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Cisco Gives Employees The Boot
Network equipment maker Cisco Systems said on Monday that it plans to eliminate about 1,300 jobs as part of ongoing efforts to restructure the company.
“We are performing a focused set of limited restructurings that will collectively impact approximately 2 percent of our global employee population,” the company said in an emailed statement.
These actions are part of a continuous process to simplify the company and assess the economic environment in certain parts of the world, it said.
Cisco had 65,223 employees at the end of its fiscal third quarter, according to its website.
Cisco last year started a plan to cut expenses by $1 billion in an effort to make the company leaner and more efficient.
Is GM Reconsidering Facebook
July 12, 2012 by admin
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General Motors Co and Facebook Inc are in talks about the return of the U.S. automaker as a paid advertiser almost two months after GM said it would stop running ads on the social networking website, sources close to the situation said on Tuesday.
Although the two companies remain far from reaching an agreement, Facebook executives have actively courted the world’s largest carmaker. One source said Facebook was not pushing for GM’s immediate return, but offered to provide data showing the effectiveness of the website’s paid ads.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg sent GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson an e-mail urging the company to reconsider its decision shortly after the third-largest U.S. advertiser pulled its ads in May, a move that undermined confidence in Facebook on the eve of its highly-anticipated initial public offering, according to sources who were not permitted to speak publicly because the talks are ongoing.
Windows 7 Most Used OS
Windows 7 is now the leading operating system (OS) for PCs, according to figures from web traffic analysis firm Statcounter.
The report claims that in June more than half of all internet connected PCs, or 50.2 per cent, ran Microsoft’s most recent Windows 7 OS.
Statcounter’s statistics show that Windows XP was the next most popular operating system, used by 29.9 per cent of users.
This might be the first time that Windows 7 has had more market share than the other operating systems put together, but with the launch of Windows 8 looming, it’s only a matter of time before Microsoft will begin pushing Windows 7 users to make the switch to its next operating system.
That’s already started happening with XP. Launched back in 2001, the OS was a massive hit for the software giant and for this reason it’s finding it hard to wean users away from Windows XP – especially considering how rubbish Windows Vista was. However, Microsoft has said that it’s time to move on, and it will end business support for Windows XP in the next two years.
Is It “Game Over” For RIM?
June 11, 2012 by admin
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Research In Motion’s share price on Monday fell to less than $10 on Nasdaq, a breach that technical analysts say could prompt even further declines, after an analyst warned that the BlackBerry maker’s sales were dismal last month.
The stock, which is trading at its lowest since 2003, has fallen nearly 15 percent in the past week alone.
After an announcement last week that RIM expects to post a quarterly operating loss, sentiment is extremely bearish on the stock, said Elvis Picardo, a strategist at Global Securities in Vancouver.
To make matters worse, Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette said in a note to clients on Sunday that RIM sales deteriorated further in May.
On Monday, RIM’s shares fell 5.8 percent to $9.66 on the Nasdaq, while its Toronto-listed shares closed on Monday 6.1 percent lower at C$10.03.
“You would have expected the C$10 level to have provided pretty strong support, but if it cracks through that it’s really hard to say where this decline will stop,” said Picardo.
RIM, which almost invented the concept of on-the-go email with its first BlackBerry device in 1999, has seen its once dominant position fade in the face of competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices from the likes of Samsung Electronics Co using Google Inc’s Android software.
T-Mobile To Make More Cuts
May 25, 2012 by admin
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T-Mobile USA will eliminate an additional 900 jobs in a restructuring, on top of a 1,900-job reduction at its call centers that was announced in March, the carrier confirmed on Wednesday.
T-Mobile, now with about 36,000 employees, has faced more than two years of subscriber losses. Last year, the wireless carrier lost out on a $39 billion deal to be taken over by AT&T — federal regulators rejected the deal.
In its first quarter results announced May 9, T-Mobile said it lost 510,000 contract customers. It now serves 33.4 million customers.
Not having the iPhone 4S to sell, compared to the other three major U.S. carriers, also hurt T-Mobile and lead to more contract deactivations, the company said in its first-quarter results.
A T-Mobile spokeswoman said in an email that the elimination of 900 jobs was the result of a “restructuring of key functions and departments across the company, including the elimination of some positions and outsourcing of others.”
Cisco Lends A Hand In Fighting Fraud
Cisco released an API at the Interop 2012 Conference this week for its branch routers designed to enable third-party developers to write applications to beef up the security of phone calls over the router network.
The Cisco UC Gateway Services API is a Web-based programming interface that allows customers and developers access to call information over a Cisco ISR G2 router at the edge of a voice network, such as signaling and media. This information can be used to detect and help prevent malicious activity such as social engineering and identity theft scams, contact center account takeover fraud, unauthorized network and service use, and denial-of-service attacks.
Applications written to the API can then apply appropriate action to terminate, redirect or record the call.
Cisco, citing data from the Communications Fraud Control Association, says global telecom fraud losses are estimated to be $40 billion annually.
Global Semiconductors On the Rise
Global semiconductor revenue is expected to rise at faster and force bigger chipmakers to acquire smaller rivals to increase their market share, according to bean counters at research outfit IDC.
In an industry report, IDC predicts that revenue may expand by between six percent and seven percent this year. Global semiconductor sales rose 3.7 percent to $301 billion in 2011, as orders for chips used in wireless devices offset declining revenue for computing-related chips, IDC said.
But it thinks all this will coase nergers and acquisitions among chipmakers will continue. Already Qualcomm bought Atheros and Texas Instruments took over National Semiconductor. But IDC thinks that industry consolidation may allow bigger chipmakers to offer products that are used in a wider range of applications.
LG Only Wants To Support Android
May 7, 2012 by admin
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Smartphone-maker LG Electronics has backed off manufacturing Windows Phone devices for now and will instead focus on Android phones, according to a report.
The Korea Herald reported Monday that LG, based in Seoul, South Korea, will take a step back from the Windows Phone platform, though it intends to “continue research and development efforts” on the Microsoft operating system.
LG currently makes the Optimus 7 based on Windows Phone 7 and other WP7 handsets.
LG has noted that Windows Phone 7-based devices hold less than 2% of the global smartphone market, according to multiple market analysts.
“The total unit[s] of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure,” an LG spokesman told the Korea Herald.
In 2009, LG had decided to make Windows Phone its primary smartphone OS, with plans for 26 new Windows phones in 2012.
Ken Dulaney, an analyst at Gartner, said the LG decision to cut its Windows Phone plans, at least temporarily, is likely not an absolute reversal of strategy.
He theorized that LG may be waiting for Windows Phone 8 to materialize late this year before producing more devices on the platform.
Is E-Commerce Next For Facebook?
April 13, 2012 by admin
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A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world’s most respected financiers, are hoping that Facebook Inc will become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.
As the world’s largest social network moves toward a $5 billion initial public offering, it will come under more pressure from Wall Street to generate new sources of profit growth and reduce its reliance on advertising, which accounted for 85 percent of its 2011 revenue.
Some entrepreneurs and investors increasingly think “f-commerce” – meaning e-commerce on Facebook – is the answer. Start-ups such as BeachMint, Yardsellr, Oodle and Fab.com are coming up with novel ways to persuade Facebook users to not just connect with friends on the social network, but to shop as well.
Backed by tens of millions of dollars from venture capital firms like Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and other big investors like Goldman Sachs, these start-ups are pushing out shopping apps, hosting online garage sales and testing out new business models on Facebook.
“E-commerce is a huge category with very strong tailwinds and it’s a natural move for Facebook,” said Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Value Partners, which owns Facebook shares and has a stake in BeachMint.
Amazon revolutionized online shopping by crunching lots of customer and purchase data to come up with relevant, personalized recommendations. In the same vein, Facebook’s combination of data, analytics and payment technology could fuel the next generation of e-commerce, Schwerin said.
Corporate America Prefers iPads
March 19, 2012 by admin
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Corporate customers who are planning tablet purchases next quarter overwhelmingly picked Apple’s iPad, a research firm said Tuesday.
Of the 1,000 business IT buyers surveyed last month by ChangeWave Research who said they would purchase tablets for their firms in the coming quarter, 84% named the iPad as an intended selection.
That number was more than ten times the nearest competitor and was a record for Apple.
“The percentage reporting they’ll buy Apple iPads has jumped to the highest level of corporate iPad demand ever seen in a ChangeWave survey,” the company said in a blog post.
Apple’s share of future business purchases has never been lower than 77% in any ChangeWave survey, which go back to November 2010.
Just over a fifth of all IT buyers — 22% — confirmed that they would be purchasing tablets for employees in the April-June quarter, ChangeWave said.
While Apple’s stock among corporate buyers rose by seven percentage points from the 77% that tapped the iPad as their preferred device last November, all other tablet makers’ numbers dropped in the most recent survey.
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