Sony and NEC join up for control of CD and DVD drives

Sony and NEC have set up a joint venture to produce CD and DVD drives in an attempt to maintain market share in the face of strong price competition. The combined operation will take the best technologies and expertise from both parties with the aim of increasing their aggregated 20 per cent of the global market and overtaking the 28 per cent share held by HLDS, itself a joint venture between Hitachi and LG. Sony will hold a 55 per cent stake in the new company against NEC's 45 per cent and both companies are preparing to transfer their respective optical disc drive operations to the joint venture before 1 April 2006. ...more

Infogrames acquires Hasbro Interactive

Publisher Infogrames has announced the completion of its acquisition of Hasbro Interactive after first announcing its buy-out intentions back in December 2000. The deal, which has been valued at around $100 million, means that the French publisher gains licence access to 600 Hasbro franchises, as well as over 250 new computer software titles. It also means that Infogrames gets exclusive rights to publish games that are based on current and future Hasbro properties. ...more

Workers struggling in 'multi-tasking society'

Britain's productivity is under threat because employees are struggling to cope with the barrage of communications technologies being thrown at them. Dr Simon Moores, the author of a Microsoft-commissioned report into productivity and technology, says 'we're being forced to exist in a multi-tasking society.' His report claims companies are failing to exploit the productivity benefits of new products. ...more

SurfTime is all washed up

BT's unmetered service has failed to attract customers and ISP partners, it emerged yesterday. According to figures released by BT, SurfTime has a mere 200,000 subscribed users, despite the telecom giant spending around ?20 million on promoting the service. Not only does the actual number of users fall well short of BT's projections, but the figures translate into a cost of ?100 per customer - not particularly impressive. ...more

Xingtones undercuts ringtone personalisation

Ringtones are cool, right? You pay ?4 for a bit of tune that makes a personal statement about you every time it goes off: 'I'm a mug'. You can pay 79p for a whole song from the majority of online music services that you can listen to when you want to, not each time you get a call. So, Xingtones has developed a little application that you can use to cut your favourite section of your favourite song and use it as a ringtone for ?1. ...more