Cisco To Cut Thousands Of Jobs

Word the street is that router giant Cisco is about to cut 14 percent of it’s worldwide workforce which is thought to be around ten thousand people.

The reports are saying that seven thousand people will be given pink slips by the end of August; and the other three thousand unfortunate souls will take an early retirement option.

It seems as though many companies go this route when the executive team does not adjust to the changing technology market; they try to boost profits in the short-term by firing those who have worked so hard for the company. That said, the massive cuts are expected to save Cisco about $1 billion in 2012. A company spokesperson told Bloomberg that additional cost cutting procedures will also be instituted.

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States Subpoena Sprint

Sprint Nextel has been subpoenaed by nine states in connection with antitrust reviews of AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of T-Mobile USA, according to information Sprint posted on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) website.

In a letter dated June 28 to FCC, Sprint said it had received subpoenas and civil investigation demands from attorneys general in the states of Arizona, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, as well as from the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Sprint, the No.3 U.S. mobile service, is opposing AT&T’s proposed $39 billion purchase of No.4 U.S. mobile service T-Mobile USA, a Deutsche Telekom AG unit, on the grounds it will give too much competitive power to one company.

Sprint said in its letter that the states have asked the company to provide all the materials it had submitted to FCC regarding AT&T’s deal.

Meanwhile, an AT&T spokesman told Bloomberg that his company had also received subpoenas from the same nine states regarding its proposed T-Mobile transaction.

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Nokia Slashes Smartphone Prices

Nokia has lowered the price of smartphones across its entire portfolio in an attempt to slow the decline of its share in the higher-end of the cellphone market, two industry sources said on Tuesday.

One of the sources with direct knowledge of Nokia’s pricing said the company’s flagship model, the N8, the multimedia phone C7, as well as the business user-targeted E6, saw the steepest cuts of around 15 percent.

Other price cuts were smaller, both sources said. “There are no very big cuts per model, but the scale — across the portfolio — is unseen for a very, very long time,” said one of the sources, who works at a European telecom operator.

A Nokia spokesman declined to comment on specific prices and said changes were part of its normal business. “It’s business as usual,” he said.

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Samsung Asks ITC To Ban Apple Products

Samsung requested that the U.S. International Trade Commission ban the importation of Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods, ratcheting up its fight with Apple.

The filing, dated Tuesday, states Apple’s iPhone, iPod digital music player and iPad tablet infringe on five of Samsung’s patents involving telecommunications standards and user interface inventions.

Samsung also filed a fresh patent lawsuit against Apple in a Delaware federal court on Wednesday.

The complaints are the latest salvo in a growing legal battle between the two electronics giants.

In April, Apple sued Samsung in a California federal court, claiming the South Korean firm’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets “slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung then countersued in California, and Apple last week filed another lawsuit in South Korea. An Apple spokesman could not be immediately reached on Wednesday.

As well as its own phones and tablets, Samsung manufactures microchips for Apple’s gadgets, a business that brought in about $5.7 billion in revenue for the South Korean company last year.

Before banning the importation of Apple’s popular devices, the ITC would first have to agree to look into Samsung’s allegations, a process that could be quite lengthy.

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Skype Debuts Video Calls For Android

Skype, which is being gobbled up by Microsoft for $8.5 billion, debuted a new service on Thursday allowing users of Android phones to make free video calls to Skype contacts, including those on Apple iPhones.

The company whose name has become synonymous with Internet calling said its updated Android app would initially support video calling on selected HTC and Sony Ericsson Phones, with more devices to follow shortly.

“We are committed to bringing Skype video calling to as many platforms as possible,” Skype’s product and marketing chief Neil Stevens said in a statement.

The move will help makers of phones based on Google’s Android software compete with Apple’s FaceTime video-calling service launched last year for the iPhone and now available on its iPad 2 tablet and Mac computers.

Video calling could also help new Skype owner Microsoft promote its Windows Phone smartphone platform, which it is merging with Nokia’s in an effort to become competitive with Android and Apple.

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E-Readers More Popular Than Tablets

More people are using e-readers than tablets, according to a Pew Research Institute study.

The Pew survey of 2,277 adults that finished on May 22 found that 12% of Americans owned an e-reader device in May compared to 8% who owned a tablet like Apple’s iPad.

Also, ownership grew faster for e-readers like the Nook or Kindle than ownership of tablets over the six months between November 2010 and May, the Pew survey found.

The telephone survey found that Hispanic Americans are the fastest-growing ownership group of both e-reader and tablet devices.

E-reader ownership increased from 6% of American adults in November 2010 to 12% in May, Pew said.

Tablet ownership grew from 5% to 8% over the same period. Tablet ownership had been increasing “relatively quickly” through Nov. 2010, Pew said, but growth was virtually flat from January to May, growing from only from 7% to 8%.

Pew also found that 3% of U.S. adults own both kinds of devices, while 9% own an e-reader but not a tablet, and 5% own a tablet but not an e-reader.

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Verizon Ending Unlimited Data Plan In July

We are closer to reaching the end of Verizon Wireless’s limited-time offer of unlimited data, says the Wall Street Journal‘s AllThingsD. The website reports that the wireless carrier plans to introduce new tiered pricing plans next month for new smartphone customers — including those buying Apple’s iPhone 4.

If true, the report hardly comes as a surprise. Back in January, when Verizon became the second carrier in the U.S. to offer iPhone service, the company said it would offer subscribers a $30-a-month unlimited data plan for the iPhone’s launch, but highlighted the fact that the offer was for a limited time only.

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TSMC May Beat Intel To Market With 3D Chip

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is competing with Intel to become the first technology firm to offer three-dimensional chips that boost the density of transistors in a single semiconductor by up to 1000 times.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chip maker, could make its first 3D chips commercially available before the end of 2011, according to a person close to the situation who wishes to remain anonymous.

The time frame for TSMC matches the end of 2011 schedule that Intel has set for the launch of its 3D Tri-Gate chips, which the company expects to be the world’s first commercial 3D chip and the most significant advance in chip technology since the development of the chip transistor in the 1950s.

With several layers of silicon stacked together, a 3D chip can achieve performance gains of about a third while consuming 50% less power. For this reason, 3D chips are particularly well suited to power new generations of mobile devices such as tablets and mobile phones, businesses where Intel has so far failed to establish a significant presence.

“This is definitely a new business opportunity for TSMC,” said Shang-Yi Chiang, senior vice president for R&D at TSMC, in an interview. “We are building a patent portfolio now.”

3D chips are expected to solve a number of problems for chipmakers who are aiming for performance increases in ever-smaller chips. As transistor density rises, the wires connecting them have become both thinner and closer together, resulting in increased resistance and overheating. These problems cause signal delays, limiting the clock speed of central processing units.

“3D chips look more attractive because of their greater density,” Chiang said. “However, it is more difficult to make them because of the testing issues. If you have five stacked dies and one of the dies is bad, you have to scrap the whole thing.”

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Verizon Adds LTE Network To More U.S. Cities

Verizon Wireless announced 19 more cities that will get its faster 4G wireless network service starting Thursday, bringing the total to 74 metropolitan areas.

San Francisco and Detroit, already on Verizon LTE since last December, will also see the existing LTE network in those cities expanded, Verizon said in a statement.

The new 19 LTE cities include several state capitals such as Sacramento, Calif., Hartford, Conn., Boise, Idaho, Harrisburg, Pa., Indianapolis, Ind., Salt Lake City (with Ogden), Utah; and Madison (with Milwaukee), Wis. The full list of cities is on Verizon’s website.

This news comes as competitor AT&T is scheduled to launch LTE 4G service in five cities in the U.S. this summer: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Rumors have also surfaced that Sprint will begin adding LTE service to its existing nationwide WiMax 4G capability, partly to support a future LTE-ready iPhone, although Sprint has not confirmed those reports.

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Acer Launches Sandy Bridge Notebooks

Acer updated its Timeline notebook series with Intel’s Sandy Bridge family of CPUs. The Timeline X series will come in three sizes, 13.3-inch, 14-inch and 15.6-inch and they are about an inch thick. Furthermore, the notebooks will be equipped with Acer’s PowerSmart Technology that is supposed to provide battery life of up to nine hours on models with integrated graphics and up to eight hours for those models with discrete graphics.

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