NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 10 July
10-07-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Accuris creates 27 jobs | App Store turns 1
Dublin software firm Accuris is to invest EUR1.5 million in research and development and create 27 new high-value jobs over the next three years. The investment is supported by Enterprise Ireland. Accuris develops roaming and convergence solutions to telecoms operators worldwide. The firm currently employs 51 people across its offices in Dublin, Malaysia and the US.
The Accuris jobs announcement came on Friday as Enterprise Ireland launched its four-year strategy for the Irish software sector. By capitalising on changes to the global software market, the strategy – called the New Software Economy -- aims to drive revenues in the sector to over EUR2.5 billion by 2013. The strategy will focus on growth areas such as the internet, and technologies such as Open Source, cloud computing and Web 2.0, as well as promoting software clusters. Enterprise Ireland is working with industry partners on the strategy, including the Irish Software Association and the Irish Internet Association.
Bing, Microsoft's search engine, took 12 percent of the US search market on Thursday, 9 July, ahead of Yahoo's 10.15 percent, according to traffic analysis firm StatCounter. This is the second time Bing overtook Yahoo in the US search market, the first time being a day after its launch on 4 June. "While [Bing's] lead over Yahoo may not last into next week our data suggests that it is slowly but surely closing the gap," said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter.
AOL, the internet arm of Time Warner, is currently reviewing assets it could either sell or divest. AOL is in the process of being spun off of Time Warner. The firm has reportedly said it will likely hold on to its social networking site Bebo, which AOL CEO Tim Armstrong said still has "great value". AOL also owns celebrity gossip website TMZ, as well as the AIM messaging service; however, the firm relies heavily on advertising revenues and has seen its search market share drop to about 4 percent in the US in recent years, down from about 12 percent in 2006.
Following the news that Google is to launch an operating system for PCs, Chrome OS, Eric Schmidt, CEO of the search giant has said he will need to talk to Apple about whether he should step down from the Apple board where he is a director. Under federal antitrust law, a person is not allowed to sit on the board of two companies if it decreases competition between them. Schmidt had been excusing himself from Apple board meetings where the iPhone was discussed after Google launched its own Android mobile phone operating system.
In more news of Apple, the firm's iTunes App Store is celebrating its first year of operation on Saturday. The store currently contains over 50,000 applications and over the past year over 1 billion apps have been downloaded. It has been widely credited with revolutionising the way in which people use their mobile phones. Since App Store debuted, Google has unveiled Android Market, BlackBerry has launched AppWorld, and Nokia released Ovi Store.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 