Hoover's Business Information Blogs

  It’s been a week of big headlines in the technology field. The biggest story was the legal settlement reached between Advanced Micro Devices and Intel . These processor archrivals agreed to wrap up their legal disputes on business practices and patent issues, with Intel paying $1.25 billion to AMD. While Intel was spared further expense in an antitrust lawsuit that was scheduled to go to trial next year, its troubles over alleged anticompetitive behavior are not fully resolved . The company is appealing the fine of more than 1 billion euros imposed earlier this year by the European Commission, responding to complaints by ... Read Full Story

The recession, at least in the US, apparently is at an end , after nearly two years. One promising sign is the uptick in business for semiconductor production equipment, as reported by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI), an industry trade group which tracks the orders and shipments reported to the organization by North American equipment suppliers. Equipment industry conditions bottomed out in the first quarter of this year, according to SEMI. The organization’s monthly book-to-bill report follows how orders (bookings) are corresponding to shipments (billings). A ratio of 1.0 indicates orders and shipments are in balance and the North American equipment industry is ... Read Full Story

Microsoft is such a constant source of news and a rich subject of speculation. The world’s largest software company garnered headlines earlier this month with the launch of Windows 7 and the Sidekick service outage at its Danger subsidiary. (Yes, Microsoft has a subsidiary called Danger — insert your geeky joke here.) One area where Microsoft appears vulnerable is the market for mobile devices , where they are facing a challenge from a familiar competitor: Google . The Windows Mobile operating system, on the market for more than a decade, enjoys a global smartphone market share of less than 10%, and it’s falling farther ... Read Full Story

Users of the Sidekick mobile device are closing out a couple weeks of anxiety, conflicting information, and possibly reassurance. It’s an episode in the Information Age that proves something, or proves nothing; it matters a great deal, or it matters little. On the face of it, the service outage that T-Mobile USA reported last weekend for its Sidekick subscribers may give the concept of cloud computing a bad name. Then again, it may not. The Sidekick was originally created by a small company called Danger, Inc., which was acquired last year by Microsoft . Danger called the mobile communication device the Hiptop, and the product was rebranded ... Read Full Story

And the big news in smartphones is that I have one now. I just got a myTouch 3G phone from T-Mobile USA . I’m very happy with the phone and with the service, which is much better than that of my previous wireless service provider — well, let’s just call them “The Then Network.” The myTouch is a second-generation phone running on Google ’s Android mobile device software, and it’s made by High Tech Computer (HTC) of Taiwan. More seriously, there is a lot going on in the smartphone market .  Orange and Vodafone will soon join O2 in selling Apple ’s iPhone in the ... Read Full Story