NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 18 September
18-09-2009
by Deirdre McArdle
Mobile shipments dip 12pc in Europe | Koni Kats get the cream
Mobile phone shipments in Europe fell by 6 percent in the second quarter, down to 42 million from 44.6 million in the year-ago quarter, according to figures from IDC. The increasing popularity of smartphones was evident during the quarter with shipments of the converged devices jumping by 25 percent over the year, compared to a decline of 12 percent in shipments of traditional mobile phones. Apple, Samsung and LG were the top performers for the quarter. Samsung shipped 12 million handsets during the three-month period, a 12 percent increase on the year-ago quarter. Meanwhile, LG had an impressive quarter with shipments rising by 71 percent over the year to 4.8 million. Apple saw unprecedented growth of 600 percent, shipping 1.4 million iPhones. Sony Ericsson shipped 5.1 million phones during the quarter, a drop of 18 percent year-on-year. Nokia too had a poor quarter, shipping 15.3 million devices, representing a 19 percent decline on last year. Its market share dropped to 36 percent with rival Samsung nipping at its heels with 29 percent share.
AirSpeed Telecom is working with Observer Outside Broadcast to deliver Content Distribution Network Services for the inaugural Global Irish Economic Forum taking place in Farmleigh this weekend. AirSpeed Telecom will be providing a 155Mbps link into Farmleigh for the duration of the conference. The link will be used to take a live video feed from the cameras at Farmleigh and will output multiple content streams in different formats for the web, for example Mpeg4, Real Player, Windows Media Player and Flash.
Ireland's Koni Kats team from St. David's Secondary School in Greystones, Wicklow took home the top prize at the fifth Formula One in Schools Technology Challenge World Championships held this week in London. Thirty one teams from 20 countries were all competing for the title. The Koni Kats team comprises Conor Daly, Eoin O'Connell, Sean Cleary and Adam Gammell. The team also won two other awards on the night: Best Presentation and Best Engineered Car.
TerminalFour will release Site Manager 7.0 at t44u, the firm's second annual global 'User Conference and Open Day'. The event is to be held in Dublin on the 12th and 13th of November 2009 and is expected to attract an international web content management audience.
Google has announced a major revamp of the DoubleClick ad exchange it acquired last year. The move is regarded as an important step in Google's plan to extend its advertising business into the market for graphical, display ads. The announcement means that Google will now combine the DoubleClick exchange with its own advertising system and technology. Google acquired DoubleClick for over USD3 billion in March 2008.
Smartphone maker Palm is to drop the Windows Mobile Platform for its devices, opting instead to focus on its own webOS mobile operating system. Palm's webOS powers the newly-launched Pre device. While Palm didn't outline its reasons for making the switch now, analysts noted that the decision means the smartphone maker won't need to shell out licensing fees to Microsoft anymore. This could help Palm to make improvements to its bottom line. Palm made the announcement as it released its quarterly figures which showed widening losses.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 