NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 5 February
05-02-2009
by Bryan Collins
Ericsson lays off 300 staff in Dublin | Chartbusters to close 17 stores
Ericsson is to lay off 300 workers over the next 18 months at its plant in Clonskeagh, Dublin. Management met with over 2,000 staff on Thursday to inform them of the developments and said there would be no redundancies at its plant in Athlone. The lay-offs come following a worldwide review by the Swedish mobile network maker, which saw it pledge to reduce costs by EUR423 million a year to adapt to the shrinking mobile phone market.
Sixty people are to lose their jobs when Chartbusters closes 17 stores over the next few weeks. The High Court appointed an examiner to the home entertainment company after hearing that it had a reasonable chance of survival if several stores were closed. Chartbusters, which has 37 stores nationwide, has debts of EUR20 million. Around EUR12 million of this is owed to KBC, ACCBank and Bank of Scotland Ireland.
Cisco has refused to rule out lay-offs despite posting solid results for the October-to-December quarter. The computer networking firm posted a net profit of USD1.5 billion for the fourth quarter of 2008, down 27 percent compared to the same period last year. Its revenue fell 7.5 percent to USD9.1 billion. Chief executive John Chambers said revenue could fall by more than 15 to 20 percent this quarter thanks to the worsening global economy. This could lead to jobs cuts of up to 10 percent of its 67,000 worldwide workforce.
The international mobile phone market experienced an unusual downturn during the fourth quarter of 2008, tradtionally the strongest quarter for mobile phone sales. According to IDC's Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped a total of 289 million units during the quarter, 12.6 percent lower than the 330.8 million units shipped during the same period in 2007. The research company said for the entire year of 2008, vendors shipped 1.18 billion units worldwide, 3.5 percent more than the 1.14 billion units shipped during 2007. "A combination of weak end-user demand, currency volatility, and limited credit availability prevented the market from experiencing the usual seasonal increase in shipments. We expect the first half of 2009 to be very challenging as vendors and distributors grapple with clearing inventory," said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC's Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team.
Spam accounted for 81 percent of all e-mails heading for Irish inboxes during the month of January, which was the same level as December's, according to the latest figures from security firm IT Force. The company analysed 647,510 e-mails received by its clients and established that 527,022 of them were unsolicited. The most prevalent viruses during the month were: Trojan.Delf-5385, W32.Virut.Gen.D-50, Worm.W32.Agent-1, Worm.Mytob.AY and Worm.Zafi.B.
Broadband services provider Perlico has donated 50 computers to the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) for computer-based literacy initiatives. The computers will be used to strengthen the NALA's distance education service and will support adults and families with literacy difficulties who do not have access to computers or the internet. According to the last international survey 50 percent of Irish people have less than the minimum level of literacy skills needed to function effectively in a modern society. The NALA's director Inez Bailey said: "This donation of IT equipment is the first of its kind that we or any Irish organisation dedicated to adult literacy has received to date from any company."
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 