Business

IBM met Wall Street forecasts today when the company announced that it has shown first-quarter profits of 16 percent. The company earned US$1.6 billion in the first three months of 2004, in comparison to the $1.38 billion it earned in the same time period last year. Market analysts have pointed to a...

Dell expanded its market share and grabbed back the title of worldwide sales leader from rival Hewlett-Packard as revived business buying helped boost computer sales in the first quarter, according to two reports. Both Gartner and IDC put Dell at the top of the PC heap during the first quarter of 20...

Intel said its first-quarter revenue hit a record of $8.1 billion and profit nearly doubled as faster sales of high-end servers augmented its booming mobile-chip business. Even so, the bellwether technology company, whose earnings are scrutinized for hints of how the overall tech sector is faring, ...

AMD has announced the settlement of patent claims with Intergraph in an agreement that calls for AMD to pay Intergraph $10 million, plus 2 percent of profits from its microprocessor sales for three years. The maximum payment from AMD is to be capped at $25 million. In return, Intergraph will grant A...

With its recent acquisitions of Ximian and SuSE Linux, Novell has taken on the challenge of promoting enterprise-class Linux solutions. The company is not simply trumpeting the benefits of Linux to clients. To prove the enterprise Linux concept, it is adopting Linux as a preferred platform for its o...

Microsoft has settled a long-simmering patent-infringement complaint with InterTrust Technology, agreeing to pay $440 million to license all of the firm's digital rights management (DRM) technology. Settlement of the patent claims, which were first filed in 2001, is just the latest move by Microsoft...

As more U.S. firms contemplate whether to send work overseas, a new twist is developing that could make the outsourcing debate even more animated. India-based software firm Infosys Technologies has announced that it will be opening a business-consulting practice in the United States. The company exp...

Since the 1970s, Latin American currency markets have been almost synonymous with high risk. But sparked by the spread of free-trade agreements and regional trading blocs -- such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), its pending successor the Free Trade Association of the Americas (FTA...

Taking another step into the outsourcing fray, IBM has agreed to purchase an India-based business processing company that handles back-office support and call centers for several U.S. firms, including Amazon.com. IBM said the 6,000 employees of Daksh eServices will become part of its business consul...

Aiming to avoid a possible showdown with law-enforcement officials, Yahoo and Google, the two largest search engines -- and online-advertising generators -- have said they will stop taking advertisements in the United States from gambling casinos and related companies. Both search providers reached ...

Gateway has said it will close all of its remaining retail stores, putting some 2,500 people out of work and driving the final nail into the coffin of an ambitious but failed approach to selling computers. The additional layoffs -- which amount to nearly 40 percent of Gateway's remaining workforce -...

Greg Stanger knows how difficult it can be to take a company public, even in the best of times. A former Microsoft employee, Stanger became CFO of Expedia when the travel site was spun off and taken public in 1999. Stanger also knows that even with the recent run-up in technology stocks and the pros...

More than 100,000 technology jobs have been outsourced from the United States to overseas workers, a trend that will continue for several more years but is actually good for the U.S. economy, a new report from the Information Technology Association of America argues. The ITAA, whose members include ...

Dell and Intel have been hit with a patent infringement lawsuit that claims the two companies pilfered graphic display technology developed by a small California company. The company, MicroUnity Systems Engineering, claims that technology used in almost all Intel Pentium III and Pentium 4 chips to d...

In a move that highlights the convergence of Web search and online shopping, Yahoo has announced plans to buy European comparison-shopping site Kelkoo for about $575 million in cash. Yahoo cited data showing Kelkoo reaches about 10 percent of all European Internet users and counts some 2,500 individ...