Dell Q3 2010 Finance Statements Disappoint

The financial statements for Q3 2010 released by Round Rock, Texas-headquartered Dell Corporation reveal a weakness in its fundamentals.

Sales have declined by 15% in comparison to the same quarter of previous year. Revenue from large enterprises dropped by 23% compared to Q3 2009 to USD 3.4 billion. Revenue from government dropped by 7% to USD 3.7 billion compared to Q3 2009. Small and medium business segments yielded revenue of USD 3 billion, which again is 19% below what was achieved in the same quarter last year. Retail revenue too saw a sharp decline by 10% to USD 2.8 billion, compared to what it was in Q3 2009. This, according to company resources, is due to the tight-fisted budget maintained by organizations over the entire year in response to recessionary conditions.

The company has reported an EPS of 17 cents, with cash flow of USD 801 million.

In this quarter, the company has completed the acquisition of Perot Systems, which means that consolidated reporting will begin from Q4 2009 onwards. The company is venturing into the smart phone business beginning this year, which it expects will add to its bottom line in the near future.

Read about the latest news from an IT biggie, here.

Google Gives Sneak Preview Of Chrome OS

Menlo Park, California-headquartered Google Inc has finally launched its offensive against the biggest brother of them all: Microsoft Corporation. Google has announced that an open-source (read “free”) operating system will compete with Windows for domination in the netbook arena, come 2010.

The sourcecode for the operating system has been released to developers under the open-source license. The company is coming up with specifications for netbook manufacturers, asking them to design their product that will optimize the use of the new operating system. In all probability, netbooks with ARM and x86 processors both will be able to run Chromium.

The basic principle behind the new OS’ design is speedy boot-up. “Almost like switching on the TV and it begins working”, according to a company spokesperson. A new paradigm is likely to be unveiled once Chromium becomes available, as together with the Chrome browser, the Flash Player 10.1 and Mozilla, full internet support on multiple mobile devices will become possible.

The netbooks of the future will connect to the cloud, which means that all data will reside not in the machine but in the cloud, including personalization of the user desktop.

Read about the latest challenge being mounted against Microsoft’s hegemony in the operating system market, here.

Nokia To Pinkslip 230 R&D Employees

World leader in mobile telecommunications, Nokia Inc, has begun to feel the heat of competition from the likes of Apple and RIM. The company has announced that it is giving the pinkslip to about 330 employees of its R&D division.

These employees were working at the company’s Oulu site in Finland and Copenhagen site in Denmark. They comprise about 2% of the company’s total R&D workforce.

Though the company continues to occupy the numero uno position in mobile phone instruments, it has notched a net decline by 15% of the smartphone market share in Q2 2009 compared to its near monopoly stranglehold of 50% in Q2 2008. By contrast, Steve Job’s Apple has overtaken Nokia in terms of profits, and has notched USD 1.6 billion in profits in Q3 2009 compared to Nokia’s USD 1.1 billion. Nokia’s balance sheet has shown a net loss of USD 832 million in this same quarter, mostly on the back of a weak Nokia-Siemens performance, which manufactures network equipment.

The company has announced appropriate voluntary severance packages in consultation with employee representatives.

Read the latest news about the impact of competition and eroding market share on a mobile giant, here.

Meet nook, The Kindle Killer From Barnes And Noble

New York-headquartered Barnes and Noble Inc, the top US book retailer, has launched a wireless ebook reader that is christened “nook”. The device is priced at USD 259, and will begin shipping at the end of November 2009. The device weighs about 320 gms, and has dimensions of 7.7 inch (H) X 4.9 inch (W) X 0.5 inch (D).

nook is based on the open-source Android operating system. It is touted as the first ebook reader with color touch screen (3.5 inches) for navigation and E Ink display. The device offers both 3G wireless access on AT&T’s mobile broadband network as well as access to Wi-Fi, at no additional cost.

The ebook reader connects seamlessly with B&N’s online store and can download ebooks, magazines and newspapers at broadband speeds. nook users can “lend” ebooks to friends free of charge for up to 14 days at a time, using the company’s proprietary LendMe technology, by sending it to the friend’s nok or iPhone, iPod Touch, a few BlackBerry and Motorola smartphones, besides PC or Mac machines on which B&N eReader software has been installed.

Read about the latest gizmo to hit the market, here.

New Online Services From Microsoft For ERP

Redmond, Washington-headquartered Microsoft Corporation has announced a set of three new online services built around its ERP platform, Microsoft Dynamics.

The first service, Sites Service, is built on Azure platform and allows users to create websites in the Dynamics app. This is especially useful for customers who are looking for a seamless way to interact with the external environment such as customers (feedback and registration), vendors (request for quote), prospective employees (recruitment), etc. The service provides capabilities such as embedded intelligence and optimization models to provide analytics.

The second service, simply called “Commerce”, links ERP and ecommerce for the users by providing a single interface that hooks up to B2C e-commerce marketplaces, dedicated e-commerce storefronts, etc. The service has an inbuilt shopping cart functionality, enabling customers to interact with the user’s organization from within their own sites.

The third service, called “Payment”, handles payment transactions from Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP interface. This service works with leading payment processing services such as First Data Merchant Services Corporation, and handles all the major credit cards. Microsoft is on a agreement-signing spree with all major payment processing services across Europe and the rest of the world to bolster this particular service.

Read about the latest in online services being offered by Microsoft, here.

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