Written by Jeremy Martin on May 16, 2011.
Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest IT company, revealed today that its revenue grew by just 3% in its most recent financial quarter.
By way of comparison, the average rate of revenue growth in the business IT industry – as measured by the Information Age Index – is currently just over 10%.
The company’s overall performance was blighted by a 5% drop in sales for its PC and laptop division, down to $9.4 billion. This drop reflected a 23% plunge in consumer device sales. The IT services division was sluggish, meanwhile, growing by just 2% to $9.0 billion.
HP’s saving grace was its server, storage and network division, where revenues rose 15% to $5.6 billion.
Profit growth was similarly underwhelming, with net earnings rising just 5% to $2.3 billion.
The results announcement came ahead of HP’s original schedule. This seems to have been in response to report this week from financial news agency Bloomberg, which quoted an allegedly leaked internal memo from CEO Leo Apotheker as saying the company faced “another tough quarter” in the next three months.
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Written by Michael Harris on May 11, 2011.
Peter Coleman
EXXONMOBIL’S operations manager when the Longford gas plant fatally exploded in 1998 has been named Woodside Petroleum managing director and chief executive.
Peter Coleman, 51, a little-known 27-year Exxon veteran, will officially take over from fiery Nebraskan Don Voelte on May 30, ending a global search for the new leader of Australia’s biggest oil and gas company.
The Victorian government criticised Mr Coleman for his performance as an operations manager for Exxon subsidiary Esso during the 1998 explosion.
The accident – which left two people dead, eight injured and cut Victoria’s natural gas supply for several weeks – was not mentioned on the version of his CV that Woodside released yesterday.
But despite the omission, Mr Coleman said the tragic events of Longford would have a significant influence over his leadership at Woodside.
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Written by Jeremy Martin on May 10, 2011.
A group of US senators has written to the country’s stock exchange regulator calling for tougher rules on the disclosure of cyber attacks.
The senators want the Securities and Exchange Commission to oblige publicly listed companies to tell the market if they suffer a “material network breach,” the Wall Street Journal reports, and to disclose what data or intellectual property might have been stolen.
“In light of the growing threat and the national security and economic ramifications of successful attacks against American businesses, it is essential that corporate leaders know their responsibility for managing and disclosing information security risk,” the five senators wrote in their letter.
Should the SEC heed their call, it would greatly increase the chances of a similar law being introduced in the UK.
In a recent interview with Information Age, UK security company Detica’s technical director Henry Harrison bemoaned an “information gap” in the market that prevents organisations realising the scale of the issue.
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Written by Michael Harris on May 6, 2011.
“They will not eliminate the rogues and other crooks.” Laura Menschik, WLM
The proposed federal government Future of Financial Advice reforms promise reassurance for investors. But critics warn that many will find little difference.
MORE paperwork and higher upfront fees for initial advice are likely outcomes should the Future of Financial Advice proposals be passed by federal Parliament and implemented from July 1 next year, financial planners say. But not too much else will change.
The financial planning industry welcomes many of the proposed changes, including the banning of dodgy entry fees and trailing commissions on retail investment products, more industry education and greater clarity in the definition of the industry.
But when you visit your financial planner after these reforms are introduced, don’t expect the world to have changed.
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Written by Jeremy Martin on May 6, 2011.
China’s two largest technology companies have begun a European court battle over mobile phone patents.
As reported by the Associated Press, the dispute between telecommunications equipment providers Huawei and ZTE Corporation is a rare example of Chinese corporations entering a public dispute.
The legal case concerns mobile connectivity standards. Huawei first filed claim in Hungary, Germany and Frace accusing ZTE of infringing patents it owns relating to data cards. ZTE quickly denied the claims, and filed a claim against Huawei for infringing its patents around fourth generation 4G mobile networking standards.
Both companies, and Huawei in particular, are raising their profile on the global stage. Last month, Huawei announced that it will create 500 jobs in the UK to better service local telcos.
And according to Gartner’s cloud computing analyst Lydia Leong, Huawei plans to become an “all-in-one” cloud provider, offering both the equipment for enterprise organisations to build their own cloud computing environments as well as public cloud services.
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Written by Michael Harris on April 30, 2011.
Fairfax Media has warned that its revenue has fallen and revised its profit outlook for the financial year, saying it expects market conditions to remain subdued.
Fairfax also said it would outsource its subeditor work in favour of ramping up its reporting staff in a part of strategic refocus that will involve some pain.
Shares in Fairfax, the publisher of this website, fell as much as 12 cents, or 9.2 per cent, to $1.19, making it the worst performing stock among the top 200.
In a statement to the stock exchange this morning, Fairfax said its second-half revenue to date was down 4.5 per cent from a year ago, while costs for the period were up 1 per cent.
Earnings before interest and depreciation (EBITDA) will be $600 million before items in the 2011 financial year, down from a previously expected $647 million and lower than last year’s EBITDA of $637 million.
Fairfax will also take a redundancy charge of $25 million for the financial year.
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Written by Jeremy Martin on April 30, 2011.
Dutch satnav device maker TomTom has apologised to customers after it emerged that police in its native country used customer data to plan speed camera locations.
The company offers a service entitled HD Traffic, which allows customers to access anonymised traffic data. In an emailed apology to customers, TomTom admitted that the Dutch police had used this service to plan speed camera locations.
“We are now aware that the police have used traffic information that you have helped to create to place speed cameras at dangerous locations where the average speed is higher than the legally allowed speed limit,” it said. “We never foresaw this kind of use and many of our clients are not happy about it.”
The company says that it had not sold the data directly to the police but to local authorities, believing that it would be used to improve road safety and remove traffic bottlenecks.
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