CE & IT Industry Now In The Hands Of The Dollar Consumer electronics, IT and Hi Fi vendors are set to get hit hard by the falling Australian dollar. Yesterday Sony announced price increases by up to 30% with both Samsung, LG and Panasonic saying that they will have no price increases untill the new year when it expected that they will lift prices by up to 15%.
GE Money Thugs Bought Into Line By ASIC GE Money who are renown for heavy handed collection practises and massive interest rates has been slammed by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. The Company, who partner with several major consumer electronic retailers, have been known to send in "thugs" to collect payments and in some cases have used "intimidating practises", according to State government sources.
Harvey Norman And Flexigroup Slammed By Former Cabinet Minister Flexigroup who have seen their shares crash from $3.00 to a low of 0.41c and one of their biggest retail partners Harvey Norman have been slammed by a labour party MP and former cabinet minister who has accused the retailer and their finance partner of using unethical practices to deceive customers into buying goods way beyond their capacity to pay.
Clever Comms Performs Backflip Amid Losses Clever Communications has generated positive operating cash flow for the first time in months following net losses two years running to the tune of almost $900,000.
Faulty Goods Hurt Panasonic’s Bottom Line Pansonic has had a bad year according to profit results from its parent-company, Matsushita, which indicate the electronics giant was hurt badly by a massive mobile phone battery recall last month.
More Australians Going Bankrupt Than Ever Before The SMB market is feeling the brunt of a massive rise in bankruptcies with up to 86% of all new businesses failing. At the same time the high cost of living and easy access to credit have led to the highest number of bankruptcies in NSW since records began more than 20 years ago, the Insolvency and Trustee Service Australia (ITSA), accountants Hall Chadwick has said.
9 Hours On Westpac Online Still Not Restored Serious questions have to be raised about the management of Westpac's IT operations after customers were forced to go hours without online banking following a system crash that raises several issues as to how the bank is actually running their technology infrastructure.
How To Find Business Success Online The Internet offers amazing opportunities to reach new customers, expand your market reach and grow your business cost-effectively. So, has your business considered the move towards eCommerce as the next step in your business plan?
Microsoft Cash Pile Cut In Half According to Bill Gates' local newspaper. the Seattle Pi, Microsoft's huge cash mountain is shrinking to the size of just an ordinary IT company.
Get Online Or Perish Long Term Are you trading online? If not you are missing out on a massive opportunity. In the UK more than a quarter of the population now buy online with online sales in 2006 nudging close to high street sales. To get online is not hard.
Australia A Target For Ecommerce Abuse Australia’s low adoption rate of effective security filters amongst ISPs is making it a soft target for ecommerce abuse, according to one industry figure.
Radio Microphones Under Threat Don’t tell Peter Costello but the future of radio microphones - used at concerts, sporting events, festivals and theatre shows in the UK - is under threat from a new proposal aimed at raising revenue by selling the spectrum claims the BBC.
Google Boss Joins Apple Google head honcho Eric Schmidt has joined the board of Apple in a move that will deliver for Apple the experience of a seasoned IT industry executive. The move comes as Google moves to delivering enterprise software and Apple a range of enterprise computers that will run both Windows and Apple software.
Apple Boss Says No To Mac Expo Keynote Apple Computer boss Steve Jobs is set to snub his European faithful by refusing to deliver a keynote address at next month's Apple Expo in France, show organisers have said.
JB Hi-Fi Reports 33 Percent Growth As pessimists talk down the CE market, JB Hi-Fi has reported 32.5 percent growth and $25.81 million in net profits.
Canon Offers Environment Grants Canon is offering five product sponsorships, valued at $5000 each, to organisations working on projects that will benefit Australia’s natural environment.
Acer Score Massive Deal Acer Computer Australia has won the National Australia Bank contract to supply PCs and notebooks over a twelve month period - a contract that is tipped to be the largest corporate contract in Australia for 2006.
Convoy Seeks Sales Manager ADVERTISMENT: Leading CE distributor Convoy is looking for a senior sales executive in NSW to sell across some of the most successful brands in the CE market today.
IBM Slashes Oz Jobs IBM Australia is set to slash jobs and restructure its operations. It is also shifting services work to Asia.
Toyota Now Video Conferencing Toyota is now using Polycom video conferencing technology at its new Victorian headquarters to communicate between Australian and Japanese offices. The company said this move will increase productivity and help to accelerate its position in the Australian marketplace.
Coonan Flogs Oz To U.S. Tech Investors Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, is currently in Texas trying to attract U.S. technology firms to invest in Australia.
Intel To Cut Costs While Microsoft Spends Up Big Intel has announced it plans to cut its expenses by as much as US$1 billion dollars, while the US sharemarket is punishing Microsoft for its plans to increase spending by US$2 billion next year.
Samsung Grabs Another iPod Contract Samsung has taken a lucrative contract to provide chips for the Apple iPod away from the current suppler PortalPlayer.
Unwired Reaches Subscriber Milestone In its Quarterly Cash report to the ASX, Unwired reports that it has reached a milestone with the signing of its 50,000th subscriber.
Lexmark Revenues Sinking Lexmark’s first-quarter revenue declined 6 per cent over the prior equivalent quarter in 2005, but the company figured that was good news.
Commander Takes Over Volante Board With all resistance overcome and a compulsory takeover in place the Board of Commander’s latest subsidiary was reconstituted at the end of last week.
McNealy Steps Down As Sun CEO Though he plans to stay on as Chairman, Scott McNealy a Sun Microsystems co-founder will step down after 22 years in the CEO role.
Google Revenues Up 79% Google has recovered form a series of stumbles in recent months to post a better-than-expected 79 percent jump in revenue fuelled by gains against Yahoo.
Can eBay Express Re-invigorate eBay? Shares of eBay dropped about 9 percent last night as Wall Street analysts cited concerns about growth in the Web marketplace after the online auctioneer failed to raise its 2006 forecast.
Apple iPod Prices To Decline: CFO Apple expects the average selling price of its iPod digital music players to decline in the current quarter from the prior period, says the company's CFO.
Intel Struggles As Profits Crash Intel, is struggling to compete despite the recent launch of Viiv.Tthe world's largest chip maker, has reported a 38 percent decline in quarterly profit in the face of stiff competition from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Sony Splits Media Buying According to advertising trade magazine AdNews Sony has appointed bellamyhayden to develop media strategy and communications planning for its range of consumer electronics brands, while maintaining its relationship with Starcom.
Culture Key To Staff Retention IT companies need to consider company culture in the recruitment process rather than simply throwing money at the problem says one HR specialist.
Telstra Buys WA Services Business Telstra Business Systems has agreed to acquire one of its West Australian partners, Converged Networks Group.
Commander Gains Control Of Volante Extending its offer period till April 12th, Commander Corporation has gained control of its takeover target Volante.
CSC Axes Workers, Seeks Buyer Computer Sciences Corp. has confirmed it is exploring a sale of the company and will cut 5,000 jobs, or about 6 percent of its staff, to reduce costs. CSC said it is aiming for US$450 million in cost savings over two years.
Victorian PC Panel A PC and Notebook purchasing initiative from the Bracks Government hopes to save the State up to $20 million over the next five years
Another $40m For DiData The commission checks will be flowing at Dimension Data this week as the integrator announces another $40 million contract, this time with Centrelink.
DiData Gets $40m SA Gov Contract The South Australian Government has signed up Dimension Data to deliver Managed Network Services.
Skype Founders In Racketeering Scandal StreamCast Networks, owners of the peer-to-peer file sharing platform Morpheus are suing Skype, Kazaa and founders Niklas Zennström and Jaanus Friis over a core technology it claims they sold to eBay as part of the Skype acquisition.
IDC Cuts Forecast 2% On Vista Delay Market researcher IDC on Monday cut its forecast for 2006 US personal computer sales by 2 per cent, citing Microsoft delayed consumer launch of its Windows Vista operating system.
Volante Delay Equals $300k Whole Volante has announced it will put its proposed acquisition of an as-yet-un-named software company on hold because it is being acquired itself.
Adobe Q1 Profit Down Adobe has posted lower quarterly net income on acquisition-related costs and gave a disappointing outlook, sending its shares down nearly 4 per cent.
iiNet Sells OzEmail Search Site Leading ISP iiNet has exited the search engine business with the sale of its Anzwers search portal to Ansearch Ltd.
Financing Can Increase Deal Size Microsoft has launched a business finance service for the purchase of software, hardware and services, saying access to money can increase deal sizes by as much as 70 per cent.
Tough Times For Optima Australia’s leading whitebox system builder is facing tough times as the company fights off aggressive pricing from big branded PC manufacturers in a margin war that is leaving everyone bruised and battered.
Dell + Allienware vs Acer + Gateway? With hardware margins still paper thin and average selling prices getting so low its hard to make a buck out of selling PC hardware, it makes a lot of sense to see some consolidation in this maturing, commoditised business.
Volante Profits As Bad As Flagged Volante reached the revised earning forecasts it made in November last year which precipitated a free fall in share price and its ultimate takeover by Commander Communications.
