Business Tech

Amid what seems to be a never ending stream of dire economic news, a few rays of sunshine poked through the gloom this week.

Amazon.com beat Wall Street's fourth-quarter revenue and earnings expectations, posting strong holiday sales amid a weak economy. The company's CEO, Jeff Bezos, expressed particular gratitude that demand is strong for the company's Kindle e-reader (which, we surmised this week, we may see a new version of on February 9).

In another despite-the-troubled-economy moment, AT&T and Verizon Communications both reported strong growth in their cell phone businesses, as it appears people … Read more

Update at 1:50 p.m. PST, with information from American Guarantee's lawsuit against Intel in the Delaware Chancery Court.

Intel has filed a $50 million lawsuit against insurance carrier American Guarantee and Liability Insurance, alleging breach of contract.

The alleged breach involves the insurance firm's failure to pay for Intel's legal defense related to antitrust lawsuits filed by rival Advanced Micro Devices and consumers.

Intel, in the lawsuit filed last week in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, alleges that American Guarantee did not step up to the plate and begin paying for the … Read more

Updated at 10:45 p.m. PST with additional information about Intellectual Ventures

Intellectual Ventures has acquired the patent portfolio of Transmeta, an erstwhile supplier of low-power Intel-compatible x86 processors.

Intellectual Venture Funding, an affiliate of Intellectual Ventures, has picked up 140 U.S. patents and additional pending patent applications owned by Transmeta, which was acquired by privately held Novafora in November of last year.

The Transmeta technology will be used "through two distinct routes," according to an Intellectual Ventures' statement. Novafora will improve its own proprietary designs by using some of the technologies invented by Transmeta. And … Read more

Googlers who want to revalue their underwater stock options will have to wait until Tuesday for the voluntary employee option exchange program to launch, Google said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday that did not explain why.

The program--which allows allow employees to exchange all or some of their existing stock options for the same number of new options--was scheduled to launch Thursday and end on March 3. Employees were notified of the change in an e-mail sent Wednesday by Laszlo Bock, vice president of People Operations at Google, and which was included … Read more

Correction, 12:50 p.m. PST: This story initially mischaracterized a statement made by John Challenger regarding the severity of recent tech-related job cuts. He does not expect them to be as severe as those during the dot-com bust. Also the percentage figures cited within the various sectors reflect the increase in layoffs last year compared with 2007, and not the percentage of jobs cut.

Job cuts in the tech sector increased 74.2 percent in 2008 compared with the previous year, as the industry was battered by an unrelenting wave of layoffs, according to a report released Thursday.

Last … Read more

Lenovo has acquired a small start-up headed by a former Microsoft executive.

Switchbox Labs is based in Seattle and was founded by Michael Sievert, Robert Dickinson, and Blake Ramsdell. Sievert left his position as Windows Mobile marketing executive last February. All three will join Lenovo, and Sievert will become a senior vice president reporting directly to Lenovo chief executive Bill Amelio.

Switchbox focuses on "developing consumer technologies." Beyond that, little is known about the company. Its projects are "confidential," according to Lenovo, but it's expected that the technologies developed will be integrated into future Lenovo … Read more

Updated Friday at 11:16 a.m., with Microsoft comment on Silverlight adoption rate.

Adobe Integrated Runtime and Flash Player 10 have latched onto a tailwind, capturing record adoption rates within a year after their release, Adobe Systems said Thursday.

AIR, software designed for running Web applications on PCs, has received more than 100 million installations, the company said. That figure comes at a time when Adobe is facing new competitors in the market. One such rival said he believes the growing popularity of open-source software will steal AIR's thunder.

Adobe's Flash Player 10, meanwhile, has been installed … Read more

Intel and DreamWorks plan to show off the fruits of their 3D collaboration in a Super Bowl 3D extravaganza this Sunday as DreamWorks prepares to tap into future Intel Larrabee graphics silicon.

The Super Bowl ad sponsored by DreamWorks Animation, Intel, and NBC will feature a 3D trailer of the animated movie Monsters vs. Aliens, coming out in March. A second spot will be a 3D commercial for PepsiCo's SoBe LifeWater energy drinks. Viewers--as they will in the movie theater--will need special 3D glasses to see the effects. (Intel has made 125 million of the InTru3D glasses, which are … Read more

Europe's largest chipmaker, STMicroelectronics, has reported a $366 million net loss for the fourth quarter of 2008, and has said it will lay off as many as 4,500 jobs in a cost-cutting drive.

The results for the European firm were released on Tuesday. The fourth quarter of the previous year saw a net income of $20 million. It is not yet known how many of the layoffs will take place in the UK--STMicro employs just over 430 employees in the UK, with a sales office in Marlow and research and development sites in Bristol, Edinburgh, Fleet and Daventry.… Read more