Apple posts highest ever quarterly earnings after success for Mac and iPad
Steve Jobs says tech firm had enjoyed "phenomenal quarter" after revenues rise 88%, with net profit up 78% at $3.25bn Record sales of Mac computers and strong demand for the iPad has helped Apple post its highest ever quarterly earnings. Steve Jobs declared last night that Apple had enjoyed a "phenomenal quarter", after it smashed analyst forecasts. Revenues rose 88% to $15.7bn (£10.2bn) in the three months to 26 June, with net quarterly profit up 78% at $3.25bn.
View post:
Apple posts highest ever quarterly earnings after success for Mac and iPad
Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India
Britons targeted by cold callers pretending to be from Microsoft phoning to fix a fake computer problem The scam always starts the same way: the phone rings at someone's home, and the caller – usually with an Indian accent – asks for the householder, quoting their name and address before saying "I'm calling for Microsoft. We've had a report from your internet service provider of serious virus problems from your computer." Dire forecasts are made that if the problem is not solved, the computer will become unusable. The puzzled owner is then directed to their computer, and asked to open a program called "Windows Event Viewer".
View post:
Virus phone scam being run from call centres in India
Intel’s best-ever profits lift technology stocks
Intel reveals better-than-expected sales and profits – boosted by demand for chips – as technology shares in US and Asia rise American microchip manufacturer Intel cheered investors overnight by reporting its best-ever quarterly profits – comfortably beating Wall Street's forecasts – in a move that has pushed technology stocks higher across the world. The second-quarter figures from the world's largest microchip maker herald the start of results season in the US. Analysts had feared they would show slowing demand, not least because of the economic turbulence in Europe, and raise fears of a double-dip global recession. But Intel announced much better than expected sales and profits, boosted by strong demand for its chips from makers of both PCs and servers. For the three months to 26 June, Intel made a profit of $2.9bn (£1.9bn) – or 51 cents a share – compared with a loss in the previous year of $398m, which was distorted by a $1.06bn fine by the European commission after a long-running competition investigation. Analysts had, however, been forecasting profits of about 43 cents per share in the second quarter. Second-quarter revenues of $10.8bn were also higher than the $10.25bn forecast by Wall Street while investors were also pleased by Intel's guidance for the next three months. In the second quarter, Intel's profit margins were 67% – higher than the 64% expected by analysts – and Intel said it expects a similar result for the third quarter, with revenues of $11.2bn to $12bn, higher than the $10.9bn analysts had been forecasting. Intel CEO Paul Otellini said there are definite signs that corporate customers are renewing spending on IT. "Now that corporations have some breathing room in the economy and their budgets, you're starting to see those machines that were four or five years old get refreshed," he said in a conference call with analysts. Intel's second-quarter figures herald the start of a slew of results from American technology firms with quarterly results from Google and chip maker AMD due on Thursday, IBM on 19 July, Microsoft on 22 July and Cisco's figures next month. The news from Intel saw technology shares rising in the US and Asia overnight and pushed British chip designer Arm Holdings to the top of the FTSE 100 index leaderboard in early trading in London. Technology sector Intel Computing United States European commission Richard Wray guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Go here to see the original:
Intel's best-ever profits lift technology stocks
Steve Jobs to launch Apple’s new iPhone – but will it be an anticlimax?
Apple is preparing to reveal its latest iPhone, but many details were leaked after a prototype was left in a bar Apple's chief executive, Steve Jobs, is due to unveil the fourth version of the company's hugely popular iPhone tomorrow – including a screen with up to four times more detail, a camera flash, noise cancellation and longer battery life. The announcement is expected at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in San Francisco, which has drawn thousands of programmers keen to write programs – apps – for the device. More than 51m iPhones have been sold since its launch in June 2007, and a number of developers have made thousands of pounds from selling apps through Apple's App Store. But for Jobs the unveiling will be something of an anticlimax – many details about the phone leaked out in mid-April after one of his staff lost a prototype in a bar near the company's headquarters. It was sold to gadget blog Gizmodo, where blogger Jason Chen took it apart and posted a video declaring: "You are looking at Apple's next iPhone." Jobs prefers to keep details of upcoming products under wraps to heighten expectations. But with more details known about the new iPhone than any previous model, some of that effect is likely to be diminished. Yet Apple can revel in having passed Microsoft as the most valuable technology company, based on market capitalisation, and having sold 2m of its iPad tablet computers worldwide since they went on sale in the US on 3 April – including a highly successful UK launch that saw a queue of over a thousand people outside Apple's flagship store in Regent Street, London. Gizmodo's posting about the new iPhone has turned into a criminal investigation after the roommate of Brian Hogan – who walked out of a bar with the iPhone – contacted police, worried that the phone was stolen
The rest is here:
Steve Jobs to launch Apple's new iPhone – but will it be an anticlimax?
HP to cut 9,000 jobs
Computer and services business to spend $1bn over three years to consolidate operations in automated data centres Hewlett-Packard, the computer and services business, is to cut 9,000 jobs while spending $1bn over the next three years to consolidate its operations in automated data centres as it completes its corporate digestion of the services company EDS, which it acquired for $14bn in August 2008. But the company will hire an extra 6,000 staff as it invests in the new data centres and expands global operations, it said in a statement . The move is expected to lead to gross savings of $1bn annually once completed, it said. The shift is part of an ongoing effort to reduce the headcount at the company, which has increasingly focused on services as a path to profit as older parts of the business, such as its PC and printer division, have seen profits remain stagnant . The fastest growth in profits in the past two years has come from its services side. But it has not abandoned the computer side of the business: in May it announced the purchase of Palm, the smartphone maker, for $1.2bn after winning a brief five-way bidding war. It plans to introduce tablet computers running Palm's WebOS software later this year.
View original here:
HP to cut 9,000 jobs
Apple’s iPad sales break the two million mark
• Apple sells more than two million iPads in less than two months • iPad to launch in nine more countries, including Ireland, in July • Analysts say biggest market is US, followed by France and UK Apple today said it has sold two million iPads, less than two months after launching the touchscreen tablet in the US, much faster than predicted. This is despite the fact the company had to delay the device's international launch by a month because it could not keep up with demand. On Friday, the iPad, which combines the mobility of a smartphone with the speed of a laptop, finally went on sale in the UK, and also launched in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland. The original UK launch date had been set for late April. The 32GB iPad, with its 24.5cm (9.7in) touchscreen, looks like an enlarged iPhone and costs £499, while the 64GB version costs £599. It will go on sale in nine more countries next month, including Ireland, and analysts at RBC Capital Markets estimated that by the end of the year, over eight million units will have been sold worldwide. The success of the gadget has underlined the renaissance of Apple, which last week overtook Microsoft as the biggest technology company in the world by market capitalisation. Apple's statement last night did not give a breakdown of the sales. Mike Abramsky, an analyst with RBC in Toronto, estimated the US will account for 57% of sales, with France and the UK being the next two biggest markets, where he predicted 805,000 and 585,000 will be sold this year. Analyst Daniel Ernst of Hudson Square Research told Reuters last month that he had estimated sales for the three months from April to the end of June at 1.25m. It took just under a month for Apple to notch up one million sales of the iPad, making it more popular than the iPhone, which took 74 days to hit the same figure in 2007. Apple has not announced sales targets for the iPad. At the launch of the iPhone in 2007, chief executive Steve Jobs said he hoped to sell 10m by the end of 2008 – it sold 16m. The iPad has already attracted a cult following among Apple enthusiasts. Stephen Fry said in Time magazine he was "not prepared for how instant the relationship I formed with the device would be", and David Pogue in the New York Times said it was "designed and built by a bunch of perfectionists". Fry queued in the rain with other Apple enthusiasts outside the company's Regent Street store when the gadget went on sale last week, even though he already owns a device. He said he was "completing the circle", having been in San Francisco when Apple announced the device in January, and present at the US launch in April: "There's a camaraderie among Apple users, particularly long-serving ones – we remember in 1997 when we were being laughed at and told we would only get spare parts in hobby shops because the company was absolutely on the floor. "I'm sure a lot of people will mock it as being some sort of pseudo-religious or cult atmosphere, but it's just genuine enthusiasm." Before it went on sale in the UK, demand was so intense that people tried to order it by using forwarding companies with offices in the US.
See original here:
Apple's iPad sales break the two million mark
Quality control will save capitalism | Ben Van Vliet
Instead of blaming computer trading systems for market crashes, we should look to these unemotional machines for the answer We now know that automated (or high-frequency) trading systems did not cause the stock market's "flash crash" of 6 May . At best we can figure, an institution executed a large sell order, which drove the market down. The downward pressure triggered lots of stop-loss orders that other market participants already had in the market. For a brief moment, buyers evaporated, and … crash. But, before there was time to panic, automated trading systems recognised the situation for what it was – a tremendous buying opportunity. The market bounced back as quickly as it had fallen. Automated trading systems do not create crashes, or even volatility for that matter.
View post:
Quality control will save capitalism | Ben Van Vliet
Larry Ellison starts to reign over Sun
Larry Ellison's Oracle is busy absorbing Sun Microsystems with the aim of becoming big in hardware, as well as software. And he has a few trenchant things to say about the failings of the previous regime… Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison doesn't talk to the press as often as we'd like, because he often ends up putting the boot into some company, product or person, and that's always entertaining. The latest victims include Sun Microsystems, its pony-tailed boss and its Rock microprocessor in Can Ellison be an Iron Man in real life? Ellison is having a busy time at the moment because Oracle is absorbing Sun Microsystems after a takeover that was delayed for many months while Europe's competition department groped around for a clue. He's been diving deep into Sun's business, rather than leaving that to henchman, and not liking all he's found. According to the longer version of the story at ABC News , he doesn't seem that impressed by blogging former boss Jonathan Schwartz: "The underlying engineering teams are so good, but the direction they got was so astonishingly bad that even they couldn't succeed," said Ellison. "Really great blogs do not take the place of great microprocessors. Great blogs do not replace great software. Lots and lots of blogs does not replace lots and lots of sales." Ellison also shut down development of the Rock microprocessor, described as one of Schwartz's pet projects: "This processor had two incredible virtues: It was incredibly slow and it consumed vast amounts of energy. It was so hot that they had to put about 12 inches of cooling fans on top of it to cool the processor," said Ellison. "It was just madness to continue that project." Then there was Sun's move to let resellers sell more systems, rather than using its own sales force: "Astonishingly they laid off all the sales people and they laid off all the field service people. They just got rid of them all," he said. "Guess what? Sales dropped.
Read more from the original source:
Larry Ellison starts to reign over Sun
Netbooks and notebooks will shine in 2010, says iSuppli
Market research company iSuppli has released a few numbers from a new report that predicts continued growth in the market for netbooks and notebook PCs US-based market research company iSuppli is predicting that sales of netbooks and CULV (Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage) notebooks will do well this year. iSuppli expects netbook shipments to grow by 30% to 34.5 million units in 2010, and to reach 58.3 million units in 2014. Acer was the biggest netbook manufacturer in 2008 and 2009, and shipped 9.8 million units last year to take 37% of the market, it says. Asus was second, after shipping 5.5 million netbooks. The other Top 5 manufacturers for 2009 were Hewlett-Packard, Samsung and Dell, in that order. iSuppli says that: "Together, the Top 5 accounted for 90% of the market." The company reckons that CULV notebooks, which are thin and offer long battery life, "will ship nearly 14.5 million units in 2010, a staggering 93% increase from 7.5 million units last year." (CULV notebooks are a new category and start from a low base.) Acer was the biggest supplier of CULV notebooks last year, shipping about 5m units. Asus was second again, shipping about shipping about 700,000 units. Acer sells the Timeline range of CULV machines while Asus's models include the UL30 and UL50. iSuppli predicts that total notebook shipments, including netbooks and CULV ultraportables, "will hit 209.5 million units in 2010, up a robust 25.5% from 166.9 million last year." It predicts notebook shipments of 371.5 million units in 2014. Computing Jack Schofield guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
Read the original post:
Netbooks and notebooks will shine in 2010, says iSuppli
Apple reveals UK iPad prices
Apple's iPad tablet computer will cost from £429 in the UK when it goes on sale on 28 May Apple has revealed that the iPad, which will go on sale in the UK on 28 May, will cost £429 for the basic version all the way up to £699 for the top of the range 64GB device with both Wi-Fi and 3G network access. The Californian technology company, which has already seen sales of the iPad sale past the 1m mark after just a month in the shops, will open its website for pre-orders of the device to British gadget fans from Monday next week. Alongside the UK, the tablet computer will also be available on 28 May in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland
Read the original post:
Apple reveals UK iPad prices