Nokia sees 2006 market beating expectations

The chief executive of top mobile-phone maker Nokia said on Friday that the global market is likely to grow faster next year than many people expect.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (25 November) that the company, which produces one of every three mobile phones sold worldwide, has forecast that the mobile device market this year would reach 780 million units.

Asked about the outlook for next year, Chief Executive Jorma Ollila told reporters in Beijing: ``The robust growth will continue and will exceed expectations, as it did this year.''

Nokia expects a large portion of that growth to come from China, one of its fastest growing markets.

The company estimated that by 2010 China will have added another 250 million subscribers, strengthening its position as the single largest mobile market in the world.

China has about 380 million mobile subscribers currently.

Reuters reports that Nokia sold 23 million handsets in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau in the first nine months of 2005, rising 77 percent from a year-earlier period, said Ollila.

The Register says that the company recorded total sales of US$3.3 billion in those markets in the January-September period, and exported US$2.3 billion of goods out of China from its four manufacturing sites in the mainland over the same period.

The company said it has invested more than US$2.2 billion in China over the past 20 years and is the largest exporter in the Chinese mobile telecommunications industry.

Reuters reports that Nokia also operates six research and development units spread across the region. The company estimates its market share of handsets in those markets at over 30 percent.

{mospagebreaktitle=Music biz to 'hijack' Europe's data retention laws}Music biz to 'hijack' Europe's data retention laws

The entertainment industry is trying to commandeer the proposed European directive on data retention to help it prosecute filesharers in the European Union, it has emerged.

The Register reports (25 November) that the newly-formed Creative and Media Business Alliance (CMBA), an informal grouping of companies including Sony BMG, Disney, EMI, IFPI, MPA and Universal Music International, says it wants the data protection directive to be modified specifically so that it can be used to go after pirates.

In a letter to all MEPs, the CMBA said:

"We would appreciate your support in ensuring that this becomes an effective instrument in the fight against piracy".

It went on to ask MEPs to amend the directive so that it covers all criminal offences, not just the "serious" ones of organised crime and terrorism, and that law enforcement's access to the data should not be limited.

{mospagebreaktitle=Fujitsu execs take pay cut after Tokyo exchange crash}Fujitsu execs take pay cut after Tokyo exchange crash

Fujitsu is to dock the pay of senior executives after the Japanese computer giant took the blame for a software glitch that forced the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) to suspend trading earlier this month.

The Register reports (25 November) that the exchange was only able to operate for 90 minutes on 1 November due to bugs with a newly installed transactions system, developed by Fujitsu, which was supposed to help cope with higher trading volumes. The interruption in trading was

Reuters reports that the exchange is yet to decide whether or not to sue Fujitsu over the outage. Nagoya Stock Exchange experienced a similar trading halt three days after the TSE glitch, which have also been traced back to Fujitsu software.

The Reuters report in The Register says that, in a show of humility over the cock-up, Fujitsu's board has agreed to slash president Hiroaki Kurokawa's salary in half for six months, and levied pay-cuts of between 10 to 25 per cent on other senior executives including those running its financial systems division.

{mospagebreaktitle=US moves forward on data privacy}US moves forward on data privacy

A draft US law to increase the security and privacy of personal information held by companies took a step forward last week, when it was approved by the influential Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill includes a duty to disclose security breaches.

The Register reports (25 November) that the draft Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2005 will now move forward to a full Senate hearing.

The bill will ensure that companies with databases containing personal information on more than 10,000 US citizens establish and implement data privacy and security programs and vet third-party contractors hired to process data.

The Register says that under the bill, data brokers will generally be required to let individuals know what information is held about them and, where appropriate, allow individuals to correct demonstrated inaccuracies. They will also be obliged to notify law enforcement agencies, consumers and credit reporting agencies when digitised sensitive personal data has been compromised.

The bill tackles the question of Government databases run by private contractors, requiring an evaluation of potential contractors involved in handling personal data; an audit of commercial data brokers hired for projects involving personal data; and a privacy impact assessment on the use of commercial databases by federal departments.

According to The Register, penalties should be included in Government contracts for failure to protect data privacy and security, according to the draft.

The bill also sets out stiff monetary penalties for failing to provide privacy and security protections and notices of security breaches, and toughens criminal penalties for those who infiltrate systems to compromise personal data.

It also imposes a criminal penalty in the cases were there is intentional and wilful concealment of a security breach known to require notice.

{mospagebreaktitle=Lycos loses Dutch ID disclosure case}Lycos loses Dutch ID disclosure case

After almost three years of long-lasting legal procedures, the Dutch Supreme Court has ruled that Dutch ISP Lycos must reveal the name of an anonymous website owner who ridiculed a part-time stamp trader. However, there is little Lycos can disclose other than a fake address that the website owner once provided.

The Register reports (25 November) that Dutch citizen Bernard Pessers traded postage stamps through eBay and was accused of fraud by an anonymous Lycos member on his home page. Pessers demanded the closure of the site and told Lycos that he also wanted to know the identity of its member. When Lycos refused, Pessers took the ISP to court.

After the initial verdict, Lycos handed over the data, but when the address turned out to be wrong, Pessers started another procedure to force Lycos to find the correct information. That demand was turned down in court, but this was in turn overruled by the Dutch Appeals Court. Lycos then took the case to the Dutch Supreme Court. The so-called Lycos-Pessers defence, which has dragged on for years, has attracted attention from legal experts worldwide.

The Register says that Dutch anti piracy organisation BREIN, which paid the legal bill of Pessers, is delighted with the verdict. It believes the ruling will be beneficial to its case against ISPs who refuse to identify illegal file swappers.

{mospagebreaktitle=Designer of supercomputers leaves Cray to join Microsoft}Designer of supercomputers leaves Cray to join Microsoft

Burton Smith, a longtime supercomputer designer and chief scientist at Cray, has resigned to take a position at Microsoft.

The New York Times reports (26 Nvember) that Mr. Smith was a founder of Tera Computer, which in 2000 acquired Cray Research from Silicon Graphics. The company, which was based in Seattle, was renamed Cray.

A Microsoft spokesman said Friday that Mr. Smith would work for Craig Mundie, one of Microsoft's chief technology officers and formerly chief executive of Alliant Computer Systems, a maker of an early minisupercomputer.

The newspaper says that Microsoft announced two weeks ago that it planned to introduce a new version of its Windows software for scientific and engineering users, and that Mr. Smith would be involved.

While at Tera and previously at a Denver start-up supercomputer maker, Denelcor, Mr. Smith was a pioneer of an innovative computer design called multithreaded architecture, or MTA, which allows several programs to run simultaneously in computer hardware, reports the NYT.

According to the newspaper, the approach was an alternative to Seymour Cray's "vector" style of computing, which was optimised for quickly performing calculations on long arrays of numbers.

{mospagebreaktitle=Firefox plans mass marketing drive}Firefox plans mass marketing drive

Mozilla is gearing up to launch a large-scale marketing drive when Firefox 1.5 is released.

According to a new York Times report by CNet (26 November) Christopher Beard, the vice-president of products at Mozilla, said on Monday that there is a "strong likelihood" that Firefox 1.5, the next major version of the open source browser, will be released on 29 Nvember.

Beard said the corporation is planning a "big marketing push" that will coincide with the release of 1.5. This will include a community marketing campaign that will encourage Firefox fans to tell the world about their favorite browser by publishing home-made videos on a Mozilla Web site.

The CNet/NYT report says that the videos will be hosted on the SpreadFirefox community marketing site, which will display a world map with a dot marking each location where a video has been created.

The report adds that Mozilla is also hoping to improve its consumer focus by offering a major release every six to nine months, rather than every two years--as was the case when it was part of Netscape. In keeping with this new strategy, Firefox 2.0 is scheduled for release in the middle of 2006 and Firefox 3 is planned for the first quarter of 2007.

According to the report, there has been more subtle change in Mozilla's marketing strategy over the last year. In 2004, before the release of Firefox 1.0, the Mozilla marketing contact predicted that Firefox would obtain 10 percent market share by the end of 2005. This week, Beard refused to provide any new targets, merely saying that Mozilla is "looking forward to continuing growth".

{mospagebreaktitle=Apple's iPod Nano a US holiday hit}Apple's iPod Nano a US holiday hit

Apple Computer's sleek iPod nano music player was among the top-selling electronic items on Amazon.com on Friday and some models sold out on a top retailer's Web site in the US as consumers stocked up on holiday gifts on one of the year's busiest shopping days.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (25 November) that the stock of Apple was the fifth-best performer on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index on Friday, climbing 3.3 percent to close at US$69.34 and helping the index hit a 4-1/2-year closing high.

The report says that Apple's black iPod nano with 2 gigabytes of storage, or enough to hold 500 songs, was the sixth best-selling electronic gadget on Amazon.com's list of most popular items, which is updated hourly. A white version was No. 10 on the list. Amazon was selling the nanos for US$199.88.

According to Reuters, retailer Best Buy's web site was sold out of both the white and black versions of the 4-gigabyte nano priced at US$249.99. A spokeswoman for the retailers said Best Buy limited the number of connections to its site due to heavy volume related to the launch of Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game console this week.

{mospagebreaktitle=Kazaa gets stay; industry sees changes}Kazaa gets stay; industry sees changes

The operator of the Kazaa file-sharing network on Friday said an Australian court would hear an appeal on a copyright case in late February conditional on Kazaa making some changes to its software in the mean time.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (25 November) that Kazaa will have to modify its software to filter out key words linked to copyrighted material by 5 December or be shut down, music industry officials have said of the ruling.

The court extended until late February a stay of an injunction barring it from distributing copyrighted recordings, Kazaa operator Sharman Networks said.

Peer-to-peer networks let users share files rather than relying on a centralised server. In recent years, such networks have been a hotbed of pirated entertainment and software.

Reuters says that the imposition of the deadline follows a ruling in September by the judge in Sydney that Kazaa users were breaching copyright and that the network's owners had to modify the software.

Other global peer-to-peer (P2P) services, which distribute data between users instead of relying on a central server, also have come under fire from courts in recent months.

{mospagebreaktitle=Wireless home music hub needs no computer}Wireless home music hub needs no computer

In the US., Olive Media Products has introduced the Musica wireless music centre, an alternative to the PC as the digital music hub in the home.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (25 November) that the Musica has a 160GB hard drive that stores more than 40,000 songs. It can access music from any Mac or PC that is on the same home network. It also allows users to burn music directly into the device, from not only CDs but also analog tape or vinyl albums.

The Musica has its own CD rewritable drive, so users can burn custom CDs or copy existing albums and update iPods, all without a computer.

According to Reuters in the NYT report, as a media hub, the Musica can stream music to as many as 20 rooms, including user-selected internet radio stations. The Digital Pure Audio feature allows users to harmonise the music volume and attributes to correspond to a specific room or atmosphere.

Burned music can be stored in MP3 or WAV files. The Musica is available via the company's web site at olive.us for USS$1,099. For an additional fee, the company will preload the Musica with a customer's private music collection.

{mospagebreaktitle=PluggedIn: brain games entice older Japan players}PluggedIn: brain games entice older Japan players

Respect for the Aged Day in Japan is not typically a cash cow for gamemaker Nintendo, but this year a bump in sales of its DS portable game machines was proof enough that electronic games are attracting a broader range of players.

Reuters reports in The new York Times (25 November) that the DS machines were purchased for older family members, so they could play games designed to strengthen brain power.

One so-called brain-training game offers three brief tests that might measure memory, calculation, or quick-response skills to indicate how close the player's brain is to the ''ideal age'' of 20.

The game, developed under the guidance of a brain imaging professor, claims to make players smarter and their brains younger with just a few minutes of daily training.

Reuters says that next to the already popular racing, adventure and role-playing games, a new category is appearing in stores, hoping to catch the eye of young women, older businessmen, novices, or those who have not played since Super Mario Brothers caused a sensation more than 20 years ago.

Since the launch in May, Nintendo has sold over 700,000 copies of the Japanese game, whose title roughly translates as ''DS Training to Strengthen Your Brain.'' There are high hopes next year for an overseas English version.

Reuters adds that Sega, which makes the same game for Spny's Playstation Portable, sold nearly 72,000 copies in the first 10 days of its launch in Japan in late October, according to a monthly study by Enterbrain, which publishes leading Japanese industry weekly Famitsu.

{mospagebreaktitle=Firms haggle over video on demand}Firms haggle over video on demand

Everyone agrees video on demand over the internet should be a goldmine for telecoms and media firms, but the two converging industries have yet to figure out how both can make money, a conference in France heard this week.

Reuters reports in The New York Times (25 November) that video on demand -- the ability to download a movie or TV program via high-speed internet -- is expected to take off in Europe as broadband, already piped to 10.5 percent of households, attracts enough users to merit investing in the service.

But how quickly video-on-demand becomes available is uncertain, as telecoms operators and media companies haggle over how to slice up the revenue pie. They did not seem close to an agreement at a conference in Montpellier, southern France, this week, according to the Reuters report.

``We want to launch video on demand (in France) before the spring but it is difficult to agree on the business model,'' said Carlo D'Asaro Biondo, head of AOL France, which has about a 9 percent share of the French broadband market and is part of the Time Warner media group.

Reuters reports that some small deals have been signed in the past six months between US TV and film-right owners, such as Warner, and European telecoms operators such as Fastweb, Deutsche Telekom and recently with France Telecom.

But, says Reuters, the choice of films and programs is limited, sometimes giving access only to 100 movies, and profits from such agreements could be difficult to make, partly because of the rivalry between the two camps.

France was one of the first countries in Europe to introduce TV on the internet in 2002 and with half a million IP TV customers shared between operators such as France Telecom, Free and Neuf Cegetel, it is a market leader.

Also, with 14 percent of households in France having broadband access, the country has one of Europe's highest takeup rates. However, online video on demand has not yet arrived, according to the Reuters report.