Google Enters Vertical Search With Travel

Something really major happened today. The New York Times reports: “Google has acquired ITA software, a 14-year-old company that makes software that organizes flight and pricing information, for $700 million in cash. ITA, based in Boston, specializes in organizing airline data, including flight times, seat availability and pricing.”

Higher Revenues But Also Higher Costs For Indian IT Players

Gartner estimated recently that worldwide IT services revenues declined 5.3% over the year in 2009 to $763 billion. Revenues for all players in the industry declined, with HP and Accenture reporting the biggest drops of 10.4% and 11.8% respectively. But India-based service providers saw revenues increase 3.6% for 2009 in dollar terms. However, growth was

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Will Amazon Or Apple Buy Netflix?

According to MasterCard Advisors’ SpendingPulse, online spending grew 18% over the year in March, outpacing the growth rate of traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Online retailers Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) also saw significant growth in their revenues. Amazon’s stock touched a record high, and recent quarter results surpassed market expectations, recording double-digit revenue and earnings growth. But the company

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Strong iPhone Sales In Asia Lead Apple Up and Away

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) reported another strong quarter this week driven by a whopping 131% increase in iPhone shipments and a 33% increase in Mac sales. Apple started shipping its latest innovation, the iPad, on April 3 after the close of its first quarter and is already expected to have sold more than 500,000 units of the

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Bullish on RIM and Palm

Last week, Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ:RIMM; TSX:RIM), the BlackBerry maker with annual revenue of $11.07 billion, reported stellar third quarter results while Palm, Inc. (NASDAQ:PALM) reported second quarter results that missed estimates. However, both companies beat estimates for device shipments. Let’s take a closer look.

Wireless Chips and IP: MRVL, IDCC, ARM, TSRA

It may still be a bit of a bumpy ride for semiconductor manufacturers, even as the smartphone market grows at a steady clip. According to Gartner, semiconductor revenue in 2010 is expected to increase 13% and rebound to 2008 levels of $255 billion as the PC market continues to strengthen, but in 2009, it is

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CRM And RNOW Hook Onto Social Networking

According to Gartner, worldwide CRM market revenue was up 12.5% to $9.15 billion in 2008, and Salesforce.com continues to rise rapidly with a 10.6% share. The company recently announced its social networking product Chatter, which was inspired by Facebook and Twitter. While Chatter has been developed in-house, rival SaaS customer relationship management (CRM) vendor RightNow is

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Intuit and ADP Make SaaS Acquisitions, But High Unemployment Hurts

This month, both Intuit and ADP made some SaaS acquisitions. Intuit has followed an aggressive acquisition strategy this year. It began its SaaS rollup with PayCycle for $170 million in June, and early this month it bought Mint.com for $170 million. ADP made its first acquisition this year with HRinterax, which has an award-winning Web-based

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