Pro IT Zone

The next five years will be very interesting for Apple if a new report by the market research firm Forrester is correct. The company predicts that Apple will dominate the digital home by 2013.

Analysts J.P. Gownder and James McQuivey predict that Apple will offer eight products and key services to connect PCs and digital content to a TV-stereo infrastructure in the homes of consumers. The strategy will include the launch of new products and reengineering in some existing services.

For example, the report said that Apple will be re-engineering the Apple Store and will cover the installation of services at home to lead a fully integrated digital experience. Analysts also expect Apple to launch a home server that will not be known as a server and the launch of a remote control that controls the music of all users of devices including iPods, home stereos and computers.

The frames with access to digital networks and clock radios that are tuned and images from the server above are also on the list. Finally, Forrester expects Apple TV move to Apple HDTV.

Whether Forrester forecasts are met or not, definitely will be fun to see Apple in the coming years.

Microsoft demonstrated its multi-touch interface for their next operating system Windows 7 on Tuesday. The interface provides a touch-screen for users to interact with their computers.

The interface uses technology multi-touch surface, filed last year by Microsoft, which leverages the capabilities of touch and multi-touch to give users a more natural way of interacting directly with the computational devices. It hopes to see the surface devices similar to a table in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and venues for public events, said Chris Flores, a director at Microsoft who works in the Communications Team to Windows Client, said in blog Windows Vista Team on Tuesday.

In a demo for the conference D: All Things Digital Wall Street Journal, Julie Larson-Green, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for program management experience in Windows, showed a serial of applications that would use multi-touch technology, including applications of photography that will allow users to manage photos on the screen more easily. The user can expand with just drag and drop a screen, zooming and rotating windows with their fingers. Those who have musical inclinations can exercise their fingers on a piano keyboard on the screen.

In a blog entered on Tuesday, Flores said that investments in long-term architecture introduced in Windows Vista and then refined for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 will lead to the Windows 7. Contrary to some speculations, Microsoft is not creating a new kernel for Windows 7, he said. One of the design goals is 7 for Windows will run on the hardware specified recommended by Windows Vista and which applications and devices that run with Windows Vista will be compatible with Windows 7, Flores added.

Amazon.com Inc., the largest online retailer, will launch a service to view online videos during the next few weeks, which will increase its digital offer.

Jeff Bezos, who spoke on a three-day conference organized by the newspaper The Wall Street Journal, not at length and a spokesman for the company did not provide further details.

The company has expanded its offering of digital media to compete with rivals such as computer maker Apple Computer, which dominates the category of downloading music with its iTunes site.

Amazon is raising its own digital music store offering downloads of films, television programs and videos on their website.

The company is not alone in offering the service of online videos, which allows in essence rent movies online instead of downloading large files for storage in personal computers or other devices.

On Wednesday, the executive president of the DVD rental by mail company Netflix Inc., Reed Hastings, said the firm is currently funding an online video service “to give us years of subscriptions and expansion of earnings.”

“Once we have ready the service we can attract more than 20 million subscribers in the world,” Hastings said in a conference with investors in San Francisco.

Jerry Yang, CEO of Yahoo Inc. said on Wednesday that an agreement with Microsoft would have a tremendous power, but that the software giant no longer seems interested in a full merger.

Speaking at a conference of leaders of the high-tech industry, Yang expressed his opinion on possible agreements with Microsoft Corp. and leader Google Inc. in Internet searches.

In his most explicit comments to date on the four-month tug of war with the manufacturer of Windows, Yang indicated that his company remained open to a possible treatment, but that Microsoft had ruled out a merger for now.

Earlier this month, Microsoft withdrew a proposal to acquire Yahoo for $ 47,500 million, or 33 U.S. dollars per share, after the Internet company rejected the offer and said that only reach an agreement by 37 U.S. dollars per share.

“We will not withdraw this offer, Microsoft did,” Yang said on Wednesday during an interview at the conference on “D: All Things Digital,” which meets annually to the elite world of technology in San Diego.

The executive said he thought that a combination with Microsoft would have had “a tremendous amount of power.”

In mid-May, the two companies announced that they had begun talks on an agreement and an unspecified level lower than a merger.

“Microsoft is no longer interested in buying the company, and we are talking about other things. We have to understand what they are proposing … clearly have interests in Yahoo,” Yang said.

Last week, a source close to the last round of negotiations said that Microsoft had proposed to buy the business search Yahoo and acquire a minority stake in pioneering the Internet, far from offering a full merger.

As part of the deal, Yahoo would sell its assets in Asia, including minority stakes in Yahoo Japan and the Chinese group Alibaba, while Microsoft would buy a portion of the rest of the company, the source explained.

In an interview in the same conference, the CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer suggested on Tuesday that discussions had broken mainly by the issue of price. “Clearly there is a difference between what it offered and asked,” Ballmer said.

In an interview with an expert in technology Walt Mossberg, Yang said that a merger with Microsoft would involve a number of issues that go beyond price and that the discussions never explored such issues, including regulatory matters.

The president of Yahoo, Susan Decker, who was with Yang at the scene where they conducted the interview, said that the price had always been the biggest barrier to reach an agreement with Microsoft.

As for Google, Yang acknowledged that an agreement on competition with his rival would make sense, but for the moment there were none.

In addition, after the criticism he received after the breakdown of talks on a purchase by Microsoft, Yang defended its year of management at the helm of the company.

“I think I’m the best person to lead Yahoo,” said co-founder of the company.

Dell Inc., the second largest computer manufacturer in the world, presented on Thursday to the expected higher earnings, driven by strong demand and lower operating costs.

The company shares increased almost 8 per cent in the operations after the closing of the market following the results.

“The rise, I believe, was due mainly to the repurchase of shares and income slightly higher,” said Shannon Cross, analyst at Cross Research. “Gross margin is online,” he added.

“Reducing costs Dell is starting to benefit margins,” said Cross. “Now the company needs to show that it can maintain and gain market share beyond just filling the channels take advantage of its retail partners,” he added.

The net gain from Dell in the three months ended May 2 was $ 784 million, or 38 cents per share, which compares with 759 million, or 33 cents per share, in the same period a year earlier.

Sales rose 9 percent to 16,000 million dollars.

Analysts were expecting on average a net gain of 33 cents per share on revenues of 15,700 million dollars in the fiscal first quarter, according to the average expectations of Wall Street according to Reuters Estimates.

Dell said that shipments of goods grew by 22 percent in the quarter, driven by a 43 percent increase in unit sales of laptop computers.

The Financial chairman Don Carty, told reporters in a conference call that he expects the company to continue to grow faster than the industry in general and enjoy increased revenue, profitability and cash flow.

Dell, which has headquarters in Round Rock in Texas, also cut 3,700 jobs in the quarter reported, bringing the total reduction in payroll to 7,000 jobs over the past year, close to its goal of 8,900.

The company, which in recent quarters made a strong campaign to sell PCs through retailers, said that the personal computer unit released in the quarter grew more than twice the pace of industry.

“We are running all points of our strategy to generate growth in every product category and in every part of the world,” said chairman and CEO Michael Dell said in a statement.

Shares of Dell scalability by 8 percent to 23.55 dollars in electronic transactions, after climbing 12 cents to close at 21.81 dollars in regular session on the Nasdaq.

Dell’s shares have risen nearly 10 percent over the past three months, compared with a fall of about 2 percent of its rival Hewlett-Packard Co. over the same period, and are just behind the increase of 11 percent the Nasdaq.