle.
Back in October, Apple's new process for making aluminum computer cases out of a single block received attention, and rightly so. No screws, stronger units, lighter weight, and cheap costs are a big plus for consumer and manufacturer alike. We should have known that wouldn't have been the end of new case manufacturing. Apparently Apple has developed a related process to make handheld computer cases out of extruded tubing, creating the possibility for a seamless iPhone or iPod case.
Apple Computer has ordered an ungodly 100 million 8 GB NAND flash chips, driving speculation that Apple has something big up its sleeve beyond the next iPhone slated for release this summer. The move has also caused a flurry of activity in the distressed semiconductor manufacturing, and may result i...
Sometimes you read the news and are surprised. Sometimes you nod at something you foresaw. And sometimes you scratch your head, wondering how people miss something obvious. In the gaming industry, there are some that understand pricing well, and then there's Sony.
Cisco's decision to create a monolithic environment, and to sell servers in competition with HP, IBM and other erstwhile partners, was just the first salvo in a battle for domination of enterprise data centers. IBM's aborted attempt to acquire Sun was the next logical retort, and as my colleague Eri...
Given current street prices on low-end PC components, manufacturers could probably build and sell a $100 PC, including a monitor, shattering the current PC price floor. Chances are that it will happen within the next 18 months.
There's plenty of evidence that Dell is planning a significant acquisition. The question is whether the target might be Sun Microsystems.
The first quarter of 2009 was remarkably, if predictably, quiet where mergers and acquisitions in the tech sector were concerned. While it's still too early to tell if the current run-up in stocks will unfreeze the M&A market, the first sector to see renewed activity may well be in IT security s...
Salesforce.com introduced mobile versions of its software today in the hopes of upselling customers to more expensive versions of its offering. The so-called 'mobile lite' application supports Windows Mobile, BlackBerry and iPhone units and is free to some customers -- but not all, despite the compa...
EMC is preparing itself for a coming war for the run of corporate data centers. EMC has steadily added by acquisition or internal development a range of tools allowing customers to manage access to content, storage capacity and infrastructure availability. The company also owns more than 90% 84% ...
