Technology Industry Archive

Updated: Ivory Investment Management, a hedge fund that owns about 1.5 percent of Yahoo, is pushing the company to do a search deal with Microsoft, but the sticking point is valuation. Analysts say that Ivory’s assumptions sound optimistic. In a letter reported earlier by CNBC, Ivory urges Yahoo to take a Microsoft search deal while it still can. Ivory says a search deal with Microsoft could...

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SAP is reportedly retreating a bit on its forced maintenance price hikes and it may be a sign to come as customers gain leverage over vendors. Dennis Howlett reports that SAP is backtracking on its maintenance price hikes, which went over like a lead balloon, in Germany. It appears there won’t be a price hike until 2010 for German customers, but SAP is likely to extend the move to all of its...

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Intel bets on small chips — Intel’s Atom chip is supposed to be the entry into the (hopefully) robust mobile market. Without getting a toehold in a big area outside of PCs, the company may face difficulties growing in the future, though the present is stable enough. [Source: Fortune] Mayfield to open India fund — Mayfield Fund has a new $110 million fund for investing in...

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If you cast a large enough net, you’ll eventually snag a fish or two. In some ways, it feels like that’s what Google is doing with its AdWords program. The company said today that it’s extending AdWords reach, optimizing it to include ads that are specific to iPhone and G1 users - which offer full-view Web browsers, as opposed to the scaled-down views on other mobile devices. The question...

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One of Yahoo’s most valuable properties is its web mail service, which has more members and gets more traffic than mail services provided by Google, MSN and AOL. Yahoo Mail was once part of the portal, another offering along side things like photo services, stock portfolios, alerts and other services under Yahoo’s “portal” umbrella. Now, according to an entry on GigaOm, Yahoo is gearing...

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Apple has a reputation for being focused on its customers. But given recent history, you might wonder whether the reputation should be for lying to customers. As Apple goes after a bigger market, it is going to face an enormous challenge of appealing over the long haul to people who are not inculcated in the partisan culture surrounding the company. If it doesn’t change its ways, a few...

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Apple may be offering a $99 iPhone at Wal-Mart. More than 300 million applications have been downloaded from Apple’s App Store. And the iPod touch is out of stock in at key retailers. Add it up and signs abound that Apple’s has created a virtuous cycle for its touch platform and the payoff may be coming macroeconomic concerns be damned. Apple’s master plan for its touch ecosystem isn’t...

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Qualcomm ups and downs — A federal court upheld part of a previous ruling that Qualcomm failed to disclose certain patents to a standards body, but vacated part of the ruling saying that the company could not enforce the patents. This is part of a long patent infringement case that Qualcomm had brought against Broadcom in 2005. [Source: Reuters] Yahoo countersues American Airlines —...

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iPod shortage? — Analysts are pointing to a sudden shortage of iPods in the distribution channel. Amazon has pushed lead times from 11 days to between three and five weeks. Given that Apple doesn’t cut prices, this probably isn’t a move to shore up margins, which means that someone badly miscalcualted a forecast, because consumer money will clearly go elsewhere. [Source:...

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Real Networks said today that it informed 130 employees, or 7.5 percent of its worldwide workforce, that their positions would be eliminated at the end of year.  In a post on the company’s official blog, the company said the layoffs were part of a larger cost cutting plan that “is intended to bring expenses in line with current and prospective economic realities.” The company said it...

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