NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 30 January
30-01-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
NEC to slash 20,000 jobs | App Store to get premium games section?
Japanese electronics giant NEC has announced it is to slash 20,000 jobs worldwide as it struggles to cope in the current economic slowdown. The company said net losses ballooned 13-fold in the nine months to December 2008 to JPY129 billion, compared with a loss of JPY9.98 billion in the same period in 2007. It also predicted a net loss of JPY290 billion in its current financial year, which ends in March 2009. NEC said its performance this year will likely be its worst since 2001.
Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of chief information officers believe there is a direct link between an IT department achieving its objectives and its CIO having a strong personal brand within the business. That's according to a survey conducted by IT recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash, which revealed that 39 percent of respondents said they have taken the time to research how others in their business view them. While 63 percent said they feel they have an equal standing as other board directors such as Marketing Directors and CFOs, the majority (75 percent) acknowledge that they are still not doing enough to improve their standing within the business. "While we are starting to see a positive shift in the way senior IT executives raise their profile within an organisation, CIOs could and should be doing more to promote not only their own success, but that of the IT function itself," said Nessa Butler, Managing Director, Harvey Nash Ireland.
IT management software firm CA has posted a 5 percent drop in revenue for its third fiscal quarter to USD1.042 billion, down from USD1.1 billion in the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, net income increased by 19 percent to USD233 million, or USD0.43 per diluted common share, compared with USD193 million, or USD0.36 per diluted common share, a year earlier. Looking ahead to its fiscal year 2009 CA said it expects total revenue growth in a range from 1 to 2 percent in constant currency, compared with a previous outlook of 2 percent.
Rumours are currently doing the rounds that Apple is gearing up to launch a new section of the App Store dedicated to premium gaming titles. According to sources quoted in PocketGamer.biz, Apple is planning to sell a range of iPhone games for USD19.99 and the initiative will only be open to a restricted number of large games publishers. There are no details yet on when all of this will be unveiled; however, industry commentators are looking at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference, which usually happens in June, as a possible launch date.
Google has announced it is making its webmail offering, Gmail, available to users even when they are offline. Google entered the offline web application market in May 2007 with the release of its browser add-on project Google Gears. It has now added Gmail to Gears, which downloads a local cache of a user's mail, and as long as a user connected, that cache is synchronised with Gmail's servers. When a user loses their connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on their computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network, explained Gmail engineer Andy Palay in a blog posting. "Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you're using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server," he wrote. The feature will be made available to individual Gmail account holders as well as Google Apps biz customers in the US and UK over the next few days.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 