Seagate To Acquire Samsung’s HD Unit

Seagate Technology is to acquire Samsung Electronics  loss-plagued hard disk drive (HDD) business for $1.4 billion as it looks to battle rival Western Digital Corp and curb price wars that continue to damage the industry.

The deal comes a month after Western Digital sought to buy Hitachi Ltd’s hard disk drive division for $4.3 billion, to create a global leader with deep resources.

It is yet to be seen whether Western Digital trump Seagate as the world’s largest hard drive maker after the deals conclude. In 2010, Seagate’s sales was $11.4 billion while Western Digital posted revenue of $9.85 billion.

Toshiba Corp and Fujitsu are the other smaller players in the hard-drive space.

The sale of the HDD business will see Samsung leave the cut-rate industry and focus on its bread-and-butter memory-chip business.

The sector is already battling persistent sales-growth declines and now faces a longer-term threat from wireless tablet devices using more power-efficient flash drives, or solid-state drives (SSD).

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Is Twitter Finally Getting A Competitor?

Twitter your days alone at the top of the micro-blogging mountain may soon be ending. UberMedia, which owns major third-party mobile applications for the Twitter platform, is said to be building a service that will compete directly against Twitter. If it’s true, the move would come on the heels of Twitter briefly suspending the company’s apps for alleged use policy violations.

Citing unnamed sources, CNN.com reported today that UberMedia is looking to attract users to its own microblogging service by addressing common complaints about Twitter, such as its rules on message lengths as well as how the service can be confusing to new users.

UberMedia declined to comment on whether its programmers are building a new microblogging service. However, in an emailed statement to Computerworld, company marketing chief Steve Chadima said, “Our foremost desire is to continue to innovate on the Twitter platform and bring more users and usage to Twitter.”

UberMedia owns UberTwitter, which is for the BlackBerry platform; Twidroyd, for Android devices; and UberCurrent, which can be used on iPhones and iPads. The company also has been in the news in recent months because it’s moving to acquire popular Twitter client TweetDeck.

TweetDeck competes directly with Twitter’s Web and mobile clients.

Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research, said he wouldn’t be surprised if UberMedia were to go after some of Twitter’s business, but the company would have an uphill climb.

Hackers Breach WordPress Servers

Hackers have gained access to several servers that support WordPress and may have obtained source code, according to the founding developer of Automattic, the company behind the popular blogging platform.
Matt Mullenweg wrote on the WordPress blog that Automattic has been reviewing log records to determine how much information was breached and re-evaluating “avenues to gain access.”

“We presume our source code was exposed and copied,” Mullenweg wrote. “While much of our code is open source, there are sensitive bits of our and our partners’ code. Beyond that, however, it appears information disclosed was limited.”

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Google Launches Online Magazine

Google has decided to launch its own quarterly online magazine, Think Quarterly, out of its centers in the U.K. and Ireland, saying that “in a world of accelerating change, we all need to take time to reflect.”

The first issue of Think Quarterly is already freely available online and is focuses on data, including data obesity, data impotence, data overload and open data.

“Think Quarterly is a unique communications tool that brings together some of the world’s leading minds to discuss the big issues facing businesses today,” the magazine says on its Twitter bio.

The magazine’s Twitter feed says it launched on March 21, though there is no mention of the magazine on Google’s blog, Twitter feed, Facebook page or newsroom.

In a note on the magazine’s website, the managing director of Google’s U.K. & Ireland Operations, Matt Brittin, said, “Think Quarterly is a breathing space in a busy world. It’s a place to take time out and consider what’s happening and why it matters.”

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Google Employees May Get Xoom Tablets

Google employees may be getting new tablets, Motorola’s CEO said earlier in the week.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley conference, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said it’s clear that his company’s focus on enterprise is paying off in that it is having conversations with companies wishing to buy tens of thousands of tablets. Motorola last week began offering its Xoom tablet, the first to run the Honeycomb version of Android, which was developed specifically for tablet devices.

When asked why those enterprises are choosing to go with an Android tablet rather than Apple’s iPad, Jha joked: “One of them is Google so I think I understand why that is.” Google may be more inclined to buy tablets running its own Android software rather than a device from competitor Apple. Read More…

Nokia Adopts Windows Phone 7 OS

Nokia will adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone as its main smartphone strategy, the company stated today, after days of speculation on what it would do to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android.

The companies will also partner on mobile ads- Nokia will use Microsoft adCenter in mobile devices and on mapping- where Nokia Maps will become part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Nokia’s application and content store will be integrated into Microsoft’s Marketplace.

Before today’s announcement, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop had stated that Nokia needed to “decide how we either build, catalyze or join an ecosystem” to change its fortunes. In the end it decided to partner with Microsoft and join the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem.

Nokia will contribute its hardware design and language support to the partnership, and help bring Windows Phone to a larger range of price points, market segments and geographies, the companies said in an open letter from Elop and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. R ead More……..

Microsoft Eyeing More Software For The iPad

The current rumor on the street is that Microsoft might be looking beyond the recently released OneNote for iPad. Insiders are saying Microsoft is closely monitoring the number of downloads of OneNote for iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch to perhaps gauge the possible interest in adding more productivity software for Apple iOS suite of products. Read More…..

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