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Logica has announced that it has been selected to develop and operate the New South Wales (NSW) government's Electronic Marketplace in Australia. The contract is valued at AUSD24.6 million over the next five years. Logica will head a consortium of IT companies to work on the landmark project with German IT company Intershop. The E-Marketplace, which will be operational by October this year, is aimed at enabling NSW government agencies to better understand purchasing habits and move towards better buying and cost savings.
British telecoms group Cable & Wireless said at its agm that it will continue to cut costs and capital spending at its main network business, Global. The firm, which reported a halving of annual earnings in May, said it expected revenues to rise at Global by the fourth quarter of the year to 31 March 2004. C&W said in May it would cut capital expenditure this year to about STG650 million for Global from STG1.1 billion in the year to March 2002. The company also predicted another 12 months of turmoil in the industry.
The ODTR published its second Measuring Licensed Operator Performance (MLOP) report, detailing the performance of telecoms operators in the last three months of 2001. The study found that Eircom completed just 73.39 percent of business orders on or before the date confirmed with the customer. This compared poorly with Esat BT's completion rate of 96.36 percent. In the past Eircom has said such comparisons were not proportionate because Eircom had a much greater market share than Esat. Comparing the results to the ODTR's previous report, Eircom fell by almost 1 percentage point while Esat BT's rate was up by almost three points.
Internet media company Yahoo has said it expects to be profitable in Europe by 2003. Yahoo is "on track" to halve its 2002 losses from international operations, including Europe and Asia. International EBITDA losses in Q2 were USD3.6 million. According to Reuters, European managing director Mark Opzoomer said "We're already profitable, by any measure, in Britain and expect some of the other large [European] countries to join in the near future. But not this year," he said. On Wednesday, the company reported an overall second quarter net profit of USD21.4 million on 24 percent higher sales of USD225.8 million, its first profit in six quarters.
Prices within the PC market are continuing to come under pressure, according to a report by research firm . After a constant decline throughout 2001, IDC's pricing index for May and June indicates another potential fall, with prices losing 1.2 points in May and another 2.2 points in June. Year-on-year, prices remain very low, with a decline of 10.3 points overall compared with June 2001. Desktop prices decreased by 7.6 points, Intel servers by 10.5 points, and notebooks by 12.9 points. IDC says the decreases are the result of fierce vendor competition and the continued expansion of the new entry-level notebook market.
Six Japanese electronics manufacturers have established a company to pool research into next-generation computer chips. Fujitsu, Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi and Toshiba have each invested YEN150 million (STG0.8 million) in the scheme. The Tokyo-based company is called Aspla, which stands for Advanced SoC Platform. SoC, or System on Chips, are sophisticated chips used in Internet-linking digital gadgets.
China's post office is offering a new service that marries e-mail and traditional postal methods. Customers can e-mail messages to the post office, which will automatically print them out, place them in an envelope and deliver them by hand. The aim is to streamline the post office's services by accommodating the country's technological haves and have-nots. Mainland China had 33.7 million Web users at the end of 2001 but that figure constitutes only a tiny percentage of the population. Initially, the government expects most customers to be small to medium-sized businesses.
The creators of consumer Linux applications can win up to USD5,000 in the Lindows-sponsored "Clicky" awards. Lindows is a start-up company aimed at popularising the use of Linux on desktop PCs. The company plans to give a Clicky award and prize money to the top three applications in six categories: audio/MP3, business/finance, games, home/education, Internet, and multimedia/design. Winners of the Clicky awards will be announced on 31 August. Users can nominate their favourite Linux application on the Lindows Web site.
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