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Sonys recent losses could spur a takeover bid
Sony unexpectedly made a loss of 4.7bn yen ($45m; £23m) in the first quarter 2008 but more importantly, Sony's ROE (return on equity, which is its profits divided by the total value of all its shares) has been an average of 6% over the past three years. This is well behind its main competitors, so it now aims to lift its ROE to 10%. "That target is a sign of Sony's sense of crisis that it could really become a takeover target if it doesn't lift its ROE to at least over 10%," said Mitsushige Akino from Ichiyoshi Investment Management.
Sony is now attempting to dramatically improve its ROE. It plans to invest about $17bn (£8.6bn) in its key businesses over the next three years.
Sony has said how it will make its television and video game units profitable this financial year as part of a series of strategic announcements. It will cut production costs in its TV business this year and make investments aimed at taking over the top spot in LCD TV sales in the next three years.
The maker of PlayStation consoles plans to offer a film download service for the PlayStation 3 starting this summer.
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>>> Computing Latest <<<
Japanese researchers devise method for cramming 42GB on a DVD
Never mind those fancy BD-R critters, how's about a 42GB DVD? Researchers with a good deal more intelligence than us over at Tohoku University have reportedly figured out a way to "multiply the amount of data that can be stored on a DVD or CD by 9." Based on our best guess at translating a foreign language (we kid... sort of), the achievement was realized by shaping the pits on a DVD's surface like Vs, essentially making the disc more capacious in the process. Unfortunately, said project will probably never see any mainstream attention, as existing DVD / CD players won't recognize the malformed media, and worse still, the process can't be applied to Blu-ray Discs.
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>>> Video Games Latest <<<
Reshuffling at Microsoft Gaming
A key Xbox marketing leader is leaving Microsoft amid executive shuffling in the company's gaming business.
Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, is leaving the company at the end of the summer to pursue other interests after only two years at the company, Microsoft said Thursday. Summer in the U.S. typically means the months of June, July and August.
http://feeds.pcworld.com/~r/pcworld/latestnews/~3/310713527/article.html
Now the question is, what does all of this imply?
A new strategy for Microsoft's gaming business?
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Nokia buys out Symbian, in full
Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia is paying 264m euros ($410m; £209m) to buy out the other shareholders in handset software firm Symbian.
Nokia, which already owns 48% of the UK-based firm, intends to develop its software to compete with Google's planned Android operating system. Nokia said Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, Panasonic and Siemens had agreed to sell their stakes in Symbian. It added that Samsung was also expected to accept the offer.
For its part, Symbian said the takeover was "a fundamental step" in the establishment of the Symbian Foundation, which is expected to start operating in the first half of 2009. The foundation will bring together Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone in collaboration on a new, royalty-free open software platform for mobile phones.
According to Nigel Clifford, chief executive of Symbian, it could signal a sea-change in how the software platform is developed. "We're freeing up innovation - this is epoch-making. Nothing like this has been put into the open-source community before." The aim is to unite several different existing operating systems - Symbian OS, S60, UIQ and MOAP.
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