Bill Gates shows next Windows

Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman and chief software architect, gave software developers a preview of the next version of the Windows operating system yesterday in an effort to build support and enthusiasm for the new program.

The New York Times reports (14 September) that the commercial release of the program, known as Windows Vista, is not expected for another year, but Mr. Gates and legions of Microsoft employees are already working with developers to create software applications that will work with the new Windows.

Mr Gates promised attendees that Vista would usher in a "big wave" of sales when it was introduced, the newspaper reports.

Microsoft executives said Vista would have better connectivity with corporate servers, improved graphics and more advanced search capability to allow users to find files more easily on their hard drives.

The new version will be the first major upgrade to Microsoft's core product since the release of Windows XP in 2001.

The newspaper said that, today, Windows runs on nearly 90 percent of the world's computers and accounts for about a third of Microsoft's revenues.

In June, Microsoft said it would release Vista in the second half of 2006, and yesterday the company reaffirmed its intent to meet that schedule.

Nokia plans rival to BlackBerry

Nokia, the leading maker of mobile phones, announced Tuesday that sales were improving and that it was introducing a mobile e-mail product to compete with BlackBerry and others.

The New York Times reports (14 September) that Nokia's revenue and earnings faltered a year ago when it mismatched its products to the market, but it said sales for the three months that will end 30 Sept. should be 8.4 billion euros (US$10.3 billion) to 8.5 billion euros, compared with its previous expectations of 7.9 billion euros to 8.2 billion euros. Nokia predicted earnings of 18 to 19 cents a share, up from an earlier estimate of 14 to 17 cents.

The newspaper reports that, while the sales forecasts were not greatly different, analysts and traders reacted more to Nokia's statement that prices for its phones had been "relatively firm" since July.

For corporate customers, Nokia announced it was getting into the potentially lucrative market for business e-mail messages via cellphone. Bob Brace, Nokia's vice president for mobile enterprise solutions, said the company intended to "bring mobile e-mail to the masses."

The NYT reports that Nokia said its e-mail product, called Nokia Business Centre, is meant for workers without access to company e-mail when they are away from their office computers, a market that comprises most of the 650 million company in-boxes Nokia estimates exist around the world.

The newspaper says that mobile access to e-mail has been the successful stock in trade of the BlackBerry device made by Research in Motion. Nokia, which has been working with the mobile e-mail specialist Good Technology, also faces competition from Microsoft, Visto, Seven Networks and others in wireless corporate messaging.

Bang & Olufsen and Samsung to sell top-end phones

Danish up-market electronics firm Bang & Olufsen and Samsung Electronics will launch a jointly made mobile phone this year, with typical B&O design and high-quality sound, the firms said on Wednesday.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (14 September) that the phones will have basic communications features and little in the way of high-tech extras, Bang & Olufsen's chief executive told Reuters, adding they would target the high end of the market in terms of price and quality.

Bang & Olufsen are known for their expensive, sleekly designed art-house type televisions and home stereos.

The Reuters/NYT report says that the handsets will be launched in 17 European countries in the fourth quarter, the companies said in a joint statement.

The report adds that while most mobile phone makers are focusing on launching third-generation (3G) phones with features like video calls and downloading music, B&O said the joint venture would stick to tried-and-tested technology.

South Korea's Samsung is the world's third largest mobile phone maker after Nokia of Finland and US Motorola, and its announcement follows comments earlier this month that it aimed to become an elite brand name.

Yahoo launches test of e-mail upgrade

Yahoo on Wednesday will begin testing a sleeker version of its free e-mail service, shifting to a more dynamic design that mimics the look and feel of a computer desktop application like Microsoft's Outlook.

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (14 September) that the company plans to invite a ''sizable'' portion of its current e-mail accountholders to experiment with the retooled service, said Yahoo spokeswoman Karen Mahon, who declined to be more specific.

The AP report says that if the test goes well, all of Yahoo's e-mail users -- an audience that spans tens of millions -- eventually will be converted to the new system.

Yahoo imported most of the changes from Oddpost, an e-mail startup the company bought for an undisclosed amount last year.

According to the AP/NYT report, the overhaul, described as the most extensive since Yahoo began offering free e-mail accounts eight years ago, represents the latest salvo in a technological tug-of-war for online traffic.

AP says that for the past two years, Yahoo and its main internet rivals -- Google, AOL and Microsoft's MSN.com -- have been unveiling a series of upgrades aimed at attracting and retaining their web audiences so they remain appealing outlets for advertisers.

Google, which runs the Internet's most popular search engine, shook things up in the e-mail market last year by introducing a free service that included 250 times more storage than some of its rivals. Yahoo and MSN subsequently matched Google, which responded by more than doubling its e-mail storage limit to 2.5 gigabytes, reports AP.

Microsoft Xbox 360 aims at Sony's hold on Japan

Microsoft is making an unprecedented effort to woo Japanese gamers with its new Xbox 360 game console, but analysts say it will be lucky if it can put a dent in Sony Corp's PlayStation following.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (14 September) that even before the release of the Xbox 360, Sony has created more market buzz in Japan for its next-generation PlayStation 3 console, due in the spring.

Microsoft Chief Xbox Officer Robbie Bach dismisses surveys showing interest in his new console is still low.

Reuters says that Microosoft commented in the NYT report that the lack of success in Japan with the first Xbox was due to lack of compelling games for Japanese, not relations with retailers or even the bulky design of the first Xbox.

Analysts expect the Xbox 360 to sell better than its previous version, but they don't expect it to seriously challenge Sony's dominance of the gaming market in Japan.

US-based research firm IDC estimates that Microsoft will sell 3.5 million Xbox 360 units in Japan by 2009, compared with 8 million PlayStation 3 units.

Microsoft and Sony dominate the US$25 billion video game hardware and software market.

Google gains researcher, Microsoft wins limits

Google and Microsoft each claimed victory on Tuesday in the latest round of their bitter court dispute over a top researcher's defection to Google.

The New York Times reports (14 September) that for Google, though, the victory claim was backed by one clear-cut result: the researcher, Kai-Fu Lee, will be at work there on Wednesday.

The newspaper says that, ruling on Microsoft's request to extend a restraining order, a Seattle judge said Dr. Lee could proceed with helping to create a Google research centre in China. But the judge, Steven C. Gonzalez of King County Superior Court, restricted him from working on some of his specialties - search and language technologies - or using information acquired while a Microsoft vice president.

According to the NYT, the dispute is an extension of the companies' increasing rivalry on each other's software turf, with Google offering a growing array of software programs and utilities that impinge on Microsoft's monopolies and Microsoft trying to gain ground in the search engine market.

Their animosity has grown more acute, or at least more evident, since Google announced in July that it was hiring Dr. Lee, a Chinese computer scientist who established a Microsoft research center in China and more recently worked at Microsoft headquarters on speech recognition technology, says the newspaper.

The NYT report says that the judge's ruling does not end the legal battle. A trial is scheduled to begin in Seattle in January in a Microsoft lawsuit seeking broad application of a noncompete clause in its contract with Dr. Lee.

IBM bulks up integration line

IBM is expected to expand its server software line with a handful of integration and workflow-related products.

The New York Times reports (13 September) that the company plans to introduce two integration servers, called WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and WebSphere Process Server. The software pulls data from various sources and tracks different steps in a business process, according to a company representative. ESB is a loosely defined term to describe integration servers that rely on industry standard messaging formats.

According to the newspaper, in addition, IBM plans to introduce a development tool geared specifically for writing programs that move data between systems, called WebSphere Integration Developer. IBM's Global Services division has also developed professional services for building software that conforms to a service-oriented architecture, or SOA, an increasingly popular software design approach that relies heavily on standards-based integration tools, the report says.

The NYT report says that analysts expect corporate customers to spend tens of millions of dollars on infrastructure software for building and running SOAs.

In the battle to win over customers, IBM is competing against other large providers, including Oracle, BEA Systems, SAP and Microsoft, which is detailing its SOA strategy at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week, said the NYT report.

Nokia taking mobile e-mail to corporate masses

Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, said it was launching a corporate e-mail system to allow workers at almost any level to send and receive mail from their mobiles.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (13 September) that Nokia Business Centre, as the new e-mail system is to be known, seeks to bridge the gap between the world's 650 million corporate e-mail accounts and the elite of about 10 million who have mobile access to their business e-mail inboxes.

The Finnish group, long expected to push into a market which brought success to Research in Motion's (RIM) Blackberry devices, said it wanted to make e-mail more cost-effective and available on a wider range of phones.

Reuters says in the NYT report that firms from software giant Microsoft to e-mail management groups Visto, Seven, Good Technology, and Intellisync are jumping in to the market pioneered by RIM.

According to the Reuters/NYT report, Nokia's e-mail system comes in two modes. A standard version gives office staff basic read/write access to e-mail.

A professional version integrates directly into a company's corporate network directory, giving people direct access to their e-mail on their mobile device in the same way they would expect to use it on their office computer. It also allows the mobile worker to handle hefty e-mail attachments.

Reuters says that the standard version comes free when a company purchases a server license, according to the company. Each server license covers 400 people and is priced at 1,800 euros.

The professional version requires a company to pay an additional one-time fee, per user, of 55 euros, giving them a perpetual license for each office worker. The cost per user for Blackberry licenses ranges from two to four times as much.

Nintendo's new Game Boy Micro's solid debut

Nintendo's new mobile phone-sized game console, Game Boy Micro, attracted better-than-expected orders on its debut on Tuesday, though less than Game Boy Advance SP had done, retailers said.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (13 September) that Nintendo, known for software titles featuring characters such as Mario, Donkey Kong and Pokemon, launched what it said was the world's smallest console in Japan a week before the US launch with a price tag of 12,000 yen.

Nintendo dominates the portable game industry with a market share of about 94 percent, and aims to strengthen its grip with the Micro as it goes up against Sony's PlayStation Portable.

The Reuters/NYT report says that Sony will introduce new white consoles in Japan on Thursday in an effort to boost sales. Previously the consoles were only available in black.

Nintendo, based in the western Japan city of Kyoto, hopes to draw women, casual gamers -- those unwilling or unable to spend hours playing games -- and older players with the new compact and stylish device.

Local retailers, including Japan's biggest discount home electronics retailer, Yamada Denki Co., said the Micro was enjoying solid orders. An electronics store clerk in Tokyo said it received advance orders for 70 percent of its Micro stock, mostly for the limited edition.

Orders were brisk but less than when the Game Boy Advance SP made its debut in 2003, the clerk said. The store sold all of the SP consoles through advance orders at the launch.

According to Reuters, Japan's video game hardware and software market has shrunk 30 percent to US$4 billion since 2000, according to the Computer Entertainment Supplier's Association.

Nintendo aims to sell 4 million units of the Micro worldwide by the end of its business year to next March.

Nintendo plans to release the Micro in Europe on 4 November in silver, pink, green and blue, at a recommended price of 99 euros, while US versions, due on 19 September for US$99, will be available in black and silver with three removable faceplates.

Reuters reports that Nintendo said in May it expected to sell a total of 10.2 million Game Boy Advance devices worldwide this business year, including Game Boy Micro.

Wallet phones for Asia

Japanese and South Korean mobile operators are betting future revenue growth on wallet phones -- handsets with embedded chips that allow electronic payments -- but the technology may be slow to take off in the rest of Asia.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (12 September) that whether the service enjoys the same demand as in Japan and South Korea will depend on the level of security and degree of participation by retailers, banks, content providers and the public transport system, according to one analyst.

DoCoMo, Japan's largest cellular operator, was the first to launch a wallet phone in June last year.

The handset contains Sony's FeliCa radio frequency identification (RFID) chip that enables electronic money transactions, identification and ticketing.

DoCoMo, whose name is a play on the Japanese word for ''everywhere,'' has sold over 5 million wallet phones, and over a quarter of users have used the service at least once.

The Reuters/NYT report says that about 20,000 stores have installed the equipment to allow customers to make payments using their phones, and DoCoMo hopes to increase this figure to 1-2 million eventually.

Smaller rivals KDDI and Vodafone K.K. are also expected to offer wallet phones later this year.

According to Reuters, East Japan Railway plans to launch a service on 1 January that would allow users to enter fare gates by passing their handsets embedded with smart chips over a scanner.

SK Telecom, South Korea's top mobile operator, offers a range of so-called MONETA services, where chip-mounted cell phones are used for credit card transactions, transport fee payments, cash withdrawals and stock trading. As of August, SK Telecom had sold 4.9 million MONETA-enabled handsets and its subscriber base stood at more than 19 million.

Reuters says that South Korea's second-largest mobile operator, KTF Co., which offers similar financial transactions for its subscribers, expects monthly revenues of US$2 million from its mobile commerce services in 3 years.

Matsushita to sell more displays to rivals

Matsushita Electric Industrial plans to sell more of its plasma displays to other TV makers next year, a senior executive said on Tuesday, as it aims to boost display output and take market share from rivals.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (13 September) that Matsushita is the world's largest seller of plasma TVs through its Panasonic brand, but it trails Samsung SDI in panel shipments because its South Korean competitor sells more panels to other TV manufacturers.

The company said it currently supplies a little more than 10 percent of its panels to other companies, but would like to see that percentage above 20 percent when a new plant at Amagasaki is up and running at full capacity next year.

Reuters reports that Fujita said the new factory in Hyogo prefecture, western Japan, would start production by the end of September. Matsushita had previously said the start could be in September or October.

Fujitsu's robot on wheels going on sale

Japanese electronics maker Fujitsu is bringing a robot to market which is equipped with voice recognition capabilities, cameras and sensors. The 4-foot tall robot on wheels will go on sale for 6 million yen (US$54,000) each in Japan in November.

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (13 September) that Tokyo-based Fujitsu plans to sell about 20 or 30 of the robots, called ''enon'' (pronounced EH-nohn), which stands for ''exciting nova on network,'' and already has received 10 orders. The price tag covers just the machine, and software programs cost extra. Fujitsu refused to estimate software costs.

The AP report says that Enon can find itself around in an office or store, based on a map programmed inside its computer brain, move at a slow pace of up 1.86 miles an hour, and picks up things as heavy as 1.1 pounds. Its mechanical arms have paws at the end that can grip objects.

According to the AP/NYT report, Japan boasts one of the most advanced robot industries in the world. Industrial robots are widely used in plants, including those of automakers Toyota and Nissan. Toyota and Honda are also developing robots for entertainment and robotics research.

Fujitsu is among a burgeoning number of Japanese makers counting on a market for service robots like enon, where software solutions will drive the business rather than sophisticated machinery, AP adds.

The report says that Fujitsu foresees the worldwide service robot market as growing to 100 billion yen (US$907 million) by 2010. It wants enon to become a mass-produced product in a year or so, and hopes to lower its price to 2 million yen (US$18,000).

CNN and Time magazines combine web sites

CNN and Time, both units of the Time Warner media conglomerate, said Monday they would combine their business and financial web sites and relaunch them next January under a single banner.

The Associated Press reports (12 September) the new site will keep the name www.cnnmoney.com, which currently features business news from CNN and from Money magazine, one of Time's magazines.

Beginning in January, the combined site will also carry material from Time's other business-focused magazines -- Fortune, Fortune Small Business and Business 2.0. The freestanding web sites of those magazines -- Fortune.com, FSB.com and Business2.com -- will also be rolled into the new site.

AP reports that the site will carry daily business news as well as market coverage and analytical stories by staff. It will also carry material produced by the CNN and Time business-related magazines.

14,000 Telstra jobs at risk

The Regiaster in the UK reports (13 September) that there are fears that as many as 14,000 telecoms jobs could be axed in Australia following the privatisation of incumbent telco Telstra.

According to The Register report, The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has called on Telstra management and the Government to release a confidential 104-page document which it says details the job cuts and other cost cutting measures.

The union is concerned that in a bid to cut overheads and maximise profits for shareholders, the quality of Telstra's service will dip especially in rural areas. It has also raised concerns about whether other jobs will be offshored to countries such as India and China.

The Register says that the matter is deemed so serious the Australian Stock Exchange is now investigating following the intervention of opposition politician Senator Stephen Conroy.

The publication also reports that, in a statement the telco said: "Telstra has not taken any decision to cut 10,000 jobs as stated by Senator Conroy or 14,000 as reported in the media."

Intel cans US$700m Indian plant-report

Intel will not be building a US$700 million wafer-testing plant in India, a local newspaper has claimed.

The Register reports (13 September) that, according to Indian business-oriented daily, the Business Standard, Intel put the plans for the plant on hold after it failed to gain tax concessions from the Indian government.

The paper attributed the claim to an unnamed Intel official, who said:

"The company conveyed to the government last week that it would not be able to make the investment as the project would not be viable without the tax concessions. The company, however, said it would explore opportunities in the future."

The Register reports that negotiations between Intel and the Indian government emerged in March, when Dayanidhi Maran, India's minister for information technology and communications, claimed Intel was close to a decision on siting the facility in India. The country has been on Intel's list of possible plant sites for some time, as former CEO Craig Barrett admitted in November 2004. The chip giant already has a number of software development and R&D facilities in the sub-continent.

According to The Register, in July the Business Standard claimed, however, that the talks were faltering. Citing government sources, the paper claimed Intel had asked India to fork out US$100m up front - a payment the nation appears unwilling to make. Intel is also negotiating for tax-beaks and other incentives, all of which are part and parcel of major plant plans.

News Corporation on web buying spree

The News Corporation has been giving new meaning to the term e-commerce: the company has been on an online buying spree, spending nearly US$1.5 billion on three internet companies in just the last seven weeks.

The New York Times reports (9 September) that its swiftness in agreeing to pay US$650 million to buy IGN Entertainment, an internet game and entertainment site, in a deal announced yesterday, underscored just how serious - one of his executives says "obsessed" - the chairman, Rupert Murdoch, is about replicating in cyberspace the kind of power he has in media arenas like British newspapers, Hollywood and cable television news.

According to the newspaper, executives involved in the deal said that as of Tuesday, Mr. Murdoch and Peter Chernin, the News Corporation's president, were informed by the head of their newly created interactive media division that IGN, with whom they had held intermittent talks since March, was on the verge of being sold to Viacom. (A Viacom spokesman declined to comment.)

The newspaper says that Mr. Murdoch was told that he would have only a short time to come up with a counterbid, but if he agreed to pay US$650 million the company would be his. Within 36 hours, he and Mr. Chernin had met with Mark Jung, IGN's chief executive, in New York, brought in bankers and lawyers, and agreed to the terms. "They got wind that we had been in other conversations, and moved heaven and earth to get a deal done," said Michael A. Kumin of Great Hill Partners, IGN's largest shareholder, who handled the negotiations.

According to the NYT report. Mr. Murdoch has said he is willing to spend up to US$2 billion on internet acquisitions, and in addition to IGN has recently acquired Intermix Media, the parent of the popular social networking site MySpace.com, for US$580 million and Scout Media, a sports site, for US$60 million. This weekend, Mr. Murdoch is holding an internet meeting for his top managers from around the world near his ranch in Carmel, California, where he is expected to discuss the progress the company has made since a similar gathering in February.

The newspaper says that what they will hear is that the purchases of MySpace and IGN in particular represented the best opportunities the company identified for quickly bolstering its presence online, when measured in terms of internet traffic. Mr. Murdoch has been particularly concerned about younger audiences spending less time reading newspapers and watching television, while spending more time online and embracing such features as interactivity and virtual communities.

The NYT says that when the deals close, traffic across all of News Corporation's internet properties - which include the web sites of dozens of newspapers and scores of TV stations it owns - will have increased to nearly 70 million unique monthly users from fewer than 25 million. According to Merrill Lynch, the estimated 12 billion monthly page views News Corporation will generate with IGN will rank it fourth among all companies online, behind Yahoo, Time Warner and MSN, but ahead of eBay and Google.

The company's challenge now, Mr. Chernin said, is figuring out how to integrate its new online businesses with one another as well as the huge amount of content the company owns and produces.

The newspaper reports that both Mr. Chernin and Mr. Murdoch are now spending much of their time on internet strategy, though the internet represented a small fraction of the company's US$23.8 billion in annual revenues last year.
News Corporation's online strategy this time around differs from its previous efforts. Rather than taking small stakes in promising start-ups, it is focusing on buying companies outright that are somewhat proven and generating operating earnings.

The Internet strategy is being handled by a new division called Fox Interactive Media, based in Los Angeles and led by Ross Levinsohn, a former executive at Foxsports.com. Mr. Levinsohn said Mr. Murdoch tapped him several months ago to come up with an online strategy and advised him to "think about where we should be in 10 years and work your way backwards."

Mr. Levinsohn came up with a list of eight internet companies that he believed could be potential acquisition targets or partners; with IGN, the company has acquired three of them, reports the NYT.

EBay in talks to buy Skype

EBay is in negotiations to acquire Skype Technologies, the internet phone company that has been the object of much merger speculation, for US$2 billion to US$3 billion, two people involved in the negotiations said yesterday.

The New York Times reports (9 September) that the talks are highly tentative and could fall apart, these people said, speaking on the condition that they not be identified because the talks are continuing. These people also noted that Skype has wavered about selling or pursuing an initial public offering and has held merger discussions with the News Corporation and Microsoft only to abandon those talks.

According to the newspaper, an acquisition of Skype would enable eBay to enter the rapidly growing market for internet-based phone service. Cable providers and Bell companies are expanding quickly into that field, as are eBay rivals like Microsoft and Google.

Skype allows users who download its software and register for its service to talk to one another free over the internet through their PC's. About two million Skype customers have signed up for a premium pay service that allows them to use their PC's to make calls to regular phone numbers as well as receive calls from regular phones.

The NYT reports that last month, Google announced a service similar to Skype's free service called Google Talk, and Microsoft said it was acquiring Teleo, a San Francisco company that allows users to call conventional phones from their PC's. The discussions between eBay and Skype were first reported in The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal yesterday.

According to the NYT, an acquisition of Skype would be eBay's biggest purchase since it bought the Internet Auction Company of South Korea in 2004 for US$4.3 billion. EBay has been aggressively acquiring companies, many of them overseas, as it reaches beyond its core online auction business.

China Telecom seeks to block VoIP

China Telecom, the nation's largest fixed-line operator, is looking at ways to block phone calls made over the internet such as the popular service offered by Skype, according to media reports.

The Associated Press reports (9 September) that Skype Technologies SA's free software lets people talk for free over the internet using computers and microphones. It can also be used to call land lines for a fee. Such services threaten the business of fixed-line phone operators.

According to the AP/NYT report, China Telecom wants to prevent users in China from logging on to Skype's server, the newspaper Beijing Business Today reported on its web site.

It is also trying to monitor and control online data volume, so if someone is making a phone call over a China Telecom broadband connection it will be disconnected, the report said.

The report says that China Telecom expects these controls will be ready in 2006 or 2007, it added.

An operator at Shenzhen Telecom -- a branch of China Telecom in the southern city of Shenzhen -- said Saturday that downloading software for voice over internet calls is not allowed by Shenzhen Telecom.

Operators at Beijing Telecom and Shanghai Telecom -- other China Telecom branches -- said they had heard of no such restrictions., reports AP

Sony takes on iPod with new Walkman

Sony said Thursday that it would sell advanced Walkman portable music players this year, aiming to move out of Apple Computer's shadow in a market that Sony created a quarter of a century ago.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (9 September) that the announcement came hours after Apple introduced the pencil-thin iPod nano digital player and a long-anticipated mobile phone that plays music in a bid to extend its domination of the market.

Sony, which created the portable music market with its cassette-playing Walkmans, has lost out to Apple in the portable digital era as it focused on its mainstay CD and Mini Disc players.

The Reuters/NYT report says that Sony will offer two music players based on hard disks - one with a storage capacity of 20 gigabytes and the other with 6 gigabytes - and three flash- memory-based players that will keep the existing models' perfume bottle appearance.

The 6-gigabyte model is Sony's first hard-disk player with a small capacity. Apple's iPod nano comes in 2- and 4-gigabyte capacities.

According to the Reuters report, Sony's new models will add the ability to select and play the songs a user listens to most, and also to pick songs released in a certain year - a function Sony calls the "time machine shuffle."

The models will go on sale in Japan on 19 November and overseas by the end of the year.

Reuters says that Sony aims to sell 4.5 million hard-disk and flash-memory portable music players in the year to next March, up from 850,000 a year earlier.

Apple has sold about 22 million iPods worldwide in four years.

13 nations urge open technology standards

In a report to be presented today at the World Bank, a group that includes senior government officials from 13 countries will urge nations to adopt open-information technology standards as a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation.

The New York Times report (9 September) that the 33-page report is a road map for creating national policies on open technology standards, and comes at a time when several countries - and some state governments - are pursuing plans to reduce their dependence on proprietary software makers, notably Microsoft, by using more free, open-source software.

The newspaper reports that the project, begun by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School, gathered government officials from China, India, Thailand, Denmark, Jordan, Brazil and elsewhere at a three-day meeting in Silicon Valley in February to discuss technology standards and economic development. The meeting was followed by e-mail exchanges, conference calls and postings on a shared web site.

The group defines an open standard as technology that is not owned by a single company and is openly published. Still, there is a huge debate in industry and among policy makers about how far openness should go.

According to the NYT, the report makes clear that government policy should "mandate technology choice, not software development models."

It also points out that open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software. Open source is a development model for software in which code is freely shared and improved by a cooperative network of programmers.

But, says the NYT, even so, the spread of open-source software in recent years has probably been the most striking example of the benefits of openly sharing information technology to reduce costs and make it easier for users themselves to innovate.

The newspaper says that even though the report did not name any companies, Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, has been the prime target of open-source advocates. And the Berkman Center sought support from IBM and Oracle, two Microsoft rivals, to help pay for the three-day conference. Both are champions of Linux, the popular open-source operating system that is an alternative to Windows from Microsoft. (Microsoft is a corporate sponsor of the Berkman Center.)

The report adds that in the last few years, Microsoft has been an active participant in internet and web groups that have developed standards so that data can be shared by different software programs. That allows the information - about a person or bank account, say - to be exchanged, but the digital equivalent of the envelope carrying the information can be proprietary.

The newspaper says that at the World Bank, the interest in open standards mostly involves using them as a tool to help stimulate economic growth in developing countries.

Intel: strong chip demand causing tight supplies

Intel, the world's largest semiconductor maker, reported yesterday that demand for its chips remained strong and that last year's problem of excess inventory had now become one of short supply.

The New York Times reports (9 September) that the company said it continued to see double-digit growth, driven primarily by demand for notebook computers based on its Centrino chips. It also said it expected to fall short of meeting chip demand through the fourth quarter.

According to the newspaper, in its midquarter update, the company said revenue for the quarter ending 1 October would be US$9.8 billion to US$10 billion. The forecast was squarely in line with that of analysts, who projected sales of US$9.92 billion and earnings of 36 cents a share, according to Thomson First Call. Intel does not provide earnings guidance.

The NYT reported that Intel also narrowed its forecast for gross margin slightly, to about 60 percent for the third quarter, plus or minus one percentage point.

The newspaper says that the report was in stark contrast to Intel's situation last year, when it was swollen with inventory and faced a host of technical problems. These days, Mr. Bryant said, the company was constrained by its manufacturing capacity, and was selling as many chips as it makes.

Intel's report came just as Texas Instruments, the largest supplier of chips used in mobile phones, also reported strong demand for its products. The company raised estimates for the third quarter, saying it expected third-quarter profit to be 36 cents to 38 cents a share, compared with its previous estimate of 31 cents to 35 cents a share.

The company predicted revenue would be US$3.48 billion to US$3.62 billion, up from its previous forecast of US$3.29 billion to US$3.56 billion.

HP to cut 6,000 jobs in Europe

US computer giant Hewlett-Packard will shed 6,000 jobs in Europe with more than half the cuts in France, Germany and Britain, a union official said on Friday.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (9 September) that an HP spokesman said some 1,250 to 1,300 jobs would go in France and 145 in Belgium.

A spokesman for HP in California said the company had no comment. The group has a total of around 151,000 employees.

The Reuters/NYT report says that the news emerged as European finance ministers were meeting in Manchester, England, where Britain's Gordon Brown urged action to make Europe a ``high growth, low unemployment'' area instead of a continent plagued by low growth and high unemployment.

The report says that Hewlett-Packard has plants or offices in Grenoble, Isle d'Ableau and Sophia-Antipolis in France, Boebingen, Herrenberg and Ratingen in Germany and Bracknell, Bristol, Erskine, Glasgow, Reading and Swindon in the UK.

It also has sites in Brussels, Amstelveen in the Netherlands, Milan, Barcelona and Dublin and Galway in Ireland.

Reuters reports that Hewlett-Packard said in July it would slash about 10 percent of its work force in a sweeping move by new Chief Executive Mark Hurd to cut costs by US$1.9 billion a year and compete better in cutthroat computer and printer markets.

PalmSource stock price skyrockets

Shares of PalmSource, maker of the Palm operating system for handheld computers, surged 78 percent on Friday on news that the Japanese software company Access Co. had agreed to pay US$324 million for it.

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (9 September) that the news had some analysts wondering how PalmSource, which has failed to excite investors since Palm spun it off two years ago, could draw such an offer.

The AP/NYT report says that Access was offering US$18.50 for each share of PalmSource common stock, an 83 percent premium to the stock's Thursday closing price of US$10.09 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

According to the report, PalmSource has seen its market share erode since its separation from Palm Inc., a darling of the tech investors in the high-flying 1990s. Microsoft and Symbian have in recent months gained in handheld operating systems.

Nevertheless, more than 45 companies worldwide have licensed PalmSource software. More than 39 million mobile devices run on the Palm OS.

New Google 'evangelist' to spread applications

The New York Times reports (9 September) that with a billion users and counting, the internet hardly seems to need an evangelist.

Yet "chief internet evangelist" is precisely the title chosen by Vinton G. Cerf for his new job at Google.

The newspaper says that Google announced on Thursday that Dr. Cerf would be leaving MCI, where he is senior vice president for technology strategy, to be one of a dozen or so vice presidents working closely with Eric E. Schmidt, Google's chief executive, as the company continues to move beyond its roots as an internet search engine.

According to the NYT, Dr. Cerf, 62, is best known for the early work he did on the internet, and its precursor, the Arpanet. Together with Robert Kahn, a fellow computer scientist, Dr. Cerf in 1973 sketched out a set method, or protocol, for allowing different, isolated computer networks to talk to one another. The protocol, which paved the way for today's internet, is called Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP.

Dr. Cerf spent 11 years at MCI, with an eight-year break to work with Dr. Kahn on internet infrastructure issues at the Corporation for National Research Initiatives. While at MCI in the early 1980's, Dr. Cerf devised MCI Mail, an early e-mail program.

The newspaper says that his hiring is the latest in a string a successful high-profile recruiting efforts on Google's part. Rob Pike, a high-level software engineer, was recruited from Bell Labs in November 2002. Louis Monier, who oversaw research and development at eBay, went to Google this summer. And Kai-Fu Lee, a former Microsoft vice president, joined Google in July, prompting Microsoft to file a lawsuit that is now in court.

Yahoo founder explains China e-mail move

Yahoo had to comply with a demand by Chinese authorities to provide information about a personal e-mail of a journalist who was later convicted under state secrecy laws and sentenced to 10 years in prison, the company's co-founder Jerry Yang said Saturday.

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (10 September) that Yang, responding to questions during an internet forum, said he could not discuss the details of the case involving Shi Tao, a former writer for the financial publication Contemporary Business News.

Overseas-based human rights groups disclosed days earlier that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., part of Yahoo's global network, provided e-mail account information that helped lead to Shi's conviction.

Yahoo earlier defended its move, saying it was obliged to comply with Chinese laws and regulations.

AP reports that the demand for the information was a ''legal order'' and Yahoo gets such requests from law enforcement agencies all the time, and not just in China, Yang told the forum.

According to the AP/NYT report, despite government information sharing requirements and other restrictions, Yahoo and its major rivals have been expanding their presence in mainland China in hopes of reaching more of the country's fast-growing population of Internet users, which now number more than 100 million.

Yahoo paid US$1 billion for a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, host of the Hangzhou conference, last month.

The Reuters report says that the case is the latest instance in which a prominent high-tech company has faced accusations of cooperating with Chinese authorities to gain favor in a country that's expected to become an Internet gold mine.

Yahoo and two of its biggest rivals, Google and Microsoft's MSN, previously have come under attack for censoring online news sites and web logs, or blogs, featuring content that China's communist government wants to suppress.

US rejects Cisco plan on options

The Securities and Exchange Commission threw cold water yesterday on a plan being pushed by Cisco Systems to value employee stock options by selling similar securities to institutional investors. But the agency said other market-based approaches might work.

The New York Times reports (10 September) that Christopher Cox, the new chairman of the commission, announced the conclusions of the staff but sought to encourage further private- sector efforts to value options. The effort has taken on new urgency since an accounting rule on the issue went into effect this year requiring companies to report the value of options granted to employees as an expense, the newspaper adds.

According to the newspaper, the commission's economists suggested two ways of using markets to value the options, but Donald Nicolaisen, the commission's chief accountant, said he doubted that those methods would be embraced quickly by any companies. Cisco said it would keep looking for such a plan, but a spokeswoman said the company would not comment on the plans suggested by the SEC.

One such plan would involve finding buyers who would, in effect, agree to accept the same returns that options holders as a group receive. Such investors would not have the ability to time when the options were exercised, and would suffer by having options forfeited, as some of the employees with options quit before they could exercise the options, reports the NYT.

The NYT report says that the other plan backed by the economists would essentially involve a company paying a third party to take on its risk of having to issue shares to employees who exercise options. That is unlikely to be embraced because it could be highly costly.

The commission's Bureau of Economic Analysis rejected the idea of selling restricted options to institutional investors, as Cisco had proposed, and using their value to estimate the value of the options issued by the company.

Former HP chief dies

Lewis E. Platt, who rose from an entry-level engineer to become the chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, died on Thursday at his home in California. He was 64.

His death was announced by the company, which did not give a cause.

The New York Times reports (10 September) that during his tenure as chief of Hewlett-Packard from 1992-99, Mr. Platt was known for his low-key management style, straightforward manner and an engineering attitude applied to the executive suite.

The newspaper says that under Mr. Platt, Hewlett-Packard, the computer and printer company, prospered in the 1990's, but it seemed slow to recognise the rise of the internet and did not benefit as much as most of its competitors from the resulting investment boom. To try to make Hewlett-Packard a more nimble company, Mr. Platt spun off the medical instruments business, which is where he began his career.

Court rules barcode scanner patents invalid

A federal appeals court on Friday upheld a lower court ruling that struck down barcode scanning patents claimed by the estate of late inventor Jerome Lemelson.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (9 September) that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sided with a federal judge in Nevada, who concluded in January 2004 that the patents held by Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation LP were invalid and unenforceable.

The report says that the appeals court ruling is a victory for a consortium of companies, led by barcode technology companies like Symbol Technologies (SBL.N), who mounted a legal challenge to the Lemelson patents.

Apple unveils a new IPod and a phone music player

Apple moved on Wednesday to extend its dominance over the digital music marketplace, introducing a compact iPod called the nano and confirming a widely reported digital music partnership with Motorola and Cingular.

The New York Times reports (8 September) that, with his usual showmanship, Apple's chairman, Steven P. Jobs, saved the introduction of the new solid-state version of the iPod for last, slipping it from the change pocket of his blue jeans at the end of a press event at the Moscone Convention Center here.

The iPod nano, which stores either 500 or 1,000 songs and is priced at US$199 and US$249, is intended to replace an existing model, the iPod Mini. The new device will be available in the United States, Japan and Europe this week.

The newspaper reports thhat, in an interview after his presentation, he called the new player, which is one of the industry's smallest, a "bold gamble."

By replacing the Mini, which accounts for more than half of all iPods currently sold, the company risked a huge revenue shortfall if the new product had been delayed, Mr. Jobs said. Despite that risk, he said, the nano reflects several innovations.

The NYT reported that Mr Jobs focused on the shift away from the small disk-drive storage device used in the iPod Mini to the solid-state flash memory at the heart of the nano. He said the custom chips and the miniaturized circuit board used in the nano had also been potential stumbling blocks.

Several analysts said that Apple had moved the introduction of the nano ahead to ensure it would be widely available for the holiday season.

The newspaper adds that most of the event on Wednesday was devoted to the unveiling of a Motorola cellphone called the Rokr E1 (pronounced rocker), which will incorporate Apple's iTunes music software and be capable of storing 100 songs. The phone, long anticipated, will be available exclusively on the Cingular Wireless network in the United States.

The phone, which will sell for US$250, has a color display, but requires that songs be downloaded from an iTunes-equipped personal computer by a U.S.B. cable. Cingular will not offer an iTunes service for buying songs directly over a cellphone connection.

The NYT reported that, in what appeared to be a direct challenge to the music industry, which has been struggling with him behind the scenes over Apple's growing influence in the music world, Mr. Jobs outlined in detail the strength of his digital music business.

He said Apple had sold half a billion digital songs and had 85 percent of the world market for digital music sales. The iTunes music service is now available in 20 countries, he said.

The newspaper said Mr Jobs noted that Apple had sold 6.2 million iPods of all models in the third quarter, comparing that figure to Sony's PlayStation Portable game machine, which sold two million during the same period.

Sony to offer advanced Walkmans to tackle iPod

Sony said on Thursday it would sell advanced Walkman portable music players later this year, aiming to move out of Apple Computer's shadow in a market the Japanese company created a quarter of a century ago.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (8 September) that the announcement comes hours after Apple unveiled the pencil-thin ``iPod nano'' digital player and a long-anticipated mobile phone that plays music in a bid to extend its domination of the market.

Sony, which created the portable music market 26 years ago with its now-legendary cassette-playing Walkmans, has lost out to Apple in the portable digital era as it focused on its mainstay CD and Mini Disc players, reports Reuters.

Sony will offer two hard disk-based music players -- one with a storage capacity of 20 gigabytes (GB) and the other with 6 GB -- and three flash memory-based players that will keep the existing models' perfume bottle appearance.

The Reuters/NYT report says that Sony's new models will add the ability to automatically select and play the songs a user listens to most, and also to pick songs released in a certain year -- a function Sony calls the ``time machine shuffle.''

The new models will go on sale in Japan on November 19 and Sony, which introduced the first Walkman in July 1979, aims to launch them overseas by the end of the year.

According to reuters, Sony aims to sell a total of 4.5 million hard disk and flash memory portable music players in the year to next March, up from 850,000 units a year earlier.

Apple has sold about 22 million iPods worldwide since their introduction in October 2001, making it by far the most widely used player in a market that research firm In-Stat expects to nearly quadruple to 104 million units a year by 2009.

Ruling in Microsoft, Google case expected

A Washington state judge said he would rule on Tuesday whether a top Microsoft executive who defected to rival Google can perform the job Google hired him for until his case goes to trial in January.

The Associated Press reports (7 September) that Kai-Fu Lee, who joined Microsoft in 2000, joined Google in July to lead Google's expansion into China.

Microsoft has sued Lee and Google, contending that Lee's job at Google would violate the terms of the noncompete agreement, which prohibits him from doing similar work for a rival for a year. Microsoft also accuses Lee of using insider information to get his job at Google.

The AP/NYT report says that, in a hearing that concluded Wednesday, Microsoft asked Superior Court Judge Steven Gonzalez to restrict what work Lee can do for Google until its lawsuit goes to trial early next year.

Google's immediate, stated reasons for hiring Lee were to have him create an engineering office in China, but Lee is also an expert in computer recognition of language -- an important field for search engines such as Google, reports AP.

Texas Instruments will offer a video technology platform

The New York Times reports (8 September) that Texas Instruments succeeded in transforming itself from the best-known maker of calculators to the largest seller of chips for cellphones, and now it wants to repeat that success in the market for video chips.

The newspapere says that the company plans to announce an all-in-one video chip technology that will make it easier for electronics producers to design and manufacture video products including digital cameras, video phones and portable media players.

According to the NYT, Texas Instruments' chief executive, Richard K. Templeton, said in an interview that digital video products are now limited by short battery life, long development time and high price. Texas Instruments' new video technology, called Da Vinci, aims to solve those problems by providing manufacturers with an integrated set of chips, software and development tools. This approach, it said, could help keep production costs down while ensuring that devices are compatible.

As the third-largest semiconductor company, Texas Instruments supplies nearly 60 percent of the chips for cellphones. It expects to have Da Vinci technology, including processors, software and tools, ready to market by the end of the year.

The newspaper says that in an era when companies are increasingly selling technology "platforms," rather than individual components, Texas Instruments' approach with Da Vinci is no surprise to analysts. Its announcement is coming two weeks after Intel announced its own new platform for digital home electronics, called Viiv. With Viiv, which will be marketed in the first half of 2006, Intel hopes to make it easier for users to share digital content over networks and make their personal computers compatible with other electronic devices.

HP chief Hurd sees "lot of work" to change company

Less than six months after taking over at Hewlett-Packard, Chief Executive Mark Hurd on Wednesday said there's still ``a lot of work to do.''

Reuters reports in The New York Times (7 September) that Hurd said that Hewlett-Packard managers need to take more responsibility for their business areas. In the past, they've turned to the chief executive to resolve conflicts, he said. ''We have got to get accountability and responsibility lower down in the organisation,'' he added.

Hurd, 48, was appointed chief executive April 1 after the company pushed out Fiorina, whose US$19 billion acquisition of Compaq Computer never produced the results she promised.

Reuters says that HP, the world's No. 2 computer maker, is shedding 14,500 jobs to cut annual costs by US$1.9 billion and boost profits.

Parental software to detect Dutch illegal file sharing

Dutch anti piracy organisation BREIN is to release free parental software on 22 September, that will detect file sharing programs such as Kazaa or illegal media files on PCs.

The Register reports (8 September) that the software will not be able to remove those files - parents have to do this manually if they wish.

According to The Register, BREIN says that the software is basically a public awareness campaign. Too many youngster do not seem to realise that it is illegal to make copyrighted music available online for others to download and that illegal file sharing is hurting the music and movie business, BREIN director Tim Kuik explains. The website where the free software can be downloaded is owned by Dutch entertainment industry organisation NVPI.

The Register reports that just recently, BREIN lost a court case against five Dutch ISPs who refused to hand over the names of 42 suspected song swappers. BREIN had hired US company Media Sentry, which monitors popular online forums and file sharing services for copyright infringement, to gather evidence against the file swappers.

However, according to the Dutch Data Protection Authority (CBP) the collection and storage of IP addresses is only legitimate if BREIN handled it themselves.

The Register says that free parental software could do this laborious job for BREIN perfectly, though the organisation insists that no information will be send back to its headquarters.

Sun tries to tempt thousands with reworked partner program

Sun Microsystems hopes to expand the number of ISVs building applications on Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris by 30 per cent before next summer following an overhaul of its iForce partner program, according to a report in The Register (7 SDeptember).

The Register says that Sun's goal is to grow its Solaris 8 partner network to 10,000 independent software vendors (ISVs) during the next year, following the diversification of the marketing, sales and development resources available to partners in the Sun ecosystem.

The company revealed its roadmap as it announced an important new tool to help it achieve the expanded number of developers - the Partner Advantage Program that replaces Sun's established iForce program.

The Register reported that the Partner Advantage Program will make 500 Sun internal training courses available, see rollout of technical readiness assessments, deliver expanded sales and marketing resources, and enable Sun's executives to participate in partners' sales engagements.

Partners will qualify for resources according to a four-tiered structure, where ISVs are categorised as either members, associates, principles or executive-level partners. Members are those who want more information about Sun products, associates are those who put their applications on just one Sun product like Solaris 10 on x64, and associates are ISVs who base their applications on multiple Sun technologies.

The Register adds that executive members are nominated by Sun based on their use of its technology, and get joint collateral along with early access to pre-release editions of Sun products.

Microsoft eyes a business niche

Microsoft said yesterday that it planned to announce today a new strategy for selling software to medium-size business, including a revamped collection of programs that would handle specific jobs. The new software programs will be released starting this fall (US) and through next year.

The New York Times reports (7 September) that Microsoft long ago identified midsize businesses as growth opportunities, but today's announcement indicates that the company sees this market as increasingly important.

The newspaper says that in the new suite of programs, called Microsoft Dynamics, the company will include features for some 50 business tasks and incorporate new technology, which has been in development for the last few years under the code-name Project Green.

A new version of the company's accounting program, Great Plains, expected this fall, will automate the processes of jobs like accounting clerk, sales manager, controller and finance manager. The software will be renamed Microsoft Dynamics GP when it is released.

According to the NYT, as existing programs incorporate the new technology, they will also be renamed, the company said. For example, the new version of Microsoft's Axapta, a human resource management program, will become Microsoft Dynamics AX.

The NYT reports that the company also said it was developing a version of its Windows Server specifically intended for "overworked generalists," the workers who provide software support, fix network problems and handle whatever else comes up. Company officials said the new technology would help companies by automating much of the work of supporting software.

Google official says frustration drove him from Microsoft

A former Microsoft executive whose defection to Google set off a legal battle testified on Tuesday that an expletive-filled tirade from the chairman of Microsoft, Bill Gates, was a low point before he decided to leave.

The Associated Pess reports in The new York Times (7 September) that, in testimony at a court hearing, the executive, Kai-Fu Lee, also said he had written a memo to another Microsoft executive saying he was "deeply disappointed at our incompetence in China - that we have wasted so many years in China with little to show for it."

The AP/NYT report says that Mr. Lee joined Google in July to lead the internet search company's expansion into China. He had been at Microsoft since 1998, first establishing an academic research lab in China and later working in the United States on computer recognition of language, a critical problem in search technology.

Microsoft has sued Google and Mr. Lee, contending that Mr. Lee's duties would violate the terms of a noncompetition agreement he signed as part of his Microsoft employment contract. Microsoft also accused Mr. Lee of using insider information to get his job at Google.

Google denies the allegations and has countersued Microsoft, AP reports.

Microsoft sues European Commission

Microsoft has sued the European Commission in the European Union's second-highest court over a decision against the software giant, the EU court's website showed on Wednesday.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (7 September) that a court official, in answer to a query, said that the filing was made on 10 August, during a summer break for the court.

It arises out of a June ruling by the Commission that sought to enforce an earlier Commission decision against the software firm.

Reuters says in the NYT report that Microsoft has previously appealed in court against a Commission ruling that the company abused the dominance of its Windows operating system.

News junkies find Wikipedia more than encyclopedia

The Wikipedia, which has surged this year to become the most popular reference site on the web, is fast overtaking several major news sites as the place where people swarm for context on breaking events.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (6 September) that traffic to the multilingual network of sites has grown 154 percent over the past year, according to research firm Hitwise. At current growth rates, it is set to overtake The New York Times on the web, the Drudge Report and other news sites.

But the rising status of the site as the web's intellectual demilitarised zone, the favored place people look for background on an issue or to settle a polemical dispute, also poses challenges for the volunteer ethic that gave it rise.

According to Reuters in the NYT, from hot topics like internet, sex and Hitler -- some of Wikipedia's most popular entries -- to obscure technical or scientific subjects, the site draws users attracted by its professed neutrality in defining controversial topics.

The report adds that Wikipedians, as avid contributors are known, have developed a set of practical policies to limit mudslinging over fighting words such as ``terrorism'' or, more obscurely, a controversial Web programing technology known as ``Ajax.'cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/). It has drawn five times more US traffic than Google News, Yahoo News or BBC, according to Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer.

Similarly, in April, Wikipedia tied with CNN.com as the No. 2 most visited after Google News, not to mention traditional media.

Mobile music buys may bring meagre carrier profit

Cell phones may become the new way for the iPod masses to download and listen to music in the coming years, but wireless companies may not see much of a boost to their profits from selling such services, according to a report by Reuters in The New York Times (7 September).

The Reuters reeport says that the biggest US mobile service companies are considering selling phones that can play songs and some have plans to deliver music to phones over the wireless airwaves, in a bid to boost revenue as phone call prices drop.

Analysts expect Cingular Wireless, the biggest US mobile service, to reveal plans on Wednesday to sell a new Motorola phone that comes with iTunes, the music store software from Apple Computer, whose iPod player dominates the portable digital music market.

The Reuters report says that, at least initially, Cingular is expected to let users transfer songs to the phone from computers rather than through wireless download services.

Despite all the excitement about wireless song purchases, such mobile music is likely to deliver much poorer profit margins than wireless carriers are used to from phone calls or other services such as ringtones, one analyst said.

Reuters says that the No. 2 and No. 3 US mobile services Verizon Wireless, and Sprint Nextel have already said they are planning mobile music download services.

Pricing these services could require a tough balancing act between profitability and creating widespread demand since iTunes, Apple's high profile digital music service, charges only 99 cents a song, analysts said.

The report says that about 70 percent of the sale price for iTunes songs downloaded on computers goes to music industry players, according to Yankee, and the remainder is split almost evenly between Apple and transaction processors such as credit card companies,according to analysts.

Reuters reports that, in a mobile music world, operators could eliminate the credit card industry's roughly 15 percent share of the pie by charging through mobile phone bills. Yankee estimated that operators get 20 to 40 percent of revenue from ringtones.

Carriers' options could include bypassing Apple by setting up a rival to iTunes, or going with other partners such as RealNetworks or Napster, which control less of the music download market than Apple, according to Yankee'.

Group: Yahoo helped China jail journalist

A French media watchdog said Tuesday that information provided by internet powerhouse Yahoo helped Chinese authorities convict and jail a journalist who had written an e-mail about press restrictions.

The Associated Press reports in The new York Times (6 September) that the criticism from Reporters Without Borders marks the latest instance in which a prominent high-tech company has faced accusations of cooperating with Chinese authorities to gain favor in a country that's expected to become an internet gold mine.

Yahoo and two of its biggest rivals, Google and Microsoft's MSN, previously have come under attack for censoring online news sites and web logs, or blogs, that include content that China's communist government wants to suppress.

The AP/NYT report says that Reporters Without Borders ridiculed Yahoo, saying it was becoming even cozier with the Chinese government by allowing itself to become a police informant in a case that led to the recent conviction of Chinese journalist Shi Tao.

Reporters Without Borders said court papers showed that Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) gave Chinese investigators information that helped them trace a personal Yahoo e-mail allegedly containing state secrets to Tao's computer. Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) is part of Yahoo's global network.

AP says that Shi, a former journalist for the financial publication Contemporary Business News, was sentenced in April to 10 years in prison for illegally providing state secrets to foreigners. Reporters Without Borders described Shi as a ''good journalist who has paid dearly for trying to get the news out.''

Yahoo and its major rivals have been expanding their presence in China in hopes of reaching more of the country's population as the internet becomes more ingrained in their daily lives, says AP.

Intel hands Czech firm millions for virus protection

Intel Capital has taken its largest equity stake to date in an Eastern Europe outfit, sinking US$16m into Czech anti-virus company Grisoft to help it expand in business and consumer markets.

The Register reports (6 September) that the chip giant's venture capitalist arm said it was investing in Prague-based Grisoft to improve the development of anti-virus software and deployment around the globe.

Intel will help privately held Grisoft improve security on computing platforms for small- and medium-sized business (SMBs) and consumers, reach new customers and market segments, and work to optimise Grisoft's security software for different platforms. Grisoft's products, used by businesses and consumers, are deployed on 25m PCs and are distributed through resellers and across the internet.

The Register reports that Grisoft chairman Gabriel Eichler said in a statement he accepted investment from Intel to help accelerate the company's drive towards becoming a "global leader" in anti-virus software.

Intel Capital last-year invested US$130m in 110 different deals, with 40 per cent of its investments made outside the US. The company claims to have invested US$4bn in 1,000 companies based in 30 countries since 1991, reports The Register.

Samsung to play safe with dual HD DVD/Blu-ray rig

Samsung is to harness consumer confusion over which next-generation optical disc standard to back by offering a player that supports both HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc (BD).

The Register reports (6 September) that the machine will launch sometime next year, said Choi Gee-Sung, Samsung's consumer electronics chief, in an interview published by the Financial Times Deutschland.

According to The Register, with talks held between the two camps to find common ground in order to yield a unified format having broken down, consumers much now choose which format to support. Backing the wrong format could leave buyers with access to less content and, over time, more expensive hardware. That risk may persuade them simply to ignore both formats until a clear winner emerges.

The Register says that to date, Samsung has favoured BD over HD DVD, but today's statement suggest it doesn't believe its favoured format will quickly establish a clear lead over HD DVD.

India computer sales up 8.6 percent

Computer sales in India reached 1.01 million during the April-June first quarter, rising 8.6 percent on year, the country's main hardware trade body said Tuesday.

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (6 September) that sales for the fiscal year to March 2006 might exceed the initial target of 4.2 million units, said the Manufacturers' Association of Information Technology.

In the April-June 2004 quarter, India sold 930,000 computers, and 3.6 million were purchased for the fiscal year that ended in March 2005.

AP reports that a MAIT spokesman said an increase in the availability of software and content in Indian languages aided the growth. The prices of faster Internet services have also been falling and fueling demand.

Earlier this year, India's state-run phone company Bharat Sanchar Nigam dropped monthly internet fees to US$6, while most service providers charge about US$22, and other service providers are expected to lower their prices.

The AP report says that despite a population of more than 1 billion people, only 16 million computers were used in India as of March 2005. But demand has risen after prices fell to US$220 for a basic computer, from US$1,000 four years ago.

Microsoft unveils new keyboards, high-end mice

Microsoft has unveiled new computer keyboards and mice aimed at users looking for easier ways to type and for high-precision gaming and photo editing.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (6 September) that, in its annual refresh of its computer input hardware, the world's largest software maker introduced two new keyboards and six new mice.

The report says that one keyboard featured a split configuration keyboard for more ergonomic typing that also includes a zoom slider bar to shrink or enlarge digital text or photographs. The second keyboard featured a new, concave design for the keys aimed at making it easier for users to type without straining their arms, fingers and wrists.

Three new mice were introduced with laser-based optical components, which allows them to track movement with more precision and more smoothly, a feature that Microsoft says will be popular for games and graphics applications. The other three mice, which use optical tracking, featured new designs and technology improvements.

Reuters reports that Microsoft said it will continue to design, build and sell hardware for users' specific needs.

Such specialisation has helped keyboard and mice sales to outpace PC sales, Microsoft said, because users tend to replace such hardware over the course of a computer's lifecycle and also because they are buying keyboards to do specific tasks.

Rivals end dispute over radio tag patents

In the US, Symbol Technologies and Intermec Technologies have said that they would settle a patent dispute over radio frequency identification technology and work to end another lawsuit over wireless communications.

Bloomberg News reports in The New York Times (7 September) that the companies agreed to license each other's technology for radio frequency tags. Symbol also agreed to allow Intermec to resume buying miniature readers embedded in bar codes that can be used to validate betting tickets or identify baggage at airports while the companies try to resolve a suit over that technology.

Intermec, a unit of Unova, filed a suit in 2004 against Matrics, a start-up manufacturer of radio tags subsequently acquired by Symbol, over patents for the technology. Radio tags allow businesses to read and write information on tags so shipments can be tracked as they move through the supply chain..

Skype signs VoIP JV in China

Skype is looking to make inroads into the potentially lucrative Chinese market after inking a joint venture (JV) agreement with wireless internet operator TOM Online.

According to a report in The Register (5 September) the two companies are already buddies having forged an agreement to develop a simplified Chinese version of Skype's internet telephony software. Ten months on and the software has attracted 3.4 million registered users and Skype reckons now is the right time to plug the service to TOM's 70 million punters.

The Register says that under the deal TOM and Skype (split 51 per cent and 49 per cent respectively) will continue to develop Skype's VoIP software for the Chinese market and do more to flog it to users.

China is the world's largest mobile phone market by users with more than 360 million subscribers. The number of net users is also expanding rapidly and is expected to hit around 150 million by 2007, according to research from IDC, reports The Register.

Last week Skype signed its first agreement with a mobile telecoms operator - Germany's E-Plus - taking its low-cost services beyond the desktop and on the road.

British music retailers begin digital war

In a clear sign the digital music revolution is here to stay, Britain's major music retailers are going head-to-head for a slice of the burgeoning -- and potentially very lucrative -- internet downloading market, reports The Associated Press in the New York Times (5 September).

The AP/NYT report says that HMV, the biggest specialist music seller in Britain, made a big splash with the launch of its new digital service Monday, employing the band Razorlight to showcase its library of around 1.3 million tracks for consumers to download from the internet.

But some of its thunder has been stolen by Virgin Megastores, the country's second biggest music chain, which signed up the Dandy Warhols for an ambush launch of its own digital service on Friday, comments AP.

According to AP, both outlets are fighting for a share of a market that, while still small in Britain, is expected to grow exponentially. A year ago, the total number of songs officially downloaded from the internet in Britain was 500,000 -- the same number is now sold every week.

The digital download market in Britain has so far been dominated by Apple's iTunes music store, which offers consumers around 1.2 million tracks, according to tyhe report, and AP says,HMV and Virgin are aiming to break Apple's stranglehold by offering services that will work with several digital music players, allowing wider download possibilities and accessibility. Apple's iTunes software works only with the iPod music player.

HMV and Virgin are both planning to offer a separate subscription service, where users pay 14.99 pounds (US$27.72) a month to download as much music as they want - the catch being that if they stop paying, they lose all their music.

The report says that HMV, which has teamed up with Microsoft for its new service, has also stepped up the competition, making a special 39 pence (72 cents) offer for tracks by some new artists. It also plans to sell recordings of gigs and is formulating a film and computer game download service.

The two retailers are banking on further growth in an already booming market.

AP says in the NYT report that about 5 percent of Britons currently own a digital music player while legal digital sales account for less than 2 percent of the market. However, analysts expect online music sales to nearly double from 34 million pounds (US$63 million) this year to 65 million pounds (US$120 million) next, reaching 261 million pounds (US$483 million) by 2010.

'Islamic Trojan' disrupts smut surfing

Virus writers have created a Trojan horse which tries to disrupt visits to pornographic websites by displaying messages from the Koran.

The Register reports (5 September) that the low-risk Yusufali-A Trojan horse monitors the websites Windows users are visiting. If the malware sees one of a set of trigger words (such as "teen", "sex" or "penis") in the url it minimises the window so the user cannot see its content and displays a message from the Koran instead. According to The Register, the message, partly written in Arabic, contains the following English text:

Yusufali: Know, therefore, that there is no god but Allah, and ask forgiveness for they fault, and for the men and women who believe: for Allah knows how ye move about and how ye dwell in your homes.

The publications quotes a senior technology consultant for Sophos as saying that unlike other malware, it appears this Trojan horse isn't trying to steal money or confidential information, but acting as a moral guardian instead - blocking the viewing of websites it determines are unsavoury.

The Sophos spokesman says that it's possible for the Trojan horse to make mistakes and block sites that are not pornographic - such as medical sites, or social sites designed for teenagers.

According to The Register, once the message is displayed the malware performs a variety of other actions before forcing infected users to shutdown.

Sony PSP sets UK console sales record

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) sold 185,000 PlayStation Portable handheld consoles in the UK this past weekend, smashing the previous three-day record, set by Nintendo's DS in March.

The Register reports (6 September) that Sony's sales, said market watcher Chart-Track, which provided the statistic, makes the PSP's UK debut the most successful console introduction in the territory yet.

The PSP went on sale in the UK on Friday, 1 September, and Chart-Track's total combines sales on that day plus those of Saturday and Sunday.

Nintendo sold 87,000 DS handhelds in the first three days' of the device's availability.

According to The Register,many of the sales had already been made, thanks to pre-order campaigns run by retailers and online suppliers once Sony formally announced the handheld console would ship on 1 September. The PSP had originally been planned to arrive in the UK at the end of March, just after the DS debut. But the demands of the US launch, scheduled to take place in the same timeframe, forced SCEE to delay the European ship-date.

The Register reports that Chart-Track said 24 games were available at launch. Twenty of them went straight into the company's Top 40, and nine entered the Top Ten. Sony's Ridge Racer took the number one slot, pushing the previous sales leader, Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 into second position.

Ashes interest could bowl over computer networks

Corporate networks could be bowled over this week as England face Australia in the final nail-biting Ashes match of the summer, according to a report in The Register (6 September).

The Register says that computer experts are worried that company networks might not be able to cope with tens of thousands of cricket fans logging on to the net to follow the action from the Oval.

According to the report in The Register, Stuart Beattie of Network General told The Daily Mail: "While every company is aware of the risks posed by computer viruses, few will have ever considered Ricky Ponting and Michael Vaughan's men a potential threat to their computer networks.

England lead 2-1 in the five match series and need only a draw to regain the Ashes

Russian phone retailers bypass distributors

Russia's two largest phone retailers Yevroset and Dixis will no longer buy electronic goods from Russian distributors in an attempt to crack down on smugglers.

The Register reports (5 September) that, according to Russian news reports, the country is swamped with illegally imported cell phones, which avoid a customs tax of 5 per cent. The International Confederation of Consumer Protection Organisations believe these phones- including Nokia and SonyEricsson models - account for approximately 90 per cent of the country's mobile phone market.

The report in The register says that in August Russian police seized about 300 tons of cellular phones and components worth more than US$10 million. Five companies who apparently front for the smugglers are under investigation. Prices on the market have gone up dramatically after the crackdown.

The Register reports that cutting out intermediaries is the optimal move right now, a Dixis spokeswoman told the Moscow Times. More than 24 million mobile phones were sold in Russia last year, with a retail value of 3 billion euro.

Napster UK touts subscriber numbers

Napster UK's 750,000 users have downloaded or streamed 55 million tracks since the service launched in May 2004, the digital music provider said today.

The Register reports (5 September) that the announcement comes on the day High Street music retailer HMV opened the virtual doors on its own digital download and subscription service. Virgin Digital went live in the UK last Friday.

To date, Napster UK's main competitor has been Apple's iTunes Music Store. But with Virgin and now HMV both targeting the same iPod-free Windows Media market in which Napster is a player they are arguably more of a threat than ITMS is, according to the report in The Register.

Hence Napster's release of subscriber figures today, the first time the company has made such statistics public, says The Register.

According to The Register's report, the company said 80 per cent of its subscribers are over the age of 25, and half of them have kids. Some three-quarters of them are male.

In a bid to stress the importance of subscriptions, Napster said its subscribers buy more music online than folk who buy one-off downloads do, though since many of them will need to do so to burn tracks to CD or transfer them to digital music players, that's not perhaps surprising. One in five of them no longer buy CDs, apparently, comments The Register.

Sony shows 8x DVD+R dual-layer drive

Sony has become one of the first DVD writer manufacturers to ship a dual-layer DVD+R that can write at 8x speeds, the company said today.

The Register reports (6 September) that, separately, Mitsubishi said it will ship DVD+R DL 8x capable media in October.

Sony's DRU-810A is an internal drive that hooks up to the host across an Ultra DMA Mode 2 ATAPI interface. In addition to 8x DVD+R DL, the drive supports DVD+R DL 4x. It also writes DVD+RW discs at 8x and DVD,DVD-RW at 6x, reports The Register.

The report says that Mitsubishi's discs, which provide 8.5GB of storage capacity, are based on a "high-sensitivity organic pigment" to support write speeds of 2.4x up to 8x and a maximum data-transfer rate of up to 209.25Mbps.

Court orders Kazaa to stop pirates

A federal judge in Sydney on Monday ordered distributors of the popular file-swapping program Kazaa to alter the software, which millions have downloaded, so it can no longer be used for music piracy.

The Associated Press in The New York Times (5 September) says that that the case was hailed as a victory by the recording industry that brought the suit, and that the decision has implications well beyond Australia, where Kazaa executives are based, because Kazaa's users span the globe.

The AP report says that, in some ways, it mirrors the US Supreme Court's June ruling that Hollywood and the music industry can sue technology companies that encourage their customers to steal music and movies over the internet.

Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox determined in Monday's ruling that Kazaa's owners and distributors, led by Sharman Networks Ltd., took no action to rein in illegal file-sharing despite posted warnings on their web site urging Kazaa users not to swap copyright material.

AP reports that Wilcox said it had been in the financial interest of Sharman and its partners ''to maximise, not minimise, music file-sharing.''

He found six of the 10 defendants, including Sharman, its Sydney-based chief executive Nikki Hemming, as well as Altnet, a Sharman software partner, guilty of copyright infringement and ordered them to pay 90 percent of the record industry's costs in the case.

Australian court: Kazaa breached copyright

A court has ruled that popular file-swapping network Kazaa breaches copyright in Australia and gave the service's owners two months to modify their web site to prevent further piracy by its millions of users.

Although the ruling is only enforceable in Australia, the record industry hailed it as a victory that would resonate around the world.

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (5 September) that the Federal Court ruling culminated a long-running court battle between Australia's record industry and Kazaa.

The 10 defendants in the case include Kazaa's owners, Sharman Networks Ltd., and Sharman's Sydney-based chief executive officer, Nikki Hemming, as well as Altnet, a company that provided some of the software for the Kazaa Web site.

The AP/NYT report says that Federal Court Judge Murray Wilcox found six of them, including Hemming, Sharman Networks Ltd. and Altnet, infringed copyright and ordered them to pay 90 percent of the record industry's costs in the case. A hearing will be held at a later date to establish damages.

Lawyers for Kazaa said they would appeal but made no immediate detailed response to the ruling. They had argued that the software is no different from a tape recorder or photocopier -- and that Kazaa could not control copyright infringement by users of the network.

But Wilcox said that they actively encouraged users to share files, the vast majority of which were copyrighted material, AP reports. Wilcox said that Sharman and Altnet should stop authorising Kazaa users swap copyright material.

AP reports that, if it wants to continue its operations, Wilcox said Kazaa's owners have to ensure that new versions of the software filters unlicensed copyright material and he ordered them to press existing users to upgrade their software to a new version that filters unlicensed material.

Not even web retailers exempt from Katrina

As the US Gulf Coast reels from Katrina's devastation, online businesses are struggling to gauge the impact of the possible loss of half a million prospective customers for weeks or months.

The New York Times reports (5 September) that, according to comScore Networks, an internet research and consulting firm, 860,000 people, on average, surfed the web from their homes or offices in New Orleans and the Mississippi towns of Biloxi and Gulfport each day in the week preceding the storm.

The newspaper says that online travel agencies like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz are no doubt feeling the pinch more than most online retailers. Not only must they cope with a deluge of calls from customers who had booked trips to the Gulf Coast and now want their money back, they must also face up to the possibility of a slump in sales as some vacationers and business executives deterred from flying to New Orleans drop their travel plans altogether.

According to the report in the NYT, with Mardi Gras just six months away and recovery estimates for the city still cloudy, agencies cannot even be sure that one of the prime travel events of February will occur. Even if the city is in a position to stage Mardi Gras events, travel companies cannot say how many travelers New Orleans will be able to accommodate.

The NYT says that Travelocity this week sent e-mail messages to 14,000 customers who had booked flights, hotel rooms and car rentals in the afflicted areas. The company has also waived the cancellation and rescheduling fees it typically charges customers, as have most airlines and other travel companies.

The newspaper reports that general merchandise retailers on the web say they have not experienced significant dropoffs in sales, at least yet. EBay, for instance, notes that it has 157 million customers worldwide.

The web's biggest online retailer, Amazon.com, is holding an undisclosed number of packages for customers in the affected areas. An Amazon spokeswoman, declined to discuss the financial impact of the hurricane on the company.

World chip sales flat but APAC up

Worldwide semiconductor sales growth effectively stalled in July, the US-based Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) admitted on Friday.

The Register reports (5 September) that the month's sales totalled fractionally over US$18billion, compared to just under that number in June. July 2005's tally was near enough the same as the figure the SIA published this time last year. The figures are three-month averages, intended to smooth out the spikiness of chip sales.

The Register report says that unit sales were "running well ahead of earlier projections", the organisation said, but any growth in shipments was more than counterbalanced by competition-driven price reductions.

Semiconductor sales declined sequentially in all geographic regions except the Asia-Pacific region, which grew by 8.1 per cent. The SIA said capacity utilisation continued to improve, with overall utilisation rising beyond the 89 per cent rate reported for Q2

New technology may increase identity theft

New technology could increase rather than solve the problem of identity theft and fraud, a British criminologist warned on Monday.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (4 September) that identity cards and chip and pin technology for credit cards will force fraudsters to be more creative and are unlikely to alleviate the problem.

Dr Emily Finch, of the University of East Anglia in England, said dependence on technology was leading to a breakdown in individual vigilance, which experts believe is one of the best ways to prevent fraud and identity theft.

The Reuters/NYT report says that Finch, who interviewed criminals about why and how they commit crimes and the impact new technology is likely to have on them, found fraudsters were tenacious and would change their methods to elude new security measures.

Data from the US Federal Trade Commission Identity Theft Survey Report released two years ago showed that 4.6 percent of 4,000 randomly selected people questioned in a poll had been the victim of some form of identity theft in the past year.

Finch said fraud and identify theft was not always done for financial reasons. Sometimes people wanted to start again with a new identity.

Reuters reports that identity cards could potentially increase fraudulent behavior, she warned. In June, the British government introduced legislation for national identity cards, saying they would counter terrorism, crime and illegal immigration. But critics say the scheme is expensive, unnecessary and intrusive.

DVD Jon hacks Media Player file encryption

Norway's best known IT export, DVD Jon, has hacked encryption coding in Microsoft's Windows Media Player, opening up content broadcast for the multimedia player to alternative devices on multiple platforms, according to a report in The Register (3 September).

The Register says that Jon Lech Johansen has reverse engineered a proprietary algorithm, which is used to wrap Media Player NSC files and ostensibly protect them from hackers sniffing for the media's source IP address, port or stream format. He has also made a decoder available.

The publication adds that Johansen doesn't believe there is a good reason to keep the NSC files encrypted, because once you open the file with Media Player to start viewing the stream, the IP address and port can be revealed by running the netstat network utility that is included with most operating systems.

The hacker hopes his move will make content streamed to Media Player more widely available to users of alternative players on non-Windows platforms, reports The Register.

According to The Register, Johansen achieved notoriety when he was tried and re-tried in a Norwegian court for creating a utility that enabled him to play DVDs on his Linux PC. Prosecutors, acting in the interests of the US Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), argued he had acted illegally by distributing his DeCSS tool to others via the internet. This, the prosecution, claimed, made it easier to pirate DVDs.

However, the court ruled in his favor, saying he had not broken the law in bypassing DVD scrambling codes that had stopped him from using his PC to play back DVDs. Earlier this year Johansen developed a work around to bypass digital rights management (DRM) technology in Apple Computer's iTunes, The Register adds.

The publicaton says his latest hack was done to make Media Player content available to the open source VideoLAN Client (VLC) streaming media player. VLC is available for download to 12 different operating systems and Linux distributions and has seen more than six million downloads to Mac. Apple is even pre-loading VLC on some Macs destined for high schools in Florida.

Germans to get iTunes phone for Christmas

T-Mobile said that it plans to sell Motorola's iTunes mobile phone in Germany by Christmas, reports Thje Register (5 September).

The Register says that Apple and Motorola are expected to announce the long-awaited phone this Wednesday.

The publication adds that the many music phones on display at the ISF show in Berlin this week include the first models to be fitted with a built-in miniature hard drive. They are competing head on with MP3 players that also have a small hard drive.

Electronic Arts loses top executives

Electronic Arts, the largest independent video game publisher, launched a big management shuffle after two of its longtime top executives said they were going to leave the company in a couple of months.

The Mercury News reportgs (3 September) that Don Mattrick, president of EA Worldwide Studios and the heir apparent to Chief Executive Larry Probst, will leave EA for other unnamed opportunities after 23 years at EA. Bruce McMillan, executive vice president of the studios, will also leave EA. Both will stay on a couple of months to wrap up current projects, Probst said in an interview.

The newspaper says that EA has had stable leadership in an industry that has seen a lot of turmoil in management ranks. But EA missed earnings targets in its most recent quarter and has warned that its lineup of games isn't going to be as strong as it originally expected. The company is also reorganising the workloads for its programmers and artists, who have complained about working too much overtime as deadlines stack up for finishing games.

Is Dell a buy for consumers or investors?

Dell, the world's largest maker of personal computers, earned its dominance by cultivating one of the most highly recognised and admired technology brands, while also being the industry's lowest-cost major manufacturer, The New York Times reports (3 September).

The newspaper saays that lately, though, the market has changed to suit the business models of competitors like Hewlett-Packard and Apple, and it shows in the performance of the three companies' stocks. Since the start of the year, Dell has fallen 17 percent and its rivals are up more than 30 percent.

According to the NYT report,the divergence is a result of several factors, including the booming sales of Apple's iPod devices, used to store music downloaded from the internet, and Hewlett's recovery, under new management, from a long period of laboring to find the right mix of activities after buying the PC maker Compaq in 2002.

Dell has been struggling as growth in computer buying has shifted from businesses to individuals, says the newspaper,putting the emphasis back on the "personal" in personal computing. The company's ability to beat the field on cost depends on marketing its products online to customers who know what they want, like corporate information technology departments. Individual computer shoppers require a bit more hand-holding and are willing to pay for it.

The NYT says that a strategy that depends on being cheapest - even when it can be carried out successfully - may be problematic now, when momentum in the PC business is slowing markedly. The technology consultancy Gartner forecasts a 12.7 percent increase this year in the number of personal computers shipped worldwide, but just 0.5 percent revenue growth.

The report says that that means prices are falling fast. Gartner projects 8.7 percent unit growth next year and a 0.4 percent revenue decline. When it comes to pricing, Dell is winning a race to the bottom - and the bottom is sinking.

The newspaper adds that Dell's ability to maintain margins through strong customer service seems to be slipping. In the University of Michigan's latest customer-satisfaction survey, Dell's lead over the rest of the industry - except Apple, which is adored by its small but fiercely loyal base of owners - has evaporated, the report says.

Skype signs-up first mobile carrier

Skype, the internet telephony software firm, has signed its first agreement with a mobile telecoms operator, taking its low-cost services beyond the desktop and on the road.

The Register reports (2 September) that Skype will next month deliver flat-rate services to E-Plus, Germany's third largest mobile operator - E-Plus has 9.8 million subscribers. Skype said it is also working with handset manufacturers, including Motorola, to offer its services on devices.

The landmark deal will give E-Plus users access to fixed rate mobile internet access for €39.95 per month and free Skype voice over IP (VoIP) calling.

The Register says that Skype's chief executive, Niklas Zennstorm, said the deal brings the "value and convenience" of Skype's global internet communications experience to millions of mobile phone subscribers. E-Plus said Skype enables its to deliver the advantages of mobile and stationary internet access.

E-Plus will expand Skype's existing worldwide subscriber base of 52 million, and comes as Microsoft this week took its first steps to rein-in two-year old Skype.

According to The Register, Microsoft bought privately held Teleo, with plans to integrate Teleo's service into Outlook and Internet Explorer for "click-to-call dialing" and to supplement VoIP in MSN Messenger. Teleo's eponymous service is currently in beta.

And last week, Google signalled its intention to become an internet phone-call player, with the beta release of GoogleTalk, a VoIP /instant messenger client

Microsoft and Google trade accusations in suit over executive

The Associated Press reports in The New York Times (3 September) that Microsoft's chief executive vowed last year to crush Google, the internet search company, while a Google executive urged colleagues to pursue the hiring of a Microsoft employee "like wolves," according to documents filed on Friday in an increasingly bitter legal battle.

The AP report says that the allegations, filed in a Washington State court, came in a showdown prompted by Google's hiring in July of a former Microsoft executive, Kai-Fu Lee, to oversee a research and development center that Google plans in China.

Mr. Lee, known for his work on computer recognition of language, started at Google the day after he resigned from Microsoft.

The report in the NYT says that Google's filing included a sworn declaration by a former Microsoft engineer, Mark Lucovsky, who said he met last November with Microsoft's chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, to discuss his decision to leave the company after six years.

After learning that Mr. Lucovsky was taking a job at Google, Mr. Ballmer picked up his chair and hurled it across his office, according to the declaration.

Microsoft is suing to prevent Mr. Lee from leading Google's expansion in China, saying those duties would violate a noncompetition provision in his employment contract. Google has depicted Microsoft's lawsuit as a form of intimidation meant to thwart a fast-growing rival.

The AP/NYT report says that in late July, Microsoft won a court order temporarily barring Mr. Lee from performing the duties Google hired him to do, and at a hearing on Tuesday it will seek an extension of that order until the case goes to trial in January.

Intel sharply rebuts AMD's antitrust suit

In a sharp rebuttal to an antitrust lawsuit, the Intel Corporation on Thursday denied any wrongdoing and characterised Advanced Micro Devices, its rival and accuser, as a victim of its own mistakes.

The New York Times reports (2 September) that Intel's formal response came nine weeks after AMD accused Intel of unfair pricing and rebates, and of coercing customers to prevent them from using AMD microprocessors. At 63 pages, the Intel rebuttal was 15 pages longer than the lawsuit itself.

The newspaper reports that Intel has more than 80 percent of the unit sales and 90 percent of the revenues in the market for so-called x86 microprocessors. Intel's response describes a range of business missteps that it says AMD made, resulting in its current market position. Most notably, Intel contends that AMD did not invest enough in new plants in recent years to stay competitive and is ther