Technology Industry Archive

The stock market took a beating today, but it’s important to keep some perspective because things could have been worse. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 7 percent in value, but that doesn’t rank among the top 10 percentage losses. Nasdaq lost about 9.1 percent, which is its third biggest percentage drop. However, tech stocks seemed to take even more of a beating. Looking...

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As financial institutions melt down right and left, it seemed like the perfect time for a discussion about high tech M&A during a credit crisis. So I chatted with Bob Strasser, who heads the San Jose technology practice for BDO Seidman. BNET: What’s happening in high tech M&A as a result of the credit meltdown? Bob Strasser: I think the market is still percolating along. When you...

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Oracle has taken an interesting strategic turn by moving into the hardware business: a pair of servers, optimized to run Oracle’s database and built and supported by HP. This seems like one of those decisions that will either prove to be a canny move or blow up in the face of Larry Ellison. This isn’t an impulse move, as the machine has been in development for three years and for...

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You’d think that if a company got rid of the competing technology, it would be able to gain market share. Not so for Sony. Market share for Blu-ray discs have actually fallen since HD DVD was taken off the market. Grabbing market share is regular DVDs, according to Nielsen VideoScan. When you look at the dynamics, it’s hardly surprising. In the consumer electronic space, it’s...

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The credit crisis looms as the greatest single financial meltdown that any of us are likely to see — a lot bigger than the subprime debacle, given that the credit default swap derivative market is somewhere close to $70 trillion (yes, with a t). And as the world wakes up to a conclusion that started to be obvious a few years ago, when it was clear that we all couldn’t keep generating...

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Last week, the Financial Times pointed out that U.S. high tech companies doing significant business overseas had seen significant revenue lifts from the falling value of the dollar. Presumably each pound, euro, or yen paid for goods and services turns into that many more greenbacks. So as the dollar has been strengthening some, I’ve finally had a chance to look at a few corporate filings to...

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To know what people think, you have to ignore their words and see what they do. There’s been lots of speculation about Yahoo’s strategy and how the company would get itself unstuck. Its most recently announced changes — changing the home page design and opening it to outside content — tells a world about what the company is planning. Instead of trying to directly fix its online...

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The U.S. presidential election is roaring up. Industry contributions have become a standard feature of the ritual, so I thought it might be interesting to see how high tech invests … oh, sorry — donates. You might think that companies would be pretty cold-blooded about such things, wanting to keep on the good side of whoever takes residence on Pennsylvania Avenue. But some time at...

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There’s been lots of talk about SanDisk’s rejection of Samsung’s cash acquisition offer at double SanDisk’s current stock price. We spoke to semiconductor analyst Jim Handy of Objective Analysis about the situation and some of the forces driving it. BNET: Why did Samsung want SanDisk? Jim Handy: SanDisk has patents to cover almost every flash card, flash controllers, and...

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Google has been talking about its view of mobile advertising as vital to its economic future. The company hasn’t been sitting still and is currently dominating the space. But Google’s success might well become what eventually brings it up short, as scared competitors, regulators, and partisans find ways to slow the company down. The penetration in both the US and major European...

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