Global PC processor manufacturing giant Intel, yesterday- 15th Jan 2009, reported a whopping 90% drop in fourth-quarter profits for 2008, as revenue fell by 23%. The company becomes the latest “hard-hit” casualty of the global recession, which has affected the sales of PCs and consumer electronics worldwide.

For 2008, Intel posted revenue of $37.6 billion, operating income of $9 billion, net income of $5.3 billion and EPS of 92 cents. Intel generated approximately $11 billion in cash from operations, paid cash dividends of $3.1 billion and used $7.1 billion to repurchase 324 million shares of common stock.

President and Chief Executive, Paul Otellini, in a statement said;

The economy and the industry are in the process of resetting to a new baseline from which growth will resume,”

“While the environment is uncertain, our fundamental business strategies are more focused than ever. Intel will continue to extend its manufacturing leadership, drive product innovation, develop new markets and implement operating efficiencies that have already taken more than $3 billion out of our ongoing cost structure since 2006. Intel has weathered difficult times in the past, and we know what needs to be done to drive our success moving forward. Our new technologies and new products will help us ignite market growth and thrive when the economy recovers.”

Intel Reports Fourth-Quarter and Annual Results

• Fourth-Quarter Revenue $8.2 Billion, down 19 Percent Sequentially
• Gross Margin 53 Percent, down 6 Points Sequentially
• Operating Income $1.5 Billion, down 50 Percent Sequentially
• Quarterly Net Income $234 Million; EPS 4 Cents

• 2008 Revenue $37.6 Billion, down 2 Percent Year-over-Year or up Slightly Adjusted for Divestitures
• Gross Margin 55 Percent, up 3.5 Points Year-over-Year
• Operating Income $9 Billion, up 9 Percent Year-over-Year
• Annual Net Income $5.3 Billion; EPS 92 Cents

Citing an excerpt from an article posted by Antone Gonsalves on the “Tech Web” website;

“Besides lower sales, Intel’s profits were hurt by a $1 billion net loss in its equity investment in Clearwire, a wireless broadband provider that leverages WiMax technology heavily promoted by Intel. Overall, Intel reported a $1.1 billion net loss in equity investments. The company had originally forecast a loss of $50 million.

Intel’s closely watched gross margin fell nearly six points from the third quarter to 53%, primarily because of charges from higher underutilization of its factories and higher inventory write-offs. Gross margin for the first quarter of this year is expected to fall to the low 40s, primarily because of charges from underutilized factories and startup costs of moving from the current 45-nanometer manufacturing process to 32 nm, which will provide the foundation for the next generation of products.”

Reports have it that Intel earns over 80% of its revenue from outside the United States, and there have been reports of dismal market for most Intel products across the globe, an exception being in sales of mini-laptops, also called netbooks.

Sales of the low-cost systems that sell for as little as $300 have been growing fast, and Intel has been gaining traction in the market with its Atom processors.

While declining to provide a formal projection for the first quarter of this year, Intel said that for internal purposes, it’s planning for sales of around $7 billion.

This just in, Sony Ericsson’s has just released the new W715- the mobile device which is “all — and only — about Vodafone”.

The new and “exclusive to Vodafone” slider boasts a 3.2 megapixel camera, Bluetooth, aGPS, WiFi, DLNA certified, 120MB memory, quad-band GSM, 900 / 2100 HSDPA, ………

News of its release has been making the rounds all over the net, with several blogs, online news sources, etc. posting numerous articles commenting on the new and unique features of the Walkman.

Anyway, the most interesting (not to mention amusing-) aspects of its features, from an African perspective that is- is its purported ability to;

“enable quick access to its navigation services through among others a dedicated key.”

You may be wondering why this is so “amusing”.

Ever heard of Google Maps? Sure you have! “Play” with this (useful) navigation tool for a while, and you would begin to see the amusement in all of this. Try navigating to Ghana for instance at a zoom level of 25, and see what it tells you.

Hint: Click the link- Ghana’s Google map, and “navigate” to the bottom of the page for quick access.

According to the IT News Africa website;

Aside from turn-by-turn pedestrian or driving navigation available using Vodafone Find&Go, customers will be able to find their nearest restaurants, hotels or shopping centers all within a few clicks on their new mobile phone, the company said. (Company here referring to Sony Ericsson of course).

It beats the imagination how finding any kind of useful information on the Walkman would be possible in some parts of Africa, where even getting street names and postal codes is a “tug-of-war”.

Anyway, not to discourage any potential shoppers, the w715 Walkman is still good for many other things. Quoting IT News Africa again;

“On the top of premium music experience with crystal clear sound, the W715 includes popular Walkman features such as the music recognition application TrackID, SensMe for matching your mood to the music, and Shake Control to change tracks with the flick of a wrist. All this provides for a premium Music experience, fully integrated with Vodafone Music, allowing easy access to single and album downloads,” said Sony Ericsson.

2008 saw a number of significant changes in IT trends globally, the most distinctive being the rise of social media in 2008. Chris Crum of Web Pro News takes a look at the Year in Social Media. It is quite obvious that there was a lot of activity in the world of social media.

There were also quite a number of changes in SEO trends in 2008, most notably Google’s Custom Search, and toolbar update, which saw a number of websites lose and gain PR.

As far as global IT trends for 2009 are concerned, there have been a number of predictions, especially on the growth in “Tech Spending”. Quoting the Wall Street Journal blog;

“Businesses and other organizations in the U.S. will spend $573 billion on computer software, hardware and services next year, just 1.6% more than they spent in 2008, according to new data out Tuesday from Forrester Research Inc. In contrast, U.S. tech spending grew 4.1% in 2008 and 7% in 2007. Earlier this year, Forrester predicted U.S. tech spending would grow 6.1% in 2009.

The results are based on several factors, including real gross domestic product growth and how technology is valued by businesses, says Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester.

Despite forecasts that show real GDP declining, tech spending will grow slightly because “businesses have become more dependent on technology”

As the baseline mag puts it ;

“.. enterprises with a forward-thinking approach and a solid grasp of technology trends will have a distinct competitive advantage. The following technologies trends in areas like SaaS, virtualization and project portfolio management, among others, are likely to shape IT and business in the coming year, and they can give your company the advantage it needs to do business in this challenging economic environment.”

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Expected global IT trends for 2009

• Saas- Software as a Service
  Cloud computing environments will contribute to the expansion of SaaS into areas beyond ERP, CRM and HR management systems. Rob DeSisto, analyst for Gartner, says organizations increasingly see the benefits of moving large-scale software expenses from the capital budget to the operating budget.

• Document management and E-discovery
  Systems that retain, manage and retreive documents and data quickly and seamlessly will continue to rise in 2009.”Today, anything electronic is discoverable as any part of litigation,” Forrester analyst Kyle McNabb points out. “Developing rules and procedures is essential, and it is going to receive a lot more attention in the coming year.” Not surprisingly, the focus is rapidly moving beyond ERP and enterprise systems and into the broader realm of all documents and communications.

• Virtualization
  was a huge trend over the past 2 years, and will continue to expand in storage, desktop and data center technologies in 2009.According to industry estimates, 50 to 60 percent of all servers are now virtualized. The goal is to reduce server inefficiencies and lower costs. It is now moving into the realm of SMBs, and is also extending into storage and onto the desktop, says Moosa Matariyeh, enterprise storage specialist for CDW.

• Energy efficient Data Centers
  Data-center hardware in conjunction with virtualized systems, will continue to reduce power needs with more green componentry and infrastructure.Chip and PC manufacturers are moving toward more energy-efficient components including improved memory and resource management, but the big action in 2009 will be in the areas of virtualization and storage. Businesses are quickly recognizing that they have little margin for error, and energy costs are now a huge variable, says Anil Desai, an independent IT consultant.

• Security, Risk and Compliance
  Expect risk and compliance to be automated in intrusion, detection, authentication, patch management and security analytics.

• Enterprise mobility
  Being secure and synchronized to live data while on a host of pocket computing devices will continue to expand and improve in 2009.

• Social Networking
  “the champion of 2008″- Social Networking will continue to expand in customer relationships with brands and corporate team building efforts as ways to help the bottom line.Organizations are increasingly looking to next-generation social networking tools to conduct sophisticated business intelligence and analytics. In many cases, they are mining data and looking for trends and patterns, such as which salesperson has the relationships to pull off a deal or which customers seem to have the biggest influence with others online.

• Web 2.0
  Applications built-on Web technologies will continue to prosper and proliferate in new and more cost-efficient ways in 2009.

  Some organizations are now exploring Twitter or Facebook-like applications that allow individuals to push information out and create a simpler, organic communications structure. Others are using Web 2.0 tools to handle everything from asset management to business intelligence and analytics. Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media. says “We are seeing the Internet become a preferred platform for app development.”

• Project and Portfolio Management
  Robust Portfolio management systems that offer collaboration tools, business-process rules support, advanced reporting capabilities and governance tools will expand in 2009.
  
  PPM is evolving and bringing greater order to business-level decision making. Applications such as Daptiv PPM and Primavera are providing tools to mesh diverse workgroups, such as finance, marketing, human resources and IT–all while viewing groups of initiatives, conducting detailed analysis on them, and understanding underlying relationships across organizational roles and teams.

• Web and Video Conferencing
  Bigger pipes and converged data and voice networks will help spur more, cheaper video conferencing and use of video for connecting with new and existing customers.Collaboration tools are poised to go mainstream and further change the way business is conducted. According to the Boston-based research firm Aberdeen Group, 63 percent of companies say they will be using videoconferencing and so-called telepresence systems (essentially, a form of videoconferencing with high-quality images and audio) by the end of 2010.

There you have it. The future looks bright enough.

Seems the global recession played out differently for the IT industry. African firms and businesses will have to prepare themselves to meet these global IT trends, as the results would no doubt be a more productive year for business.

In an earlier post on this blog, we discussed the challenges facing the use of IT infrastructure in some parts of Africa. Recent studies have shown a slight improvement, but we aren’t there yet.

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Okay! It’s official- Ranking as we know it is “DEAD“.

The official release of Google’s all new Search Wiki marks the end of Page Ranking as we know it. Basically, Search wiki allows users personalize their search results, meaning- users now have a way to; “customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results“.

The effect of this on SEO need not even be mentioned. Search Wiki has introduced a new dimension to Search Engine Marketing, which essentially downplays the importance of SEO’s- with regard to SERP, as Search Engine Marketing has more or less shifted from just getting good rankings with SE’s, to brand marketing as a whole.

As Google’s Matt Cutts puts it,

SEOs are starting to embrace the fact that they are marketers. It’s a broader spectrum. You have to think about how you build buzz, how do you get loyal customers, how do you optimize your ROI. All those different things and that can include how do I make good videos, do I have a book, things like that.

So is page ranking officially “Dead”? Maybe not quite …….  according to Cutts;

I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.

According to the Google Blog, the changes you make only affect your own searches. But SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can also see how the community has collectively edited the search result.

Quoting Cedric Dupont, Product Manager, and Corin Anderson, Software Engineer,

This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic, giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives. We have been testing bits and pieces of SearchWiki for some time through live experiments, and we incorporated much of our learnings into this release. We are constantly striving to improve our users’ search experience, and this is yet another step along the way.

Well folks, that’s just a brief picture of the new face of SEO in 2009. There are also other things worth mentioning though, such as googlebot’s new ability to index flash and video content.