HP Joins Business Matchmaking

HP announced it is participating with Business Matchmaking Inc. a not for profit corporation supporting procurement opportunities for small businesses, to launch the 2011 Business Matchmaking event series. Business Matchmaking provides opportunities or small businesses to secure contracts from federal, state and local government agencies, as well as many Fortune 500 companies at key events and through an online network. In addition, the program offers education, training, counseling and resources.
Through regional events held across the country, and in online sessions, Business Matchmaking has enabled more than 77,000 small business sales appointments resulting in more than $8 billion in contracts granted. All events are free to both participating small businesses and representative buyers.
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CALLl OF JUAREZ Ubisoft New game 2011



Ubisoft announced the development of Call of Juarez® The Cartel, the third game in the award-winning Call of Juarez series. Developed by Techland® for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC, Call of Juarez The Cartel will be available worldwide Summer 2011.

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Apple New MacBook Pro laptops

Apple today released their New MacBook Pro Prolaptops, and the new models further refine an already great series of personal computers.

Highlights of the new models include an upgrade of the 15-inch and 17-inch models to speedy quad-core Intel Core i7 CPUs. The 13-inch models can be ordered in dual-core i5 or i7 versions, so all the systems got a nice performance boost.
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Nokia and Microsoft Now together

Nokia's new head has sent an outspoken and frank memo to his staff that suggests the phone giant is in crisis.
Stephen Elop describes the company as standing on a "burning platform" surrounded by innovative competitors who are grabbing its market share.
In particular, he said, the firm had been caught off guard by the success of Google's Android operating system and Apple's iPhone. 11 February, 11 10:05

The Nokia-Microsoft ecosystem would aim to deliver differentiated and innovative products and have unrivalled scale, product breadth, geographical reach, and brand identity. With Windows Phone as Nokia's primary smartphone platform, Nokia would help drive the future of the platform by leveraging There expertise in hardware optimization, software customization, language support and scale.
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Game of catch-up for Nokia et al

Nokia needs to maintain its creativity and strategic thinking to ensure it doesn’t become another fallen giant Imagine motorbike manufacturer Yamaha made a car able to travel on a new network of roads that vehicles by Ford, General Motors and Fiat could not use. Imagine the established manufacturers dismissed the Yamaha project while still producing millions of cars that could not access this incredible road network.
Imagine customers of their premium cars now wanted a Yamaha, even though it was not as fast or feature-laden as their luxury saloons. Such is an analogy of how Apple changed the mobile ecosystem with its iPhone and Apps Store and transformed the humble handset into a device for life management. The latest chapter of the story tells how Apple established brand superiority over leviathans Nokia, LG, Motorola and Sony Ericsson, despite launching only one minimally-upgraded handset per year.
Seven years ago Motorola took the market by storm with the RAZR. Alas, the RAZR was a once-trick pony. Only now is Motorola attempting a serious comeback after three years in the wilderness of product development (by using a Google operating system).
LG has seen its mobile sales drop by more than a third. The company is basing its return to former glory on a new smartphone called Optimus with a 3D display. The Optimus 3D has the wow factor (I’ve seen it) but misses the point – the iPhone is successful because of its accessibility to thousands of applications. Besides, who really wants a battery-sucking 3D display on their phone just to play games?
Nokia’s problemNokia’s problem is even more acute. As we go to press rumours abound of a root and branch shake up of the business. It is easy to see where it all went so wrong for the Finnish giant. In 2007 Nokia splurged $8.1 billion on digital mapping company Navteq. The aim was to attract millions of buyers to its phones bundled with ‘free’ satellite navigation. Unfortunately, Nokia failed to anticipate Google would install free navigation on millions of iPhones and Android devices and that apps such as CoPilot would cost a few pounds.
A year later Nokia bought all the outstanding shares of Symbian for £208 million. But Symbian is steam-driven compared with the iPhone’s OS 4.2 and Google’s Android. Nokia’s big product launch of 2010 was the flagship N8, running Symbian 3.0. Much marketing ballyhoo was made of the N8’s 720p HD resolution video camera,HDMI connection, film editing software and Dolby surround sound. Yet the N8 was a sales flop. Customers who want to make movies will choose an 1080p HD camcorder, not a mobile phone.
The ability to download apps was run through Nokia’s own Ovi Store. This is like a corner newsagent competing against the Selfridges of the Apple App Store and Android’s applications store.
In September, Nokia hired Microsoft man Stephen Elop as its new boss. Elop’s appointment has now sparked rumours that Nokia will replace its own smartphone OS MeeGo with Windows Mobile 7. The phrase "deck chairs on the Titanic" springs to mind. Microsoft has yet to define its position in the mobile space. Its first iteration of Windows Mobile failed to achieve critical mass. Its attempt to launch its own mobile phone (called ‘Kin’ flopped). And Microsoft has yet to establish Windows Phone 7 OS as a viable alternative to Android and Apple.
The question now is will these hardware vendors who have lost credibility and market share ever retain their positions as prestige brands? Or will the‘new’ brands of HTC, RIM, and Apple prevail?
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Vodafone markets 12 month smartphone deals

Operator to launch marketing campaign throughout retail estate in order to raise awareness about reintroduced 12 month smartphone contracts

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O2 heeds service wake-up call

As 02's reputation takes a beating, Michael House visits its huge contact center in Bury, where the man in charge of all things O2 customer care, Bob Dunn is determined to get back on top

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