Circuit City Between Rock and Hard Place

April 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Retailer NewsPDFPrintE-mail

circuit cityThe $12.5 billion No. American superstore Circuit City has hired Goldman Sachs to explore "strategic alternatives" for the struggling chain. The move comes after pressure from shareholders led by industry veteran Mark Wattles to oust the board of directors and CEO Philip Schoonover.

 

Schoonover is accused of making a bad situation worse by his idea to cut costs last year by laying off 3400 of Circuit City’s highest-paid-and most experienced-employees.

 

Wattles, whose company owns a 6.5% stake in Circuit City, founded Hollywood Video in the 1980s, built it into the #2 rental chain in USA and sold it in 2005. Then he took over Ultimate Electronics and turned the 32-store chain around. His demands create options that may put him in charge.

 

Go Circuit City Responds to Wattles

Dell to Join Under $500 Ultra-Portable Makers

April 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Laptops & TabletsPDFPrintE-mail

Dell will join the growing crowd of makers selling ultra-portable notebooks for $399-$499. Coming in late June or early July, the new line of laptops will have flash memory-based storage of 8-12GB.

 

Michael Dell recently highlighted that for more than one year Dell has invited its customers to share ideas about improving products on IdeaStorm.com. Their site has attracted more than 8900 ideas and features 45 Ideas in Action.

 

Go Dell’s IdeaStorm

Can Nokia’s “Tube” Answer the iPhone?

April 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Mobile (Phones)PDFPrintE-mail

Every mobile maker wants to bury the iPhone. A new Nokia phone with touch-screen is codenamed 'Tube' and will have Java built-in and probably support for the DVB-H mobile TV and mobile video. The device can upload photos to the web, indicating either built-in Wi-Fi or HSDPA connectivity. GPS should be included, as Nokia wants to build location technology into all smartphones.

 

Nokia hopes to significantly undercut Apple with their manufacturing economies of scale. One analyst thinks the “leak” promising an iPhone-like device may be an attempt to reduce iPhone uptake in Nokia’s home market in Europe.

 

Go First Photo of Tube

How Not to Do an Acquisition

April 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Vendor NewsPDFPrintE-mail

BallmerWhat do you do when sweet-talk doesn’t work in an acquisition? If you are Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, you issue an ultimatum.

 

The man famous for hopping like a lunatic on stage to motivate staff and partners fails to find new ways to motivate Yahoo execs to come to the table.

 

Two days after Yahoo reluctantly responded to the Microsoft ultimatum (“OK, we don’t like it but we are open to a deal, but not at the price you’re proposing…”), Yahoo will begin a limited test of Google Search service. This will deliver relevant Google ads alongside Yahoo!'s own search results and delivered another reason for the Microsoft.CEO to be hopping mad.

 

Now Microsoft is talking to News Corp. to create a mega-internet company combining Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and News Corp.'s Web properties (MySpace and Fox Interactive.) Yahoo is still searching for other buyers, any other buyer, please a buyer…supposedly Time Warner is considering folding its AOL unit into Yahoo.

 

Go Ultimatum

EMC Buys Iomega, Goes Consumer

April 11, 2008 | Bob Snyder | Storage (Personal)PDFPrintE-mail

IOMEGAEMC acquires Zip-drive maker Iomega for $212.5 million, stopping a stock-swap merger with Great Wall Technology. Great Wall gets a $7.5 million deal-termination fee.

 

The darling of personal storage in the ‘90s, the makers of Zip and Jazz drives, Iomega was once one of the hottest stocks in high tech, selling at $110 per share.

 

Enterprise storage player EMC paid only $3.85 a share as a way to move into the high-growth consumer and small-business markets. Recently EMC paid $75 million for the consumer online storage service Mozy.

Go Iomega

Page 966 of 993