The Government of India has further postponed the auction of the much-awaited 3G spectrum in the country taking into consideration the concern of the prospective applicant companies, say reports.
According to a report, the last date of receiving application has been extended to January 20 from January 5. Though the auction was supposed to take place before December 31, it was later postponed to January 16.
Earlier there were reports that the auction would be delayed as the Department of Telecom has not received the Cabinet's approval on vital proposals relating to the services.
Also it was said that the Defence Ministry, which holds the spectrum, may not be able to vacate the same before the auction date.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Monday, December 29, 2008
Jet Airways, Kingfisher to cut air fares in January
Private air carriers Jet Airways and Kingfisher announced reduction in fares following steep fall in Aviation Turbine Fuel prices.
While Jet Airways said it was reducing air fare ranging 15-40 per cent from tomorrow, Kingfisher Airlines said it would effect fare cut across its network from January 1.
"Jet Airways is reducing basic fares ranging from 15-40 per cent across most of the domestic flights with effect from tomorrow," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.
The fare cut would be across all domestic sectors, the spokesperson said tonight.
Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had repeatedly asked the airlines to pass on the benefit of sharp drop in ATF prices to passengers. Earlier in the day, Kingfisher Airlines said it would effect a fare cut across its network from January 1.
"Kingfisher Airlines will begin the New Year on an aggressive note by slashing fares on its network," Kingfisher Airlines Chairman, Vijaya Mallya, said in a statement here. He, however, did not specify the quantum by which fares would come down.
The current low prices of ATF allows Kingfisher to pursue an opportunity to significantly increase market share by offering the fine five-star flying experience at reduced fares, he said.
Earlier, Kingfisher had said that it would effect fare cut only after the government classifies ATF in the Declared Goods category. The airlines across the board are demanding the Government to classify ATF in the Declared Goods category.
Under the declared goods category, there will be a uniform 4 per cent sales tax on air fuel across the country. The proposal is now before the Parliament.
However, several state governments are likely to oppose the uniform taxation as it would cause revenue loss to them. Now, the sales tax varies from four per cent to 32 per cent, and accounts for over 35 per cent of airlines' operational cost.
Over the last four months, there has been a sharp decline in ATF prices. While some air carriers earlier this month reduced the fuel surcharge between Rs 200 and Rs 400, they did not touch the basic fare.
While Jet Airways said it was reducing air fare ranging 15-40 per cent from tomorrow, Kingfisher Airlines said it would effect fare cut across its network from January 1.
"Jet Airways is reducing basic fares ranging from 15-40 per cent across most of the domestic flights with effect from tomorrow," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.
The fare cut would be across all domestic sectors, the spokesperson said tonight.
Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had repeatedly asked the airlines to pass on the benefit of sharp drop in ATF prices to passengers. Earlier in the day, Kingfisher Airlines said it would effect a fare cut across its network from January 1.
"Kingfisher Airlines will begin the New Year on an aggressive note by slashing fares on its network," Kingfisher Airlines Chairman, Vijaya Mallya, said in a statement here. He, however, did not specify the quantum by which fares would come down.
The current low prices of ATF allows Kingfisher to pursue an opportunity to significantly increase market share by offering the fine five-star flying experience at reduced fares, he said.
Earlier, Kingfisher had said that it would effect fare cut only after the government classifies ATF in the Declared Goods category. The airlines across the board are demanding the Government to classify ATF in the Declared Goods category.
Under the declared goods category, there will be a uniform 4 per cent sales tax on air fuel across the country. The proposal is now before the Parliament.
However, several state governments are likely to oppose the uniform taxation as it would cause revenue loss to them. Now, the sales tax varies from four per cent to 32 per cent, and accounts for over 35 per cent of airlines' operational cost.
Over the last four months, there has been a sharp decline in ATF prices. While some air carriers earlier this month reduced the fuel surcharge between Rs 200 and Rs 400, they did not touch the basic fare.
Microsoft advised to lay off over 9,000 employees
The world's top software firm Microsoft has been asked to cut its workforce by 10 per cent, or about 9,100 employees, to tell the market that profits are more important than revenue growth in difficult times.
Brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co's analyst Brad Reback has said in a report on Microsoft that such layoff exercise "would be a healthy move for the company."
The move would be well received by the market and would "signal that profitability is more important than revenue growth during this very difficult time," Reback added.
Calling for a 10 per cent reduction on the company's payrolls, Reback said in his report for the institutional investors of Microsoft that this would result in an approximately 10 per cent gain in its earnings per share.
The software giant had close to 91,000 employees on its payrolls at the end of July-September quarter.
Earlier in October, Microsoft had put in place a hiring freeze on some of its divisions, such as entertainment and devices businesses that make products like X-Box and Zune.
There have been some unconfirmed reports on blogs that the company would announce some major layoffs in the first month of 2009.
Microsoft is scheduled to release its second-quarter results for the fiscal year 2008-09 on January 22.
Battling the economic crisis, companies in their bid to save costs, have announced more than one lakh job cuts in the month of December alone in the US, while so far in 2008 there have been close to 20 lakh layoffs.
Source: Agencies
Brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co's analyst Brad Reback has said in a report on Microsoft that such layoff exercise "would be a healthy move for the company."
The move would be well received by the market and would "signal that profitability is more important than revenue growth during this very difficult time," Reback added.
Calling for a 10 per cent reduction on the company's payrolls, Reback said in his report for the institutional investors of Microsoft that this would result in an approximately 10 per cent gain in its earnings per share.
The software giant had close to 91,000 employees on its payrolls at the end of July-September quarter.
Earlier in October, Microsoft had put in place a hiring freeze on some of its divisions, such as entertainment and devices businesses that make products like X-Box and Zune.
There have been some unconfirmed reports on blogs that the company would announce some major layoffs in the first month of 2009.
Microsoft is scheduled to release its second-quarter results for the fiscal year 2008-09 on January 22.
Battling the economic crisis, companies in their bid to save costs, have announced more than one lakh job cuts in the month of December alone in the US, while so far in 2008 there have been close to 20 lakh layoffs.
Source: Agencies
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Top Web-based operating systems
Want to see what lies ahead in the world of operating systems? Head to the Web. That's where you'll find some workable examples of operating systems that move everything- applications, files, and communications- from the confines of your desktop to the more widely accessible Internet.
And mind you, Web-based operating systems are more than just a collection of applications that run within a browser. They're self-contained environments in which you can create and store documents, copy files from one folder or drive to another, and conduct communications.
In short, almost everything you can do from Windows or the Mac OS should be able to be accomplished within a Web OS. All you need is a Web browser to get there. Here's looking into some options.
Google Chrome
While the major players in the software industry are not yet among those with Web-based operating system (OS) prototypes, it's clear that the big names are paying attention- and making plans.
Google's Chrome, with its Spartan interface- largely devoid of visible menus, button bars, and status panels, easily reminds one of the basis of an operating system when it's expanded to full screen.
And Microsoft, although deriving a large portion of its revenue from the lucrative desktop applications business, has just announced that it will create Web-based versions of its Microsoft Office applications- and make them available for free.
eyeOS
A good place to start in your discovery of Web-based operating systems is eyeOS (http://eyeos.org), which is free, open source, and very easy to sign up for. There's no need to install anything to use eyeOS.
Simply sign up with a user name and password to create an account, and from that point forward, you have an operating system on the Web, accessible from any browser. eyeOS creates space on its servers to store your operating system settings and any files you create.
eyeOS resembles contemporary desktop-bound operating systems.
There's a workspace area- or desktop- along with icons on the left that represent shortcuts to applications, including a word processor, calendar, contact manager, RSS feed, and a trash bin.
Fire up the eyeOS word processor and you'll find yourself in a serviceable document creation tool, replete with toolbar buttons for most of the formatting tasks that users require today.
Documents you save are stored on eyeOS's servers by default, so there's no local storage involved. You can, if you choose, download the files you create to your own PC and upload files to your eyeOS environment.
The beauty of a Web-based environment, however, is that you can shut down your browser -- and thus your eyeOS operating system -- on one machine, launch a browser on another machine in another location, and then launch your eyeOS desktop again.
eyeOS even remembers all of the applications and documents you were last working on, so the workspace you see is exactly the one you left off with.
A green eyeOS button at the bottom middle of the screen is analogous to the Windows Vista Start button.
It contains shortcuts to system settings, applications, and a few other commands, including Close Session. Enter System Preferences, and you'll see some impressive customisation options, including the ability to change the theme, or look, of eyeOS to resemble Vista, Ubuntu, Gnome, or other operating systems. The one glaring omission from eyeOS is an e-mail client. Apparently you're expected to bring your own e-mail.
G.ho.st
G.ho.st (http://g.ho.st/) is in some ways even more full-featured and certainly more colourful- than eyeOS. After you sign up, for free, G.ho.st carves out an impressive 5 gigabytes of file storage on its servers for you, and it creates your very own G.ho.st Mail e-mail account, with 3 gigabytes of storage.
Like eyeOS, there's nothing to install. Once you sign up, you'll receive a confirmation e-mail message. Click the activation link inside, and you're ready to go.
The first time you launch G.ho.st, your browser will switch to full-screen mode so that you can see all there is that G.ho.st has to offer. There's a full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, your personal G.ho.st drive for file storage, instant messaging, and even a few games.
There's also plenty of hand-holding in G.ho.st, as well, with icons that offer to take you on a tour of G.ho.st, help you set up your e-mail, create and edit documents, and upload files from your desktop computer to your G.ho.st environment.
A Go button in the lower left-hand corner of the G.ho.st screen mimics Vista's Start button; it provides handy access to all of the operating system's features and programs.
G.ho.st is full of glitz and color, and it is consequently more demanding of your hardware and somewhat more sluggish than eyeOS, which is streamlined by comparison. Still, many will likely find that G.ho.st's friendliness will make any performance hit worthwhile.
Desktop Two
Desktop Two (http://desktoptwo.com) is a java-based Web operating system that's the quickest of all to set up and get going.
After a brief sign-up routine, the desktop loads, and you're ready to start exploring.
Desktop Two offers more applications that allow users to create their own presence on the Web than the other major Web operating systems. Along with a word processor and e-mail program, Desktop Two provides a Web site editor and a blogging programme.
The blogging application, in particular, is impressive, providing a two-click entry into the world of setting up and maintaining your own blog.
Once you create your first blog entry, the programme provides you with the Web address that you can distribute to the world so that others can visit your blog on the Internet.
Desktop Two's conventional applications are less impressive, however, in part because the operating system was not always able to save documents to Desktop Two's online storage system.
Why Web-based OS
One could argue that a Web-based operating system is redundant, since one needs a computer, operating system, and Web browser to access an online operating system.
While that's true, the point of an online operating system is complete environment portability.
That means being able to log on to any computer that has an Internet connection and, in the time it takes to launch your Web OS, having all of your applications and documents ready for you to resume work.
Although you could cobble together many of the elements of a Web OS by using, say, Google Docs, Yahoo Mail, and other online applications, doing so would require you to make several stops around the Internet.
There's no doubt that today's Web-based operating systems are far from feature-laden, and they probably will not tempt many to abandon their current routine that combines desktop and Web-based software.
But given the push that the major players in the industry are making toward a completely Web-based future, there's also little doubt that Web-based operating systems, or some form thereof, are in our collective future.
Source: Agencies
And mind you, Web-based operating systems are more than just a collection of applications that run within a browser. They're self-contained environments in which you can create and store documents, copy files from one folder or drive to another, and conduct communications.
In short, almost everything you can do from Windows or the Mac OS should be able to be accomplished within a Web OS. All you need is a Web browser to get there. Here's looking into some options.
Google Chrome
While the major players in the software industry are not yet among those with Web-based operating system (OS) prototypes, it's clear that the big names are paying attention- and making plans.
Google's Chrome, with its Spartan interface- largely devoid of visible menus, button bars, and status panels, easily reminds one of the basis of an operating system when it's expanded to full screen.
And Microsoft, although deriving a large portion of its revenue from the lucrative desktop applications business, has just announced that it will create Web-based versions of its Microsoft Office applications- and make them available for free.
eyeOS
A good place to start in your discovery of Web-based operating systems is eyeOS (http://eyeos.org), which is free, open source, and very easy to sign up for. There's no need to install anything to use eyeOS.
Simply sign up with a user name and password to create an account, and from that point forward, you have an operating system on the Web, accessible from any browser. eyeOS creates space on its servers to store your operating system settings and any files you create.
eyeOS resembles contemporary desktop-bound operating systems.
There's a workspace area- or desktop- along with icons on the left that represent shortcuts to applications, including a word processor, calendar, contact manager, RSS feed, and a trash bin.
Fire up the eyeOS word processor and you'll find yourself in a serviceable document creation tool, replete with toolbar buttons for most of the formatting tasks that users require today.
Documents you save are stored on eyeOS's servers by default, so there's no local storage involved. You can, if you choose, download the files you create to your own PC and upload files to your eyeOS environment.
The beauty of a Web-based environment, however, is that you can shut down your browser -- and thus your eyeOS operating system -- on one machine, launch a browser on another machine in another location, and then launch your eyeOS desktop again.
eyeOS even remembers all of the applications and documents you were last working on, so the workspace you see is exactly the one you left off with.
A green eyeOS button at the bottom middle of the screen is analogous to the Windows Vista Start button.
It contains shortcuts to system settings, applications, and a few other commands, including Close Session. Enter System Preferences, and you'll see some impressive customisation options, including the ability to change the theme, or look, of eyeOS to resemble Vista, Ubuntu, Gnome, or other operating systems. The one glaring omission from eyeOS is an e-mail client. Apparently you're expected to bring your own e-mail.
G.ho.st
G.ho.st (http://g.ho.st/) is in some ways even more full-featured and certainly more colourful- than eyeOS. After you sign up, for free, G.ho.st carves out an impressive 5 gigabytes of file storage on its servers for you, and it creates your very own G.ho.st Mail e-mail account, with 3 gigabytes of storage.
Like eyeOS, there's nothing to install. Once you sign up, you'll receive a confirmation e-mail message. Click the activation link inside, and you're ready to go.
The first time you launch G.ho.st, your browser will switch to full-screen mode so that you can see all there is that G.ho.st has to offer. There's a full-featured word processor, spreadsheet, e-mail, your personal G.ho.st drive for file storage, instant messaging, and even a few games.
There's also plenty of hand-holding in G.ho.st, as well, with icons that offer to take you on a tour of G.ho.st, help you set up your e-mail, create and edit documents, and upload files from your desktop computer to your G.ho.st environment.
A Go button in the lower left-hand corner of the G.ho.st screen mimics Vista's Start button; it provides handy access to all of the operating system's features and programs.
G.ho.st is full of glitz and color, and it is consequently more demanding of your hardware and somewhat more sluggish than eyeOS, which is streamlined by comparison. Still, many will likely find that G.ho.st's friendliness will make any performance hit worthwhile.
Desktop Two
Desktop Two (http://desktoptwo.com) is a java-based Web operating system that's the quickest of all to set up and get going.
After a brief sign-up routine, the desktop loads, and you're ready to start exploring.
Desktop Two offers more applications that allow users to create their own presence on the Web than the other major Web operating systems. Along with a word processor and e-mail program, Desktop Two provides a Web site editor and a blogging programme.
The blogging application, in particular, is impressive, providing a two-click entry into the world of setting up and maintaining your own blog.
Once you create your first blog entry, the programme provides you with the Web address that you can distribute to the world so that others can visit your blog on the Internet.
Desktop Two's conventional applications are less impressive, however, in part because the operating system was not always able to save documents to Desktop Two's online storage system.
Why Web-based OS
One could argue that a Web-based operating system is redundant, since one needs a computer, operating system, and Web browser to access an online operating system.
While that's true, the point of an online operating system is complete environment portability.
That means being able to log on to any computer that has an Internet connection and, in the time it takes to launch your Web OS, having all of your applications and documents ready for you to resume work.
Although you could cobble together many of the elements of a Web OS by using, say, Google Docs, Yahoo Mail, and other online applications, doing so would require you to make several stops around the Internet.
There's no doubt that today's Web-based operating systems are far from feature-laden, and they probably will not tempt many to abandon their current routine that combines desktop and Web-based software.
But given the push that the major players in the industry are making toward a completely Web-based future, there's also little doubt that Web-based operating systems, or some form thereof, are in our collective future.
Source: Agencies
Caretel Infotech hires 600 people for BPO operations
Dalmia group company Caretel Infotech is upbeat about the opportunities in the BPO space and has hired about 600 people, even while others are handing out pink slips to employees amid the current slowdown.
"In last 30 days, we have recruited 619 employees for our various projects from metros and even small towns like Chindwara at Rajasthan for our Kisaan Call Centre Project. For our various assignments, we will be recruiting more and more people from all over India and train them for the future," Caretel Infotech Chief Executive Officer Amit Roy said in a statement.
The company also said it is looking at the downturn as as an opportunity to bag more deals, both in the country and overseas.
"We are looking at this slowdown as an opportunity and have started international outsourcing process for some part of the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to manage the slowdown impact. We have also increased our national clientele as we have bagged assignments from reputed brands like DDA ... and soon will close a DTH service provider in India," Roy said.
Caretel has 13 business centres in India and employs over 6,000 people. It is now expanding its operations overseas and is targeting a significant growth from its global clients.
For our international clients, we will be hiring 200 or more people in near future, he added.
Source: Agencies
"In last 30 days, we have recruited 619 employees for our various projects from metros and even small towns like Chindwara at Rajasthan for our Kisaan Call Centre Project. For our various assignments, we will be recruiting more and more people from all over India and train them for the future," Caretel Infotech Chief Executive Officer Amit Roy said in a statement.
The company also said it is looking at the downturn as as an opportunity to bag more deals, both in the country and overseas.
"We are looking at this slowdown as an opportunity and have started international outsourcing process for some part of the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand to manage the slowdown impact. We have also increased our national clientele as we have bagged assignments from reputed brands like DDA ... and soon will close a DTH service provider in India," Roy said.
Caretel has 13 business centres in India and employs over 6,000 people. It is now expanding its operations overseas and is targeting a significant growth from its global clients.
For our international clients, we will be hiring 200 or more people in near future, he added.
Source: Agencies
Friday, December 26, 2008
Techies bidding farewell in 2008
It's time to bid adieu to the year 2008, the year which witnessed the farewells of some of the biggest names in the technology world -- some of the marking the end of an era.
While most of these were ceremonious exits with some moving to take up their passions or philanthropy, others in pursuit of greener pastures. There were also some unceremonious exits, where some CEOs were made to resign penalising them for falling revenues and constant battering of their company's stocks at the bourses.
Here's looking into some of the most high-profile exits of 2008:
Arun Sarin, Vodafone
One of the most successful CEOs of British telecom giant Vodafone, Arun Sarin, quit the company in the July 2008 to don a new challenge.
During his five year tenure at the world's largest mobile firm, Sarin is credited for acquiring a controlling stake in one of India's biggest mobile phone companies, Hutchison Essar. Under him Vodafone posted group revenue of 35.5 billion pounds for the year ending March 31, an increase of 14.1 per cent, and organic growth of 4.2 per cent. This came in marginally higher than market consensus, provided by the company, of 35.2 billion to 35.4 billion pounds.
Under Sarin, Vodafone expanded aggressively into emerging markets, including Romania, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Sarin visited India before his exit along with his successor to participate in Vodafone-Essar board meeting, triggering speculation that he may join Tatas, but officials of the Indian conglomerate debunked any such report.
Post-exit Sarin planned a trekking trip to Himalayas before settling in California. Recently, Sarin, 53, who quit Vodafone at the pinnacle of his career, was speculated to be the most sought-after contender for the position of Yahoo CEO, after the Jerry Yang's exit.
Sarin, however, said he was not keen on the position. Sarin is looking at alternative roles at other US public companies as well as at a private equity firm, the Financial Times wrote recently.
The India-born US citizen is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and has an MBA degree from University of California, Berkley.
Bill Gates, Microsoft
This was surely the biggest farewell of 2008. The exit of Bill Gates marked an end of era. Gates retired from Microsoft, the company he co-founded with college-friend Paul Allen in 1975.
In June, Gates quit as full-time chairman and software architect of the world's largest software company to work full-time at his charitable organisation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain the company's non-executive chairman.
A Harvard College drop out, Gates has been a permanent fixture in the Forbes Richest people list, holding the numero uno slot for 15 years in a row between 1993 and 2007. In 2008, Gates was topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico's telecom tycoon Carlos Slim in the world's wealthiest list.
Bill Gates' key creation is Microsoft, a company with sales of $51 billion as of June 2007 with 78,000 employees across 105 countries. Almost 90 per cent of the estimated 1 billion computers (desktop and laptop) in the world run on Microsoft's Windows and Office. The company has products across the layers network, operating system, database, middleware, application software.
Gates departure comes at a time when Microsoft is engaged in an escalating rivalry with Google and other competitors who are using the internet to chip away at its software dominance.
During his recent visit to India, Gates launched a major initiative for India’s public healthcare with a special focus on eradicating polio.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo
After a rocky tenure at Yahoo, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as chief executive this November.
Among the Silicon Valley dotcom billionaires, Yang was named CEO in June 2007 after Terry Semel exit. As CEO, Yang struggled to turn around the company's dwindling fortunes. The rejection of Microsoft offer and a failed advertising deal with Google marred his brief tenure.
Earlier this year, Yang rejected a $33 per share offer by Microsoft for Yahoo worth a total of more than $47 billion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer later withdrew the offer after Yang sought $37 per share. The negotiating breakdown triggered a shareholder revolt led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who called for Yang's ouster in July. Since then Yahoo has been trading at between $10-12 a share.
With a fortune estimated at $2.23 billion, some shareholders accused Yang of putting his personal affection for the company he created over the interests of its shareholders. After squandering the opportunity to sell to Microsoft, Yang tried to boost Yahoo's profit by forging an advertising partnership with Google. But this backup plan too fell when Google walked away from the deal to avoid a court battle with the US Justice Department, which concluded that the partnership may throttle competition in the online advertising market.
Sanjay Jha, Qualcomm
Indian engineering whizkid Sanjay Jha left Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) group as COO and president this year to join beleaguered US telecom major Motorola as CEO of Mobile Devices.
At Motorola, Jha holds a key task to pull the American cellphone pioneer which slipped to the fourth position in global handset sales and the downslide has been quite sharp.
What top's Jha's priorities is reversing the fortunes of the company’s loss-making handset business -- comprising over one third of Motorola’s total business worth $36.6 billion.
Forty five-year-old Jha started as a senior engineer at Qualcomm VLSI (very large scale integration) group in 1994 and was promoted as senior vice-president of engineering in 1998.
He was elevated as the president of QCT in 2003 when the chipset and software division was started at Qualcomm. For the past five years, this division of Qualcomm has been ranked among the world's largest fabless semiconductor producers, and was rated as being ahead of the leader Texas Instruments last year. Qualcomm had sold its own CDMA cell phone business to Kyocera in February 2000.
Neelam Dhawan, Microsoft
Ending her three-and-a-half years stint as MD Microsoft India, Neelam Dhawan joined Hewlett-Packard India as its managing director in June.
At HP, 48-year-old Neelam holds key tasks of driving overall strategy, revenues and profitability for HP India. Currently she reports to Balu Doraisamy, MD, HP Asia Pacific & Japan.
During her tenure at Microsoft, she looked into the strategic focus and improved company's operating efficiency and execution, as well as its financial performance and customer focus.
Prior to Microsoft, Neelam worked with Compaq as head (Enterprise Sales) and HP as vice president (Customer Solutions Group). Under her leadership the Rs 16,000-crore Hewlett-Packard recently won a multi-million dollar Godrej outsourcing deal.
An economics graduate from St Stephen’s College Delhi, Neelam holds a masters in Business Administration from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.
Lee Kun-hee, Samsung
In one of the most sensational and controversial exits of the year, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, resigned following an indictment on tax evasion charges after a counsel investigation.
Known to be the most powerful Korean tycoon, Lee was charged with $133m tax evasion and breach of trust during his 20-year tenure at Samsung. Lee was also charged with damaging the interest of other shareholders. He was accused of forcing Samsung subsidiaries to sell shares to his son at unfairly low prices.
However, the company was cleared of the most serious allegation that it raised money to bribe influential citizens and ministers in its native South Korea.
Joining Lee in stepping down were Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo and Lee Jae-yong, the chairman's son and heir apparent to the Samsung throne. Nine other senior executives also left Samsung following the charges.
Sixty six-year old Lee is credited of having built $160-billion Samsung Group which is Korea Inc's pride, accounting for roughly 21 per cent of the country's total exports.
Ben Verwaayen, British Telecom
British Telecom Group, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, saw the departure of its CEO Ben Verwaayen in the month of April.
Having served BT for almost six years, Verwaayen headed back to the US to take up a position with a venture capital firm. Verwaayen joined BT in January 2002 after quitting his job from US equipment vendor Lucent.
During his tenure at BT, Verwaayen initiated a complete broadband overhaul of BT's aging infrastructure. He mended fences with Ofcom, the UK's version of the FCC.
Fifty-six year old Dutch national was also awarded an honorary knighthood for services to the communications industry. Verwaayen helped BT buy a slew of US-based companies including Infonet, Radianz, Counterpane and INS pushing the telecom giant into a number of emerging markets.
Ian Livingston, who was chief executive of BT Retail, succeeded Verwaayen.
Farewell in the wings: Steve Jobs?
Apple recently announced that its Chief Executive Steve Jobs will not deliver the keynote address at the Macworld trade show next month. The announcement once again revived investors' concerns about the state of his health and sent the company's shares down.
Apple spokesman, however, denied that Jobs was missing the show due to health issues. Instead of Jobs, Philip Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote.
However, Samuel Wilson, an analyst at JMP Securities, said Jobs' absence at the event was important. "It's like the first time in a long time he hasn't spoken in Macworld. Why is he not speaking this year would be the question."
Investors have been concerned Jobs health after he was diagnosed with cancer some years back. In 2004, Jobs, 53, said he had undergone successful surgery to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer. In September, Jobs, who is often perceived as irreplaceable as Apple's leader, appeared thin but jaunty as he introduced new iPod digital music players.
Macworld is a cultural event that draws thousands of Apple fans and technology aficionados to San Francisco, where they have been treated to major announcements from Jobs in past years, including the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Source: Indiatimes Infotech
While most of these were ceremonious exits with some moving to take up their passions or philanthropy, others in pursuit of greener pastures. There were also some unceremonious exits, where some CEOs were made to resign penalising them for falling revenues and constant battering of their company's stocks at the bourses.
Here's looking into some of the most high-profile exits of 2008:
Arun Sarin, Vodafone
One of the most successful CEOs of British telecom giant Vodafone, Arun Sarin, quit the company in the July 2008 to don a new challenge.
During his five year tenure at the world's largest mobile firm, Sarin is credited for acquiring a controlling stake in one of India's biggest mobile phone companies, Hutchison Essar. Under him Vodafone posted group revenue of 35.5 billion pounds for the year ending March 31, an increase of 14.1 per cent, and organic growth of 4.2 per cent. This came in marginally higher than market consensus, provided by the company, of 35.2 billion to 35.4 billion pounds.
Under Sarin, Vodafone expanded aggressively into emerging markets, including Romania, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Sarin visited India before his exit along with his successor to participate in Vodafone-Essar board meeting, triggering speculation that he may join Tatas, but officials of the Indian conglomerate debunked any such report.
Post-exit Sarin planned a trekking trip to Himalayas before settling in California. Recently, Sarin, 53, who quit Vodafone at the pinnacle of his career, was speculated to be the most sought-after contender for the position of Yahoo CEO, after the Jerry Yang's exit.
Sarin, however, said he was not keen on the position. Sarin is looking at alternative roles at other US public companies as well as at a private equity firm, the Financial Times wrote recently.
The India-born US citizen is an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and has an MBA degree from University of California, Berkley.
Bill Gates, Microsoft
This was surely the biggest farewell of 2008. The exit of Bill Gates marked an end of era. Gates retired from Microsoft, the company he co-founded with college-friend Paul Allen in 1975.
In June, Gates quit as full-time chairman and software architect of the world's largest software company to work full-time at his charitable organisation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will remain the company's non-executive chairman.
A Harvard College drop out, Gates has been a permanent fixture in the Forbes Richest people list, holding the numero uno slot for 15 years in a row between 1993 and 2007. In 2008, Gates was topped by investor Warren Buffett and Mexico's telecom tycoon Carlos Slim in the world's wealthiest list.
Bill Gates' key creation is Microsoft, a company with sales of $51 billion as of June 2007 with 78,000 employees across 105 countries. Almost 90 per cent of the estimated 1 billion computers (desktop and laptop) in the world run on Microsoft's Windows and Office. The company has products across the layers network, operating system, database, middleware, application software.
Gates departure comes at a time when Microsoft is engaged in an escalating rivalry with Google and other competitors who are using the internet to chip away at its software dominance.
During his recent visit to India, Gates launched a major initiative for India’s public healthcare with a special focus on eradicating polio.
Jerry Yang, Yahoo
After a rocky tenure at Yahoo, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down as chief executive this November.
Among the Silicon Valley dotcom billionaires, Yang was named CEO in June 2007 after Terry Semel exit. As CEO, Yang struggled to turn around the company's dwindling fortunes. The rejection of Microsoft offer and a failed advertising deal with Google marred his brief tenure.
Earlier this year, Yang rejected a $33 per share offer by Microsoft for Yahoo worth a total of more than $47 billion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer later withdrew the offer after Yang sought $37 per share. The negotiating breakdown triggered a shareholder revolt led by billionaire investor Carl Icahn, who called for Yang's ouster in July. Since then Yahoo has been trading at between $10-12 a share.
With a fortune estimated at $2.23 billion, some shareholders accused Yang of putting his personal affection for the company he created over the interests of its shareholders. After squandering the opportunity to sell to Microsoft, Yang tried to boost Yahoo's profit by forging an advertising partnership with Google. But this backup plan too fell when Google walked away from the deal to avoid a court battle with the US Justice Department, which concluded that the partnership may throttle competition in the online advertising market.
Sanjay Jha, Qualcomm
Indian engineering whizkid Sanjay Jha left Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (QCT) group as COO and president this year to join beleaguered US telecom major Motorola as CEO of Mobile Devices.
At Motorola, Jha holds a key task to pull the American cellphone pioneer which slipped to the fourth position in global handset sales and the downslide has been quite sharp.
What top's Jha's priorities is reversing the fortunes of the company’s loss-making handset business -- comprising over one third of Motorola’s total business worth $36.6 billion.
Forty five-year-old Jha started as a senior engineer at Qualcomm VLSI (very large scale integration) group in 1994 and was promoted as senior vice-president of engineering in 1998.
He was elevated as the president of QCT in 2003 when the chipset and software division was started at Qualcomm. For the past five years, this division of Qualcomm has been ranked among the world's largest fabless semiconductor producers, and was rated as being ahead of the leader Texas Instruments last year. Qualcomm had sold its own CDMA cell phone business to Kyocera in February 2000.
Neelam Dhawan, Microsoft
Ending her three-and-a-half years stint as MD Microsoft India, Neelam Dhawan joined Hewlett-Packard India as its managing director in June.
At HP, 48-year-old Neelam holds key tasks of driving overall strategy, revenues and profitability for HP India. Currently she reports to Balu Doraisamy, MD, HP Asia Pacific & Japan.
During her tenure at Microsoft, she looked into the strategic focus and improved company's operating efficiency and execution, as well as its financial performance and customer focus.
Prior to Microsoft, Neelam worked with Compaq as head (Enterprise Sales) and HP as vice president (Customer Solutions Group). Under her leadership the Rs 16,000-crore Hewlett-Packard recently won a multi-million dollar Godrej outsourcing deal.
An economics graduate from St Stephen’s College Delhi, Neelam holds a masters in Business Administration from the Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University.
Lee Kun-hee, Samsung
In one of the most sensational and controversial exits of the year, Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee, resigned following an indictment on tax evasion charges after a counsel investigation.
Known to be the most powerful Korean tycoon, Lee was charged with $133m tax evasion and breach of trust during his 20-year tenure at Samsung. Lee was also charged with damaging the interest of other shareholders. He was accused of forcing Samsung subsidiaries to sell shares to his son at unfairly low prices.
However, the company was cleared of the most serious allegation that it raised money to bribe influential citizens and ministers in its native South Korea.
Joining Lee in stepping down were Vice Chairman Lee Hak-soo and Lee Jae-yong, the chairman's son and heir apparent to the Samsung throne. Nine other senior executives also left Samsung following the charges.
Sixty six-year old Lee is credited of having built $160-billion Samsung Group which is Korea Inc's pride, accounting for roughly 21 per cent of the country's total exports.
Ben Verwaayen, British Telecom
British Telecom Group, one of the largest telecommunications companies in Europe, saw the departure of its CEO Ben Verwaayen in the month of April.
Having served BT for almost six years, Verwaayen headed back to the US to take up a position with a venture capital firm. Verwaayen joined BT in January 2002 after quitting his job from US equipment vendor Lucent.
During his tenure at BT, Verwaayen initiated a complete broadband overhaul of BT's aging infrastructure. He mended fences with Ofcom, the UK's version of the FCC.
Fifty-six year old Dutch national was also awarded an honorary knighthood for services to the communications industry. Verwaayen helped BT buy a slew of US-based companies including Infonet, Radianz, Counterpane and INS pushing the telecom giant into a number of emerging markets.
Ian Livingston, who was chief executive of BT Retail, succeeded Verwaayen.
Farewell in the wings: Steve Jobs?
Apple recently announced that its Chief Executive Steve Jobs will not deliver the keynote address at the Macworld trade show next month. The announcement once again revived investors' concerns about the state of his health and sent the company's shares down.
Apple spokesman, however, denied that Jobs was missing the show due to health issues. Instead of Jobs, Philip Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, will deliver the keynote.
However, Samuel Wilson, an analyst at JMP Securities, said Jobs' absence at the event was important. "It's like the first time in a long time he hasn't spoken in Macworld. Why is he not speaking this year would be the question."
Investors have been concerned Jobs health after he was diagnosed with cancer some years back. In 2004, Jobs, 53, said he had undergone successful surgery to remove a rare type of pancreatic cancer. In September, Jobs, who is often perceived as irreplaceable as Apple's leader, appeared thin but jaunty as he introduced new iPod digital music players.
Macworld is a cultural event that draws thousands of Apple fans and technology aficionados to San Francisco, where they have been treated to major announcements from Jobs in past years, including the launch of the iPhone in 2007.
Source: Indiatimes Infotech
50,000 Indian IT jobs may go, says UNITES
Over 50,000 IT professionals in the country may lose their jobs over the next six months as the situation in the sector is expected to worsen due to the impact of global economic meltdown on the export-driven industry, a forecast by a union of IT Enabled Services warned.
"...there would be 50,000 job losses (IT and BPO put together) over the next six months," Karthik Shekhar, general secretary of UNITES India, a politically neutral union of ITES professionals told the media.
The job loss in the IT and BPO sector in the country topped 10,000 in the September-December period, Shekar said.
While employees of medium-sized companies bore the brunt of job losses in the September-December period, it's going to be their counterparts in the big and small firms who would increasingly face the axe in the coming six months, he said.
UNITES India, affiliated to the global union United Network International, suggested that the companies in trouble could resort to salary and incentive cuts without trying to "squeeze" the staff, rather than adopting the "layoff path".
Employees are willing to take such cuts for 12-16 months till the demand picks up again, when such benefits should be restored to them.
Shekhar said senior officials of the industry had concurred with the figure of 10,000 job loses in September-December, stating that it accounted for "bottom five per cent of the performers".
Consultations with the union's counterparts in the US and UK suggested that slowdown would continue to hit the offshore sourcing space, he said.
He said factors like continued slowdown, likely "tax application" to companies outsourcing jobs under the new US regime and tightening in regard to H1-B visas were among the key reasons cited for the acceleration in issue of pink slips.
Source: Agencies
"...there would be 50,000 job losses (IT and BPO put together) over the next six months," Karthik Shekhar, general secretary of UNITES India, a politically neutral union of ITES professionals told the media.
The job loss in the IT and BPO sector in the country topped 10,000 in the September-December period, Shekar said.
While employees of medium-sized companies bore the brunt of job losses in the September-December period, it's going to be their counterparts in the big and small firms who would increasingly face the axe in the coming six months, he said.
UNITES India, affiliated to the global union United Network International, suggested that the companies in trouble could resort to salary and incentive cuts without trying to "squeeze" the staff, rather than adopting the "layoff path".
Employees are willing to take such cuts for 12-16 months till the demand picks up again, when such benefits should be restored to them.
Shekhar said senior officials of the industry had concurred with the figure of 10,000 job loses in September-December, stating that it accounted for "bottom five per cent of the performers".
Consultations with the union's counterparts in the US and UK suggested that slowdown would continue to hit the offshore sourcing space, he said.
He said factors like continued slowdown, likely "tax application" to companies outsourcing jobs under the new US regime and tightening in regard to H1-B visas were among the key reasons cited for the acceleration in issue of pink slips.
Source: Agencies
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