by Kathy Sandler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
The economic slump has bottomed out and optimism is returning, but it will take some time for business to return to more normal levels, Microsoft Corp. International President Jean-Philippe Courtois said Monday.
Mr. Courtois’s comments echo those of Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, who told delegates at a Confederation of British Industry conference Monday that he expects the economy to stay weak and recover only slowly.
There’s lots of talk in the tech industry these days about capitalizing on growth in “emerging markets,” countries like China, Vietnam and Brazil where people are rapidly buying computers and printers.
A story in Monday’s Boston Globe says Hewlett-Packard Co. is taking that strategy one step further: Its printers, writes Farah Stockman, “have become a top seller” in Iran–a country whose economy the U.S. government wants to prevent from emerging.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Cisco, true to its word, began reducing its headcount this week. Drastically. Aaron Rakers, an analyst at Wachovia Capital Markets, noticed that the total number of the company’s job listings has fallen 93 percent in the last week. Rakers isn’t specific about how many of those jobs are in Silicon Valley, but job-listing businesses advertising on the radio in the Bay Area may want to change their recession-defying promises of “thousands of job openings” to “thousands of applicants.”
by Tiernan Ray, Blogger, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Worldwide server sales rose 12.2 percent, year over year, to 2.3 million units, in the second quarter, declares research firm Gartner (IT) in a note today, while revenue was up 5.7 percent for a total of $13.8 billion.
This is a section of the All Things Digital Web site featuring posts from around the Web, from other Dow Jones properties and also original pieces we solicit. The section is now explicitly labeled that it comes "from other Web sites."
We are fully aware of the controversies around how linking and aggregating is done on the Web and we, in no way, are attempting to "scrape" original content created by others. Instead, regarding third-party posts, we are trying to point readers of this site to other posts from around the Web that we admire and are trying to do so in the quickest manner possible.
The Internet is full of terrific content that is not ours and we want to help our readers find it by making editorial suggestions--Look, Mom, no algorithm!--of posts we think are worth their time.
That is why we have made even more changes to Voices to ensure we do this in the most transparent and timely way. While we don't expect that everyone will agree with our policies, we have made changes that reflect our intent in pointing to content outside our site.
Because the site is wholly owned by Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, we aim to adhere to the journalistic standards of the best of the mainstream media. But, because it is run autonomously as a small online startup, we aim to exhibit the fresh thinking and nimbleness of the best of the new media. We want to be first, and sassy, but also well sourced and accurate. We will offer lots of opinion and analysis, but plenty of fact as well.
