Weekly Digest
Weekly Digest Issue No. 511
15-04-2010
by Deirdre McArdle
Fruitful week for Irish firms | Surprise Intel results point to recovery
Fruitful week for Irish firms
It's been a successful week for Irish firms, with a number of deals and expansions announced. On Monday, Irish visual search firm Plink was acquired by search giant Google for an undisclosed sum. The company launched its PlinkArt product publicly four months ago, and within a month of its launch had surpassed 50,000 users. As part of the deal the Plink team will work with Google developing its Goggles application.
On Tuesday, Enterprise Minister Batt O'Keeffe announced that Irish firms in a number of sectors including construction, software and electronics had scooped EUR200 million worth of contracts for the London 2012 Olympics. Dundalk-based Anord Control Systems was awarded a contract worth over STG1 million to supply switchgear as part of infrastructural cabling works, while Kerry-based Donseed's web-based workplace management solutions were chosen to be deployed on the Stratford site.
Finally, three Irish firms made moves into the US market this week. First up, high-end digital camera maker Andor Technology, which is based in Belfast, acquired the assets of US firm Photonic in a cash and shares deal. Andor paid USD5 million in cash and included more than 156,000 Andor shares of STG0.02 each. A further USD2 million may be paid if certain targets are met. Photonic makes laser-based illuminations systems; manufacturing will be transferred to Andor's Belfast facility. Separately, telecoms equipment supplier Intune Networks this week opened an office in Boston, as it launches an expansion into the US market. The Boston office is the firm's first outside of Ireland, and comes as it builds up to the rollout of a commercial product later this year. Finally, medical devices firm Crospon launched its EndoFLIP product in the US this week at an endoscopic surgical conference.
Twitter makes its ads move
Twitter this week unveiled its advertising programme, Promoted Tweets, through which it hopes to monetise its massive growth. Figures revealed on Thursday show that Twitter has just under 106 million registered users, and 600 million searches are conducted each day. This second figure is likely to be of interest in relation to the Promoted Tweets programme, which will see advertisers' tweets appear in results when a user searches for keywords that advertisers have bought to link to their ads. For now, Virgin, Starbucks and Best Buy have all signed on to the scheme. A second, more controversial, phase of the scheme is expected to be introduced at a later, as yet unannounced, date. This would see promoted tweets show up in users' Twitter feeds, even if they have not performed a search and do not follow the advertiser. With this plan, Twitter runs the risk of potentially alienating users who may not appreciate ads appearing on their personal Twitter page.
A new company called TweetUp also plans to start monetising Twitter-related ads. The company was set up by Bill Gross, the internet entrepreneur who invented search advertising in the late 1990s. TweetUp will launch an auction-based advertising system closely modelled on Google's.
In more news of Twitter, on Wednesday Google announced plans to roll out a timeline of archived Twitter messages organised by topic, so that searchers can see Twitter activity within a specified time-frame. They can then opt to 'replay' the tweets from that day. Google has so far only indexed tweets going back to February this year, but plans to eventually index all tweets as far back as March 2006, when Twitter launched. Also on Wednesday, Twitter announced a partnership with the US Library of Congress, which will see the micro-blogging site donate its tweet archives to the library, going back to the first ever tweet posted by co-founder Jack Dorsey on 21 March 2006. The Library of Congress wants to store tweets to give researchers of the future a better way to revisit discussions of significant events. Only tweets from public profiles will be available.
US iPad-mania has knock-on effect
Just a week after the launch of the iPad, Apple confirmed that it had sold over 500,000 of the devices. This followed on from the shipping of 300,000 iPads on the day of launch alone, and highlights what Apple is calling the "surprisingly strong demand" for the device in the US market. This strong demand has caused Apple to postpone the worldwide launch of the iPad until the end of May (it was originally pegged to launch internationally at the end of April).
Apple will be announcing international pricing and start taking online orders for the iPad on 10 May. When the device arrives in the UK, Vodafone, O2 and Orange have all been lined up to carry it. All three operators issued near-identical releases on Wednesday announcing that they will be offering plans for all models of the iPad from the end of May. A breakdown on pricing was not disclosed by the trio. No information as to when the device will be available in Ireland has been revealed.
Separately this week, Apple surprised some industry commentators when it approved the Opera Mini mobile browser for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The browser has gone down well among iPhone users so far; on the first day of its launch on the App Store it was downloaded to 1,023,380 Apple devices, and is currently the top iPhone download, according to Opera.
Surprise Intel results point to recovery
Stocks around the world rallied this week following an unexpectedly solid set of first quarter results from chip giant Intel. Intel's figures are often seen as a bellwether for the tech sector, and with revenue of USD10.3 billion, up 44 percent on the year-ago quarter, the signs look promising all round. Meanwhile, operating income rocketed a massive 433 percent to USD3.4 billion and net income jumped 288 percent to USD2.4 billion. Earnings per share increased by USD0.32 to USD0.43. Intel's head Paul Otellini said the results marked the chip giant's best first quarter ever, and indeed they skipped past Wall Street's estimates of EPS of USD0.38 on revenue of around USD9.84 billion. Looking ahead to the second quarter, Intel is predicting revenue of USD10.2 billion, which is ahead of analyst expectations of USD9.68 billion.
On a conference call with journalists Otellini cited growth in demand for high-performance chips, as large corporates start spending on IT again. He also highlighted the rejuvenated tablet market, which he said will see "significant" growth year-on-year, and he expects a number of Intel customers to unveil tablet devices during 2010. In general, Otellini was in an optimistic mood, claiming that "his industry is nearly fully recovered". Certainly, with results like that it's hard to argue with him.
This strong performance by Intel was echoed by the global PC market, which recorded shipment growth of 24.2 percent for the first quarter, according to IDC figures. In all, 79 million units were shipped worldwide with HP leading the market with 19.7 percent market share. Acer is currently the second largest PC manufacturer globally with a 13.6 percent share, slightly ahead of Dell at 13.3 percent. Lenovo (8.8 percent) and Toshiba (6.8 percent) round off the top five. "This is part of an expected recovery trend that should include strong second quarter performance and lift growth for the year to 15 percent or higher," said Loren Loverde, vice president, IDC Worldwide Trackers.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 