8 May 2009
Vodafone earnings fears lead sharp reverse on Footsie
Vodafone led a sharp reverse by the London market yesterday as earnings fears rose on both sides of the Atlantic. Shares in the world’s biggest mobile telecoms group had their sharpest fall in six months after the European Commission said fees for routing calls should be cut by up to 70 per cent.”The outlook for revenues has clearly deteriorated in recent months,” said Cazenove, Vodafone’s joint house broker. It yesterday cut sales and profit forecasts to below consensus levels ahead of the group’s full-year results on May 19. Vodafone fell 4.9 per cent to 121¼p. The decline was matched by Verizon, co-owner of Vodafone’s American joint venture, after one of its executives hinted during an Ericsson capital markets day that US mobile pricing would fall to European levels.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/eef8ee28-3b68-11de-ba91-00144feabdc0.html
And more bad news….Telecoms’ Results Sag – European Carriers Suffering Amid Global Downturn
Two European telecommunications heavyweights, Deutsche Telekom AG and Telecom Italia SpA, Thursday reported first-quarter results that were weighed down by the economic downturn, but sought to reassure investors on their full-year forecasts. Deutsche Telekom posted a net loss of €1.12 billion ($1.49 billion) for the quarter ended March 31, compared with a year-earlier net profit of €924 million. The company’s bottom line was hurt by a €1.8 billion write-down related to its T-Mobile operations in Britain, for which it said it is reviewing all options. Despite the hefty write-down, the German company still expects to post a net profit for the full year, said Chief Financial Officer Timotheus Höttges, in a conference call.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124168466479195529.html
Google boss won’t quit Apple job
Google CEO Eric Schmidt says he will not resign his Apple board position despite a government inquiry. The Federal Trade Commission is looking at a possible breach of antitrust laws given Mr Schmidt’s directorships at Google and Apple. Both companies have competing browsers and phone operating systems, leading to possible conflicts of interest. But Mr Schmidt told reporters: “If there are issues on competitiveness, I recuse myself.” He also said that it is well established that he leaves the boardroom whenever the discussion has anything to do with the iPhone. When asked if he had considered resigning given the recent FTC interest, Mr Schmidt replied “it hasn’t crossed my mind.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8039316.stm
News Corp will charge for newspaper websites, says Rupert Murdoch
Current days of free internet will soon be over, says media mogul. Rupert Murdoch expects to start charging for access to News Corporation’s newspaper websites within a year as he strives to fix a ”malfunctioning” business model. Encouraged by booming online subscription revenues at the Wall Street Journal, the billionaire media mogul last night said that papers were going through an “epochal” debate over whether to charge. “That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal’s experience,” he said. Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as the Times, the Sunday Times, the Sun and the News of the World, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.”, he said that moves could begin “within the next 12 months‚” adding: “The current days of the internet will soon be over.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/07/rupert-murdoch-charging-websites
Telstra Picks CEO, Chairman
Australia’s Telstra Corp. has picked a company insider, David Thodey, as its next chief executive, and replaced its chairman, in a move analysts say is likely aimed at smoothing prickly relations with the government. Thodey will replace outgoing boss Solomon Trujillo, who plans to leave Telstra at the end of June. Telstra said in a statement that Chairman Donald McGauchie, who also sits on the Reserve Bank of Australia’s board, will leave its board immediately, to be replaced in the chairman’s role by Catherine Livingstone, who has been a Telstra director since 2000.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124174280301599077.html
Google: The cloud is cheaper
When considering the costs of going to the cloud, consider the whole picture, not just hardware costs, said a Google executive. Following a recently published report from McKinsey, which cast a shadow on cloud computing, the cloud platform vendor is perturbed. The search giant spoke to ZDNet Asia Thursday in response to the report, which recommended large companies be better off managing their IT resources in-house. It compared the costs of running a typical enterprise data center against a cloud alternative, and found the latter to be a more costly option for large enterprises. Matthew Glotzbach, product management director, enterprise, at Google said the report was flawed in that it only focused on hardware cost.
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-299809.html
It’s 3.0 Or Die For New iPhone Apps
Apple has just sent out an email alert to iPhone developers that any new app submitted to the App Store will have to be ready for the iPhone 3.0 software, which is due shortly (probably around Apple’s WWDC event in June). Beginning today, any app submitted that isn’t 3.0 compatible will be rejected. Here’s the key part of the email: “Beginning today, all submissions to the App Store will be reviewed on the latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0. If your app submission is not compatible with iPhone OS 3.0, it will not be approved.”
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/07/its-30-or-die-for-new-iphone-apps/
