News in brief related to Information Technology.
Microsoft earnings surge, Vista on hold
REDMOND, WA, USA - Software titan Microsoft Corp. on October 27 posted a 24 percent surge in quarterly net income to $3.14 billion on the back of robust demand for its software and server products. Microsoft's revenue for the three-month period rose 6 percent to $9.74 billion.
"We continue to see healthy demand for our products, and customer excitement is high for our next wave of product innovations kicking off next month with the launches of Xbox 360, SQL Server 2005 and Visual Studio 2005," chief financial officer Chris Liddell said in a statement. But the launch of Vista, the successor to the Windows XP operating system, has been put back a year after the company hit problems developing the software.
Dozens nabbed with fake DVDs in Spain
MADRID - Spanish police said on October 27 that they had made dozens of arrests across the country in a crackdown on pirated DVDs and CDs distributed by a Chinese-run group. Sixty-nine people were arrested following a swoop by more than 200 policemen. The Chinese trio is alleged to have been behind a concerted effort to flood the Spanish market with pirated music and films from their base in the Madrid suburbs. Police discovered 119 DVD recorders capable of churning out 1,100,000 copies a month, the interior ministry said.
ISPs help in conviction of child porn leader
MAGDEBURG, Germany - A leading member of a giant global Internet child pornography ring was sentenced in Germany on October 27 to three-and-a-half years in prison and told to undergo psychiatric therapy. The 29-year-old, whose name was not released by the court, belonged to a network that swapped thousands of images of children being sexually abused.
The discovery of such photographs and films on computers at the defendant's home in an initial search in early 2002 helped lead police to 26,500 suspects in 166 countries in an unprecedented swoop against child pornography online. German and US Internet service providers (ISP) provided information to the police including 38,000 e-mail addresses.
Movie downloaded in 0.5 seconds
TOKYO - A Japanese company has developed technology to transmit a two-hour movie in 0.5 seconds, the world's fastest speed achieved with fiber-optic cables in the field. Kansai Electric said on October 27 that it used fiber-optic cables on power-transmitting steel towers to achieve the speed of one terabit per second, which is more than 100 times faster than inter-city data transmissions currently in use, a spokesman said.
Chinese blogger goes missing
BEIJING - A businessman who reported online about steel worker protests in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing has disappeared and is believed to be in police custody, rights groups said on October 27. Shi Xiaoyu was taken from his home in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, along with his computer and other materials on October 20, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. He had been posting information on the Internet about Chongqing steel worker protests that began in August.
Sony profit slides under Brit boss
TOKYO - Sony said on October 27 that its net profit almost halved in the three months to September as falling prices of televisions and other electronics goods hit the struggling Japanese icon's bottom line. Sony, which under its new boss, British-born Howard Stringer, last month announced a major overhaul of the business including 10,000 job cuts, left its full-year forecast unchanged at a net loss of 10 billion yen.
Sony posted a net profit of 28.5 billion yen for the second quarter of its financial year, down 46.5 percent from a year earlier. The company has been hit by fierce competition in key markets such as televisions that has driven down prices for plasma and liquid crystal screens. Stringer, the first foreigner to take the helm at Sony in its six-decade history, plans to dispose of a swathe of assets and axe 11 manufacturing plants and focus on revitalizing the core electronics business.
Fast Internet boosts music sales
WASHINGTON - Online music sales are getting a lift from high-speed Internet usage, and is likely to represent 16 percent of all music sales in Europe and North America by 2010, a research firm said on October 26. The two regions are expected to spend over $1 billion on online music this year, with sales reaching $4.5 billion by 2010.
A growth factor is the "explosive sales of MP3 players and music-enabled mobile phones", the research firm said. But the report said that despite the success of Apple in selling individual songs for $0.99 each, by 2010 over 60 percent of online music revenues are likely to come from subscription-based services giving access to songs for a fixed monthly fee.
Gates says Israel's military 'leads hi-tech know-how'
TEL AVIV, Israel - Microsoft founder Bill Gates hailed Israel's thriving technology sector on October 26, saying that its strong performance stemmed largely from its cutting-edge military inventions. "The start-ups here are similar to those in Silicon Valley, but there is special expertise here in areas of information security, some of which is derived from the experience that some of the developers gain in the army," Gates said in an interview with the Ma'ariv daily.
"If you are good in a certain area, this success leads to success in other areas. Israel is more similar to the US in these areas than any other country I have visited." Reports said that Gates was likely to sign a cooperation agreement between the Israeli government and Microsoft for joint development and support of Israeli technologies and start-ups.
Smartcard maker turns smart profit
PARIS - Gemplus, the biggest smartcard maker in the world, announced on October 26 that it made a net profit in the third quarter of €20.9 million ($25.2 million), reversing an €8.5-million loss in the same period of 2004. The company said that sales growth this year would exceed 10 percent, but would be lower than initially expected because of a fall in sales of telephone and pre-paid mobile phone cards.
Sony to delist from nine bourses
TOKYO - Japanese electronics giant Sony said on October 26 that it would delist from nine stock exchanges overseas because of the low trading volumes of its shares. The bourses are the Vienna, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Swiss, Brussels, Paris, Toronto, Chicago and US-based Pacific exchanges, the company said in a statement.
"Due to the prevalence of borderless stock trading, the trading volume of Sony's shares on each of these nine stock exchanges has been extremely low," the firm said. Sony will maintain its listings in New York and London as well as two Japanese bourses, Tokyo and Osaka, it added.
French ad agency wins Samsung
PARIS - Shares in French advertising agency Publicis were showing a gain on October 26 on a press report that the company had won a $400-million (€331-million) account from Korean electronics group Samsung, dealers said. The CAC 40 index of leading shares had advanced by 0.38 percent. Advertising trade magazine Adweek, reported that Samsung decided to switch most of its $400-million global advertising account to Publicis from British rival WPP.
Sharp's profits blunted
TOKYO - Japanese electronics maker Sharp said on October 26 that its net profit fell 7.2 percent in the first half of its financial year because of declining prices of flat-screen televisions and memory chips. Sharp, Japan's largest maker of liquid crystal display (LCD) panels and television sets, is projecting global sales of 4 million LCD TVs, unchanged from its previous forecast, but up 47 percent from a year earlier.
Amazon profit hit by legal charges
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA - Internet commerce giant Amazon.com said on October 25 that its third-quarter profit fell 44 percent from a year ago to $30 million, hurt by litigation costs. The online retailer also said that expenses rose faster than sales due in part to a low-priced delivery promotion.
Sales rose 27 percent to $1.86 billion, helped by its sale of some 1.6 million copies of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Excluding the legal expense, operating expenses rose 34 percent, inflated by the company's Amazon Prime shipping offer that allows users to pay a flat annual fee to get two-day delivery on all purchases.
Swede fined for Internet file-sharing
STOCKHOLM - A Swede was on October 25 found guilty of file-sharing for making a copyrighted film available to others on the Internet, and was ordered to pay a fine of 16,000 kronor ($2,027). The 28-year-old man in November 2004 downloaded the popular Swedish film Hip Hip Hora and made it available to others on a file-sharing program. A court found that downloading copyrighted material was not illegal at the time, but spreading it was. According to one estimate, at least 500,000 of Sweden's 9 million inhabitants use file-sharing programs to download and post illegal copies of films, music and computer games on the Internet.
French fest claims Iran blocking its Website
STRASBOURG, France - Organizers of a French festival showcasing Asian cinema said that their Website was being blocked in Iran, perhaps because of their promotional poster showing women wearing veils. The director of the International Festival of Asian Cinema at Vesoul, Martine Therouanne said that according to several sources in Iran attempts to connect to the festival's Website in that country found only a blank page. Organizers said that the reason for the censorship might be the festival's theme this year, looking at movies to do with women, and the poster, which shows the Earth carrying a camera amid veiled mouths.
Siemens to axe more IT jobs
FRANKFURT, Germany - German electronics giant Siemens is set to announce additional job cuts at its troubled information technology services division, SBS, the daily Die Welt reported on October 25. "We fear that up to 4,800 jobs could be on the line," a source close to the company was quoted as saying.
Electronic Arts tops in game software
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, USA - Electronic Arts (EA) computer game company - whose game titles include the popular Sims2, From Russian With Love, Harry Potter and an array of professional sports - trumped its competitors this year when it came to revenues, popular titles and happy workers, a trade magazine announced on October 24. Electronic Arts of Redwood City in Silicon Valley headed Game Developer magazine's "Top 20" list of entertainment software publishers.
Measures used in the study included revenues, numbers of new releases, quality of games and staff pay and perks, according to the magazine. This was the third consecutive year that EA won the top spot in the ranking. Earlier this month EA announced that Academy Award winning film director Steven Spielberg would collaborate with the company to create three original new games.
After silence Al Qaeda ridicules US Web claims
WASHINGTON - Al Qaeda in Iraq has ridiculed the US military's claim to have arrested its Webmaster. "Day after day the Muslims become more convinced of how shallow and idiotic are those people who control the 'biggest and most powerful empire' that history knew!" begins a message signed by the group's spokesman Abu Maysara Al Iraq.
The message followed a statement this week from the US-led Multi-National Force, Iraq, which said that coalition troops had seized "Al Qaeda in Iraq's propaganda cell leader" Abu Dijana in a raid on September 25. News reports said that insurgent Websites were unusually quiet the day before the referendum. "No one posted anything on [the day before the referendum]," the SITE Institute's Rita Katz told UPI, saying not just Al Qaeda's site, but the Web pages of other insurgent groups had not been updated that day. But the following day, she said that a dozen or more new postings appeared on the Al Qaeda site.
'World's first' BT piracy case conviction
HONG KONG - A Hong Kong man was convicted on October 24 for illegally distributing movies over the Internet using BitTorrent (BT) technology, in what is believed to be the world's first criminal piracy case involving BT software. BT is a popular computer program that cuts the time needed to download files, allowing Internet users to easily trade and share music, movie and software files.
Chan Nai-ming, 38, was found guilty of copyright infringement for putting three Hollywood movies onto the Internet without authorization by using the popular BT peer-to-peer file-sharing program. The unemployed Chan, who was arrested in January, was released on bail of 5,000 Hong Kong dollars (US$641) pending a sentencing hearing on November 7.
Sony says German IT fair 'out of step'
BERLIN - Japanese electronics giants Sony will not attend the CeBIT, the world's biggest technology fair held annually in Hanover, in 2006, its director for Germany told the October 23 press. "The CeBIT is not the right platform for us," Manfred Gerdes told the newspaper Die Welt.
He hinted that the annual March fair was out of step with the fast-moving world of technology and electronics. "In order to present new products we should really take part in a fair every three months for technology information products and every six months for electronic entertainment products." Sony's withdrawal follows European electronics giant Philips giving similar reasons.
Blackberry maker says it could face US ban
WASHINGTON - Canadian firm Research in Motion (RIM) acknowledged on October 21 that it might face a court order to stop selling its Blackberry handheld computers in the United States. RIM said that the US Court of Appeals in Washington refused to delay proceedings to enforce an injunction at the request of US-based software firm NTP, which claims that the popular Blackberry device infringes on its patents.
The Canadian group earlier this year agreed to a $450-million settlement with the privately held NTP, which had claimed that it owned the patents to the technology used in the Blackberry, widely used for wireless e-mail. But that deal fell through later and NTP took the matter back to court. An injunction could be a huge blow to RIM, which gets about 70 percent of its revenues from US Blackberry users.
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