In the papers 22 July

22-07-2008

by Sylvia Leatham

Vodafone warns of slowing revenue growth | SAP waves goodbye to TomorrowNow

The Irish Times says that Yahoo has settled a proxy battle by agreeing to appoint activist investor Carl Icahn and two of his nominees to its board. Read the full story on ENN.

The paper also reports that Griffith's Valuation, the most detailed guide to people and property in mid-19th century Ireland, has gone online for free for the first time. The version available on Askaboutireland.ie is searchable by family name and place name, copies of the original document can be printed off, and the site includes maps from the mid-19th century and contemporary maps from Google Earth. The Library Council of Ireland has spent EUR230,000 over the past year on digitising the resource and making it available online.

According to the Irish Examiner, there are 17 public payphones around the country that have been used to make only one call each in a whole year. One is on Tory Island off Donegal and Cork has three -- at Clondulane village, Hare Island and Ballynoe. Four reside in Mayo at Ballina, Ballinrobe, Balla and Westport, and others are at Castlerea, Co Roscommon; Pallaskenry, Co Limerick; and Kildysart, Co Clare. There is also one each in the commuter areas of Ballivor, Co Meath, and Celbridge, Co Kildare, as well as four in Dublin city, including one in Trinity College.

The Financial Times reports that mobile operator Vodafone has warned of slowing revenue growth as it predicted that full-year income would be at the bottom end of its own estimates. In a trading update for the three months to June, Vodafone said it expected full-year revenue to be "around the bottom" of its previously stated range of STG39.8 billion to STG40.7 billion. The mobile giant said the revised outlook reflected recent economic weakness and lower-than-expected income from equipment. Cost-reduction measures should allow it to deliver adjusted operating profits of between STG11 billion and STG11.5 billion, compared with STG10.1 billion last year, it said.

The paper also says that US chipmaker Texas Instruments has disappointed Wall Street with its second-quarter earnings. The company posted profits of USD588 million, or USD0.44 a share, on revenues of USD3.35 billion. Analysts had expected earnings per share of USD0.46 on revenues of USD3.39 billion. TI continued to lose ground in supplying chips for mobile phones and blamed weakening economic conditions for slower demand.

The Wall Street Journal reports that German software maker SAP is to wind down its TomorrowNow subsidiary, a business that was accused by US rival Oracle of stealing proprietary information. Oracle filed a lawsuit against SAP at the end of March 2007, claiming it engaged in "corporate theft on a grand scale" after some TomorrowNow employees were alleged to have made inappropriate downloads from Oracle's website. SAP said last month it wants to settle the legal dispute with Oracle out of court, with the main case not set to commence until February 2010. SAP had put the unit up for sale, but a spokesperson has now said that "winding down the operations was in the interest of the units' customers."

The paper also notes that Apple's premium e-mail service is continuing to suffer from outages. The company has been migrating its .Mac pay e-mail service to an upgraded version, called MobileMe. But in doing so, it has run into problems, including service outages and customers losing access to their accounts. Last week, Apple apologised for the problems in a letter to MobileMe customers, noting the transition "was a lot rockier than we had hoped." As compensation, Apple gave current subscribers an automatic 30-day extension of the MobileMe service for free.

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