The Inquirer

AMD eggs on Nvidia's war of words with Intel

Paul Hales — Thu, 15 May 2008 16:05:00 GMT

Paul Hales the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 16:22:00

Hopes it'll help

THE WAR OF WORDS that broke out between Nvidia and Intel has AMD chuckling along from the sidelines. "One says the CPU is not important, the other says the GPU is not important. The beauty of AMD is that we provide a balance with a strong CPU and a strong GPU - the company best tailored to provided a balanced PC," puffed Giuseppe Amato, AMD's technical director of sales and marketing in EMEA. "We hope we see some gain from the fight these two are having together." Amato was talking to the INQ from AMD's Dresden fab where he'd been outlining the firm's global channel strategy to partners and selected channel hackery....

AMD channels game initiative

Andrew Thomas — Thu, 15 May 2008 11:26:49 GMT

Andrew Thomas the Inquirer, Thursday 15 May 2008. 12:18:00

INQ not invited, naturally

CHIMPZILLA held a bash at its fab in Dresden yesterday but didn't invite the INQ. Still, when you've got a Fab standing idle it makes sense to use it for press conferences and we'd only contaminate the place with our filthy communist ways. The ailing chipster launched a gaming marketing initiative with exclamation marks all over the place, but as we have an editorial policy forbidding the use of daft capitalisations and gratuitous punctuation, you'll just have to guess where they go. AMD Game is aimed at distributors and retailers and will include software carrying Game Ready branding. It will enable the channel to put lots of stickers on their boxes and will be rolled out next week in North America....

AMD and Intel fling more legal briefs

Egan Orion — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:21:28 GMT

Egan Orion the Inquirer, Tuesday 6 May 2008. 14:40:00

David v. Goliath lawsuit slogs on

AMD AND INTEL traded more court filings last week as their ongoing legal dispute in the antitrust case AMD filed in 2005 grinds towards trial next year. The two chipmakers' briefs filed in US District Court in Delaware last Friday were made public Monday. Their trial is tentatively scheduled for April, 2009. AMD has alleged that Intel abused its domination of the x86 microprocessor market by various means in order to prevent others from competing fairly. AMD alleges Intel offered larger discounts to PC manufacturers if they used Intel chips exclusively, punished OEM vendors that considered buying AMD chips, and gave away products to prevent AMD from gaining market share....

Dell axes 250 Irish jobs

Ambrose McNevin — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 15:54:47 GMT

Ambrose McNevin the Inquirer, Tuesday 29 April 2008. 16:37:00

Who's next?

AN EMEA-WIDE reorganisation is to blame for 250 IT, sales, marketing, finance and support job cuts today in Dell Ireland, apparently. A report on Silicon Republic said the move means that the firm's Irish headcount will drop to 4,250 within nine months. Dell Ireland said that no manufacturing jobs would go. The firm said it is looking to slash $3 billion of costs in an effort to drive growth. µ L'Inq Silicon Republic

Dell goes to Carrefour in Italy

Sylvie Barak — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:42:13 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Monday 28 April 2008. 15:15:00

Indirectly

MEGA SUPERMARKET chain Carrefour has announced that as of April 24th, it will be selling a new product line of Dell brand computers. Bravo, Bravo, the crowds cried out in collective consumer frenzy. The mighty direct-selling computer maker has now come to Italy to eat hunble pie, it seems. Nine Carrefour mega stores have begun selling Dell notebooks including the Inspiron 1720 and the Xps 1330 in various configurations. The Inspiron 1720 is apparently being flogged by the mega chain for 899 euros, whilst the Xps 1330 is going for 990 euros, or a hundred less for a lower performance model with a 120GB hard disk and an Intel GMA x3100 graphics chip....

War of words breaks out over Microsoft MOU

Mark Ballard — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:25:18 GMT

Mark Ballard the Inquirer, Wednesday 23 April 2008. 14:44:00

An open letter to Richard Steel

RICHARD STEEL, CIO of Newham was shaken by his recent dealings with the INQUIRER that he asked in his blog whether he should ever trust the press again?" Here is our response. The salutary lesson to draw from our dealings, Richard, is not whether you can trust the press. It is rather a lesson in managing expectations, a process every CIO should know well. The expectations you invested in your 2004 deal with Microsoft, as enshrined in the memorandum of understanding, were also unrealistic. To recap, the original MOU said the use of Microsoft software would "improve Common Performance Assessment results and Star Ratings" measured by the Audit Commission....

VMware virtually busts own expectations

Sylvie Barak — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 13:12:34 GMT

Sylvie Barak the Inquirer, Wednesday 23 April 2008. 13:59:00

We don't suck quite as badly as we thought

WITH ITS BETTER THAN expected first quarter results, Vmware seems to be back in favour with Wall Street and its fickle investors, after pulling off an unexpected 69 per cent revenue hike, when the company itself had only been predicting 50 per cent. Share holders couldn't get rid of stock quick enough back in January when Vmware slashed its growth prediction by half, but it seems that (mostly) all is now forgiven, with the company's net income being reported as $43 million, which translates into 11 cents a share. Analysts had been expecting revenues of only $421.3 million. This hasn't made Vmware any more bold in its future predictions though....

EMC to buy Microsoft reseller

Ambrose McNevin — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:49 GMT

Ambrose McNevin , Tuesday 1 April 2008. 18:45:00

Conchango going Ker-Chingo for £42m

EMC has offered to buy Surrey based "we do" consultancy Conchango. The firm does web portals or "digital experiences" for Tesco, Sky and Virgin and the Daily Wail. The Conchango board has already said yes please and recommended the offer to the shareholders (no fools they). The pricewill secure 80 per cent of its stock. The statement says that it "builds upon the focused investments EMC has been making to expand its information infrastructure consulting services around the world," whatever that means. The firm has 300 consultants with job titles like experience planner and user experience consultant, is a Gold Certified Microsoft reseller and listed on the AIM stock exchange in January this year....

Has Avnet come on to the Irish Horizon?

Ambrose McNevin — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:49 GMT

Ambrose McNevin , Wednesday 2 April 2008. 09:09:00

Channel Analysis Buy, buy, bye …

YESTERDAY WAS the day that gigantic US distributor Avnet closed its acquisition of semiconductor distributor Azzurri. And it was the day the Inq was reliably informed that Avnet is also the company behind the approach to buy Irish distributor Horizon Technology Group. On March 13th Horizon told the city that it had received an approach valuing the company at 1.18 euro per share valuing it at around 97m euro with the warning that "the approach is preliminary in nature and is subject to a number of conditions. Accordingly, no assurances can be given that a formal offer will be forthcoming or that any transaction will occur." On the same day Horizon, which makes most of its money in the enterprise space announced 288 million euro revenues for the year....

Micron samples notebook DDR3

Stewart Meagher — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:49 GMT

Stewart Meagher , Wednesday 2 April 2008. 11:29:00

Fastest modules for greedy laptops

MICRON TECHNOLOGY announced that it is sampling 4Gb DDR3 modules, designed using 2Gb components, to provide the industry's highest-density DDR3 modules for notebook computers. The firm reckons high-density memory modules are becoming essential as laptops take on more of the memory-intensive tasks once the exclusive domain of the desktop computer. "With our new 4 GB DDR3 modules, we are allowing users to easily take advantage of the performance benefits that increased memory provides," said Brian Shirley, Vice President of Micron's Memory Group. The company said it has received Intel's validation on 512MB, 1GB and 2GB DDR3 notebook modules for the upcoming Intel Centrino 2 mobile platform....

Big growth rates for system integrators

Sylvie Barak — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:49 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Wednesday 2 April 2008. 21:20:00

Growing big and strong

EUROPE'S LEADING system Integrators posted growth rates well above the industry average over the last year, according to a leading provider of strategic business intelligence. IT Europa published the report entitled "Systems Integrators in Europe -The Top 700" today, which spans 38 different countries and gives detailed business profiles including sales breakdowns by company activity, the market they operate in, their staff count and development plans. According to the report, each of the top 700 European Systems Integrators, between them, employ 1.29 million people. The average growth rate for the companies combined was a healthy 11.27 per cent, and combined sales last year valued a whopping $169.96 billion (€107.57bn)....

Microsoft partners want their pound of flesh

Mark Ballard — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:49 GMT

Mark Ballard , Thursday 3 April 2008. 17:15:00

Show us the money

UK MICROSOFT partners have demanded a percentage of profits the vendor makes from its direct sales venture to compensate for the loss of as much as a quarter of their sales. Microsoft said last month that Online Services, which sells software directly to customers as a service, would start selling to businesses of all sizes, including those serviced by its SMB sales partners. It said at the time that its direct strategy would be a good opportunity for its partners. In evidence it produced a snippet from a survey it commissioned of 700 partners, which said they thought the direct sales strategy would be a good opportunity for them....

Dell goes chopping bananas

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:49 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk , Friday 4 April 2008. 11:27:00

More jobs to go

PC MAKER DELL aims to cut more than the 8,800 already set to be axed, CEO Michael Dell told analysts yesterday. The firm aims to save at least $3 billion in costs per year and the plan means more heads will roll. "We're decreasing our head count," Dell said. "It's declined in the past two quarters and it will decline again in the first quarter. And we will go past the 8,800 target previously discussed as we achieve everything that I'm outlining today." It was the first time Dell boy had faced analysts for a couple of years. He said the "entire Dell leadership team is focused on addressing these opportunities and challenges." So it sounds like they won't be sacked....

Apple becomes America's top music retailer

Sylvie Barak — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:48 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Friday 4 April 2008. 16:46:00

Duffs up Walmart

APPLE HAS ACHIEVED a milestone as the company outstripped Wal-Mart to become America's No. 1 music retailer, the first time that a supplier of digital downloads has ever beaten the big CD dealers. The fruity toymakers claim is based on the latest data from the market research firm, NPD Group. The survey counted every 12 digital downloads as one whole CD and excluded mobile music sales and sales revenue. Apple reckons it has 50 million customers, which helped its Itunes platform sell over four billion tracks since launching in 2003. This is due, in no small part, to the immense popularity of the Ipod....

Nvidia shares take a pounding

Sylvie Barak — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:48 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Monday 7 April 2008. 11:48:00

How low can you go?

NVIDIA HAS SEEN ITS shares plummet by a massive 40 per cent over the last three months, due mainly to slowing sales in the computer market and skyrocketing expenses. Nvidia had previously enjoyed high profitability and good market share, but weakness in the desktop computer sector, which makes up nearly 50 per cent of Nvidia's sales, as well as Intel and AMD's relative successes in the field of graphics chips in Q4 of 2007, was bad news for the company's stock prices. According to AP, Nvidia's shares have become 70 per cent more volatile than the average stock in the S&P 500 information technology sector, with shares trading in the last 12 months between $17.31 and $39.67....

Computacenter grounds staff

Andrew Thomas — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:48 GMT

Andrew Thomas , Tuesday 8 April 2008. 17:17:00

You're not here to enjoy yourselves

UK CHANNEL OUTFIT Computacenter is keeping its staff's feet firmly on the ground by cutting back on overseas travel. The company reckons it's chopped travel costs by 90 per cent following a pilot scheme using videoconferencing, smart whiteboards and data sharing. While the project, put in place by Bagshot-based Steljes, is reducing Computacenter's carbon footprint and putting local travel agents out of business, we wonder if Computacenter staff such as Internal Sales Director Chris Hanson are happy to be stuck in an office in Birmingham rather than flying round the world to slightly more exotic destinations. Hanson reckons he spent 17 weeks travelling an estimated 40,000 miles every year, a figure that has now dropped by 75 per cent....

Barcelona appears in various different flavours

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:48 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk , Wednesday 9 April 2008. 09:10:00

Finally...

AND SO TODAY is Barcelona day. AMD has finally announced the broad availability of its quad-core server chip, some six months after it was officially launched and never have the fortunes of a company been so dependent on a single sliver of silicon. "We're off to the races now, and the product is out," John Fruehe, worldwide market development manager at AMD appears to have told Dow Jones. "All of the fixes are in place, and everything looks wonderful," he said. Barcelona's launch back in September 2007 acquired the aura of a farce when for months afterwards samples of the chip failed to appear....

Monitor misery meanders on

Andrew Thomas — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:47 GMT

Andrew Thomas , Wednesday 9 April 2008. 12:00:00

Light at end of tunnel may be approaching train

HAVING EXPERIENCED a character-forming end to 2007, desktop monitor suppliers were keeping their fingers crossed for better times in early 2008. Sadly, new figures show this is far from the case. Research from Meko on the status of the desktop monitor market in EMEA for Q1 2008 suggests that things have not improved with volume shipments down by 30 per cent on what was, in fairness, a damn fine Q1 last year as plummeting prices drove demand. "As prices continued to rise during the latter part of 2007, there was a notable slowdown in sales into the channel", says Pete Gamby, research director at Meko....

Government warns of dodgy sales channels

Mark Ballard — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:47 GMT

Mark Ballard , Friday 11 April 2008. 07:26:00

Fraud watch

THE NATIONAL FRAUD Strategic Authority is planning to tell businesses which of their sales channels, and even which of their people, are most vulnerable to fraud. Launched after the Attorney General's Fraud Review of 2006, the Authority is still setting up its central intelligence unit, which will only succeed if it gets the co-operation of industry. Arshad Rahman, assistant director of the Attorney General's National Fraud Strategy, said he was trying to recruit industries to take part in a pilot of its business fraud intelligence system. The National Fraud Reporting Centre and Intelligence Bureau would take pool of frauds and analyse the data for trends and vulnerabilities, including which people and delivery channels were proving the most susceptible....

Mesh Computers enmeshed in unholy row

Paul Hales — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:47 GMT

Paul Hales , Friday 11 April 2008. 08:06:00

Miffed adversary washes soiled sheets on the web

AN UNHOLY row has broken out between a third party warranty provider and system builder Mesh Computers. According to a post on its web site, Repair-Line recently placed Mesh's account on stop. "All services to the manufacturer are being withheld due to non payment of account and failure to exchange parts buffer stock to allow repairs to continue," says the message on the website. The long, detailed and occasionally rabid account apparently posted by boss of Castleford-based Repair-Line, Carl Hill, accuses Mesh of all sort of shenanigans and picks out consultant Paul Kinsler as the focus of his anger. Kinsler is a fairly well-known chap in the UK IT business, having made his presence felt as MD of Mesh back in the days when system builders were virtually printing their own cash. After some years at the helm, he left Mesh in 2000 to found his own PR company. A personable chap, Kinsler is always ready with a laugh and an anecdote but, back in the day, Mesh employees did suggest he could be fearsome when riled. He's a well-built fellow and you do get the impression you wouldn't like to be on the wrong side of him should he explode. We were pretty sure Kinsler would right now - to use our founder's favourite phrase - be going apeshit bananas. But having spoken to him on the phone, he seems pretty sanguine about the whole sorry affair. Repair-Line lays into Kinsler in the long diatribe which is really aimed at Mesh, alleging various misrepresentations of the way the deal for on-site warranties was handled between the two companies. It seems Mesh, having found itself in a bit of a pickle, called on ex-MD Kinsler to get involved with the company again. Kinsler has run a PR company PK Media for the past few years and said he was asked by Mesh to help restructure and refocus the company. According to Repair-Line, "Paul subsequently took charge and Max (Sherafati) was no longer contactable the last claims are he is in Iran living his life in his Mansion complete with servants to tend his ever need." (sic). Kinsler said he used the title acting MD and denied that he "likes to disassociate himself with Mesh just in case the inevitable happens and they fall," as Repair-Line alleges. Kinsler said that as part of his attempts to sort out Mesh he decided to cancel Mesh's contract with the Repair-Line giving the firm the required three months notice, a version of events Repair-Line disputes. "It's a Mickey Mouse company," he said. "They are in the process of being wound up. We'd be winding them up ourselves but we can't as they're already being wound up. They gave crap service so we gave them three months notice." In reply to our query, Dave Williams Technical Manager at Repair-Line said in an email: "Repair-Line are not in the process of being wound up and expect that is just a slanderous rumour being passed about by certain disgruntled persons to discredit the company." He added: "We will be posting a further update to this on our website in the next day or two once we have confirmed it will not affect our legal case against Mesh Computers". Kinsler wouldn't be drawn on the specific allegations made by Hill on the web page, "What can I do?" he opined. "The whole thing's total rubbish. The only good thing I can say about it is that PK Media now shows up on a Google search..." µ AN UNHOLY row has broken out between a third party warranty provider and system builder Mesh Computers. According to a post on its web site, Repair-Line recently placed Mesh's account on stop. "All services to the manufacturer are being withheld due to non payment of account and failure to exchange parts buffer stock to allow repairs to continue," says the message on the website. The long, detailed and occasionally rabid account apparently posted by boss of Castleford-based Repair-Line, Carl Hill, accuses Mesh of all sort of shenanigans and picks out consultant Paul Kinsler as the focus of his anger....

AMD wants another £200

Andrew Thomas — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:47 GMT

Andrew Thomas , Friday 11 April 2008. 16:18:00

Hand over the cash and nobody gets hurt

IN A MOVE that will have the UK channel coming over all moist, AMD big cheese Giuseppe Amato says he wants to help its channel partners make more dosh. The plan is simple, Amato, AMD's director of value propositions told CRN. AMD is aware that resellers and system builders need a 'helping hand' to encourage users to hand over the readies. "We want customers to upgrade to the £799 product rather than the £599. And if they were already thinking about the £799 one, let us get them up to £999," he said. "If someone says they like watching films, but nothing else, we can give them a triple-core....

Intel opens online component shop

Mike Magee — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:47 GMT

Mike Magee , Monday 14 April 2008. 10:56:00

Servers, mobile and desktop

WHAT'S THIS then? The mighty Intel appears to have opened an online shop on ebuyer.com, selling all sorts of kit you might want. The site is divided into desktop, mobile and servers, and on it you can buy processors, mobos, LAN cards, wireless LANs, server boards and even chassis. Say, for example, you want a processor with this stunningly long moniker: the Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz FCPGA6 800FSB 4MB retail boxed mobile processor, Intel has four in stock at £123.38 including Her Majesty's VAT. We guess that Ebuyer is now Intel's favoured channel partner, or at least that's the cunning plan....

First Centrino Atom portable coming to Japan in June

Sylvie Barak — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:46 GMT

Sylvie Barak , Monday 14 April 2008. 21:28:00

The catch? It's expensive and bulky

SHARP WILL BE FIRST off the mark to offer a mobile computer based on Intel's Centrino Atom chip. Its D4 is to be released and distributed by Japanese mobile operator Willcom, as early as June. The device, however, sadly doesn't quite live up to expectations of small sizes or 'small' prices according to MacWorld. Willcom, Japan's fourth largest mobile service operator, will purportedly sell the D4 for ¥39,800 (US$395) on a two-year service plan that comes to ¥2,100 ($20) a month. This means that the overall cost of the device is a rather expensive ¥90,200 ($893). When Intel had previously talked about their upcoming Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), the firm had tentatively priced them at only about $500....

Dramurai stock up on inventory

Andrew Thomas — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:46 GMT

Andrew Thomas , Tuesday 15 April 2008. 11:36:00

Crisis? What crisis?

BIG DRAM makers went into a product dumping frenzy on the spot market in the last couple of weeks. The move was a cynical bid to make their Q1 figures look a tad healthier, but manufacturers are now stockpiling to avoid exposure to big losses in Q2 if supply still stays ahead of demand. Industry watchers reckon the Dramurai are just manipulating the market to create the illusion of shortages and that if demand doesn't take an upturn by the middle of Q2, they will again resort to panic dumping. Powerchip Semiconductor had offered a price protection policy for its customers, offering compensation if spot prices dropped below buying prices, but has now withdrawn the scheme to protect its own cash flow....

Fujitsu Siemens profits up

INQUIRER Newsdesk — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 01:38:46 GMT

INQUIRER Newsdesk , Wednesday 16 April 2008. 10:12:00

Revenue down

FUJITSU SIEMENS said it made more money from less revenue in 2007 having eschewed less profitable areas of its business. For the year ending March 2008, profit before tax increased by 15 per cent to 105 million Euros, the company said today. Revenue (turnover) was just above 6.6 billion Euros down by 4.9 per cent on 2007 reflecting the company said, its "strategic business changes and the difficult market environment". The firm dumped is dalliance with tellies and PDAs but found price pressure and a strong Euro still impacting its numbers. It prefers to serve up servers and claims to be the fastest-growing vendor among the top five in the worldwide server market, having notched 19.8 per cent growth in the x86 server market in Q4 2007 (according to Gartner)....