Articles by Keith Regan

IBM continued its recent run of strong growth in the second quarter, posting a double-digit profit increase on strong sales fueled by service and software Big Blue's net income rose 12 percent to US$2.26 billion, or $1.55 a share, from $2.02 billion, or $1.30, a year earlier, the Armonk, N.Y.-based company said Thursday....

Microsoft's search unit scored significant gains in June thanks to its newly launched Live Search Club, according to new data that also showed Google's share of the Web search market slipping below 50 percent Google is still the dominant search player, according to data from comScore, accounting for 49.5 percent of all U.S. searches conducted last ...

Google's Enterprise unit continued its recent barrage of product rollouts and other moves, unveiling Google Custom Search Business Edition, a paid version of its popular ad-supported site search tool The service allows users to customize the search results page to match their Web sites' look and feel. They can also choose whether to display the Goo...

IBM has landed a US$1.4 billion contract to provide outsourced information technology services to pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca, a deal that boosts IBM's service arm and enhances its reputation in the key life sciences vertical The seven-year deal calls for Big Blue to run servers, data storage systems, desktop computers and networks around the ...

Shares of Verizon soared in early trading Monday on the heels of a published report suggesting that UK-based Vodafone was mulling whether to offer as much as US$160 billion to acquire the U.S. telecommunications giant Verizon's stock was up nearly 4 percent Monday after a report published on the Financial Times Web site said Vodafone had held inter...

Hoping to put its run-in with the options backdating scandal to rest, VeriSign said on Thursday it will replace its chief financial officer and restate results for four full years VeriSign, which serves as the registrar for the dot-com and dot-net domains and offers Web security and related services to businesses, said it would take a charge of aro...

An appeals court declined to issue a stay on steep hikes in royalty fees for Internet radio, clearing the way for the new fees and 18 months of retroactive collections -- which some say could kill Web radio -- to come due on Sunday The U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to issue a stay to the July 15 start d...

Motorola's second-quarter results will miss already lowered expectations as overseas sales fell short of targets, the company said, ratcheting up the pressure on CEO Ed Zander to jolt the troubled mobile handset maker from its prolonged funk Motorola also backed off an earlier forecast that its mobile handset business would be profitable for the fu...

Time Warner's AOL has reached a settlement with 48 states attorneys general that calls for the online service to pay US$3 million, offer refunds to some customers and make it easier for people to cancel service in the future The settlement was announced late Wednesday, and culminates years of complaints from AOL customers that they were bullied int...

Michael Capellas, the former CEO of PC maker Compaq and long-distance company MCI, has been tapped to lead First Data after the payment processing firm's planned private equity buyout is completed Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. plans to complete its takeover of First Data -- valued at US$29 billion when it was announced in April -- sometime during t...

Amazon.com began offering users of the TiVo digital video recorder the opportunity to purchase and download movies directly from their television sets, a move that takes the personal computer out of the Web-based download equation for the first time TiVo and Amazon first announced a partnership in March of this year, when they gave TiVo users the a...

Chipmaker Intel has acquired a minor ownership stake in EMC's VMware software unit, a move that comes as the storage company readies its fast-growing server virtualization subsidiary for an initial public offering (IPO) Intel Capital, the company's venture investment arm, backed VMware with US$218.5 million, the companies said late Monday. Intel wi...

Samsung and Ericsson have agreed to end patent infringement lawsuits against each other, signing an agreement to cross-license their mobile technologies instead The cross-licensing agreement covers a host of patents relating to second- and third-generation, or 2G and 3G, mobile services....

Google will buy on-demand Web security provider Postini for US$625 million in cash, a move that the search giant hopes will help lower a key hurdle to broader adoption of its on-demand, Web-based applications targeted at business users Privately held Postini serves some 35,000 businesses around the world, with about 10 million end users who receive...

Sony has no plans to cut the price of its PlayStation 3 consoles, Sony President Ryoji Chubachi told Reuters during a press interview, despite hints from the electronics giant that it might do so in order to rev up disappointing sales figures The price point for the PS3 has long been seen as a sticking point for greater sales of the device, which c...

Microsoft will open a software development center in Canada by the end of the year, a move that will enable the software giant to hire more foreign workers without running up against the limitations of U.S. immigration law The center will be located in Vancouver, British Columbia, less than three hours away from Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond,...

With Nintendo's Wii continuing to set the pace for gaming console sales, Microsoft said it is planning an October launch date in Japan for the upgraded version of its Xbox 360 console Xbox 360 Elite -- a high-end version of the console that features a 120-gigabyte hard drive, a high-definition TV interface and other advanced capabilities -- will go...

After years of waiting and lobbying, Research In Motion (RIM) has finally won governmental approval to sell its BlackBerry mobile e-mail devices to users in China The company is preparing to start selling its handheld devices in China as soon as the end of August, and it has approximately 5,000 presale orders from Chinese customers, mainly multinat...

A U.S. subsidiary of Germany's SAP made "inappropriate downloads" of documents from the Web site of rival Oracle, SAP acknowledged, but the company denied the actions represented corporate espionage In response to a suit filed by Oracle in March, SAP said its division TomorrowNow was authorized to download documentation such as software patches and...

Blockbuster has named James Keyes, former chief of convenience store chain 7-Eleven, as its new CEO as it bids to regain investor confidence while fighting off challenges from Netflix and emerging technologies Keyes will succeed John Antioco, who activist investors -- led by billionaire board member Carl Icahn -- forced out. The investors were ince...