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News

• Brands, take note: Customers still struggle to reach you

  In any given year, more than 80 percent of consumers try to reach a brand, and for most of them, it's an exercise in frustration, according to new data from The Northridge Group.

• IDC: No end in sight for rising smartphone sales

  Emerging markets and lower prices will push worldwide smartphone shipments close to the billion-unit level this year, according to the latest forecast by IDC.

• Laptops walking out the door of policy-free firms

  Concerned that your employees are being a bit lax when it comes to looking after their laptops? Steal them yourself, one vendor has advised in the wake of yet another damning security report that suggests laptops and other equipment are literally walking out of Australian companies that are still operating at far below world's best practice when it comes to device security.

• Local CIOs see open source as strategic, still lack policy

  A recent global survey by analyst firm Gartner has found more than half of organisations have adopted open source software (OSS) solutions as part of their IT strategy, but only 30 per cent of CIOs have a formal policy in place.

• Server sales post biggest jump since 2003, IDC says

  Worldwide server sales posted their biggest jump since 2003 during the second quarter as Hewlett-Packard outsold rival IBM to take the top spot among server vendors, IDC said Tuesday.

• Android growing much faster than expected, say analysts

  Google's Android was expected to become the world's second most-used smartphone OS by 2012, after the Symbian OS, but now accelerating sales will help it get there this year, according to analysts.

• Study reflects weak server spending this year

  Overall server spending in enterprises remains weak in 2010 as companies continue to look for ways to save money following the economic downturn, research firm TheInfoPro said in a study released on Monday.

• ISuppli raises semiconductor foundry revenue forecast

  ISuppli has increased its 2010 revenue forecast for semiconductor foundries, driven by a resurgence in demand for consumer products, the analyst firm said on Thursday

• Gartner rolls back 2010 IT spending forecast

  Gartner has dropped its 2010 IT spending forecast, citing currency fluctuations caused by the ongoing European debt crisis.

• Microsoft admits Windows Phone 7 slide was wrong

  Microsoft acknowledged on Friday that it used an inaccurate number to represent research company IDC's sales forecast for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform.

• TSMC's chip sales in April hit all-time high

  Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC), the world's largest contract chip maker, on Monday reported record high chip sales for the month of April.

• Shipments of DDR3 memory growing fast

  Shipments of the speedy DDR3 memory are growing at a fast pace as implementations of its predecessor, DDR2 memory, slow down, research firm iSuppli said in a study released on Tuesday.

• Smartphones bouncing back from economic woes

  Smartphone shipments have recovered strongly from a slump during the economic downturn, with Nokia delivering the most units but Motorola showing the greatest gains among top vendors, research company Canalys said Monday.

• Server virtualization bounces back in Europe, says IDC

  Sales of server hardware and software for virtualization in the fourth quarter of 2009 increased for the first time in a year in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, according to an IDC report issued Monday.

• SOA market to reach $US8B by 2016: report

  Analyst firm WinterGreen Research has released a new report on the global SOA middleware software market, which is set to grow from $3.5 billion (2009) to $8.2 billion in 2016.