Business Tech

The economy may be under water, but the graphics chip market is on fire.

The market for graphics processing units (GPUs) saw the biggest increase in third-quarter shipments in six years, according to Jon Peddie Research (JPR), as AMD gained in both the desktop and laptop segments.

In the third quarter of 2008, more than 111 million GPUs were shipped, the market researcher said. During the same quarter last year, 91 million GPUs shipped, and 94 million units shipped in the previous quarter. That's an annual increase of 22.5 percent and a quarter-to-quarter increase of almost 18 percent, … Read more

Will Apple's decision to use Nividia chips in its new MacBooks be a catalyst for change?

With all the hoopla surrounding Apple's choice of Nvidia graphics in its new MacBooks fading, it remains to be seen if Nvidia's GeForce 9400M has legs.

Intel has a successful integrated graphics franchise and is the leader in laptop graphics. Before I get slammed, let me be clear that I'm not talking about performance. I'm referring to market share. Many laptop suppliers--particularly in the low-cost and ultraportable segments--default to Intel graphics because it offers adequate performance, reasonable power efficiency, … Read more

Virtualization company VMware has publicly disputed the way in which key research into the virtualization market was undertaken by analysts IDC, and disputed figures that appear to show a rapid growth by a competitive product from Microsoft.

According to the IDC research published last week, Microsoft has done well in virtualization since the launch of its hypervisor, Hyper-V.

In "its first quarter of general availability Microsoft Hyper-V delivered a strong showing, and when combined with Virtual Server 2005, Microsoft's market share is 23 percent of new shipments," according to the IDC research note.

Then in a blog posting … Read more

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