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The tech industry loves the concept of new innovation to the point where product launches all too often call to mind infatuated elders showing off photos of their latest grandkids. But practicality tends to drive the manufacturing side of the IT business, with consistency trumping innovation. As a r...

The hacker group Anonymous and other so-called hacktivists are the biggest concern for IT security professionals, according to a survey by Bit9. Its 2012 Cyber Security Survey queried nearly 2,000 IT security experts to gauge the current state of enterprise security and otherwise identify what keeps...

President Obama initiated an Open Government program on his second day in office, pledging to make government information more accessible to the public. Three years later, that program has achieved significant success in many forums. However, the effort of making more federal information even more a...

Just two weeks after forking over more than $1 billion to AOL for hundreds of patents and patent applications, Microsoft resold 650 of them to Facebook on Monday. Each party in this latest transaction will retain licenses to the intellectual property the other will hold when the deal is completed. T...

What a difference a year makes. Netflix, the tech industry's golden child last spring, has been struggling to overcome a series of missteps it made later in 2011. There is guarded optimism that when the company posts its fiscal first quarter report after the closing bell on Monday, some progress wil...

LightSquared made an outstanding payment to Inmarsat Friday for Phase 1 of its spectrum agreement. It received an additional two years to seek federal approval before it must pay for the second phase of the deal. Previously, Inmarsat had said it wasn't certain it would receive any more payments fro...

Innovations in wireless technology have made mobile Internet capabilities common and popular features on numerous portable consumer devices, including laptops, smartphones, tablets, netbooks and e-book readers. Data usage has increased dramatically as a result of more devices and consumer use of ban...

Microsoft reported higher than expected earnings Thursday, with Windows 7 license sales up despite the company's plan to release a new version of its desktop operating system later this year. The company's PC division gained 4 percent from a year ago, earning $4.6 billion in revenue. The gain was i...

The European Commission's competition authority has given an investment group led by Sony the go-ahead to acquire EMI Group's music-publishing division for US$2.2 billion. The commission's approval is conditioned on Sony, which is partnering with ATV in this transaction, selling certain music assets...

Facebook will make its public trading debut on Nasdaq on May 17, according to a TechCrunch report citing multiple anonymous sources. The much-anticipated IPO reportedly will value the company at $100 billion. The date jibes with separate reports and rumors from other sources; for some time, it has b...

Verizon reported a strong first quarter of 2012, it revealed Thursday, thanks in part to new FiOS and wireless subscribers. Verizon took in $1.69 billion in profit, or 59 cents per share, an increase from the 51 cents per share it reported from the same time last year. The company's operating revenu...

Google CEO Larry Page continued his testimony on Wednesday in the trial over whether his company violated Oracle's Java patents and copyrights. Like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison attempted to do with his testimony on Tuesday, Page did his best to give little ground to the opposing counsel. Yet they manag...

When Twitter eventually goes through an IPO, its investment bankers will be faced with the challenge of establishing a price per share for the company's stock. To the uninitiated, this might seem like a simple task. The fact is there are several valuation scenarios that can be used to price a stock...

Just like 10 years ago, and then again five years ago, the technology industry is changing. That means companies are enjoying new opportunities and wrestling with new challenges. Only some will win. I'll offer my perspective as an analyst on who is winning, who is losing and why. I believe you will ...

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg apparently lives by the idea that it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. This seems to have been the case with his decision to acquire Instagram earlier this month. Zuckerberg reportedly alerted the board of directors only hours before making its la...