Some business technology news in brief
Shipments of PCs fall 7.1% in first quarter
Shipments of PCs fell 7.1 per cent year-on-year during the first quarter of 2009, according to IDC’s worldwide quarterly PC tracker. A decline of 8.2 per cent had been expected but low-cost portable PCs such as netbooks buoyed demand.
The market in Europe, the Middle East and Africa recorded its first annual decline since 2001 but the decline in western Europe was moderate, “considering the overall environment”.
HP maintained its position as the best-selling PC brand worldwide, growing 2.9 per cent overall and claiming the number-one spot in the US from Dell.
Number of Facebook visitors up by 314%
The number of monthly visitors to Facebook has grown by 314 per cent in the past year to almost 100 million a month, according to new research from internet measurement specialists ComScore.
Facebook is now the most popular social networking website in 11 of the 17 European countries monitored by ComScore. In Ireland it attracted 512,000 unique visitors during February, an increase of 153 per cent compared to February 2008. Despite this, Facebook still lags Bebo as Ireland’s most popular social networking site.
The research also found that Facebook users are “highly engaged” and spend an average of three hours a month on the site.
Microsoft’s extension to respond to charges
Microsoft has confirmed a report that it received a one-week extension from EU anti-trust regulators to respond to charges that it had sought to thwart rivals by bundling its web browser with Windows systems.
"Microsoft confirms that the new deadline for the company to respond to the [European] Commission's statement of objections is April 28th," a spokeswoman said, referring to an unsourced reference to a new deadline reported on the website of the Financial Times.
A spokeswoman for the commission said she could not immediately comment. Last month, the EU executive pushed back the original deadline to April 21st after the US company asked for more time. – (Reuters)
