Sony sees Flip is no flop
@CES, Las Vegas – Flip camcorders from San Francisco’s Pure Digital were Christmas best-sellers in the US, but electronics giant Sony has hit back in January with its own take on the low-priced point-and-shoot video cameras.
It unveiled a new line of camcorders called “Webbie HD” at its press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday evening, with the MHS-PM1 (pictured) paying homage to the Flip’s design and features. Read more
Cisco v Microsoft in the digital home
@CES, Las Vegas – What matters most about media is how easy it is to manage and move around.
That is the animating principle behind both Cisco and Microsoft’s view of the digital home. To judge from what each company has had to show off at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, it will define competition between the two for years to come. Read more
MSI launches MacBook Air challenger
@CES, Las Vegas: Apple, which claims its MacBook Air is the thinnest portable PC on the market, faces new competition from an unexpected source – Taiwan-based Micro Star International.
MSI, best known for its PC motherboards and ‘Wind’ netbook PCs, used the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to launch the ultra-thin X-Slim X320 notebook – a low-cost machine that looks remarkably similar to the MacBook Air but runs Microsoft Windows. Read more
Tech jobs: waiting for the axe to fall
The jumpiness is understandable: job cuts are certainly coming (and have started in some places, such as EMC’s announcement today that it will slim its workforce by around 6 per cent.) But it’s simply too early to tell how deep they will eventually be, and the most pessimistic predictions at the moment remain largely speculative.
Take the suggestion on tech blog Fudzilla last week that Microsoft was about to slash 15,000 jobs (this “news” got a surprising amount of coverage, no doubt owing to the general lack of other things to report at the time.) Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
