Technology Industry Archive

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff’s new book, Behind the Cloud, is remarkable if for no other reason that it’s a candid account of the company’s growing pains and isn’t just the usual self-serving claptrap when it comes to Benioff’s own career. Benioff also shares strategy about how the company intends to maintain its edge, even after having established itself as the...

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Sony just released its fiscal year second quarter numbers (third calendar quarter). Short take: PlayStation 3 unit sales were up by a healthy 33 percent, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 2 unit sales were down, and VAIO PC sales (now put together with games as “networked products & services”) were also down. So were prices, with a net result of the division revenue being...

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The year was 2009; the month, October. News came of the end of the last specialized consumer electronics device. The GPS, which had seemed destined to continue its existence, passed on at the announcement of the Google Maps navigation feature on Android 2.0. OK, a bit exaggerated, but not by much. The current stock of smartphones is showing how many categories of consumer electronics are simply...

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Juniper Networks introduced a new chipset, as well as a new router and network application platform today at the New York Stock Exchange, which it also counts as a customer. That’s an important point, as enterprise customers in areas like financial services, where speed is a critical component of stock trading, as well as health care, government and entertainment, are starting to require...

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A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits. AT&T claims price fixing — AT&T is suing a number of LCD panel manufacturers — including Samsung, LG Display, and AU Optronics — claiming price fixing. [Source: Barron's Tech Trader Daily] Facebook out from under Power.com suit — A judge tossed out a lawsuit that...

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Netflix announced in a press release that its video streaming service would be available to Sony PlayStation 3 owners next month. Although the DVD rental operator already has Internet distribution deals in place for a variety of consumer electronic devices, this latest partnering should help the company lower operating costs and overall churn rates in coming quarters. The core strategy of...

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Every now and then I read an article so fundamentally smart that I want to hold people’s heads down to get them to see it. One today is by Martin Peers of the Wall Street Journal, in which he observes how a good portion of Amazon’s financial success depends on putting off paying its bills. And while he is right that eventually vendors won’t put up with it, the company is still...

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I often think that the preoccupation with corporate earnings can even outshine their revenue issues. However, you can never do better than the amount of money you can bring in, and for SAP, the signs are not promising, particularly as its weakest area, software sales, is the one that makes all the others possible. Although earnings increased by 12 percent, sales dropped by 9 percent. But for...

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A Washington, D.C.-based market research firm says Federal Communications Commission (FCC) staff is talking with TV broadcasters about buying back some spectrum that it would then lease or auction to wireless carriers, with the broadcasters getting in on the action. This makes a lot of sense, particularly given the concerns the Obama Administration has expressed over the paucity of wireless...

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You know that “Broken Promises” ad that Apple is running on TV these days, which essentially calls Microsoft a liar for saying that Windows 7 is “different” because it won’t cause the problems that previous operating systems did for customers? At first blush, the ad seemed mean-spirited to me, but those screams you’re hearing are from Microsoft users trying,...

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