Business

After beating analysts' expectations with a surprise profit of $2.71 billion in its first fiscal quarter, software giant Microsoft acknowledged over the weekend that a repeat performance in the coming year is not likely. "The first-quarter results were a blip," Morningstar.com stock analyst Joe Beau...

When Apple and Microsoft signed a pact five years ago formalizing their relationship, the two companies laid out a detailed road map for the future. Fast forward to the summer of 2002. The agreement expired, no extended proposal has been put in place, and published reports have questioned the state ...

Just three years ago, those interested in an e-commerce career simply had to stand around and jobs would drop into their hands like fruit falling from an overburdened apple tree. But the economy's long decline has forced many companies out of business, and many of the remaining players have slashed ...

Affluent Americans make up the fastest-growing online segment, with the number of online households earning more than $100,000 annually rising more than 50 percent in the past year, according to a report from Nielsen//NetRatings. "The numbers surprised us a bit at first," NetRatings director and chi...

Microsoft has announced that it plans to spend $300 million to promote its MSN Internet service, casting a shadow over the glittery New York release of AOL version 8.0. The software giant said the investment represents the largest ever marketing outlay for MSN, which has long run a distant second to...

IBM has unveiled a 64-bit chip that can process data at twice the rate of current PC processors. According to published reports, the new chip may be used in Apple desktop computers and servers in the future. The PowerPC 970, which is compatible with 32-bit programs, is expected to allow speedier han...

In a sea of drowning tech companies, Logitech's is an unlikely story -- one of profit, promise and seemingly unlimited potential. The peripherals maker has homed in on a market where the sky is the limit at a price point that defies recessionary pressures. How has the company been so successful in a...

A federal judge has ruled that Intel's Itanium chip line infringes a smaller company's patented technology and has ordered the chipmaker to pay $150 million in damages. Under terms of the ruling and an earlier agreement between the two companies, Intel can appeal the ruling, drop the technology in q...

As it battles a sagging U.S. consumer electronics market, Royal Philips Electronics has announced it will close its Philips Components division in the United States. Some sections of the division -- which handles optical storage, mobile display systems, emerging electronic solutions and connectivity...

An expected upturn in spending on information technology is taking longer than anticipated to materialize, and the sector will post much weaker growth than previously forecast for 2002, according to two new reports. When spending does turn around, it probably will begin with lower-cost items, such a...

The classic law of supply and demand has caught up to technology workers. Not only are fewer jobs available, but there has been a noticeable erosion of salary gains made during the technology boom. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, 75 percent of top-earning workers rep...

Microsoft is slated to announce the release of its .NET Content Management Server 2002 at the annual Microsoft Exchange Conference in Anaheim, California. The new software will let developers more rapidly publish content to the Web directly from Microsoft Word, according to the company. In addition,...

The dollars spent by tech sector heavyweights on research and development number in the billions. Determining a company's return on its R&D investment is not a clear-cut exercise -- and until ROI is achieved, companies and their shareholders pay for their investment in lost profit. Even so, IDC ...

Despite high-profile layoff announcements from IBM and others, the third quarter was a relatively quiet one for job cuts in the technology sector, according to a new report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The outplacement firm counted 91,450 job cuts in the quarter ended September 30th, down ...

Purveyors of interactive online games have hit upon an audience-pleasing business model, featuring methods like subscription plans that give users unlimited access for a monthly fee. But firms in other areas of e-commerce likely will be hard-pressed to emulate gaming companies' success using the sam...