NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 30 November
30-11-2009
by Sylvia Leatham
Samsung to beat sales forecast | Cauwill, Sophia win Seedcorn competition
Mobile handset maker Samsung Electronics has said it is on track to beat its 2009 sales forecast of 200 million mobile phones. The South Korean company said that touchscreen handsets would account for 20 percent of mobile phones sold this year. Samsung has sold 50 million touchscreen mobile phones so far this year. In 2008, Samsung had only sold 10 million touchscreen phones by the end of November.
Limerick firm Cauwill Technologies and Belfast-based Sophia Search have won InterTradeIreland's all-island Seedcorn Business Competition. Cauwill was named the 'best emerging company' for its PinPoints application, software that helps users locate their hotel using a mobile phone. Sophia Search was named 'best high-growth company' for its development of innovative semantic search technology. Cauwill and Sophia will each receive EUR100,000 in investment prize money.
Dublin-based Muzu.tv has signed a deal with The O2 venue in London to create a music video section on TheO2.co.uk. Due to go live soon, the 'video channel' will give site visitors free access to thousands of music videos by artists playing at the venue. Music fans will be able to share the videos with their friends via the website and embed the videos into their social networking pages and other websites. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but the O2 will pay Muzu a 'per-stream rate' for each video viewed on its website. Muzu licenses the video content through its own arrangements with music labels.
Meanwhile, in news of the O2 telecoms firm, O2 Ireland has launched a business blog designed to "encourage small and medium sized businesses to talk to each other in new ways". The 'O2 ideas room' claims to offer expert advice from business specialists in areas ranging from marketing and sales to HR and finance. "With the 'O2 ideas room' we want to create an online community where businesses, large and small, can access free expert information of value to their organisation but also contribute to the blog themselves, either through online discussions or by posting an article," said Jonnie Cahill, head of Communications & Sponsorship, O2 Ireland.
Apple products are set to get wider exposure among retailers in Ireland with the appointment of BPI Telecom as distributor and Expert Ireland as a reseller for the Mac. Expert Ireland is an Irish-owned electrical retailer with almost 70 stores around the country, in Dublin, Drogheda, Gorey, Mullingar, Naas, Tullamore and Wexford, among other locations.
Some 90 percent of online shoppers will spend the same amount or more online this Christmas as last year, according to a study carried out by researchers at Waterford Institute of Technology on behalf of AllGifts.ie. Forty-one percent said they were likely to spend about the same online as in previous years on Christmas gifts, while 49 percent indicated they would be spending more online than in previous years. The main reasons given for shopping for gifts online were convenience (60 percent), time-saving (22 percent) and online bargains (18 percent).
As well as being more convenient, shopping online may also be safer, judging by a survey of London cabbies which found that the Christmas shopping period was the worst time of year for leaving mobile devices in the back of cabs. According to a survey by Credant Technologies, Londoners forget on average around 10,000 mobile phones a month in the back of taxis, and more than 1,000 other handheld devices, including iPods, laptops and memory sticks, every month. While advising users to encrypt their devices, Credant also noted that the survey, which is carried out on a regular basis, has over the years recorded the loss of other non-tech items in the back of cabs, including diamonds, a baby, a sawn-off shotgun, 12 dead pheasants, two dogs, a cat, toilet seats and funeral ashes.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 