Healthy sales this year.

I freely admit to liking new toys. Admittedly, my Sharp Zaurus is getting on but it’s one thing that I’m loathe to get rid of but my desktops are regularly replaced (let me just add that my old PC’s are recycled). So are yours according to a report by iSuppli.

The research shows global PC sales have been increasing at a steady rate - growing by 12.1 per cent over the last year. The significant point here is this: the figure is identical to the first quarter growth rates recorded over the last five years. This suggests that, regardless of the world economic state, home users and businesses feel the need to keep up with the latest tech (or at least have half a chance of supporting Vista the resource hog).

HP headed up the sales league with more than 13 million PC shipments, a 23% increase and 18.9 per cent of the total market. The success of HP’s notebook lines and a strong sales channel is credited as a significant factor in the companies rising sales figures.

Dell was second on the list with a 20% growth over last year. The company shipped more than ten million PCs attaining a 15.4% share of the market.

Acer, Lenovo and Toshiba rounded out the top five, posting market shares of 9.7 per cent, 6.9 per cent and 4.4 per cent, respectively.

Analysts are rather surprised by the figures, having expected the numbers to be far lower on the basis of the flagging world economie - then again, we’re only just starting to feel the effects now so let’s see what the future holds.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Confirming what Yahoo have already said!

Comments made by Bill Gates in a TV interview would suggest that the deal is dead in the eyes of both Yahoo and Microsoft.

The acquisition question was put to Bill Gates by Tom Brokaw of the NBC network on Friday to mark his last day of full-time work at the software company.

Brokaw asked Gates: “Do you think in a year from now, when you’re down at the [Bill & Melinda Gates] Foundation offices, you’ll look up at Microsoft and see Yahoo as a permanent wing of Microsoft? Do you think the deal will get done? ”

Gates responded: “No, I don’t think so. But there are plenty of decisions ahead that Steve [Ballmer] will get to make about what he invests in, R&D, and what kind of deals he does.

“I don’t think that one’s likely but there are plenty of others that will get done and I’ll look on with great respect.”

Microsoft recently abandoned a $47.5 billion takeover deal after lengthy discussions with Yahoo who were pushing for a higher price per share. More recently, Microsoft had considered buying a 16 per cent stake in Yahoo. This would allow MS to effectively buy the Yahoo search business thereby giving Microsoft a much greater share of the search market and advertising revenues.

Bill Gates depature from Microsoft will allow him to devote most of his time to his philanthropic ventures.

Popularity: 8% [?]

New Domains cause headaches

Enterprise web filtering specialist, Bloxx, has welcomed the the announcement by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to extend the currently available top level domains. The move should, alongside longer IP addresses available under IPv6, protect the Internet for all perceived domain name and world population growth rates.

From January next year, anyone can then apply for one of these new, inexhaustible domain names which will be made available by opening up top level domain possibilities (rather than the currently acceptable .uk, .fr, .de etc).

In addition, the widespread adoption of IPv6 lengthens the available IP addresses, which at the current rate would expire in 2010. With IPv4 there were potentially 4.2 billion IP addresses available for use. By moving to IPv6 this figure has increased this to 340 trillion, trillion, trillion - that’s a lot of domains.

“The recommendations from ICANN will future proof the Internet so that it can be used and enjoyed for many generations to come,” says Bloxx Managing Director, Eamonn Doyle. “However, we predict a land grab for these additional top level domains which will see a dramatic increase in the number of registered domains and URLs. This will be a significant
challenge for first and second-generation web filtering suppliers whose products depend on keeping a URL database up-to-date.”

“The problem with first and second generation web filters is with the growth and turnover of the web, as soon as a URL database or “blacklist” is updated, it is out of date - these new recommendations mean this problem has never been more relevant,” explains Doyle. “Third-generation filters, such as Bloxx Tru-View Technology, analyse and categorise sites on the fly and make an informed decision as to what risks are associated with accessing them, and are now clearly the only viable way to manage user access to the web.”

So, expect to see a slew of new products on the market as vendors seek to keep up with the implementation of IPv6.

The opening up of the TLD’s also represents huge potential for anyone interested in domaining - fingers and credit cards at the ready!

Popularity: 10% [?]

MS Hyper-V gets official launch

Microsofts answer to VMWare, Hyper-V, has been launched 6 weeks ahead of schedule. The technology is expected to appeal to small businesses who can’t afford, or don’t need, the capabilities offered by VMWare.

The software will be available free to licensed user of Windows 2008 or as a standalone product which will be priced at $28 - that’s a huge price saving over VMWare. But be aware, Hyper-V is nowhere near as advanced as the VMWare software - Hyper-V is probably not the software of choice for mission critical applications.

Popularity: 11% [?]

More work required.

RadioFrame Networks has launched market research into how small medium businesses (SMB) use mobile communications for day to day work. The research, carried out by Quocirca, gathered data from 240 SMB’s in the UK, Germany, Sweden and France. Here’s a general overview:

• More than a third of SMBs have problems using their mobilephones at work, and even more so when working from home. However, for many the mobile phone is their first choice when making a call, even when provided with a fixed phone ( SHOCK, HORROR - some small organizations don’t even provide workers with a fixed phone).

• 3G is on its way, but not quite here - over half of allrespondents have no plans to implement 3G phones, but 17% plan to introduce 3G laptops in the coming year, adding to the third that havealready done so.

Research suggests that even though there are many reliable data products on the market there is still a huge demand for high quality voice services. Stands to reason really. Personally, I prefer to talk to another person rather than using email and other messaging services.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Work completed for as little as £5 per project!

I’m not endorsing this. The subtitle is a statement of fact. But many of you know that already and has been comfirmed by Birmingham City University who have detected 1,000 cheating students since 2004.

Students have contracting out coursework for to bidders from countries such as India and Pakistan via sites such as scri… - I’ll let you work it out.

The practice, which is difficult to detect, seems to be growing in popularity with sites springing up on a regular basis in places like Romania and India.

Lecturers have called for academics to pose questions on the content of coursework handed in by students as a means to combat cheating - something that will require a lot of time and effort.

Don’t you just love capitalism? No wonder the UK tech industry is in such a poor state.

Popularity: 7% [?]

…Victorian attitudes.

Did you get that? Based on a recent survey it would appear that flexible working is still frowned upon in the IT industry. 61.1% of technology workers currently work from home or on the move but many feel the industry is slow to adapt. More disturbing is the view of about 1/5th of respondents who feel that flexible working can harm career prospects. It would appear that many employers see this class of workers as less reliable than employees sat in an office!

Home working is an important factor to IT professionals but more than a third of those interviewed stated that their employers don’t offer the option.

Current regulations allow only parents of children under six or disabled to apply for flexible working. Plans are in the pipeline to extend this to parents of children under 16. This should go a long way to encouraging women to enter into, and stay in, an industry that is currently experiencing a skills shortfall.

On a personal note, I’ve worked for a number of companies that didn’t allow flexible working. The unspoken view was that  home workers don’t do any work! Here’s something for those dinosaur companies to consider; I actually get more work done when I’m not sat in an office being distracted by stupid questions every five minutes. You’ll need to change your ways or high calibre candidates will look elsewhere!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Huge development costs hurt Sony.

Poor Sony. I mean, what’s wrong with wanting to dominate the gaming world? That’s effectively what Sony tried to do by pouring huge sums of money into the PS3. It looks like their plans may have backfired…just a little. Figures just released show losses of £1.09 billion (I bet Bill is chuckling to himself right now).

Typically, consumer electronics companies sell at a loss when a new product is released. They then rely on subsequent high-volume sales to make up for the initial losses. The problem for Sony lies with the huge R&D costs associated with the PS3 development.

In all, it looks like there’s no way the PS3 will ever be as profitable as version 1 and 2.

But there is hope. Every PS3 sold effectively seeds homes with Blu-ray players. This means Sony can then sell Blu-ray DVD movie titles at much higher margins. Cunning plan or just lucky?

Popularity: 13% [?]

Government not to blame…

…this time! I’m sorry, does the title seem a little bland? My mistake. When I said ‘customer’ I meant ‘customers’ . In fact, about 3,000 customers.

Virgin has come clean and owned up to losing the bank details last month when a CD was used to transfer the data between offices. No problem, that’s what encryption is there to protect against. Well, it would be if the data had been encrypted! I wonder how many so called security experts have just lost their jobs over this fiasco!

“This is an isolated incident which has affected a small number of our customers,” Virgin Media said in a prepared statement.

So far, there is no evidence that the CD has fallen into the hands of criminals and the incident is being investigated by the ICO.

Don’t you feel so much safer now!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Whole lot of browser love going on.

Yes, Firefox 3 has has notched up a staggering download figure in its first week of availability. What is even more impressive is the figure for the first 24 hours - 8 million downloads.

Reports show that the US took the lead with 5.48 million downloads with Germany coming in second at 1.7 million. The UK managed a healthy 807,900 copies of Firefox downloaded. Hey, we’re only little!

Mozilla have been urging users to download en masse in order to set a world record for the number of software downloads. The campaign by Mozilla was so successful that is almost knocked out their servers!

Browser market share for Mozilla now stands at 19.17%, up from 18.41%.

Does Microsoft have an answer to Firefox? We’ll have to wait for the next release of IE.

Popularity: 10% [?]