Business

The Hispanic market has been riding the headlines for the past couple of years as one of the fastest growing sectors of marketing. According to the third annual AOL/Roper U.S. Hispanic Cyberstudy, Hispanics are entering cyberspace at a rapid pace with over 14 million U.S Hispanics online. Yet the c...

Cell phone technology maker Qualcomm has agreed to pay a US$1.8 million fine to settle allegations that it began controlling business decisions at merger partner Flarion Technologies before antitrust regulators cleared the purchase. Qualcomm, best known for developing the Code Division Multiple Acce...

Digital video recorder maker TiVo has won a jury verdict finding that rival EchoStar has been infringing on a "time warping" patent that is at the core of the DVR technology. A jury in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas found EchoStar has "willfully" infringed on TiVo's patent, set...

As so many of us are aware, India has become a technological powerhouse, and this has all happened in a relatively short span of time. How does a country go from being a developing and economically challenged nation to a formidable technological competitor? What alchemy was at work here? Actually, ...

Continuing to garner a reputation as a fierce regulatory watchdog ready to take on major industries, the European Commission said major credit cards are charging excessive fees to both businesses and consumers. The Commission, which handles regulation for the European Union, issued a report saying b...

Continuing to add to its menu of applications targeting enterprises in specific industry verticals, Oracle plans to buy Portal Software in a deal worth US$220 million. Portal sells billing and revenue management software products, mainly to media and communications customers. Oracle intends to use P...

Peer-to-peer communications firm Skype said it would buy a pair of VoIP startups in a two-for-one deal completed with the stock of parent company eBay, a transaction that gives it direct access to technology it currently licenses from a third party. Skype, which eBay acquired last September in a dea...

Continuing its epic battle against the European Union's antitrust arm, Microsoft plans to argue in court that regulators overstepped their boundaries and violated international law. They did so, the U.S.-based company charges, by imposing sanctions that require it to share its technology with rivals...

Marketers will need to tweak their selling strategies if they want to collar new broadband customers, according to industry experts. Although broadband growth has been strong for the last three years -- nearly doubling from 23.7 million subscribers in 2003 to 40.9 million in 2005 -- the "big pitch" ...

At least one UK-based telecommunications firms may be on the verge of launching a free broadband product, offering high-speed Internet access as a free service that comes with telephone service. The yet-to-be-announced services would be a new twist in what is shaping up to be a long and hard fought ...

Profit margins for American and Canadian mobile phone carriers are soaring -- having reached the highest point this decade during the fourth quarter of last year. EBITDA margins among North American cellular carriers jumped four percentage points during the fourth quarter of 2005 to 32 percent -- th...

An effort to get so-called net neutrality baked into telecommunications laws suffered a setback, with a key committee voting against language that would ensure that Web services firms would be able to access broadband networks to delivery video and other content. The Telecommunications and Internet ...

Shares of Research In Motion dropped Friday after the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail reader said revenue fell short of analyst targets for the fourth quarter. The company gave a weaker-than-expected forecast, despite claiming that it has regained momentum now that its legal issues are behind it. On...

Microsoft is reviewing a lawsuit filed against it by Lucent Technologies. The suit alleges that Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console contains technology that infringes on a Lucent patent. Lucent filed the suit in the U.S. District Court in San Diego on March 28. The company is seeking an injuncti...

Vodafone, one of the largest mobile phone carriers in the world, unveiled a sweeping restructuring plan designed to cut costs and help it compete in a rapidly changing marketplace. The UK-based company -- the largest mobile carrier in terms of market value -- plans to split into three units to focus...