NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 13 May
13-05-2009
by Emmet Cole
Intel slapped with record fine | Ireland and India sign science deal
The European Commission has imposed a record fine of EUR1.06 billion on chip maker Intel for abusing its dominant position using "illegal anticompetitive practices" to exclude its main rival AMD from the market. Intel will appeal the decision. Read more about the Commission's decision in ENN's Weekly Digest on Thursday.
O2 Ireland's key performance indicators (KPIs) for the first quarter reveal that the company's total customer base at the end of March 2009 was up almost 3 percent to 1.711 million, compared to the same period last year. However the figures show a drop when compared with the final quarter of 2008, when its subscriber base stood at 1.728 million. Competition in the pre-pay market saw the company's pre-pay base decline by 25,202 customers during the period. There was a 7.2 percent rise in the number of text messages sent in the quarter, increasing from 699 million text messages in the fourth quarter of 2008 to 750 million. Service revenue was EUR210 million for the quarter, down from EUR227 in the previous quarter, and down 5.6 percent when compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, monthly average blended ARPU for the quarter was EUR39.30, down 7.7 percent from EUR42.60 in the previous quarter and 9.3 percent from EUR43.35 in the year-ago period.
Irish food blog CheapEats.ie has launched a classifieds section aimed at restaurants, hotels and takeaways that want to promote special offers. The service is offering an advertising rate that guarantees a match with the cost of the special offer. If a restaurant is offering a two-course meal for EUR15, for example, then CheapEats Classifieds will charge EUR15 to place the ad for a week. As a special introductory offer, the service is completely free until Monday, 25 May.
In other food-related news, Lookandtaste.com has launched a video recipe application for the iPhone. The application allows users to view over 300 video recipes and over 300 food glossary videos on the iPhone. The app will be priced at USD9.99 on the iPhone App Store while a free version called Lookandtaste Lite has also been launched. Lookandtaste.com was formerly know as iFoods.tv, the Irish cookery site, and was named by UK tech magazine T3 as one of the top 10 most useful web services.
Conor Lenihan, Minister for Science, Technology & Innovation, and Dr. Thirumalachari Ramasami, Secretary, Indian Department of Science and Technology, have signed a 'Programme of Cooperation on Science and Technology', at a meeting in Dublin. Under the programme, Irish and Indian scientists will cooperate on a range of research areas such as sustainable energy, medical sciences, information and communications technology and food science.
Ryanair has confirmed that from Wednesday, 20 May all new passenger bookings, including those travelling with infants and checked-in bags, will move to online check-in only as the budget airline phases out the use of airport check-in desks. Ryanair said it will be charging passengers a EUR5/STG5 online check-in fee per person, per flight, on new bookings and introducing a EUR40/STG40 'boarding card re-issue fee' to passengers who turn up at the airport without a printed-out boarding pass.
Citing recent successes in the SME sector, enterprise cloud computing company Salesforce.com, says that Irish SMEs are increasingly adopting cloud computing to maximise customer service, manage the sales pipeline more effectively, and lower their overall IT costs. New Salesforce.com customers include Bolgers, Searsons Wine Merchants and Pure Telecom.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 