WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 13, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES GREEK BANK SCUPPERS HOPES OVER DEAL Alpha Bank, Greece’s third-largest lender, has killed hopes of a merger deal with larger rival National Bank of Greece, scotching the push by regulators and the government for the country’s troubled banking sector to strengthen itself through consolidation. RETAILERS RUN OUT OF IPAD 2 WITHIN HOURS Many [...]
ARM falls on fears of tablet PC supply glut March 10, 2011 ARM Holdings shares nose dived 8.97 per cent yesterday amid fears non-iPad tablets are vastly over supplied. The UK chip designer supplies around 95 per cent of chips for smartphones and has already cornered the nascent tablet market. A JP Morgan analyst this week forecast the glut of tablets – an estimated 81m this year [...]
IBM stocks hit a lifetime high March 9, 2011 SHARES of International Business Machines (IBM) hit a lifetime high yesterday as analysts welcomed the tech giant’s commitment to double its profit by 2015. IBM shares rose as much as 3.3 per cent to $167.72 (£103.50), their highest level on record adjusted for stock splits, as analysts raised their target price on the company, the [...]
Gizmos that can make the commute a bit more fun March 9, 2011 Shouting into your mobile on the train during the morning commute may be frowned upon, but there’s nothing to say you can’t watch telly. AverMedia.com’s Hybrid Volar dongle will turn your laptop into a digital TV recorder, so you can watch 50 digital Freeview channels. Or listen to the cricket commentary on the radio. The [...]
British consumers like the iPad 2 but think it is pricey March 8, 2011 LAST Wednesday Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad 2, a revised design for the tablet that will become available in the US next week and in 25 other countries a fortnight later. APPLE CREATES BUZZ IN UK The announcement led to an immediate rise in buzz score in the UK; from +20 on the day of [...]
Microsoft to pay $1bn for Nokia tie-up March 8, 2011 MICROSOFT will pay Nokia a staggering $1bn (£620m) upfront to develop handsets designed to run its Windows Phone 7 (WP7) operating system, it is understood. Nokia will reportedly pay Microsoft a royalty fee for each WP7 licence it uses, although the exact figure has not been announced. Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop, a former Microsoft [...]
WHAT THE OTHER PAPERS SAY THIS MORNING March 7, 2011 FINANCIAL TIMES IVORY COAST MOVE SPARKS COCOA FEARS Laurent Gbagbo, the Ivory Coast leader who the international community says lost presidential elections in November, announced he would nationalise the cocoa sector in a surprise move that threatened to drive the cocoa price sharply higher. The African country is the world’s largest cocoa exporter, accounting for [...]
Western Digital in $4.3bn deal March 7, 2011 Western Digital, the world’s second-biggest hard drive maker, yesterday agreed to buy Hitachi’s hard disk drive operations for about $4.3bn (£2.7bn) in cash and stock. After the deal, Hitachi will own 10 per cent of Western Digital. Western Digital said it had secured a term loan of $2bn and a revolving credit facility of $500m [...]
iPad 2 moves the tablet goalposts out of sight March 7, 2011 SO the iPad 2 is finally here, unveiled by Steve Jobs who, if you believe some of the more hyperbolic reports, may have risen from the dead to show it off in San Francisco last week. Geeks flocked to BBC studios for the live link-up to the event; so many geeks that there was nowhere [...]
A sanctuary – with iMacs – in West Sussex March 6, 2011 A WEEKEND in the country is often not so much a change of pace as stepping back into another era, where duvets are a dirty word and the closest you get to modern technology is a Teasmade. Not so at Park House, a luxury rural retreat in West Sussex. There might be rows of Hunter [...]