Palm Pre “could be DOA”
After the hype, a supremely negative take on the prospects of the eagerly awaited Palm Pre smartphone and the company itself from Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar today.
Mr Kumar says his supply-chain checks indicate that “due to multiple hardware and software issues, Palm has dramatically reduced its production orders” with its manufacturing partner.
Sympathy for the venture capitalists? Forget it
When I caught up with Bill Hambrecht on Wednesday, he certainly wasn’t overflowing with sympathy for venture capitalists (the NVCA just launched a campaign to counter what it claims are structural obstacles that discourage young companies from seeking a listing on Wall Street, hurting VC returns.)
Asked why there weren’t more IPOs even before the financial crisis took hold, the veteran Silicon Valley financier had this to say: “I think what the [venture capitalists] really don’t like are the valuations.”
Sony’s Free Realms takes on Runescape
Sony opened its online kingdom Free Realms on Wednesday – its response to the success of the browser-based role-playing game, Runescape.
Britain’s Jagex has found a lucrative market among pre-teen boys and girls for Runescape, which has similarities to the world’s most successful online role-playing game World of Warcraft.
Tellme more
Software engineers and device manufacturers continue to push up against the limits of human physiology in the search for the ultimate interface for mobile phones and other handheld mobile devices.
Thumb-operated mini-Qwerty keyboards, virtual keypads and touch interfaces may all have their place, but perhaps the most logical interface for the mobile phone is voice?
Intel sees green chips of recovery
Intel, which believes in investing during a downturn to the tune of spending $7bn on new manufacturing facilities over the next two years, is trying to persuade its customers to think the same way.
It released a survey and statistics on Tuesday that suggested investing in upgrading three or four-year-old computers will quickly pay for itself.
Twitter’s low retention rate could limit growth
The incessant media focus on Twitter (we’re guilty, too), coupled with a parade of celebrity endorsers (from Oprah to Lance) has excited enormous public interest in the micro-blogging service.
Eager to see what all the fuss is about, millions of people around the world are signing up to send their first “tweets.” Unique users of Twitter grew by more than 100 per cent in March, and are now estimated at 14m.
But it turns out most of those users are determining that the fuss isn’t about all that much, after all. A full 60 per cent of new Twitter users fail to tweet again the following month, according to Nielsen vice president of primary research David Martin.
Phorm controversy sparks up again
For a little while it looked like things were looking up for Phorm, the internet advertising technology company. There had been a year of controversy about the company’s technology which monitors internet users web surfing behaviour at the ISP level – a technique known as “deep packet inspection”, which has raised accusations of spying with some privacy activists.
But at the beginning of the year, things went quiet. There were a few positive statements about targeted advertising from UK officials like Stephen Carter, and the company launched a trial with KT, the Korean broadband provider.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Older entries
