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HP Makes Changes At The Top
HP has appointed former Boeing Company executive John Hinshaw as CIO.
In the newly created role of EVP of Global Technology and Business Processes, Hinshaw will oversee IT and shared and administrative services, including indirect and services procurement. Hinshaw also will be in charge of optimising business processes across the company.
Hinshaw was previously VP and general manager of Boeing Information Solutions at The Boeing Company, where he was responsible for running a new business.
Prior to Boeing, Hinshaw was SVP and CIO at Verizon Wireless. Earlier in his career he also served as a consultant with Accenture.
Hinshaw will join HP as a member of its executive council on 15 November, reporting to HP president and CEO Meg Whitman.
Meanwhile, HP also announced that Craig Flower has been promoted to SVP and CIO. Flower will be responsible for data management, application architecture, global business intelligence, sales, and product development and engineering applications. Flower has held a wide range of IT management positions within HP since 1984.
RIM’s Woes Continue
September 23, 2011 by admin
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PlayBook shipments dropped in half for Research In Motion during its second quarter, which also saw revenue continue its steep decline.
RIM shipped just 200,000 PlayBooks in the second quarter, down from 500,000 last quarter, when it started offering the tablet device.
Revenue was US$4.2 billion, hitting the low end of the company’s expectation and down 10 percent from the same quarter last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected $4.47 billion.
RIM’s net income was $329 million, or $0.63 per share. Adjusted net income was $419 million, or $0.80 per share. Analysts were expecting better: Those polled by Thomson predicted $0.87 per share.
RIM shipped 10.6 million smartphones during the second quarter. In June, RIM warned that the second quarter might be weak because of delays in shipping new phones. The delays meant RIM would miss the back-to-school sales period, negatively impacting sales, it said at the time.
Executives who spoke during a conference call to discuss the results put a positive spin on phone sales, however. The company only began launching phones running the new BlackBerry 7 software within the past few weeks, and so far it’s the “largest and most successful launch in our history,” Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, said during the call.
Facebook Is Display Advertising King
Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will reach roughly $2.2 billion in 2011, toppling Yahoo Inc to collect the biggest portion of online display advertising dollars, according to a new study.
Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will give it a 17.7 percent share of the market for graphical display ads that appear on websites, according to a report released on Monday by research firm eMarketer.
Last year Facebook garnered 12.2 percent share of the U.S. market.
The figures highlights the growing clout of Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network. It has seen its valuation soar to roughly $80 billion in recent transactions for its shares on the private markets as some investors anticipate it could have an initial public offering next year.
While Facebook has grabbed the top ranking, eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said the overall market for display ads, which include banner ads, video ads and Web page sponsorships, is growing robustly enough that it is benefiting numerous companies.
Verizon May Not Carry The PlayBook
April 22, 2011 by admin
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Verizon Wireless is still evaluating whether or not it will carry the PlayBook tablet computer from Research In Motion, the biggest U.S. mobile operator stated on Wednesday.
While BlackBerry maker RIM had said it expected Verizon Wireless to be one of its distribution partners for PlayBook, the company said it has yet to make such a determination.
“We’re still evaluating the BlackBerry Playbook and have not made a determination as to whether we’re going to distribute it,” Verizon Wireless Spokeswoman Brenda Raney said.
The comment came the day after PlayBook debuted at North American electronics retailers.
NFC Support Coming to Windows Phone 7
April 3, 2011 by admin
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Microsoft is adding support for NFC (near field communication) to its Windows Phone mobile operating system, according to a report on Bloomberg Businessweek. NFC technology is a key component to the upcoming mobile payment and mobile wallet systems now reportedly under development at Google, RIM and Apple as well as the new carrier-led initiative Isis, a coalition of three of the four major cellular providers here in the U.S.
Support for NFC technology in Windows Phone 7 will be pushed out in an update to Microsoft’s mobile operating system, sources told Bloomberg reporters. Those updates may arrive sometime this year.
Bloomberg says that the addition of NFC is an effort to close the gap between Microsoft and Google, the latter which is currently the leading smartphone platform here in the U.S., and, according to at least one analyst firm, worldwide.
Google’s Android mobile operating system added in NFC support in the release code-named Gingerbread (Android 2.3) and has incrementally added new capabilities since then to broaden its feature set. In February 2011, for example, an update delivered the ability to both read and write to standard NFC tags, whereas before the NFC support was read-only.
Is Motorola Building Its Own Mobile OS?
March 26, 2011 by admin
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Motorola Mobility has snagged a number of experienced mobile and Web engineers from Apple and Adobe and is developing a Web-based mobile operating system as a potential alternative to Google’s Android software, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Asked to comment, Motorola did not refute the existence of the project but continues to affirm its interest in Android. “Motorola Mobility is committed to Android as an operating system,” a company spokesperson stated.
Jonathan Goldberg, an analyst with Deutsche Bank in San Francisco, said that he too had heard Motorola was at work on its own operating system. “I know they’re working on it,” “I think the company recognizes that they need to differentiate and they need options, just in case. Nobody wants to rely on a single supplier.”