Posted 12/01/08 at 07:09:39 AM by Paul Lilly

International management consulting firm Oliver Wyman released a survey last week painting a pretty grim outlook for technology and media sales, but that didn't stop shoppers from flocking online on Black Friday. According to comScore, consumers spent $534 million online on Black Friday, November 28th, up 1 percent from last year. Total online sales were up 2 percent for the combination of Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, beating out expectations.

"Early reports suggest that Black Friday sales in retail stores were slightly better than anticipated in this depressed retail climate, and that performance apparently extended to the online channel, which saw sales on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday combined increase 2 percent versus year ago," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni. "It's probable that on Black Friday consumers responded positively to the very aggressive promotions and discounts being offered in retail stores."

Despite the 2-day sales boost, e-commerce spending for the first 28 days of November was down overall at $10.41 billion, 4 percent less than what it was in the same time frame one year ago.

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online, e-commerce, business, black friday, spending

Posted 11/25/08 at 10:19:27 AM by Paul Lilly

While websites continue to look for ways to increase online ad revenue, analysts are cautioning that advertisers are starting to cut back their budgets. According to a research note by analyst Jeff Lindsay of Sandford C. Bernstein & Co., the advertising industry is only expected to grow 11 percent in the U.S. in 2009 and 9 percent worldwide, down from a previous estimate of 13 percent. But even 11 percent seems overly optimistic to Jim Friedland of Cowen & Co., who downgraded his previous forecast of 13 percent to only 3 percent.

While Friedland's outlook is particularly bleak, he notes a decline in online display advertising, a trend which he sees continuing as ad budgets are tightened. Yahoo has already witnessed the decline first hand and last month reported a 64 percent drop in net income for the third quarter, which Jerry Yang mostly attributed to a weakening online ad market.

One entity that looks poised to weather the storm is Google, a major player in paid-search ads, which Friedland predicts will grow in the low double digits.

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Yahoo, business, online advertising, Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

Posted 11/24/08 at 10:29:00 AM by Paul Lilly

If you thought blue screens and other unexpected fatal system errors were annoying, how would you feel if your employer docked your paycheck every time you had to reboot your PC? This frightening practice appears to be a growing trend, one which has prompted several lawsuits by angered employees who are suddenly being itemized for the time they spend booting a PC.

According to The National Law Journal, several lawsuits have been filed in the past year in which employees claim they were not paid for the time they spent booting up and shutting down their PC at the start and end of each work day. And these aren't necessarily smaller companies looking to cut corners, either. Some of the accused include AT&T, UnitedHealth Group, and Cigna Corp.

"These are hourly employees who are not making much more than minimum wage,"said Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas-based lawyer who has experience filing computer-booting lawsuits. "There's a good half-hour a day that they're not being paid for. It adds up."

Thierman notes that even though booting up and shutting down a PC takes time, employees are still working, whether it be wading through paperwork or making phone calls. But management-side attorney Richard Rosenblatt sees it a different way. According to Rosenblatt, he's observed first hand employees engaging in non-work activities while waiting for their PC to boot.

"They go have a smoke, talk to friends, get coffee -- they're not working, and all they've done at that point is press a button to power up the computer, enter in a keyword," Rosenblatt said.

Are employers justified in docking pay based on startup and shutdown times? Hit the jump and sound off.

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law, business, paycuts

Posted 11/14/08 at 12:00:00 PM by David Murphy

If you haven't noticed the general collapse of the financial system around you, coupled with the massive switch to corporate cost-savings mechanisms (including a healthy dose of "rightsizing" by every company under the sun), then you need to stop playing Wrath of the Lich King and flip on the news.  Money is important, but perhaps never as important to the general corporate well-being as right now.

It's no surprise then that good ol' open source hardware and software platforms are being thrown into the mix now more than ever.  Semantic arguments aside, the open source movement is generally consider a cheaper, if not free alternative to proprietary, commercial software in the enterprise market.  But that doesn't mean that open-source software comes without a cost, nor are these companies necessarily immune to the financial movements of the technological industry. So where, then, does open-source development rest in the spectrum? Can these solutions do enough to save the bottom lines of big business?  Or are open-source companies just as doomed by a market slowdown as the software vendors on the other side of the fence?

Click the jump to find out!

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Software, open-source, hardware, proprietary, enterprise, business, market, recession

Posted 11/12/08 at 09:44:26 AM by Paul Lilly

For awhile there, things were looking pretty grim for AMD's graphics division, ATI. Nvidia could do no wrong, leaving AMD content to focus on the low to mid-range market and conceding the high-end altogether. Would ATI silicon ever be competitive again?

As we found out, the answer is yes. As a result, AMD's graphics chips have been able to take some market share away from Nvidia, according to a report by market research Jon Peddie Research.

"AMD has by all account exceeded expectations with its Radeon 4000 series," the report claims. "Priced aggressively yet delivering solid performance, AMD's new line not only took back some market share -- jumping up to 40 percent from 35 percent the quarter prior -- it forced Nvidia (and other partners) to cut prices on its recently released GTX 200 series product."

More than just price cuts, we've repeatedly referred to the situation as a price war between the two camps. Never have gamers been able to get so much gaming bang for their buck, and looking at the market share results, the war appears to be favoring AMD. Interestingly, JPR notes sequential growth in add-in boards (AIBs), which increased by over 2 million units from Q2 to Q3 2008, but a 15 percent drop in year-to-year growth.

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amd, nvidia, Market Share, business

Posted 11/10/08 at 10:24:17 AM by Paul Lilly

Should Japanese electronics maker Panasonic Corp. manage to purchase a controlling stake in its smaller rival Sanyo Electric, Panasonic, who is already the world's largest plasma TV maker, could become Japan's biggest electronics firm as well. For that to happen, the company would have to come to an agreement with Goldman Sachs, Daiwa Securities SMBC, and Sumitomo Misui Banking Corp, all of whom are major shareholders in Sanyo.

The acquisition would put Panasonic ahead of the pack in the global market for rechargeable batteries, a market that is expected to see significant growth amid increased sales in portable electronics and hybrid vehicles.

"This appears to be the kind of deal where you add one and one and get three, instead of two," said Masayoshi Okamoto, head of trading at Jujiya Securities. "Their battery operations would truly be world-class."

Sanyo is currently the world's largest supplier of lithium-ion batteries, ahead of both Sony and Panasonic. The company can also boast being the seventh largest solar cell producer world-wide, another increasingly popular market sector that would benefit Panasonic should the acquisition come to fruition.

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sanyo, consumer electronics, panasonic, business

Posted 11/07/08 at 11:36:32 AM by Paul Lilly

Will the real Nvidia please stand up? Getting a read on the graphics chip maker is turning out to be nigh impossible. On one hand, Nivida has been hammered over a mobile graphics manufacturing defect that led to an "abnormal failure rate," much negative press, and questions about how widespread the problem might actually be. Then the tide changed as Apple announced it would be outfitting its refreshed MacBook line with Nvidia's 9400M GPU instead of Intel silicon. Is the company poised to fall or on the rebound?

Looking over Nvidia's financial report appears to raise even more questions than answers. For the three months that ended October 26, the company's profits have plummeted 74 percent to $61.7 million, down from $235.7 million one year earlier. But despite the free fall, earnings per share sat at 20 cents, or almost twice as much as the average estimate of 11 cents projected by First Call.

In terms of market share, Nvidia acknowledges losing ground to AMD's ATI unit, but also believes its on the verge of an upswing.

"We were caught flat footed at 65nm and our chip and board solution was just too expensive," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia. "We've made that transition (to 55nm) in Q2. And in Q3 we're through that transition and we're off and running."

Which direction the company is running towards, however, is anyone's guess.

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graphics, nvidia, gpu, revenue, business

Posted 11/05/08 at 01:10:05 PM by Paul Lilly

Memory module makers continue to suffer through what some analysts suggest is the worst the DRAM market has been in 15 years with chip manufacturers posting record high losses. To stop the bleeding, most module makers have already cut production in an attempt to drive prices back up, and while that has been met with some success in niche markets (DDR prices are up 30 percent), slumping demand paints a grim outlook for memory makers in the immediate future.

The solution? Send home your workforce without laying them off. That's essentially the strategy some Tawain DRAM and memory module makers are trying to take in an attempt to reduce operating costs, according to DigiTimes. Rather than hand out pink slips, the tech news outlet reports that chip makers are asking employees to take time off without pay.

This isn't an isolated scenario, either. DigiTimes claims that Nanya Technology, Powerchip Semiconducter Corporation (PSC), and ProMOS Technologies have all taken "measures to encourage employees to voluntarily take one work-day off per week without pay in order to help the companies reduce operating costs."

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Memory, hardware, nand, DRAM, business, modules, unpaid leave