Business

Dell announced Wednesday it will shutter its retail kiosks in shopping malls across the U.S. as it continues with its six-month-old retail store and direct-sales strategy. Dell launched the Direct Store kiosks in 2002 as a way to give consumers who may have been unfamiliar with its computers the opp...

Aided by a more stabilized sales showing for its video game category, Sony reported a healthy bounce in profits for the third quarter. The Tokyo-based firm's PlayStation business halted a streak of six consecutive money-losing quarters, while its core electronics segment -- which includes liquid-cry...

Amazon.com doubled its fourth-quarter profit as international sales fueled growth, but the e-tailer's outlook raised questions about its continued reliance on discounting as it expands into new markets and product categories. The company met analyst expectations for fourth quarter earnings with net ...

The growing popularity of Software as a Service is having a significant impact on data security and regulations compliance. Most companies are concerned -- and rightly so -- about the legal and security issues raised when company data is located outside their firewall. Software as a Service is incre...

Microsoft thought five years of oversight was long enough, and states that had fought the software giant over alleged monopolistic practices thought five more years were in order. Neither side got what it wanted. Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a federal district judge in Seattle, ruled on Tuesday to extend...

In the wake of a fourth-quarter report that showed a drop in profits and an outlook that disappointed investors, Yahoo said Tuesday it will cut 1,000 workers from its payroll as CEO Jerry Yang attempts to reinvigorate the portal he cofounded. Yahoo's fourth quarter profit of $205.7 million, or 15 ce...

In a blow to the music industry's worldwide campaign to crack down on copyright infringement, a European court has ruled that Internet service providers cannot turn over the identities of alleged file-sharers. The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg found that existing EU laws do not allow for s...

Barely a week after eBay announced a change in leadership, the online auctioneer unveiled a major switch in strategy. The company plans to reduce by half the up-front fees it charges users to list their items on its platform. The strategy, unveiled by John Donahoe, the company's incoming chief execu...

Overhyped expectations caused shares of VMware, makers of desktop and server virtualization software, to plummet after the company announced fourth-quarter earnings that failed to meet investor expectations. The stock's freefall, which wasn't entirely unexpected, also threatened to hurt its parent c...

Hoping to overcome sizable hurdles such as a volatile stock market and uncertain economy, Current Media -- the money-losing, multi-channel media company cofounded by former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore -- has filed for an initial public offering. Current Media, which operates ...

eBay's PayPal unit will acquire the software firm Fraud Sciences for $170 million. The move could help boost confidence in the online payment industry and in the parent company's online auctions. Based in Tel Aviv, Israel, and founded by former members of Israel's intelligence agency, Fraud Sciences...

Amazon.com is taking its digital music store to the world -- a necessary move if the online retailer hopes to compete with a digital giant like iTunes. Amazon will roll out its music store internationally this year, offering music that is free of digital rights management copy-protection technology ...

Fewer people are thumbing through newspapers, but more than ever are clicking on them, according to the latest industry findings -- and that trend appears to be on an upward spiral, with no end in sight. What it means to newspapers' profitability, however, remains a mystery. Newspaper Web sites attr...

The global mobile handset market ended 2007 with a bang, recording shipments of more than 300 million devices in the fourth quarter, according to a report released by IDC Friday. While year-over-year growth for 2007 slowed, the 334 million handsets shipped during the holiday season set a new industr...

Microsoft posted an impressive quarter on Thursday, with Vista and Office sales setting the pace. The software giant also issued a strong outlook for the current quarter and all of 2008 -- something many of its fellow tech companies have been unable to do. Microsoft's earnings rose about 79 percent ...