NEWS IN BRIEF
Daily Digest 23 February
23-02-2010
by Deirdre McArdle
Angel network to form funding syndicates | Smartphones driving mobile phone market
Halo Business Angel Network (HBAN), a joint initiative of InterTradeIreland and Enterprise Ireland, has said it's committed to the formation of up to 10 new investment syndicates that would provide financing to companies in the life sciences and biotech sectors. "Private investment is critical to the development of a healthy start up sector and provides early stage financing when a company is probably too early stage to attract an institutional investor such as a venture capital firm," said Diane Roberts, National Director, HBAN. Last week, 30 stakeholders met to form the first syndicate group and to review a number of potential projects including Argutus Medical and Vasorum. Each of the syndicates that are formed is expected to have an investment capacity of up to EUR1 million.
The quality of communication within European businesses, and between them and their customers, partners and suppliers, has worsened during the global economic downturn, according to research published by Avaya. Fifty-five percent of companies surveyed said their internal communications have deteriorated, 52 percent said communications with customers have suffered, and 41 percent said communications from suppliers have gotten worse. "This report shows that companies should reassess the effect of the downturn on their internal and external comms, invest in the areas which will have most impact on the bottom line, and develop appropriate policies and procedures," said Michael Bayer, President, Avaya EMEA. On the flip side, the downturn has seen companies increasingly incorporate social media technologies into the customer communications mix. The survey shows that among senior managers, 55 percent are making more use of technologies like smartphones and instant messaging, as well as social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, than they did 18 months ago.
Irish business equipment company MJ Flood has been appointed the exclusive distributor for Konica Minolta's EUR35 million print solutions business in Ireland. Under the terms of the deal MJ Flood will distribute the entire range of Konica Minolta products throughout Ireland. The appointment follows the recent acquisition by Xerox of Irish Business Systems, which had previously distributed the Konica Minolta brand in Ireland.
Overall mobile phone sales reached 1.21 billion units during 2009, with sales in the fourth quarter surpassing 340 million units, according to Gartner, which cited huge growth in demand for smartphones. Smartphone sales increased by 41.1 percent to 53.8 million units in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2008. For the year, sales reached 172.4 million units, a 23.8 percent increase on 2008. Gartner research director Carolina Milanesi said she expects mobile phone sales to return to low double-digit growth in 2010, but "competition will continue to put a strain on vendors' margins".
Some 50 million tweets are being posted each day (600 per second) on Twitter, according to figures revealed by the micro-blogging firm in a blog post. This figure has grown considerably over the past three years or so: in 2007, the site was seeing 5,000 tweets per day, in 2008 this had jumped to 300,000 per day, then to 2.5 million per day at the start of 2009. By the end of 2009 some 35 million messages were being tweeted each day.
In related news, some 6 percent of 2,000 people polled in the UK said they had dumped their partner via Twitter. It seems that traditional ways of breaking up with someone, i.e. face-to-face, are being shunned for more digital methods. Over one-third (34 percent) of respondents said they broke up with their partner via e-mail, while 13 percent changed their status to 'single' on Facebook, apparently as a way of 'telling' their partner that it was all over. The survey was conducted for dating agency DateTheUK.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 