Technology Analysis

Apple has been feeling on top of the world, what with the success of its products, most notably the iPhone, and its financial well-being. But the company has also developed the reputation of being controlling and high-handed, whether non-disclosure agreements, that have the reputation of being far and away the worst in the industry, that its business partners must sign or the seemingly cavalier...

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It seems that AT&T is planning to compete with Amazon in offering on-demand web services. Little surprise, as virtually every tech-related company is looking at entering the cloud computing space, where automated capacity provisioning and self-service billing and payment is becoming de rigueur. But what we’re seeing is more than moving CPU cycles or storage to some location managed by...

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A look at highlights of the past week in the high tech legal world: courts, regulation, and lawsuits. AT&T suing Verizon over 3G ad — It seems that AT&T heard the recent Verizon ads that slammed the former’s 3G coverage loud and clear and is both suing and asking for a restraining order. The Verizon ad shows a map of the apparently spotty coverage that AT&T 3G service...

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Cisco is finding that sometimes acquisitions aren’t quite as easy to do as showing the money. This morning it upped its bid for Tandberg from $3 billion to roughly $3.4 billion. Some holders of sizeable chunks of Tandberg stock had objected to the Cisco offer as inadequate. That initial offer was 153.5 Norwegian Kroner versus the 170 Kroner today, or a jump of about 10.7 percent. So where...

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Recent signs suggest that Apple (AAPL) is considering advertising as an important part of its future business model. While that might tie in to the company’s reported plans to bring a tablet computer to market, it also seems to be part of a broader interest in targeting Google (GOOG). Just last week, the New York Times noticed that Apple had filed a patent application for a way to force...

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You knew that Google wanted to be in the telecom business when it bid for wireless spectrum. You knew that it really wanted to be in the telecom business when it acquired GrandCentral and eventually created Google Voice. Well, here comes the next step: Google just bought VoIP software vendor and service provider Gizmo5, and everyone over at Vonage and Skype must be quaking in their shoes. While...

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Just a few days ago I was arguing that platform would beat machine in the mobile wars. I specifically referred to Google and Apple, though meant the point more generally. But it appears that some Gartner research, leading to a 2012 projection, would back up the argument. The following Gartner chart, via a Between the Lines piece on whether the mobile OS wars would follow PC history, shows the...

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Years ago — back in the dark ages before the Internet bubble – many people spoke of convergence. One group, those who built gaming consoles, such as Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT), predicted that their devices would become the entertainment centers of the future. Although events didn’t unfold on their timeline, it may be that ultimately they’ll be shown to be right.And that...

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Time Warner (TWX) filed an 8-K with the SEC today and gave a preview of the AOL spin-off. It’s coming quick and it’s going to be expensive — and messy. It doesn’t seem like that many years ago when AOL, swaggering under the weight of its pre-bubble market cap, decided that it was going to purchase Time Warner. Why? Synergy, of course. But synergy was another word for the...

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Intel (INTC) will pay AMD $1.25 billion to settle all the antitrust and patent infringement suits that have been flying about. But this isn’t going to come close to letting Intel put antitrust issues behind, and some of the biggest prices the company will pay are yet to come. In a joint statement the two companies commented, “While the relationship between the two companies has been...

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