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  • Apple Signs USD $ 500 Million Deal With LG


    Apple and LG Display have agreed a deal that will see the South Korean electronics manufacturer supply flat panel displays for Macs and handheld products over the next five years.

    In exchange for a guaranteed supply of LCD screens until 2013, Apple will prepay USD $500 million to LG later this month.

    LG, which is the world’s second-largest maker of flat panel displays behind Samsung, presently supplies Apple with 70 per cent of its LCD panels.

    Prices for the parts, which have been falling rapidly during the recent global slowdown, are expected to begin rising again in the near future.

    In 2005, Apple made a similar deal with five memory suppliers which ensured the iPhone maker established a competitive edge in the digital media player and cell phone markets.

    In that agreement Apple prepaid a total of USD $1.25 billion to secure its supply of NAND flash memory.

    This type of strategic deal allows better prices to be obtained for components and can put pressure on competitors’ margins.

  • Motorola to cut mobile staff by half


    Motorola is considering reducing the workforce in its mobile devices group by as much as 50 per cent.

    The company is reportedly set to start major layoffs this week that would reduce staff levels by half and is said to be dramatically scaling back its phone development as a whole.

    Nearly all development for smartphones is already believed to be switching exclusively to Android while Motorola’s own phone introductions may scale back to as few as 12 devices per year.

    The company is also reportedly shelving plans to have a booth at the CTIA show in April despite its being the premier cellphone event in the US, according to Phone Scoop.

    The cutbacks if accurate suggest increasingly desperate attempts to revive the company’s fortunes.

    In the last quarter, Motorola had a USD $397 million loss and phone sales by the American cellphone producer dropped by a third in just 12 months.

    Much of the blame for this has been put on substantial drops in high-end phones as well as the lack of a compelling low-end product.

    The company’s popular RAZR recently lost its top ranking in the US to the iPhone and BlackBerries.

  • Palm Unveils New Pre smartphone


    Palm finally revealed its new smartphone, the Pre, along with an exclusive partnership with Sprint to distribute it.

    The new touch-screen device and operating system, WebOS, received a positive welcome at CES in Las Vegas.

    Much has been made of the importance of the new device’s success if Palm is to resurrect its fortunes in the highly competitive smartphone market.

    Initial positives for the Pre include its emphasis on fast Web browsing and efficient multitasking.

    The handset will be available in the first half of the year. No pricing information is available as yet.

    The Pre has a sophisticated interface and can be charged on a special platform without the need to attach a cable.

    It comes comes with eight gigabytes of storage, GPS navigational capabilities, Wi-Fi networking and a slide-out keyboard.

    A possible hurdle in Palm’s path to renewed success could be apps for its new device.

    Software developers are now concentrating on RIM’s BlackBerry devices and the iPhone because they represent a large and growing market.

    Apps are seen as crucial to the success of smartphones because of the functions such as games and navigation services that they provide.

  • Digital Realty Wins Datacentre Leaders' Award


    Digital Realty Trust, the world’s largest wholesale datacentre provider, has been recognised for "Innovation in an Outsourced Environment" by the prestigious Datacentre Leaders’ 2008 Awards.

    Digital Realty Trust received the honor for a Turn-Key Datacentre that Digital Realty Trust delivered to IBM to support growth of the company’s hosting business in France.

    The Datacentre Leaders’ Awards recognise innovation and reward excellence in facility design and operations in the UK and across Europe.

    Bernard Geoghegan, senior vice president at Digital Realty Trust, said it was an honor to receive the award, particularly for the IBM project.

    "By establishing its new datacentre in our Turn-Key Datacentre facility in Paris, IBM was able to eliminate capital requirements and meet all of its rigorous technical and financial objectives for the project," he said.

    The Turn-Key Datacentre facilities provide state-of-the-art environments for supporting mission critical infrastructure, with advanced cooling, power, redundancy, and sustainability features to ensure that critical applications are available while optimising energy efficiency.

  • ATTO Adds Industry-first 8-GB Fibre Channel To RAID Storage Controllers


    ATTO Technology has announced the release of the industry’s first 8-Gb Fibre Channel-to-SAS/SATA RAID storage controller.

    FastStream SC 8500 is an independent external RAID Storage Controller that provides 8-Gb Fibre Channel host connectivity to multiple tiers of low-cost, off-the-shelf SAS/SATA disk storage enclosures.

    ATTO says the SC 8500 is well-suited for mid-range storage solutions.

    It is the highest performing RAID controller in its class delivering up to 1400 MB/sec. access to data while providing parity RAID protection to multiple tiers of disk enclosures.

    FastStream RAID Storage Controllers are designed to sit between workstations or a SAN and low-cost JBOD disk storage providing users the ability to scale their performance and storage capacity without purchasing a RAID controller every time expansion is needed.

    The FastStream is well-suited for applications in DVA and IT infrastructures including digital film production, high-definition video post-production, imaging, digital prepress, disk-to-disk backup, audio production and transaction-based environments.

    Tom Kolniak, director of products for ATTO Technology, said the FastStream SC 8500 Storage Controller was ideal for customers looking to improve workflow performance and add RAID protection in a collaborative environment.

    “The 8500 allows those currently using Direct Attached Storage to move to an affordable Storage Area Network solution providing them with the benefits and savings realized from a lower total cost of ownership for storage and increased efficiency in workflow production,” he said.

    He cited performance, scalability, and ease-of-use of the FastStream SC 8500 as key elements for customers looking to implement a solution that fits their needs while remaining within their budget.

  • CA Targets DLP With Purchase Of Orchestra


    CA has bought New York-based Orchestria Corporation, a leading provider of data loss prevention (DLP) technology.

    The company intends to develop and sell Orchestria’s information-centric DLP product in the rapidly growing DLP market.

    More ambitiously, it says it plans to transform the way organizations think about DLP, identity management and information security overall.

    A CA statement said: “Organizations and auditors need to know who has access to data and what they can do with it at a role or user level.

    “By using Orchestria’s DLP technology with CA identity and access management solutions, organizations will now be able to consolidate and strengthen their security postures by including information-centric policies in the process of centrally managing users and roles, and their access throughout the enterprise.”

    Dave Hansen, corporate senior vice president and general manager, CA Security Management, said the acquisition would allow CA to deliver one of the broadest and most advanced information security solutions in the market today and address the demand for a new generation of identity and access management.

    “We are continuing our aggressive plan to deliver to our customers a comprehensive solution for identity and access management to help meet their security, compliance and privacy needs,” he said.

    Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

  • EMC Cuts Jobs Despite Strong Results


    EMC is laying off 2,400 workers in a bid to streamline operations in the face of economic recession.

    The cuts represent about 7 per cent of its global 41,900 employee workforce.

    Despite the move, EMC is expected to post record quarterly revenue growth that will meet fourth-quarter expectations.

    The storage giant said in a statement that Q4 2008 revenues would total about USD $4 billion.

    This represents 4 per cent growth over the same period a year ago and an 8 per cent increase compared with the third quarter of 2008.

    EMC said the staff reductions were necessary to ensure it remained ahead of the downturn.

    The staffing cuts are expected to reduce expenses by USD $350 million in 2009 and USD $500 million by 2010.

    The company’s last redundancies took place in 2007, when it axed 1,350 jobs.

    At the time it said these were required because acquisitions had led to overlapping staff.

  • Blu-ray Growth Bolsters Dipping DVD Sales


    US consumer spending on packaged home entertainment – rental and sales of DVD and high-def disc formats – fell by 5.5 per cent in 2008, to USD $22.4 billion, according to the Digital Entertainment Group.

    Spending on DVD purchases fell more dramatically than the total, declining by 9 per cent, to about USD $14.5 billion, and the shipment of DVD units was down almost 15 per cent in 2008 to 1.4 Billion

    That contrasts with expenditure on high-def discs, primarily Blu-ray Disc, which almost tripled during the year to reach USD $750 million.

    The figures, compliled by DEG with input from all the major studios, which while still dwarfed by those for DVD show that Blu-ray software shipments grew 250 per cent, to 63.2 million units in 2008, from 18 million units in 2007.

    Sales of Blu-ray players, including videogame consoles, meanwhile, grew to almost 10 million units since the format’s launch.
    The trade group said that in the fourth quarter alone, 3 million devices were sold.

    The DEG figures coincide with a SNL Kagan report that says Blu-ray discs will soon rescue the industry.

    Kagan suggests the growth of Blu-ray will eventually make up for losses in the standard-def category.

    "Retail revenue should start to grow again in 2010. Sales should start a short period of growth as high-definition player prices drop below $200 in 2011 and Blu-ray really begins to penetrate the mass market," Kagan says in its report.

    Blu-ray players in the US dipped under USD $200 at the end of 2008 and Vizio is to launch a USD $199 Blu-ray player in April.

    Kagan said Blu-ray sales represented less than three percent of home video revenue in 2008. But the research firm projects that it will grow to around 19 percent by 2011.

  • HD Content Helps Freesat Double Sales


    Freesat doubled sales of its satellite packages in the last quarter of 2008.

    Emma Scott, MD of the UK’s free-to-air digital satellite television service, said high definition content from the BBC and ITV have helped drive sales.

    Since the service launched in May 2008, over 200,000 sales have been recorded, with 100,000 of those coming in the months since September.

    "Freesat is able to offer incredible HD with no subscription," said Scott.

    "We’re thrilled that both the BBC and ITV are investing more in HD programming in 2009.

    Scott said key goals in 2009 include increasing Freesat’s product range and distribution by the quality and choice of channels and services available, and the anticipated launch of IPTV services, like BBC iPlayer onto Freesat later this year.

  • Yahoo Widget Engine Gets HDTV Makers' Backing


    Yahoo has agreed deals with a host of big-name HDTV makers, including Samsung, LG, Sony and Vizio, that will result in their sets supporting Yahoo’s online service.

    The alliances put Yahoo firmly at the forefront of the drive towards the convergence of the Internet and TV.

    The new TVs will be available from as early as the spring and will support widgets – small Internet applications – that operate alongside broadcast TV content.

    After making the announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo said the applications can be used for a variety of Web activities.

    These include YouTube, MySpace, tracking stocks and sports teams, buying and selling on eBay, messaging friends using Twitter, or using Flickr.

    The widgets give viewers more interaction with the programs they’re watching.

    There will also be applications based on Yahoo-branded services such as Yahoo Finance.

    Yahoo will use the technology as a means to to sell advertising.

    The technology also allows outsiders to write TV applications for the platform.