Public spend boosts Logica August 15, 2008 IT group Logica yesterday upped its forecast for sales growth after an increase in IT spending in the public sector boosted first-half revenues by 6 per cent. Chief executive Andy Green admitted that the group was seeing a slowdown in financial services and consumer-driven sectors, but said other areas were holding up. Logica said that [...]
Publishers Beware: The bookworm’s iPod has arrived August 14, 2008 As as free publicity goes, you can’t do much better than getting your product compared to the iPod. That’s why Amazon will have been delighted earlier this week, when Citi analyst Michael Mahaney likened its e-book reader, the Kindle, to the world’s favourite gadget. Digital books have been around since the 1990s, but poor technology [...]
Blackberry on the up despite Apple iPhone August 12, 2008 The BlackBerry has cornered 10 per cent of the American mobile phone market for the first time, a research firm said yesterday – despite concerns about its ability to give Apple’s iPhone 3G a run for its money. Strategy Analytics said that BlackBerry maker RIM had increased its share of both the consumer and corporate [...]
Why lad’s mag websites are beating the media gloom August 6, 2008 After Michael Gove, shadow secretary for education, attacked lads’ magazines for their supposedly corrupting influence earlier this week, the industry needed a good news story. Yesterday’s announcement that the online version of IPC Media’s lads’ mag Nuts had doubled its audience in a year was just the ticket. In June, 1.4m unique users (web speak [...]
Sage expects to deflect the credit crunch August 5, 2008 Business software maker Sage yesterday said that its second quarter profits were up by 12 per cent, fuelling hopes that it will hold strong in the face of challenging market conditions. Despite increased competition in the small to medium enterprise (SME) market, the company continued to grow ahead of market expectations, posting an increase of [...]
BT stock falls on profit slip August 1, 2008 Telecoms giant BT fell the most in more than eight years yesterday, after reporting its fourth consecutive quarterly decline in profit and warning that margins at its global services unit may drop. Its shares fell 12 per cent, the sharpest fall since February 2000, closing at 173.9p. The firm’s share price has lost 28 per [...]
Slowing sales of broadband August 1, 2008 Growth in sales of broadband connections, which surged in recent years, has peaked and is now slowing rapidly, according to figures released by the UK’s leading broadband providers. Carphone Warehouse yesterday said it had missed its fixed line revenue growth targets, adding just 41,000 broadband customers in its first quarter, compared to earlier forecasts of [...]
Wii to win war of the consoles July 31, 2008 Video games veteran Nintendo, which makes the immensely popular Wii console, looks set to replace Sony as the king of the video game world, posting a 31.5 per cent increase in first quarter profits. Sales of the Wii console, which has a motion-sensing controller that can be swung like a bat, rose by 51 per [...]
Few bright spots in a dark day for Sony July 30, 2008 There were few glimmers of hope for Sony yesterday, after it revealed that first quarter net profit had plummeted by 47.4 per cent to ¥34.98bn (£207m). Nearly every area of the Japanese giant’s business, from music sales to electronics, posted worse than expected performances. Although sales volumes in electronics were up, reduced margins and an [...]
Disaster-proof your business, it could save you millions July 30, 2008 In these technological times, clever companies prepare for catastrophes before they have happened, writes David Crow Here in the UK, businesses used to be able to view natural disasters as foreign and exotic. Of course, the images of destruction that played across television screens would elicit feelings of horror and sympathy, but the true cost [...]