Business

Boosting hopes for a banner e-commerce holiday, a new report says U.S. consumers spent $1 billion more online during the first three weeks of November than in the same period last year. Questions remain about whether these early results can be sustained throughout the shopping season, but Nielsen//N...

Buoyed by purchases of cell phones and other wireless devices, worldwide sales of semiconductors rose a modest 1.8 percent to $12.5 billion between September and October, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization. The figure reflects a larger 19.9 percent gain over October 2...

The weak economy and a shorter-than-usual holiday shopping season have led analysts who focus on the overall retail market to say the only foreseeable aspect of this year's holiday sales is that they will be unpredictable. The same cannot be said of forecasting online holiday sales revenue, however....

CDNow.com has announced it will outsource its Web site operations to Amazon.com, becoming the latest in a string of online merchants to choose to join, rather than fight, the e-tail giant. The deal reportedly will be structured similarly to one with Borders, which tapped Amazon to operate its online...

When Novell reported fourth-quarter earnings recently, the financial press pounced on the company's sizeable loss of $96 million. But most of that loss was a result of one-time charges. Novell actually beat both its own and Wall Street's revenue targets, with $300 million in sales. How has the compa...

In a closely watched case about DVD hacking and Web publishing freedoms, the California state Supreme Court has thrown out a lawsuit filed by the DVD Copy Control Association, which had accused Texas resident Matthew Pavlovich of posting a program on his Web site that enabled users to bypass DVD cop...

In the wake of massive denial-of-service attacks on the Internet's DNS root servers, the likelihood of an attack that could crash the Internet -- and bring e-commerce to a screeching halt -- seems far greater than it once did. Every 24 hours of Internet downtime theoretically could mean more than $1...

Compared with a year earlier, e-commerce retail sales in this year's third quarter skyrocketed to their highest dollar value since reporting began in 1999, according to a new U.S. Department of Commerce survey. The survey of 11,000 stores showed that sales, not adjusted for seasonal, holiday and tra...

IT pay has been hammered by the reversal of stock option fortunes, increased overseas outsourcing and the dismal economy in general, but experts say technology workers can still command a decent salary in some fields without becoming a CIO. Giga Information Group vice president Craig Symons told New...

AOL has begun selling prepaid Internet access cards and offering more online content, providing a glimpse into parent company AOL Time Warner's strategic plans for jump-starting growth at its online unit. The prepaid cards are already for sale at Western Union and Target stores and will be available...

As the battle for online revenue extends into 2002's shortened holiday-shopping season, some e-commerce firms may be considering whether to post uncensored reviews of the products they sell, as Amazon does. To be sure, it is a risky proposition -- e-tailers risk losing product sales by having negati...

IBM has announced it will invest $1 billion to provide customers with access to a team of 200 research consultants, who will split their time between pure research and working with customers on real-life computing and business problems. "IT research has to change along with the industry," IBM senior...

In his first appearance since the announcement of the landmark Microsoft antitrust settlement, CEO Steve Ballmer told an audience last week that the software giant is striving to fulfill the provisions of the settlement decree. Of course, it remains to be seen how the company actually will conduct b...

In what may be its most direct competitive move yet against e-tail giant Amazon.com, eBay has announced plans to consolidate its electronics listings into a single online store and to offer free shipping on some purchases. The free shipping move is likely a nod to the fact that Amazon recently exten...

In its first advertising push since its May 2002 merger with Compaq, and on the heels of president Michael Capellas' departure, computer and peripherals maker Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a new campaign to refocus its identity away from its printing and imaging reputation. The campaign, which will c...