IN THE PAPERS
In The Papers 8 October
08-10-2010
by Deirdre McArdle
Phonovation in EUR7m deal with UPC | Microsoft licenses 74 smartphone patents
The Irish Times reports on the launch of a new e-commerce business Gruupy.com. The site has been launched by internet entrepreneur Dylan Collins and will offer cut price consumer electronics for shipment around Europe. Each day the site features a single product at a price lower than mainstream online retailers, provided a minimum number of people agree to buy at that price. "Gruupy is for people who buy a lot of devices and the core audience will be males aged 24 to 44," said Collins.
The same paper says that Phonovation has signed a EUR7 million three-year deal with UPC Business as part of a strategy to expand into Europe with integrated voice and SMS services. UPC will carry Phonovation's voice traffic on a national and international basis, and host its switches in its data centre. For Phonovation, the investment is the latest move in a strategy that began four years ago when it moved away from a business model weighted around premium-rate phone calls to services using interactive voice response (IVR) technology. The company has recently seen a boom in bulk SMS services and is exploring ways of combining both.
The Irish Independent reports that Ireland's 57 fee-paying secondary schools are to get more than EUR1 million in computer grants from the Department of Education and Skills. The schools will be included for the first time in the latest round of information and computing technologies (ICT) grants for second-level schools, which will be announced next week. Education Minister Mary Coughlan will announce a EUR20 million package for second-level schools for computers and digital projectors. All second-level schools will get a basic grant of around EUR1,700 and a grant per student of more than EUR40 each. A further EUR20 million will be announced for 3,200 primary schools within a few weeks. The decision to include fee-paying schools in the grant scheme was greeted with fury last night by the Teachers' Union of Ireland, whose general secretary Peter MacMenamin said it would widen the divide between these schools and those catering for disadvantaged students.
The paper also says that fears are growing over the future of up to 150 jobs at a leading US electronics firm Sanmina-SCI. The firm declined to comment on reports it is set to seek between 100 and 150 lay-offs from its manufacturing facility at Fermoy in Cork. The firm employs almost 400 staff at the plant. Early last year, 150 contract staff were let go, and over recent months, elements of the workforce have been operating on short-time, working three weeks followed by one week of unpaid leave.
According to the Irish Examiner, Irish scientists working with nanomaterials, have developed a smelling device that could lead to the early detection of cancer. The electronic nose under development at Tyndall National Institute in Cork offers the potential to identify aggressive cancers, such as those of the prostate and bladder, at an early stage. "We have attached nano-sized receptors that can recognise smells to a nanotransducer, and the main work will be modifying the receptors and the electronic signals to get to a standard that can be used for clinical diagnosis," said project coordinator at Tyndall Dr Vladimir Ogurtsov. The project, which has passed the design stage, is being developed in partnership with centres in Spain, France, Italy and Britain.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft has licensed dozens of patents related to smartphones. In all, Microsoft licensed 74 patents for undisclosed terms from Acacia Research Corp and Access Co Ltd, a Japanese company that acquired PalmSource, the firm behind the Palm operating system, in 2005. "By focusing on efficiently licensing patented innovations from other companies, we're free to develop great software and we're able to provide our partners and customers [intellectual property] peace-of-mind," David Kaefer, general manager of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft, said in a statement. The deal will allow Microsoft to avoid at least some of the litigation that has been targeted at big rivals in the smartphone market recently.
The same paper says that several major news organisations, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, are lining up behind the Samsung Galaxy Tab, a new Android-based tablet device due for launch later this year. The newspapers will offer software applications for the Galaxy Tab, according to people familiar with the matter, while Gannett's USA Today is also developing a software application for the device. Publishers are hoping that the applications they are building for the Galaxy can be easily adapted to other forthcoming Android devices, say people familiar with the matter.
The Financial Times reports that a possible Microsoft acquisition of Adobe Systems was raised informally at a recent meeting between the chief executives of the two companies, among a number of other ideas for closer co-operation, according to a person familiar with the talks. Two people familiar with the meeting played down the prospect that the informal takeover suggestion would lead to a deal between the two companies. However, news of the meeting, first reported in The New York Times, sent Adobe's shares up by more than 11 percent in the final hour of trading on Wall Street on Thursday.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 