The holiday season opened a bit stronger than last year, with retail stores reporting higher traffic and somewhat better sales and online retailers reporting sharply improved results. It’s too early to say how this will translate into seasonal gains because shopping behavior (like a lot of consumer behavior) has been altered by the downturn and…
No, they’re not related, but both are providing some news this short work week here in the US! HP’s numbers seem to illustrate a point I’ve been making about the IT spending plans of enterprises. Storage was their big product star, gaining about 25% where other product areas gained less than 10% in sales. The…
The seemingly never-ending Eurozone sovereign debt and bank stability issue moved a step closer to resolution, and at the same time a step further away. That’s been the history of this issue from the first, and it continues to cause concern for the global economy. Ireland, in the most trouble after Greece, accepted IMF and…
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This week was marked by the usual combination of good fundamentals and hype and hysteria in the media and markets. The Irish debt crisis, which is objectively solved at this point, has been the source of rumors that have whipsawed stocks and created a new set of reasons for individuals to avoid the markets. But…
Juniper added to its content portfolio today, acquiring the intellectual property of a video delivery firm called Blackwave. This is a smaller deal by recent Juniper standards, but it’s potentially critically important. Network operators are getting more sophisticated and demanding in their content plans, moving just from optimizing traffic to demanding reasonable monetization strategies. Anyone…
An interesting bit of research from the ad industry opens some potential issues for the future of video advertising online. The data shows that pre-roll ads for video do quite well, and in fact exceed the expectations of the advertisers in terms of performance. In fact, research says that people today will generally watch a…
AMD joined the MeeGo Alliance, a group started by Nokia and Intel to promote Linux for tablets, netbooks, smartphones, and “embedded” devices like car navigation and entertainment systems. Since Android is already in these spaces and already Linux-based, it’s pretty clear that the alliance is aimed at countering Google, but it’s less clear why so…
Last week was difficult for the stock market, partly because of the normal tendency for Wall Street to sell off to take profits as the earnings season closes and upside surprises are less likely, but also because of Cisco’s cautious comments. This week the big question will be numbers, and there are already interpretation issues…
It’s been a challenging week in a number of ways, not the least being the shock that was generated by Cisco’s cautious comments on their quarterly call. That was enough to cause a route in the stock market and raise concerns about the state of technology. As we indicated at the time, there’s good reason…