NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 30 October
30-10-2008
by Deirdre McArdle
G1 launches in the UK | Wii sends Nintendo profits soaring
The G1 phone, which uses Google's Android operating system, launched in the UK on Thursday. As in the US, the phone will be available through T-Mobile. The G1 is free with a STG40-a-month contract and includes features such as GPS, wireless internet access and built-in support for a number of Google applications. The G1 launched in the US last week for USD179.99. On Wednesday, Wal-Mart announced it was to start selling the G1 for USD148.88, severely undercutting T-Mobile's price, and no doubt frustrating consumers who snapped up the device last week.
Games console maker Nintendo said first-half operating profit came in at JPY252.2 billion (USD2.56 billion), up 34 percent from JPY188.78 billion a year earlier. First-half sales of the Wii rose 38 percent from a year earlier to 10.1 million units while the DS gained 2.8 percent to 13.7 million units, Nintendo said. The Japanese firm has projected that Wii sales will climb 48 percent to 27.5 million machines this fiscal year, raising the figure from the 26.5 million it had estimated in August. Despite the continuing success of the Wii, Nintendo cut this year's net income forecast by 16 percent to JPY345 billion.
PC maker Asus has linked up with Intel to launch a project whereby consumers are being asked to design their ideal notebook PC. The pair have developed a website -- www.wepc.com -- where users can share ideas, images and designs. The ideas will be evaluated by Asus and could influence the development of an actual notebook PC built by Asus and powered by Intel. The online community on wepc.com will be divided into three conversation groups, addressing three of the most popular consumer PC categories: netbooks, notebooks and gaming notebooks.
Online car rental firm CarTrawler has signed a deal with Faroe Islands airline Atlantic Airways. Under the agreement CarTrawler will supply Atlantic Airways with access to over 450 branded and independent car rental suppliers in 17,000 locations and 130 countries around the world. CarTrawler's car rental content will also feature across all Atlantic Airways' sales channels. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. In June CarTrawler signed a similar deal with Spanish low-cost airline Clickair.
After 100 years of continuous publication the Christian Science Monitor is to cease printing daily news and will instead publish daily news on its website and print a paper just once a week. This is the first nationally distributed US newspaper to make such a move. "It's a tough road, but we basically feel that the web is where the growth is," said Editor John Yemma, who added that the paper might cut some staff. Some 52,000 primarily US subscribers currently pay for the Monitor. This compares to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, which each have around 1 million subscribers. The Monitor's website gets 1.5 million unique visitors per month and 5 million page impressions per month.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 