It appears that PA Semi's chip business may not have a place in Apple's future plans, which could spell trouble for the chipmaker's clients, including the Defense Department.

An EETimes report cites sources close to companies affected by the merger in reporting that Apple seems more interested in PA Semi's intellectual property and development side, rather than its chips.

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Nintendo said Friday it is confident in consumer demand for its two consoles, thus making a price cut unnecessary at least during 2008.

Both Sony and Microsoft have already cut prices on their current consoles in an effort to keep sales up. Nintendo has so far continually rebuffed calls to similarly cut prices for its own systems.

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According to French Web metrics firm XiTi, Mozilla Firefox continues its unabated growth in popularity, reaching around 29% usage share in Europe overall in March.

Microsoft Internet Explorer saw its usage share begin to drop in the at the end of 2005, roughly one year after Firefox 1.0 was released and began to be embraced internationally. In 2006, the XiTi Monitor reported Firefox had continued its market share increase to around 23-25%.

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If Microsoft doesn't "make progress" in its Yahoo buyout bid by this weekend, the Redmond company will move on to options that include taking the offer to Yahoo shareholders and dropping the acquisition offer entirely, said Chris Liddell, senior VP and CFO at Microsoft, in a conference call late Thursday.

"[But] Microsoft is focused on the online ad market," due to industry predictions of major growth in this space over the next few years, Liddell told financial analysts and journalists during Microsoft's third quarter financial call.

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A pint-sized, multi-functional Linux server small enough to hold in the palm of your hand, was released this week into the North American market by Japan-based Plat'Home.

Designed to work as an Apache Server, MySQL database server, or just about any other type of larger Linux server, the new OpenMicroServer is particularly geared to places that are short on space, or where systems need to be remotely managed due to an absence of on-site administrators.

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In a decision that could anger some privacy advocates, a US appeals court said that border and airport security agents can search laptops without cause.

Surprisingly, the unanimous 3-0 decision came from the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals, which has otherwise been a target of criticism for its alleged liberal bias.

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The solid state disk industry may never be ready for prime time, according to data last week from the president of Toshiba, a supporter of the technology. SSD's rate of growth may never catch up, he projected, to the rest of the storage industry.

While the overall market for solid-state disk drives is expanding at triple-digit annual rates, according to an account of a speech on Monday by Toshiba President Shozo Saito from the Nikkei press agency, analysts today are noting that just as twice nothing is still nothing, thrice not very much is a small percentage indeed.

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The latest Ubuntu operating system, version 8.04, code-named "Hardy Heron," has a new feature aimed at making it easier for Microsoft Windows users to install and test the operating system without creating a separate virtual machine.

"Wubi" is a Windows-based installer that puts Ubuntu on the same partition as the Windows partition. Though it physically writes to the hard drive, it does not actually partition or format it -- which, of course, would defeat the purpose. Instead, it installs Ubuntu onto a disk image that emulates a hard drive.

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In a deal spawned by the flat panel TV industry's current price war, financially struggling Pioneer Corp. has agreed to stop making plasma panels and buy them instead from Panasonic's parent company Matsushita.

Pioneer has shown an operating loss for three consecutive years now, while dealing with an oversupply of plasma display capacity in the face of falling prices.

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A popular feature on social networking site Facebook, the ability to adorn a profile with multiple mini-applications, was unveiled today on MySpace in its Application Gallery.

In February, the MySpace Developer Platform was created, allowing original applications to be integrated with MySpace. To test these third party apps out, MySpace rolled out a beta of the Application Gallery, which facilitated over 2 million installs of the over 1,000 third-party applications posted there.

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While SPOT devices were released to great fanfare four years ago, the company says it will stop selling new watches.

Smart watches with the MSN Direct service have sold out, and the company has no intentions of producing new models. It says however, that it would continue to seek out new channels for the SPOT technology.

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In a move designed to change the texture of mobile Web content, Google is integrating smaller display ads designed for mobile browsers, into its AdWords service starting today. But it won't fool many into thinking it's not playing catch-up.

The leader in online display image advertising right now is actually DoubleClick, which is now a Google division but is still allowed to do its own thing. In the meantime, Google's increasing emphasis on mobile device platforms -- including its own Android -- is pushing it to become a display ad leader for that segment.

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Motorola posted a sharp 39 percent annual decline in mobile device sales and revenue during the first quarter of this year, but a company restructuring plan is looking to bring sales back into control.

During this quarter, Motorola decided to "pull the chute" on its plummeting mobile division and create two discrete publicly traded companies. President and CEO of the Schaumburg, Illinois company Greg Brown said that improvement of the mobile product portfolio is a prime concern.

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April 24, 2008 - 6:10pm: A Microsoft spokesperson has officially quelled any speculation over a change in strategy. According to an official statement, Microsoft's current plans to end XP sales are "unchanged", and the company is "confident that's the right thing to do based on the feedback we've heard from our customers and partners."

Continuing his tour of Europe, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the company may reconsider its decision to stop selling the XP operating system in June.

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While some US consumers are using HDTVs for video games, and some are watching true high-def broadcasts, HDTV sales are also being driven by plummeting display prices and the upcoming changeover to digital TV broadcasting.

Although 25 percent of US households now own at least one high-definition TV set, owning an HDTV and actually viewing HD content are not one and the same for everyone, according to new research from a prominent television industry analyst group.

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