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Ericsson and Ciena cut more jobs | Microsoft looks to tackle Hotmail spam
Telecoms equipment maker Ciena is cutting 17 percent of its workforce, citing tough industry conditions. The company, which makes optical networking software and equipment, is making 450 job cuts. Ciena expects the cuts to save between USD50 million and USD55 million a year, and the company said it expects to take a USD75 million to USD80 million charge in the fourth quarter as a result of the cuts.
Ericsson, the world's largest maker of wireless networks, has said it is cutting 700 jobs in Spain, according to Bloomberg. The cuts, which equate to 29 percent of its Spanish workforce, are part of an overall workforce reduction plan that was announced by Ericsson when it released its second-quarter results.
US mobile phone technology company Qualcomm has reported an increase in revenues for the third quarter and forecast strong demand for its chips in the fourth quarter. Qualcomm said Q3 revenues rose 17 percent to USD771 million, up from USD657 million a year ago. The 3G wireless technology firm said a net loss of USD14 million was mostly due to USD194 million in charges related to the decline in value of the company's Leap Wireless investments. Qualcomm anticipates shipment of 20 million chips in the fourth quarter, up from 16 million in Q3.
Software company Open Text has acquired Centrinity, a provider of feature-rich messaging and collaboration solutions with offices in Shannon. The two companies announced an agreement under which Open Text will acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of Centrinity for a cash consideration of CAN1.26 per share. The companies expect the transaction to close in the next quarter. Centrinity has more than 8 million users of its FirstClass Communications Platform, a solution that provides a unified mailbox that combines a user's e-mail, voicemail and fax messages.
A Belfast-based company has won an award at the European Call Centre of the Year. The awards were presented by Call Centre Focus magazine and sponsored by BT Retail. Gem won the Best Multi-Media Contact Centre award.
Research In Motion, the manufacturer of the BlackBerry handheld e-mail device, has filed a patent-infringement suit against Handspring over some of its Treo Communicator hand-held machines, according to the Wall Street Journal. RIM says keyboard features of Treo models k180, 270, and 300 infringe on RIM patents. A spokeswoman for Handspring said the company has not yet been served with the suit and had no comment on it.
Irish-headquartered company PolarLake has released PolarLake v2.0, a new version of its enterprise XML and Web services platform for Java technology. Based on PolarLake's patent-pending Dynamic XML Runtime, the product can be used for the deployment of complex XML and Web services processing. PolarLake v2.0 is suitable for use in straight-through processing and back-end processing systems and next-generation service creation and management.
NTL Broadband has announced a series of initiatives aimed at boosting its broadband services in the UK. NTL is accelerating the speed of its 512 Kbps service to 600Kbps, and the company is offering new customers free installation of the faster service. It has also upgraded its network, and its broadband services are now available to almost 7 million homes in the UK. NTL also said it is rolling out a new "stand-alone" broadband cable modem product.
"T-commerce" is set to take off in Germany, according to a study conducted by Berlin media consultancy GoldMedia Consulting & Research. T-commerce involves revenue models that use television as a transaction channel, including Pay-TV, pay-per-view, teleshopping and Direct Response TV commercials. In 2001, more than EUR1.8 million was generated through t-commerce services in the German market, according to GoldMedia, and that figure is set to grow to EUR4.3 billion in 2007.
Users of Microsoft's popular e-mail service Hotmail may soon see a decrease in spam. The software giant is teaming up with Brightmail to incorporate its spam-filter technology into the e-mail service. The solution uses a collection of over 200 million e-mail addresses designed to attract spam that help Brightmail identify and eliminate junk mail before it reaches users' inboxes. The spam guard will be fully deployed later this year to Hotmail's 110 million users.
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