NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 12 June
12-06-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Over 11m downloads for Safari 4 | D-TV Day in the US
Over 11 million copies of Apple's web browser Safari 4 have been downloaded in the first three days of its release. This figure includes over 6 million downloads of Safari for Windows. Safari 4 includes HTML 5 support for offline technologies and support for advanced CSS Effects, which facilitates web applications that feature rich media, graphics and fonts. Safari 4 is available for both Mac OS X and Windows as a free download at www.apple.com/ie/safari.
Insurance firm Hibernian Aviva Health has selected SAS Ireland's Business Intelligence software solutions to support the analysis of its customer data and provide insight into customer preferences. "A rapidly growing organisation like Hibernian Aviva Health needs a system which can simplify complex and large amounts of information. Strong customer Intelligence is absolutely critical to support marketing investments and to measure customer satisfaction and maintain customer loyalty," said Michael Kearney, Managing Director, SAS Ireland. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
As anticipated in earlier reports, German software giant SAP has announced it is making a move into the software-as-a-service market, offering on-demand applications to its biggest clients. According to reports, SAP will still continue selling its core product to enterprises, but additional modules will be added using the SaaS model. John Wookey, the vice president of SAP, made the announcement at the SIIA OnDemand Europe event. He said the first products would be available in the third quarter of this year.
Friday, 12 June, is D-Day in the US with TV stations all over the country making the switch from analogue to digital signals. A recent survey from Nielsen revealed that more than 3 million US homes are unprepared for the switch to digital TV (DTV). While the digital TV switch will not affect consumers with cable or satellite service, consumers getting over-the-air signals via aerials need to either buy a digital television or a converter box to continue TV reception.
Sales of video games in the US dropped to USD863 million for the month of May, dipping below the USD1 billion mark for the first time since August 2007, with slowing consumer spending taking its toll on the market. According to NPD figures, in the year to May, video games sales dropped 7 percent from a year earlier to USD6.1 billion. Nintendo led the market in May selling 633,500 of its DS portable gaming devices and 289,500 of its Wii platforms. Microsoft trailed, shifting just 175,000 Xbox units during the month.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 