Author: Tom Nolle

HP has lowered its forecast for the year, and the threat of that move that broke yesterday caused tech stocks to shudder.  It raises a serious question about just what’s going on in tech, a question that doesn’t have any easy answers.  That means the future of tech as we know it may be…well…uneasy.  To…

Cisco reported its results, which the Street has described as those of a “company in transition”.  I disagree; they’re the results of a market in transition and a company not yet transitioning.  The signs of the conditions that have dumped Cisco’s stock and fortunes have been clearly visible for over four years, and alarmingly visible…

Skype and Microsoft?  Well, apparently it’s more than just a possibility.  There have been rumors swirling around a buyer for Skype for a week or more, but they’ve been just rumors.  The possible deal with Microsoft is a lot more than that—Microsoft confirmed it at about 8 AM today.  So now, the question is “why?” …

Today begins with more negative comments on Cisco, and it’s hard not to wonder at the way a company that was once a model of tech success (“I want to be the next Cisco”) is now seen as a model of a transition failure.  The idea of breaking Cisco up into pieces so that valuable…

There are conflicting reports on the progress of the mobile operators’ Isis project to provide mobile/NFC transaction processing in competition with credit cards.  Some of the media are saying that the initial link with Discovery for the actual transaction handling was an error in judgment, and the operators themselves admit that merchants say that Visa…

Verizon’s Digital Media Services initiative has been somewhat of a yawn to the press but it’s of great interest to other operators and also to some vendors.  Verizon is now launching another program, called the Verizon Strategic Initiatives Council, and this one could be even more important.  Perhaps the most significant thing about it is…

We’ve got more signs of change from the earnings announcements, and as always change is good for some and bad for others.  There does seem a bit of a bias toward bad-ness, though. Nokia is going to shift Symbian support to Accenture and cut 4000 jobs.  The move illustrates that there are significant challenges for…

Barnes & Noble has finally brought out a true (if dated) Android version for their color Nook, which likely makes it the cheapest tablet around.  It’s clear from both the performance and features of the new release and the pronouncements of the company that this isn’t intended to be a general-purpose tablet, but it’s also…

Two “tech embarrassments” lead the news today, and there’s at least one lesson to be learned from each of them.  Amazon had a cloud outage that disrupted some websites, and both Apple and Google are accused of tracking users with their smartphone technology. The Amazon outage was apparently related to its distributed RDBMS, though precise…

Tech earnings are demonstrating again that the global economy is recovering, and also demonstrating some of the dynamics within the tech market.  Yesterday, IBM, Intel, and Juniper reported, and there’s something to learn from them all. IBM revenues overall were up 8% and earnings up 10%, and the IT giant raised its forecast for the…