Past heroes battle to keep up with mobile world
year, exceeding the projected figure of 207 million notebook PCs, according to NPD DisplaySearch.
“There is no doubt that the device market is evolving,” said Peter Klein, Microsoft’s chief financial officer. “Consumers and businesses are increasingly shifting their focus to touch and mobility.”
Many businesses are choosing to install Windows 7, an older version, on existing PCs instead of buying new hardware with Windows 8, according to IDC.
Companies are also slowing down the pace at which they replace PCs as more people bring their own technology to work. Almost a fifth of chief information officers said they were supporting employees’ own PCs and tablets, according to a Citigroup survey this month of 260 chief information officers across the globe. recovering,” said Alan Dabbiere, the chairman of Atlanta-based AirWatch, which provides mobile management software used by large companies to track employees’ cellphones and tablets.
Dabbiere said IBM and Microsoft still had ample opportunity to grab business in mobile computing, because smartphone and tablet applications relied on servers and software – where both firms are strong.
“There are plenty of Microsoft-centric enterprises that would love to see Microsoft get it right, and there are plenty of others that are quite pleased that they no longer have the lock on the market they used to have.”
Microsoft is trading at a 51 percent discount to Google on a price-to-earnings basis, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. IBM is undervalued on the same basis by 39 percent.
IBM, grappling with sluggish demand for hardware and consulting work, has been pushing into faster-growing, more lucrative markets such as data analysis and cellphone security.
Lenovo Group, the Chinese company that bought IBM’s PC business in 2005, was the most likely bidder for IBM’s low-end server business, a person familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
IBM was investing in software and services that could help customers in banking, retail, health care and other industries design automated business processes that incorporated smartphones and tablets, vice-president Mike Riegel said before the earnings were announced.
It now had more than 1 000 customers for such work, he said.
IBM had also made more than 10 mobilecomputing acquisitions since 2011 and held more than 125 mobile-computing patents. “This is a big increase the last two years,” said Riegel.
Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor maker, this week forecast second-quarter sales that may exceed some analysts’ estimates as strong demand for server chips helps make up for a slump in the PC market.
Improving demand for powerful chips at the heart of corporate networks would blunt the impact of falling PC sales and help Intel boost revenue for the year, IBM chief financial officer Stacy Smith said.
While the shift to smartphones and tablets from PCs contributed to Intel’s third consecutive decline in quarterly revenue, its server-chip sales have benefited from the increased Web traffic these mobile devices bring.
Two of the largest PC makers, HewlettPackard and Dell, are both scheduled to report earnings on May 21. Sales at Hewlett-Packard, the top PC supplier, may fall 8 percent to $28.2 billion (R258bn) in the second quarter, according to the estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
Hewlett-Packard, which gets about 28 percent of its sales from desktop and notebook computers, is trying to shift further into higher-margin networking and storage computers that businesses can use to deliver software over the Web. The company this month delivered a powerful, energy-sipping computer called Moonshot designed to win a place in the data centres powering the world’s largest websites.
Dell’s sales may fall 6 percent – the fifth consecutive decline – to $13.6bn in the fiscal first quarter. Chief executive Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake Management are trying to take the company private in a $24.4bn leveraged buyout to accelerate the move away from PCs to data centre equipment and software.
Asset manager Blackstone Group, a rival bidder for Dell, withdrew its offer for the company on Friday but billionaire Carl Icahn remained a bidder.
“The story’s still in transition,” said Thill. – Bloomberg
THE PROPOSED ban of alcohol on Sundays, which has been included in the draft revisions to the Gauteng Liquor Bill, will have no impact on the drive by the government and the alcohol industry to reduce alcohol abuse and could actually have the opposite effect.
Earlier this month, the Western Cape quietly scrapped its proposed ban on liquor sales on Sundays. City authorities are quoted as saying that new information had come to light showing the ban would have dire consequences for businesses. We could not agree more.
As the chief executive of the South African Liquor Traders Association, I represent a large number of traders who strongly oppose this proposed amendment, for a number of good reasons.
I have already mentioned the most important reason – that it would fail spectacularly to cut down on abuse. Another is that it will actually fuel illegal trading.
Although small traders and entrepreneurs have for many years suffered inconsistent treatment and bias in the regulation of alcohol, we have been working very hard to encourage our members to trade within the strict confines of the law. We have made excellent progress and have comprehensively educated our members on the critical role they play in the responsible consumption of alcohol.
Few South Africans would deny the harm that alcohol abuse can do. And few would oppose any intervention that would serve to reduce abuse. The proposed ban on Sunday sales of alcohol may seem like a relatively small concession on our part to the growing demands of the government to regulate our industry for the public good, but in reality, the proposed ban takes us back to the dark ages and puts South Africa directly at odds with policy in the rest of the world.
In the past decade, the US has repealed bans on Sunday sales in all states but one. The reason? Consumers had been flocking over state borders in search of more convenient hours and lower prices, costing the states that had instituted the ban millions of dollars. With abundant international precedents available to our regulators, one might well wonder why they would implement a law that has failed elsewhere. Bans on Sunday trading prior to our democratic dispensation served to do nothing but irritate consumers and spitefully deprive them of a glass of wine at a shisa nyama.
Simple questions should suffice to show the lack of logic behind such a proposal: why a Sunday? Why not, say, a Tuesday? Or perhaps a Friday, when alcohol consumption is at its highest? We are a secular state and Sundays are not sacrosanct, as they were under apartheid. All a Sunday trading ban would achieve is increased bingeing on a Friday or Saturday, or – more likely – large-scale pre-emptive buying of alcohol on a Saturday. Either way, the ban will have no beneficial net effect and certainly won’t cut down on alcohol abuse.
A major consideration for policy makers is the negative unintended result of passing such legislation. A ban would almost certainly mean illegal trading flourishing in informal areas on Sundays. So those who already obey the law would not trade on Sundays and would lose revenue, while those already breaking the law in illegal outlets would do a roaring trade on a Sunday, no doubt charging a premium for their products.
The Gauteng Liquor Forum, along with its partners in the industry, has been working hard to curb illegal trading, but the good that has been achieved would be significantly undone and undermined when the livelihood of our traders is threatened. The surge in illegal trading will also put additional – and in our opinion unnecessary – pressure on law enforcement, whose primary job it is to protect our citizens.
While we fully support our provincial government and appreciate that the MEC’s key objective is to reach a regulatory balance that maximises benefits and minimises harm, we feel that a ban on Sunday trading would achieve exactly the opposite, fuelling binging and infringing consumer rights.
Targeted interventions that meaningfully address alcohol harm and promote self-regulation are far more effective in achieving the government’s goals, and ample evidence exists to support sensible regulation where policy and reality meet to create a situation that benefits all, in a respected regulatory environment that is seen to be logical and fair.