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Sales of personal computers posted strong growth in 2005, while Dell held onto the crown and captured more market share and the U.S. gave up its title as the largest single PC market, according to reports from two research firms. Gartner said sales grew 15.3 percent in 2005, while IDC said growth fo...

Booming sales of iPods helped Apple score another winning quarter, but a lowered outlook may be raising the stakes for the pending switch to Intel chips in the company's notebook and desktop computers. Apple exceeded earnings expectations, posting a profit for its first quarter, which included the h...

Many Web businesses do not provide a compelling customer experience; some sites are simply unusable, while others fail to provide content, goods and services that match their customers' needs and expectations. To make matters worse, most e-tailers do a poor job of effectively assessing their custome...

Shares of Yahoo took a hit Wednesday, a day after the portal and search company reported earnings that, while up sharply from a year ago, fell short of expectations. Some analysts wondered whether the overall strength of the Internet sector in the fourth quarter had been overstated in forecasts, whi...

Interest in surveys that purport to identify averages and norms is so great that the myths this type of research spawns are sometimes floated as sophisticated branding and marketing strategies. Cures are invented, fads are nurtured, styles are crushed and dogmas are erected as though mandated by som...

For many e-commerce companies, the temptation to revel in the success of the 2005 holiday season is a powerful one. Many sites saw strong double-digit growth, with more shoppers than ever buying more online than ever before, helping to extend the e-commerce shopping season later than in the past. It...

Microsoft owns the majority of the collaborative platform software market, but that is not stopping it from trying to grab additional share away from its nearest rival, IBM. The software giant has announced the availability of a suite of new and updated tools to help IBM customers "analyze" whether...

The Securities and Exchange Commission cast a preliminary vote in favor of new rules that would force public companies to more fully report how much top executives are being paid, with everything from stock grants and bonuses to non-cash perks subject to disclosure. The five-member commission held a...

Google has agreed to acquire Newport Beach, Calif.-based dMarc, which develops digital applications for the radio broadcast industry, for US$102 million in cash. DMarc connects advertisers directly to radio stations through its automated advertising platform. Its technology is designed to simplify t...

The offices of Japanese Web services firm Livedoor Co. were raided by investigators Monday night, sending the company's shares into a nosedive and prompting a reassuring message from company leadership, while potentially casting a negative new light on Internet companies elsewhere. Livedoor issued a...

Microsoft is establishing a research center called adLab that will develop new ways to provide even more detailed demographic data about consumers, as well as new marketing technologies, to online advertisers. AdLab, which is a joint effort of MSN's adCenter and Microsoft Research, is located at a s...

Portable devices helped offset weak sales of gaming consoles and drove the video game industry to record sales in the United States last year, according to a report from the NPD Group. The research firm said sales hit US$10.5 billion, up nearly 7 percent from last year and eclipsing the previous hig...

Apparently eyeing the worn pathway from enterprise technology to the consumer marketplace, Cisco Systems is said to be mulling a plan to produce electronics and related products for home use. The Financial Times reported that Cisco is on the brink of rolling out a range of Web-connected products, in...

One twentieth of a second. That's about how long it takes for a Web site to make a first impression on an Internet user, according to researchers at a Canadian university, whose findings could have competitive impacts for businesses on the Web. Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and colleagues from Carleton Univer...

Setting the stage for a bruising battle for paid search supremacy with Google and others, Microsoft is putting the finishing touches on its MSN adCenter system, which will offer a self-service, targeted way to buy pay-per-click search advertising. Microsoft said its adCenter would be ready in the U....