emea

International BlackBerry outage continues

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion has still not fully restored e-mail, messaging, and Web service to more than 10 million customers in Europe, the Middle East, parts of South America, and Africa after a disruption at one of its network operation centers yesterday.

A BlackBerry outage, which began on Monday around 10:20 a.m. BST, has resulted in limited access to e-mails, Web browsing, and messaging services such as BlackBerry Messenger, otherwise known as BBM.

Late yesterday, RIM said it had resolved the issue. But this morning, millions of BlackBerry subscribers woke up to find their service was still … Read more

Overseas, IBM growth consistently modest

IBM's third-quarter revenues coming out of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa are tracking on a similar growth pattern as the first half of the year, the company announced on Monday in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Big Blue, which is meeting with European investors, said revenue growth during the first two months of the third quarter is "consistent" with the company's EMEA performance during the first six months of the year.

For IBM, that could bode well for its third quarter, given that the EMEA region accounts for roughly a third of its overall … Read more

PC market laughs in the face of economic uncertainty

Despite concerns that a weakening U.S. economy would slow spending here and elsewhere, the PC market is chugging along respectably.

The market's success was foreshadowed Tuesday by Intel, whose solid quarter demonstrated that there's continued demand for notebook PCs particularly. Shipments of PCs worldwide grew 16 percent in the second quarter of this year, led by the Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions, according to IDC. Shipments were down in the Asia-Pacific region, usually a strong market for growth, but the results were even worse in the U.S., where units shipped grew 3.6 percent, according … Read more

With a recession looming, "Rest of World" becomes critical

IBM and others are driving growth outside the US. This will become even more critical as a US recession becomes a near certainty.

It's also why it suddenly makes a lot of sense to be based outside the US if you're a vendor.

Don't get me wrong: there are many difficulties inherent in starting a business outside of the US. The US is the primary market for just about all software vendors, and will be for the foreseeable future, China notwithstanding. If you want to be a serious software player, you have to compete in the US.

But consider the following:… Read more

Notebooks continue to drive growth in worldwide PC market

Shipments of PCs to the saturated U.S. market may be declining somewhat, but the EMEA region (Europe, Middle East, Africa) gave the worldwide PC market a big boost in the third quarter, according to figures released Wednesday by IDC.

PC shipments grew 15.5 percent worldwide in the past quarter. Growth in the EMEA regions, led by Hewlett-Packard and Acer, was paced by a strong demand for notebooks and back-to-school promotions, leading to the best growth rates in the region in the past two years.

"The issue is that it continues to be notebooks that are driving strong … Read more