You just know that this is not the end.

It’s like one of those bad soap operas. There’s a big family wedding coming up and the distant European cousins aren’t invited. It leads to some vicious public name-calling. Eventually everyone calms down and the cousins are invited after all, though some other guests have be thrown off the list to make room for them.

But as soon as they all get in the same room again, it won’t take long for the bad feelings to return. You just know. Continue reading "Skype soap opera set to continue"

Two weeks after the launch of Windows 7 come some early data on how it is faring with consumers (while these sales are minor in the bigger scheme of things, getting early favourable buzz going with consumers is an essential part of building momentum for the new operating system).

According to research firm NPD, purchases of the software upgrade in the US were 82 per cent higher in the first few days than they were at the launch of Vista (in dollar terms). You can put most of that down to promotional offers.

However, consumers didn’t rush out straight away to buy Windows 7 PCs (despite assurances from Steve Ballmer that new PCs will be the main driver of demand for the software). Sales of PCs were up 49 per cent from the year before, which is less than the 68 per cent year-over-year bump they got with the Vista launch. You can probably put that down to the recession.

The verdict: this vital product launch has gone off pretty smoothly (while giving Apple another chance to poke fun). But it will be a long time before 7 can be declared a success.

When it comes to deal-making, predicting what Larry Ellison will do next is never easy - which is just the way he wants it.

So what to make of the fact that Mr Ellison’s pursuit of Sun Microsystems has now reached a point few expected, with the European Commission close to drawing a line in the sand with a formal objection to the deal?

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Brussels will act to block it. But it does show that things have reached an impasse in Brussels, which at the very least means a longer delay - with further detrimental effects to Sun’s business.

Assuming neither side balks before the EC issues its objection, Mr Ellison now appears to have a number of options. Continue reading "Oracle/Sun: the plot thickens"

It’s not surprising that expectations for Google Wave got way ahead of reality. The all-purpose Web-based communication and collaboration tool is one of the most ambitious things the company has come up with this year.

So it’s also not surprising that some early users of the service, which opened for tests in September, have been critical. Robert Scoble, never one to bite his tongue, was outspoken in his own views.

When I met the Wave’s lead developers at Google in Mountain View recently they were open about the service’s shortcomings, and outlined the changes they are working on.

That is likely to start with an end to the anarchic free-for-all that lets any participant in a Wave change or delete anything another user has written. Continue reading "Google Wave: Changes coming"

It’s been apparent for some time that the spate of touch-screen smartphones now hitting the market will dent profit margins in the hottest part of the mobile business, but Wall Street seems only now to be digesting that fact.

The slumping share prices of Research in Motion and Palm over the past fortnight make this case eloquently. Two weeks ago, not coincidentally, was the weekend that Verizon began its guerrilla marketing campaign for Motorola’s Droid (see Chris Nuttall’s first impressions last week). Since then, Palm’s stock is off 35 per cent and RIM is down 20 per cent, while Motorola is up.

It’s clearly ridiculous to think that one handset can cause this much damage: what is sinking in are the implications of the much bigger wave of competition that is about to hit.

Continue reading "More smartphones, lower margins"

Will the new Droid smartphone be a hit for the anti-iPhone alliance of Motorola, Google and Verizon?

How is Carol Bartz doing in her effort to turn around Yahoo?

And what does the fading buzz around Nintendo’s Wii say about the future of the gaming business?

Listen to reporters from the FT’s San Francisco and Tokyo bureaus discuss some of this week’s big tech stories.

This event is now over - read the transcript by clicking on the link below.

Continue reading "FT techtalk - Waiting for Droid"

Sometimes it feels like every news story you read is about Apple. If it’s not the iPhone or the phantom tablet, then it’s Steve Jobs’ health.

So to make up for it, today’s headlines are being hogged by Google. There was the first appearance of the much-hyped Android 2.0 on the Droid handset, not to mention what Techcrunch called a “killer app” for the new mobile software platform: a navigation service (see item below).

But that’s not all. In other Google news: the launch of Music Search, and efforts to appease the FCC.

Continue reading "From today’s Daily Google…"

Two years ago, navigation devices of the kind that you find mounted on car dashboards were one of the hot gifts of the holiday season and the stocks of Garmin and TomTom were riding high.

Not any more. Wednesday brought a double-whammy that knocked 21 per cent off shares in TomTom and 16 per cent off Garmin. Of the two pieces of news, it was the second that sounded the more ominous.

First was a warning from TomTom that prices for these devices, which not so long ago commanded a hefty premium, are likely to continue to slide. They dropped 27 per cent in the company’s latest quarter to an average of under 100 euros, and that erosion shows no sign of slowing. Continue reading "Latest victims of Google: Garmin and TomTom?"