Current Account

  • Sutherland has a pop at Clinton on Doha trade talks paralysis

    January 31, 2009 @ 8:54 pm | by Simon Carswell

    One issue in Davos that constantly emerged year after year, without any resolution, is the failure to come up with a world trade agreement between the richest and poorest nations in the world. The so-called Doha round of talks (named after the Qatari capital where they started way back in 2001) have been dragging on for years.

    It’s a subject that gets Irish businessman Peter Sutherland, a former head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), riled up. Sutherland concluded the Uruquay round of talks back in the 1990s and oversaw the transition from GATT, of which he became director general in 1993, to WTO. It was some achievement in light of almost eight years of paralysis on the Doha round. (more…)

  • Getting confidence back - Davos told it’s a question of coconuts

    @ 12:03 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Montek Alhluwalia, deputy chairman of India’s planning commission, told delegates at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland this morning that the world needed to have confidence again. He said that confidence grows like a coconut tree but falls like a coconut. He said that India was still expecting 7 per cent economic growth this year. This isn’t far off what Chinese premier Wen Jiabao predicted for his country during his speech in Davos on Wednesday night - he said that even though he believed China’s forecast of 8 per cent growth this year was “a tall order” he still believed it was attainable.

    This morning Japanese prime minister Taro Aso  said he had decided on an economic stimulus package of about 75 trillion yen or US$840 billion with fiscal measures amounting to 12 trillion yen or $135 billion, which corresponds to about 2 per cent of Japan’s GDP. Mr Aso said that he would pledge not less than $17 billion in development assistance to Asian countries. The Japanese PM ended his speech with a quote from French philosopher Alain: “Pessimism comes our passions, optimism from the will.” Certainly, the Russian and Asian participants are far more sanguine than their Western counterparts at Davos this year.

    It’s worth noting that Japan treated delegates to a fine sushi lunch in Davos headquarters, the Congress Centre - a sign that at least there is no culinary slump at the Swiss think-in this year.

  • Are you dating a banker?

    January 30, 2009 @ 7:47 pm | by Laura Slattery

    With newbie keyholders mired in negative equity and reams of P45s draining the red ink on thousands of HR departments’ printers, now is the time to hang on to the financial lifeline you may fondly know as your boyfriend/girlfriend/partner (delete as appropriate).

    So you used to feel a sense of injured masculine pride (if you’re a man) or feminist guilt (if you’re a woman) every time your more flush other half paid the dinner bill? In this recession, a solvent partner will beat any income protection policy and should be clung onto as tightly as the deeds to your over-mortgaged house. With many co-owners unable to sell their homes without incurring a five-digit loss - each - then staying together could be the new breaking up this January.

    But not so for the traumatised bankers’ wives and girlfriends (BWAGs) of New York City, according to this tongue-in-cheek blog, Dating a Banker Anonymous, publicised in the New York Times this week. It begins: “Are you or someone you love dating a banker? If so, we are here to support you through these difficult times.” This is the Lehman’s fallout you didn’t see on the financial news pages.

    (more…)

  • Just who was calling Gordon Brown, Blair perhaps?

    @ 6:44 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Gordon Brown was elaborating on his ideas to encourage the resumption of the lending by the banks at a press conference at the Davos economic forum when his mobile phone went off. He continued talking until he realised he was ringing. “Sorry, that’s my phone,” he said, to laughter from the assembled reporters.

  • Gordon Brown says international action is needed to solve crisis

    @ 5:46 pm | by Simon Carswell

    British prime minister Gordon Brown is speaking at the Davos economic forum at the moment and has called for more international cooperation, like many of the other speakers this week. Part one was the recapitalisation of the banks, he says, part two involves fiscal stimulus in individual countries and part three needs to be some sort of international insurance scheme, like the one the UK is working on, to take out the banks’ bad assets. He says that if governments don’t act together to come up with such a scheme, then banks will withdraw from foreign markets and focus on their home markets and lending will dry up, exacerbating the crisis. Without this, there will be protectionism. “We need that international action and that is why the G20 (nations) is so important.”

  • Partying on through the slump, Davos dances the blues away

    @ 5:06 pm | by Simon Carswell

    The only party that was really kicking last night at Davos hotspot, the Steigenberger Belvedere Hotel, was the bash hosted by consultants McKinsey. The rest were practically empty. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ “nightcap” (Davos-speak for an economists’ party) last night was deserted, while KPMG’s party the previous night was equally dead.

    Participants in the Swiss think-in/economic party obviously want to avoid the dreaded auditors. This is hardly a surprise - at a time of “illiquid markets”, they’ll probably tell you how little your sequined party suit and dancing snow boots are worth, applying stringent mark-to-market accounting standards. Yes, at party time, avoid the auditors. (more…)

  • Cowen has no time for skiing in Davos, O’Brien not worried by Slim

    @ 4:36 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Taoiseach Brian Cowen had a busy morning at the Davos economic forum today, meeting world leaders in back-to-back sessions. Among the leaders he met was Fredrik Reinfeldt, prime minister of Sweden, which takes over the European presidency in July. No doubt the Taoiseach will have picked his brain about how the Nordic country bailed out its banks in the early 1990s without digging into the pockets of taxpayers. The Swedish rescue appears to be something of a blueprint for any government looking at how to fix a banking system - so, in other words, most governments.

    All eyes are on Cowen and Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan on whether they will create a good bank/bad bank system, just like Sweden did, or follow the UK creating some sort of insurance scheme for the toxic loans. We hear that a decision from the Government on the final billion in the €3 billion recapitalisation each for Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland could happen very soon. No doubt Cowen will have picked up the negative vibe in Davos and move more quickly. (more…)

  • Hedonic regression… and other cautionary tales

    @ 3:35 pm | by Laura Slattery

    It sounds like a psychoanalytical term for a stag night, but anyone who has been consuming house price statistics with a dedication arising from either professional duty or paranoia will know that “hedonic regression” is the name given to the methodology used by Permanent TSB and the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) for its house price index, the latest edition of which was published this morning.

    The index shows that house prices fell 9.1 per cent in 2008, an even greater fall than the 7.3 per cent drop recorded by the index in 2007. From peak to trough, house prices have fallen more than 16 per cent, Consider the effects of steep climbs in consumer price inflation and in real terms, house prices have fallen 25 per cent. But what’s even scarier is that several commentators and rival measurers of house prices believe that Permanent TSB / ESRI’s index is not capturing the full horror of the housing market’s precipitous decline. (more…)

  • Middle East tensions erupt in Davos (of all places)

    January 29, 2009 @ 9:41 pm | by Simon Carswell

    The second day of Davos ended with a minor diplomatic spat when the Turkish prime minister wasn’t given time to respond to comments by Israeli president Shimon Peres in a discussion about the conflict in Gaza. The Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan bounded off the stage at the World Eonomic Forum after a verbal exchange with Mr Peres.

    Erdogan tried to speak as the scheduled discussion was ending yesterday evening, asking the moderator, Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, to let him speak again in response to Mr Peres. (more…)

  • Other broadband providers not keen on Eircom deal

    @ 6:20 pm | by John Collins

    No sooner has the dust settled on Eircom’s settlement with the music industry, which both sides have hailed as a far-seeing agreement to “work closely together to end the abuse of the Internet by P2P copyright infringers”, than cracks have begun to appear.

    Clearly Eircom doesn’t want to be the only Irish ISP that monitors peer to peer traffic (which is very different than monitoring what websites someone visits, although media commentary elsewhere makes it sound as if they are the same thing) and implements a three strikes and you’re out rule. If it was any new customers would obviously take their business elsewhere. As a result the statement from Eircom concludes with the line: “The record companies have agreed that they will take all necessary steps to put similar agreements in place with all other ISPs in Ireland.” (more…)

  • Davos moves from economic gloom to politics

    @ 3:04 pm | by Simon Carswell

    It’s no surprise that politics should have eventually taken centre stage at the Davos economic forum given the number of heads of state and government this year. Some 40 leaders are in attendance - more than double the number that were here last year. One delegate noted that Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin has a fleet of 20 SUVs travelling with him and that the security was so heavy at one dinner last night that it took about 20 minutes to through the front door of a hotel because of the security measures introduced to accommodate Mr Putin’s visit to the Swiss resort.

    Davos moved on from the economic gloom that permeated yesterday afternoon to politics later in the evening. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (who is also travelling with a very large entourage) and Mr Putin caused quite a stir in their keynote addresses at the Swiss gathering last night, arguing that they are the big boys on the world economic stage now. (more…)

  • McCreevy warns that fixing banking supervision will not solve crisis

    @ 2:02 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Despite the flak being taken by banking regulators over the global financial mess - 51 per cent of delegates in a survey yesterday at the World Economic Forum in Davos blamed poor supervision of the financial sector - Ireland’s EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy has said in interviews in the Swiss resort this morning that fixing regulation alone won’t solve the crisis. He said that the banking meltdown has shown the need for a pan-European monitoring of banks with cross-border businesses, but said that member states were still opposing this and that it was a “very vexed” issue. (more…)

  • On the recessionary cocktail circuit at Davos

    @ 12:11 pm | by Simon Carswell

    There’s no better way to gauge the economic mood at the Davos than taking in a few of the cocktail parties at the Steigenberger Belvedere Hotel, one of the more upmarket hotels in the tiny Swiss mountain resort. Many of the annual parties have been cancelled this year because of the sober economic mood, most notably the bash hosted by investment bank Goldman Sachs, but through forensic sleuthing a few parties were discovered. One delegate at Davos said it was inappropriate to be seen having a good time this year.

    At the Belvedere, once you’re past the metal detectors, security guards and chaotic wardrobe counter, you’re in - until you try to get into the individual parties. The hotel was (for the most part) abuzz with activity last night. However, KPMG’s bash needed just a few tumbleweeds to complete the scene. It induced feelings consistent with the 1930s Depression - The Waltons would have felt at home here. (more…)

  • Taoiseach prepares to meet world leaders, company bosses in Davos

    January 28, 2009 @ 8:55 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Some progress in the talks with the social partners on how to cut €2 billion from State expenditure has given Taoiseach Brian Cowen breathing space to make an appearance at the Davos economic forum tomorrow (Thursday) and on Friday. Mr Cowen will be bound for the Swiss Alps tomorrow evening. (more…)

  • How George Soros would save the financial world…

    @ 2:49 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Financier George Soros, the man best known for breaking the Bank of England by betting against the pound in 1992, told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos this lunchtime that there was “very serious trouble brewing in the peripheral countries” and particularly the new members in the European Union where more than half their household debt is in foreign currencies, mainly Swiss francs. “That is a problem that urgently needs atttention,” said Soros. (more…)

  • Senior Irish bankers are a no-show at Davos

    @ 2:14 pm | by Simon Carswell

    Bank of Ireland chief executive Brian Goggin, who was due to attend the five-day World Economic Forum in Davos, has decided not to travel to the Swiss Alpine village. Allied Irish Banks chairman Dermot Gleeson, who had planned to travel as well, is not coming either. So says the banks’ respective spokespeople. Clearly, both men have more important things on their mind what with the Government’s recapitalisation of both banks, about which talks are continuing with the Department of Finance. (more…)

  • Murdoch tells Davos the party’s over, now here comes the pain

    @ 11:21 am | by Simon Carswell

    Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation, told reporters at the first press conference of Davos 2009 that the binge on cheap money and borrowing was over, that the world had been living well beyond our means and that we now have to live through the correction. He said that $50 trillion of personal wealth, including money built up the value of homes and pensions, had disappeared and that people were “depressed and traumatised”.

    Mr Murdoch, a co-chair of this year’s World Economic Forum annual meeting in the Swiss Alpine village, said he believed that it would take “quite a long time” for the economy to recover and that while government intervention and greater regulation was required, he warned that it was “very important that we don’t over-react and get ourselves into a situation of semi-socialism that restricts free markets and restricts growth.” (more…)

  • Swiss think-in starts on a predictably pessimistic note

    @ 9:00 am | by Simon Carswell

    The World Economic Forum’s 2009 annual meeting in Davos began on a typically bearish note this morning as the first sessions kicked off.

    Stephen Roach, chairman of Asian operations at US investment bank Morgan Stanley, said that 2009 would be the first year since the end of the Second World War when the world’s economy (GDP) would contract. (more…)

  • Davos 2009… let the brain-storming begin!

    January 27, 2009 @ 11:52 pm | by Simon Carswell

    The 38th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) begins tomorrow (Wednesday) and once again the sleepy Swiss Alpine village of Davos has been surrounded by razor wire and heavily-armed Swiss soldiers to protect the 40 heads of state and government (including our own Taoiseach Brian Cowen) that are scheduled to attend the five-day confab. (more…)

  • Recessionistas

    @ 12:34 pm | by John McManus

    Watch Laura Slattery and Caroline Madden’s interview on Ireland AM about their new guide to personal finance The Money Book

  • Sammy’s Stance

    @ 12:22 pm | by John McManus

    Francess McDonnell writes in her Belfast Briefing column about the lack of joined up think apparent in the North’s enviroment minister’s response to the economic slow down. Sammy Wilson wants Nothern companies to discriminate in favour of people from Northern Ireland when it comes to taking on new employees. What he seems to have forgotton is that discrimination of pretty much every imaginable ilk is banned in the North.

  • Beesley on the banks

    January 22, 2009 @ 5:26 pm | by John McManus

    Watch a trenchant interview with senior business corespondent Arthur Beesley done with CNBC this week by clicking on the link

  • Someone talked!!

    @ 3:47 pm | by John McManus

    someonetalked.jpg

    This comes courtesy of thepropertypin.com

  • Morgan Kelly’s Seoul Mate

    @ 1:56 pm | by John McManus

    The Department of Finance can only dream of the powers available to thier opposite numbers in Korea when it comes to dealing with economic dissidents such as Morgan Kelly. According to a Reuters report they have prosecuted a blogger called Minerva for being to gloomy. Minerva became a household name for predicting sharp falls in the won and the local stock market. Sounds familiar?

  • Economic Hysteria

    January 21, 2009 @ 6:56 pm | by John McManus

    Recent Hysteria 

    Rossa White from Davy has published a note on the national finances with the sub-head State still has lots of options despite recent hysteria pointing out that we will not be going  bankrupt, which is reassuring and makes for an antidote to Morgan Kelly.

  • Insightful business commentary from an unlikely source

    @ 2:39 pm | by John Collins

    It’s not somewhere I’d normally turn to for business commentary (or style tips for that matter), but Vanity Fair has been playing a blinder since the banking crisis last September. You could argue that a magazine that sometimes reads like a newsletter for New York socialites is bound to have the inside track on what’s been happening on Wall Street. But VF has had some excellent contributions from the likes of Michael Wolff (great colour on private equity this issue), Michael Shnayerson and several good reads from Niall Ferguson which explain how we got to the current pass.

    The current issue (cover at left) has a forensic piece from former Fortune writer Bethany McLean (and also author of Enron documentary The Smartest Guys in the Room) on the demise of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It’s a fascinating tail of Washington political intrigue that suggests their demise had as much to do with powerful enemies as a downturn in their business.

  • Stand up for your right to be an economist

    January 20, 2009 @ 6:52 pm | by John McManus

    Worth having a look at The Irish Economy  blog where there is an interesting thread on the rights of economists to speak their minds has developed following the withdrawl on legal advice of a link to this morning’s extremely critical article on the Anglo  Irish Recapitalisation by Morgan Kelly of UCD on the Irish Times oped ed pages.  It seems that in Latvia they simply get the secret police to take downbeat economists into custody….

  • You pay your money and you take your chances

    January 16, 2009 @ 9:21 pm | by Barry O'Halloran

    Barry O’Halloran 

    If the Louvre were to put the Mona Lisa up for auction tomorrow and the highest bid received came to one euro, then that is what Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting would be worth.

    The cash value of anything at any point in time is determined by one thing, what someone is prepared to pay for it. It’s seems obvious, but it’s something that a lot of people, Anglo Irish Bank shareholders amongst them, seem to be forgetting.

    Rightly or wrongly, the State is about to take ownership of Anglo Irish Bank. It has pledged to compensate the bank’s shareholders and will appoint an assessor to decide the final value of their holdings.

    (more…)

  • Creating one bad bank and adding the bad debts of the others

    January 14, 2009 @ 10:01 am | by Simon Carswell

    The London-based Daily Telegraph reported this morning that the UK Treasury has asked Credit Suisse to assess the possibility of setting up a “bad bank” as a means of restoring a better flow of credit into the economy. This happened following the collapse of the banking system in Sweden in the early 1990s where bad property loans were purchased from some of the country’s more troubled banks. The UK government could ring-fence bad debts and underwrite them with a state guarantee.

    Anna Lalor, analyst at Goodbody Stockbrokers, says in a research note this morning that a similar plan by the Irish Government would “depend on its willingness for taxpayers to take on the risk of such loans (on the assumption that they were transferred at fair prices - whatever that may be) and its capacity (to raise sovereign debt) to support any additional equity issuance that may be required as a result of taking credit losses up front.”

    It would certainly be a clever idea corralling all the bad debts, particularly high-risk, speculative loans to the property market, into one bank so the Government could solve one problem instead of six. Bank of Ireland’s former chief executive Mike Soden has suggested this as an idea to this newspaper in recent weeks. Such a plan would deal with a significant blackspot on the balance sheets of the Irish banks. However, the taxpayer should exact a hefty premium for shouldering the not-insubstantial bad debts into a single Irish bank.

  • Elan’s trouble with dates

    January 13, 2009 @ 8:12 pm | by Dominic Coyle

    Elan president Carlos Paya entered the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference hoping to put behind him the controversy over statements attributed to him over a possible extension to the duration of Phase III trials for the company’s Alzheimer’s drug bapineuzimab  currently slated to last 18 months.  Unfortunately, as he moved to clarify -referring to recent confusion - he again alluded to 24 months before hastily correcting himself.

  • Crossed lines at Elan

    @ 7:59 pm | by Dominic Coyle

    Irish drugmaker Elan is suffering a significant attack of mixed messages. Just days after chief executive Kelly Martin stated categorically that the maker of multiple sclerosis breakthrough drug Tysabri “isn’t negotiating to sell the company to Pfizer or any other drugmaker”, the company announced a strategic review to assess a range of alternatives (sic) that include . . . a merger or sale.

    That announcement came just after the company put out a statement “clarifying” about an “erroneous report” in news service Bloomberg that said the duration of a Phase III clinical trial for the company’s Alzheimer’s disease drug bapineuzimab could be extended. “The planned [18 month] duration of the trials has not changed since the program was announced in December 2007. There are currently no plans to extend the duration of the Phase III trials,” it said curtly.

    Fair enough, except that the Bloomberg story quotes both Elan president in charge of strategy Carlos Paya and head of corporate relations Mary Stutts (both appointed in recent months, but industry veterans).

    “There are a number of discussions going on, including what is the right duration of the trial,” Paya said in a telephone interview with the news service. “The length is now 18 months. There are also some discussions of making a number of changes in the protocol: should they be 24 months, or 18 months with an extension?” Stutts was reported as saying the discussion about the length of the trials is occurring within the company, and hasn’t been broached with either the Food and Drug Administration [the regulator] or partner Wyeth.

    So just who needs clarification then?

  • Swiss Army knife gets a high-tech makeover

    January 9, 2009 @ 11:26 pm | by John Collins

    Speaking of Swiss Army Knifes, as I was in my last post, Victorinox, the makers of the classic range of tools, is in attendance at CES and is showing off its cool Presentation Pro knife.

    It’s a Swiss Army knife that also has USB storage, a fingerprint scanner to provide security for your data, Bluetooth, so you can connect it to a PC and control PowerPoint presentations which can be controlled with up and down buttons on the back of the knife, as well as a red laser pointer so you can highlight features of your slideshow.

    It also has a knife, scissors and a couple of other tools you’d expect on a Swiss Army knife, although there is a “Flight safe” version going to be available without blades. Currently in production it’s set to go on sale in May in 8, 16 and 32 Gbyte versions priced at $169, $229, $334.

  • Is that a camera in your pocket?

    @ 5:41 am | by John Collins

    Convergence is a word much loved, but also roundly abused by, the technology industry. But at CES this year we are really seeing a variety of mobile devices - MP3 player, mobile phone, digital camera, camcorder, GPS navigation device - in a single device. It’s no longer just a case of for example, a mobile phone that has some of those other features but doesn’t do them very well. Instead mobile devices are really becoming a master of all trades and reducing the amount of kit that the average gadget lover or geek has to carry around with them.

    Take the Sony Cybershot G3 camera unveiled by the electronc giant’s boss Sir Howard Stringer during his keynote. It has built in Wi-Fi and a web browser so you can instantly upload and share pictures, blurring the lines between camera and a mobile internet access device.

    Trying out LG’s Renoir mobile phone this afternoon I had to do a couple of double takes to make sure this wasn’t a digital camera. The touchscreen phone with 8 megapixel camera has the kind of high end features you would expect from a quality compact digital camera such as Smile Shot which will automatically take a picture when the subject smiles. Video is captured at an impressive 120 frames per second while it has built in GPS soour pictures are automatically geo-tagged. It’s expected to ship in Europe this spring.

    So who will be first company to create the “Swiss Army knife” of mobile devices?

  • Gadget mania - CES highlights of day one

    @ 1:23 am | by John Collins

    So day one of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas is nearly coming to an end and my feet are tired and back aching after trying to cover some of over one million square feet of exhibition space to see what the hot products this year are going to be. So in no particular order here’s some of the cool things I’ve seen today:

    Sony enters the super portable netbook market with the VAIO P series. This is a seriously high end netbook with built-in webcam, GPS and 3g broadband. The snag - the $900 price tag rather than the sub-$400 price most netbooks go out at.

    Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) televisions that have a super bright screen but are also super slim. Samsung has a 2mm thin 14.1″ display on show as well as a translucent display that could be mounted in cars allowing you to see directions superimposed on your windscreen.

    Motorola’s W323 Renew which it claims is the first carbon free mobile phone on the market. The case is made from recycled bottles that have been used in office water coolers and that alone took four years of development. The company says the carbon neutral claim takes the energy it took to manufacture, ship, use the phone for two years and then dispose of it. Green claims are a recurring theme of CES. Greeneace is holding a press conference in the morning and will say whether claims byb individual manufacturers stack up. Will be interested to see what they make of the Renew.

    I also got a preview of the Windows Media Centre capabilities of Windows 7. With a Windows 7 PC and an Xbox connected to your TV it will make it really easy to get internet content as well as digital music and video on to your PC. The new Home Group feature of Windows 7 will make home networking via Wi-Fi so simple - the only problem is you won’t get the full benefits until you upgrade all your PCs.

    The wow factor for me today has been Nvidia’s GeForce 3D Vision graphics system which works with projectors from Samsung, LG and Mitsubishi to turn games, movies and photographs into 3D. You need glassses to get the effect but at least they are stylish sunglasses rather than the nerdy cardboard ones with a blue and red lens. I saw it being demoed with guitar hero and was blown away as I felt like I was looking 30 or 40 feet through the screen. Lots of talk about 3D here including Sony prototypes of 3D television sets for the home.

    That’s just a small sample of today so far, so I’ll update with my thoughts at the end of the day.

  • Microsoft kicks off CES in Las Vegas

    January 8, 2009 @ 7:48 am | by John Collins

    LAS VEGAS: So the annual gadget-fest that is the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas has kicked off with the by now traditional keynote from Microsoft. This year it was delivered by chief executive Steve Ballmer (pictured left) rather than founder and figurehead Bill Gates.

    Ballmer began by making reference to the fact it was his first CES and put on screen some of the messages of encouragement he allegedly received. Gates wanted to make sure he didn’t end up at the other convention taking place in Vegas this week - the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo 2009 taking place next door. A spoof message from Yahoo chief Jerry Yang, who rebuffed Microsoft’s $44 billion takeover offer last year, read “why do you keep ignoring my friend requests on Facebook” and got a big laugh from the thousands in the audience.

    Ballmer was upbeat about the economy - a theme that opened and closed his speech - and encouraged businesses to keep investing during the tough times. In terms of technology the theme was the convergence of the PC, mobile phone and television and how Windows can provide a unified experience between all three platforms.

    The big announcement during his speech was that Windows 7, the upcoming version of the ubiquitous operating system, has gone into beta and will be available as a free download from Microsoft’s website tomorrow. He said 7 will be “the best version of Windows ever” because the world’s biggest software company is “baking the right ingredients into it - simplicity, reliability and speed”.

    He also unveiled a new version of Windows Live Essential, a suite of software that extends Windows to the web. A new relationship with Facebook means that Windows Live users will be able to see their friends updates from the social networking site on their Windows Live home page. Computer maker Dell will also begin pre-installing Windows Live Essential on its consumer and small business PCs.

    Microsoft also revealed it will release two new games in the Halo series - the blockbuster Xbox game which has sold 25 million copies in its various iterations. Xbox will also get a new channel called Primetime this year which will allow users participate in online events with their friends such as virtual game shows. There was also a demo of Kodu, a new product which makes it easy to create and share simple Xbox games. It was delivered by an 11-year-old girl and received one of the best audience responses of the evening.

    While there wasn’t any earth shattering news delivered Ballmer’s larger than live personality was able to carry the 90 minute presentation. All this was of course in sharp contrast to Apple’s keynote at its Macworld event in San Francisco earlier this week. Even Apple fans admitted that while marketing boss Phil Schiller is a nice guy, and didn’t have much to announce, his keynote address never came near matching the Steve-notes delivered by the company’s charismatic founder Steve Jobs.

    Expect more posts from CES later today as the show officially opens.

  • Not-as-bad is the new good

    January 7, 2009 @ 12:07 pm | by John McManus

    Fiona Walsh, our woman in the City writes this morning in London Briefing on the changed face of retail where success is not doing as badly as everybody expects.  Debenhams and Next did it yesterday and Marks reports today

  • Apple says low key farewell to Macworld

    January 6, 2009 @ 9:21 pm | by John Collins

    So Phil Schiller of Apple has delivered the tech company’s last Macworld keynote - the annual speech where in the past co-founder Steve Jobs has dramatically and with humour unveiled the iPhone, the iMac and the Macbook Air. Jobs was absent due to health reasons and Apple has said this is the last time it will attend the show, which is organised by a seperate company IDG. Even taking those factors into account Schiller’s presentation was a total disappointment for all but the most loyal of the Apple faithful.

    He spent the first hour of his 90 minute speech talking about iLife and iWork, the business and consumer suites of software that it ships with its Macintosh range of PCs. In fact we got excrutiating detail about iPhoto 09, the photo editing and organising component of iLife which now has the ability to tag photos with the location they were taken and to recognise the faces of people you have previously tagged,

    It was all rather typical of Apple. It is rarely if ever first with a new technology but you can be sure when it does enter the fray it will be done with style and panache. The iPhone is typical of this approach - other smartphones have similar if not better features but the ease of use sets it totally apart. The approach is in stark contrast to Google. The internet giant releases unpolished new products and services in “beta”and them hones them on the basis of user feedback.

    The sole hardware announcement was the 17″ MacBook Pro - a high end notebook with a high end price tag of $2,799. The main innovation is its custom designed non-removable battery which takes an industry leading 8 hour charge and can accept 1,000 charges before performance degrades. As you’d expect from Apple it claims to be the thinnest and lightest 17″ notebook on the market at less than an inch thick and weighing just 3 kilos.

    Schiller, to be fair, didn’t have much to work with but he took a cue from his boss and kept the best until last. The ridiculous digital rights management restrictions that the major labels insisted on applying to digital music have now been lifted. And the iPhone gets a mobile music service that beats any other hands down.

    Even with legendary crooner Tony Bennet  closing the keynote with a couple of numbers, Apple exited the keynote stage where it has made so many significant announcements with a whimper rather than a bang. Mac users will be pleased with all the new enhancements but the rest of the technology community will have been left cold.

  • Last minute Macworld prediction

    @ 3:19 pm | by John Collins

    You have got to hand it to The Onion- this spoof news report about the new Macbook Wheel is hilariously cutting about Apple fans. My favourite quote:  “I’ll buy anything as long as its shiny and made by Apple”

    Proving I’m not immune myself I’m wide awake in a San Francisco hotel room just after 7 in the morning and will be dashing over to see the keynote at Macworld shortly.  Updates later this afternoon Irish time.

  • US tech shows feel the economic chill wind

    January 5, 2009 @ 2:49 pm | by John Collins

    SAN FRANCISCO: 40,000 Apple users, programmers, and Mac evangelists will descend on San Francisco over the next two days for Macworld 2009, the annual love-in for the maker of iPods and iPhones. As mentioned here previously a central figure will be notable by his absence - Apple CEO Steve Jobs. And even though it’s the 25th Macworld Apple have announced they won’t attend Macworld in future and there is little expectation of a major announcement a la iPhone which was introduced at Macworld 2007.

    Despite all this IDG, the publishers and conference organisers who put on Macworld, are confident that the event will pull the same crowd of 40,000 as last year.

    That’s impressive given the chill economic winds now blowing through this city by the bay and the rest of the US. Over in Las Vegas the Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s biggest exhibition for all things technology-related, will kick off on Wednesday but already is looking as if it will be a more subdued affair than 2007. The number of exhibitors is down to 2,700 from 3,000 last year with the floor space of the show shrinking from 1.8 million feet to 1.7 million. The number of attendees is expected to drop from just over 140,000 to 130,000 and it’s still possible to get a hotel room in Las Vegas this week - something that never happened for CES before, where people used to book their hotel rooms for the following year as they checked out the previous one.

    As a result analysts expect smaller ticket items like netbooks, mobiles and GPS devices to attract far more attention than aspirational 70 inch plasma screen home cinema systems. That may well be no bad thing.

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