Business Tech

Update at 4:45 p.m. PDT, with information from Foundry's proxy filing on adjourning the meeting to get more shareholder votes.

Foundry Networks delayed a meeting to vote on its merger with Brocade Communications Systems until next week, after failing to get enough investors to support the deal.

Foundry called a special shareholders meeting at 10 a.m. PDT on Friday to vote on its proposed merger with Brocade, which was valued at approximately $3 billion when it was announced in July.

But shortly before 2 p.m., Foundry announced it would adjourn the meeting until Wednesday at … Read more

The chip equipment business is "on hold," said an analyst at a major industry association, and that bodes ill for the electronics industry in 2009.

Chip equipment makers signal how the electronics industry will fare in the future. They take orders from chipmakers which, in turn, take orders from electronic gadget makers.

Lara Chamness, a senior market analyst in industry research and statistics at Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, talked about prospects for the industry in an interview. SEMI is an industry watchdog that covers the manufacturing supply chains for the microelectronic, display, and photovoltaic industries.

"We … Read more

Microsoft says it has joined an industry effort, initiated by several of its competitors, to establish a specification defining a standard way for business software to communicate.

The specification, called the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP), was initiated through software developed by JPMorgan Chase. Red Hat acquired the software, and has worked with Cisco Systems and others to establish AMQP as an industry standard.

The AMQP specification seeks to do what the industry has been unable--or unwilling--to do for years: establish a common way to send messages between software packages from rival companies.

Messaging has for years been a standard … Read more

Ten years ago, Apple and Yahoo were in very different financial situations.

Apple had hit rock bottom and was trading for a few bucks a share, while Yahoo was the Internet darling at the height of the Internet boom. In the past couple of years, they quietly exchanged places, and their earnings calls this week bore that out clearly.

Apple's fourth-quarter profit soared past expectations on extremely strong sales of the iPhone, but revenue was a little light. iPhone sales were astonishing during the quarter: Apple sold 6.9 million iPhone 3Gs during the quarter, which was far more … Read more

The world's largest printing and document services company announced plans to cut 5 percent of its workforce and lowered its forecast for the next quarter.

Describing current economic conditions as a "tough business environment," Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy said that by trimming 3,000 jobs over the next six months, the company will save $200 million, according to a Reuters report.

Xerox's third-quarter net income was $258 million, or 29 cents per share. But excluding onetime charges and the settlement of tax benefits, the company earned 26 cents per share. Most analysts were expecting profits of … Read more

Reports out of a Google developer conference in India indicated that Google was primed to add support for Java programs running on its presently Python-only Google App Engine. Java support is a top request for the Web application hosting site, but fans would be better off holding their horses for now.

The reports based the Java-on-GAE conclusion on remarks from a speech by Prasad Ram, director of Google research and development in Bangalore. Google, though, said nothing is happening soon.

"While we don't have any immediate plans or announcements, we are working on other languages for App Engine. … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices falls nearly 10 percent on Thursday, as the broader markets pull in competing directions.

AMD declined 9.7 percent to $3.27 a share, following the release of its third quarter results the previous day.

The chip maker may have found some comfort in that its share price didn't plunge as far as Cadence Design Systems, which fell a whopping 25.5 percent to $3.22 a share. Cadence took a hit, after the company disclosed it expects to restate its financial results for the first quarter and first half of the year, as it investigates … Read more

Updated at 12:30 p.m. PDT: Added comments from Andy Bechtolsheim.

Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim is shifting to a reduced role at the Silicon Valley stalwart as he turns his attention to getting yet another start-up off the ground.

He'll be taking on a new full-time gig as chairman and chief development officer at Arista Networks, which is focusing on 10-gigabit Ethernet switches. But Bechtolsheim believes that the company he helped found and build will do just fine without his day-to-day involvement.

Earlier Thursday, there had been some confusion about where exactly Bechtolsheim stood, following a report in The New York Times … Read more

Electronics and entertainment giant Sony warned investors on Wednesday that its yearly profits will be far below what the company anticipated.

The Japanese company said it expects to record $1.5 billion (150 billion yen) in profit for the current fiscal year, which is a 59 percent drop from the previous year.

In July, Sony said it expected to post profits of $2.4 billion, or 240 billion yen.

One of the main culprits has been the increasingly unfavorable yen-to-dollar conversion rate. The company's headquarters are in Tokyo, but the bulk of its business is in the United States … Read more