Friday 15 May 2009
Week in review: EU slams Intel with record fine
by Steven Musil
Intel was fined more than 1 billion euros by the European Commission for violating antitrust legislation, following a lengthy investigation prompted by complaints made by chipmaking rival Advanced Micro Devices.
The world's chip giant was fined 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) for engaging in illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for computer chips called x86 central processing units (CPUs), the Commission said.
Between October 2002 and December 2007, Intel held more than 70 percent of the worldwide x86 CPU market. The Commission found that during the period in question, Intel engaged in two illegal practices. The first was that it gave wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on the condition that they buy all or almost all of their x86 CPUs from Intel.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini responded aggressively to the conclusions attached to the fine and said the company will appeal the ruling. Otellini cited the Commission's determination of the chipmaker "granting conditional rebates, where the conditions just weren't just volume-based but allegations about exclusive dealings or in one case exclusivity on retail shelves."
"Intel strongly disagrees with this decision. We do not have those kinds of conditions in our contracts. Our contracts are straightforward. They're consistent worldwide and they're volume-based: the more you buy, the less you pay," he said.
Answering a question about how will this affect Intel business practices, Otellini said he hasn't seen the 500-page document yet. "The two-and-a-half page summary released to us did not include what the specific remedies they're asking for are," he said.
However, don't expect the EU's antitrust enforcement decision to radically change what you see when it's time to buy your next PC. Antitrust actions can have a dramatic effect when a decision breaks a company into pieces, but the biggest factors in the rivalry between Intel and AMD--and increasingly Nvidia, too--is technology. So while AMD can be pleased with the European Commission's conclusion, it's got bigger worries.
When it comes to taking on Intel, a far bigger factor has been technology--not just processor designs, but also manufacturing skill and capacity--that means chips can be priced competitively while still being profitable.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/
by Steven Musil
Intel was fined more than 1 billion euros by the European Commission for violating antitrust legislation, following a lengthy investigation prompted by complaints made by chipmaking rival Advanced Micro Devices.
The world's chip giant was fined 1.06 billion euros ($1.45 billion) for engaging in illegal anticompetitive practices to exclude competitors from the market for computer chips called x86 central processing units (CPUs), the Commission said.
Between October 2002 and December 2007, Intel held more than 70 percent of the worldwide x86 CPU market. The Commission found that during the period in question, Intel engaged in two illegal practices. The first was that it gave wholly or partially hidden rebates to computer manufacturers on the condition that they buy all or almost all of their x86 CPUs from Intel.
Intel CEO Paul Otellini responded aggressively to the conclusions attached to the fine and said the company will appeal the ruling. Otellini cited the Commission's determination of the chipmaker "granting conditional rebates, where the conditions just weren't just volume-based but allegations about exclusive dealings or in one case exclusivity on retail shelves."
"Intel strongly disagrees with this decision. We do not have those kinds of conditions in our contracts. Our contracts are straightforward. They're consistent worldwide and they're volume-based: the more you buy, the less you pay," he said.
Answering a question about how will this affect Intel business practices, Otellini said he hasn't seen the 500-page document yet. "The two-and-a-half page summary released to us did not include what the specific remedies they're asking for are," he said.
However, don't expect the EU's antitrust enforcement decision to radically change what you see when it's time to buy your next PC. Antitrust actions can have a dramatic effect when a decision breaks a company into pieces, but the biggest factors in the rivalry between Intel and AMD--and increasingly Nvidia, too--is technology. So while AMD can be pleased with the European Commission's conclusion, it's got bigger worries.
When it comes to taking on Intel, a far bigger factor has been technology--not just processor designs, but also manufacturing skill and capacity--that means chips can be priced competitively while still being profitable.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/
LAN_THEME_30Making the Sims into neighbors you can relate to
By Stephanie Clifford
The New York Times
In its biggest campaign yet for its biggest franchise, Electronic Arts is making The Sims video game a little more sociable.
The Sims lets players choose characters and create lives for them, selecting everything from when they sleep to what their bathroom looks like ("Sims" is short for "simulated"). Introduced in 2000, and updated in 2004, it became the best-selling line of PC-based video games in the world.
In The Sims 3, which goes on sale June 2, there are new features.
Previously, players could choose what Sims looked like; now they can choose their personality traits--neurotic, vain, loves to cook and so on. "What they want from life is determined by their personality traits," said Benjamin Bell, the game's executive producer.
"We really felt like the ability to create human beings, to give them a soul if you will, was really exciting, so we wanted to come up with some ways that people could define the personalities of their character," Bell said.
And while the characters lived in a single household in earlier versions, they now live in a town. The game supplies characters that also live in the town, but players can create new citizens, change the existing ones, or remove them and replace them with, say, replicas of the cast of "Lost" to see what it is like to live next door to them.
Electronic Arts executives wanted the marketing campaign to showcase the new features of The Sims 3, and to get people who might not play the game to understand what it was about.
The focus of the marketing is online, and beginning Friday, Electronic Arts will begin offering three ways for consumers to play with Sims characters on the Web.
There will be a free trial available at Sims3.com and at the Sims 3 fan page on Facebook, meant for people who have never played the game before.
Another option, called SimFriend, lets visitors to the Web site pick a Sim pen pal from among 120 characters, and that pen pal will send e-mail messages. For example, a Sim might send a message asking what type of dinner she should cook for her boyfriend, and the fan picks from options like "Cook an elegant meal." The e-mail chain would continue, tailored to the Sim's personality and skills.
"If the Sim happens to be a kleptomaniac chef, the response you get back might be, 'Thanks, I went and stole food today,' when what you're expecting is 'Thanks, I just had lunch,' " said John Buchanan, senior director of worldwide marketing for the Sims line at Electronic Arts.
The third option is called SimSidekick. A fans chooses from 6 characters on the Web site, and an image of the character that is chosen floats on top of the browser as the fan moves around the Web.
The character has site-specific responses to sites that Electronic Arts has chosen, like MTV.com, YouTube, and Twitter. On Twitter, for instance, where the mascot is a bird, a flock of bluebirds descends on the character, and, depending on its personality, the character will jump, wave his or her hands, or respond in some other way.
On other sites, the SimSidekick software looks for the category of the Web site, like travel or news, and the character responds appropriately, acting like a sports fanatic on a site like ESPN.com, or looking like he's searching for something on Google.com.
The effort is reminiscent of what Skittles, the Mars candy brand, did this year with its Web site, showing a floating Skittles graphic on top of the browser that took visitors to the brand's photos on Flickr or product pages on Facebook.
Sims characters will also come to life on the Viacom sites MTV.com, VH1.com and AddictingGames.com, a game site, on June 2. Characters will move around text and graphics on pages of the sites. The game will also be promoted through an iPhone sampler application, available now (the full game will be available for purchase and play on the iPhone or iTouch on June 2; a Macintosh version will also be available then). Freestyle Interactive in San Francisco, part of the Isobar division of Aegis, worked on the digital advertising efforts.
But measuring whether these efforts are a hit or a flop is a challenge for Electronic Arts, which, like other marketers, hasn't quite determined how to assess social media advertising. As Microsoft marketing executive Mich Mathews said at the annual 4A's advertising conference last month, a result like 100,000 views of a YouTube video doesn't mean very much. "I would confess, though, we look at it: 'Is that a good number or not a good number?' " she said.
Buchanan said that Electronic Arts would look closely at Web site traffic, advance sales and game sales, along with monitoring how consumers were reacting to the game in online discussions. "We'll be able to get closer to measuring what's working and not working, but there's still a little bit of art in identifying performance in the new media space, versus being all science," he said.
In print and television, the ads will emphasize the new features of The Sims 3. Along with the town setting and the personality traits, it will be the first time that players can minutely adjust features like the squareness of a character's chin, the depth of its eyes, or its weight. The campaign's tagline is "Let There Be Sims."
"It's referring to the fact that there are almost little people that live in your computer, and because of these new personalities and traits, they have a life of their own and do what they want," said Aaron Allen, a creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, which created the print and television ads. One TV ad shows a house on fire and people stealing a television--to appeal to the subset of Sims players known affectionately as deviants--and then, for the romantics, a couple finding one another.
"The Sims is all about the characters, and it's characters that are written into the game and characters you create, and every interaction you have, you get a different response," said Ian Schafer, the chief executive of the digital-marketing firm Deep Focus, which did not work on the campaign. "That's the beauty of the game, and that's the beauty of the campaign," he said.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/
By Stephanie Clifford
The New York Times
In its biggest campaign yet for its biggest franchise, Electronic Arts is making The Sims video game a little more sociable.
The Sims lets players choose characters and create lives for them, selecting everything from when they sleep to what their bathroom looks like ("Sims" is short for "simulated"). Introduced in 2000, and updated in 2004, it became the best-selling line of PC-based video games in the world.
In The Sims 3, which goes on sale June 2, there are new features.
Previously, players could choose what Sims looked like; now they can choose their personality traits--neurotic, vain, loves to cook and so on. "What they want from life is determined by their personality traits," said Benjamin Bell, the game's executive producer.
"We really felt like the ability to create human beings, to give them a soul if you will, was really exciting, so we wanted to come up with some ways that people could define the personalities of their character," Bell said.
And while the characters lived in a single household in earlier versions, they now live in a town. The game supplies characters that also live in the town, but players can create new citizens, change the existing ones, or remove them and replace them with, say, replicas of the cast of "Lost" to see what it is like to live next door to them.
Electronic Arts executives wanted the marketing campaign to showcase the new features of The Sims 3, and to get people who might not play the game to understand what it was about.
The focus of the marketing is online, and beginning Friday, Electronic Arts will begin offering three ways for consumers to play with Sims characters on the Web.
There will be a free trial available at Sims3.com and at the Sims 3 fan page on Facebook, meant for people who have never played the game before.
Another option, called SimFriend, lets visitors to the Web site pick a Sim pen pal from among 120 characters, and that pen pal will send e-mail messages. For example, a Sim might send a message asking what type of dinner she should cook for her boyfriend, and the fan picks from options like "Cook an elegant meal." The e-mail chain would continue, tailored to the Sim's personality and skills.
"If the Sim happens to be a kleptomaniac chef, the response you get back might be, 'Thanks, I went and stole food today,' when what you're expecting is 'Thanks, I just had lunch,' " said John Buchanan, senior director of worldwide marketing for the Sims line at Electronic Arts.
The third option is called SimSidekick. A fans chooses from 6 characters on the Web site, and an image of the character that is chosen floats on top of the browser as the fan moves around the Web.
The character has site-specific responses to sites that Electronic Arts has chosen, like MTV.com, YouTube, and Twitter. On Twitter, for instance, where the mascot is a bird, a flock of bluebirds descends on the character, and, depending on its personality, the character will jump, wave his or her hands, or respond in some other way.
On other sites, the SimSidekick software looks for the category of the Web site, like travel or news, and the character responds appropriately, acting like a sports fanatic on a site like ESPN.com, or looking like he's searching for something on Google.com.
The effort is reminiscent of what Skittles, the Mars candy brand, did this year with its Web site, showing a floating Skittles graphic on top of the browser that took visitors to the brand's photos on Flickr or product pages on Facebook.
Sims characters will also come to life on the Viacom sites MTV.com, VH1.com and AddictingGames.com, a game site, on June 2. Characters will move around text and graphics on pages of the sites. The game will also be promoted through an iPhone sampler application, available now (the full game will be available for purchase and play on the iPhone or iTouch on June 2; a Macintosh version will also be available then). Freestyle Interactive in San Francisco, part of the Isobar division of Aegis, worked on the digital advertising efforts.
But measuring whether these efforts are a hit or a flop is a challenge for Electronic Arts, which, like other marketers, hasn't quite determined how to assess social media advertising. As Microsoft marketing executive Mich Mathews said at the annual 4A's advertising conference last month, a result like 100,000 views of a YouTube video doesn't mean very much. "I would confess, though, we look at it: 'Is that a good number or not a good number?' " she said.
Buchanan said that Electronic Arts would look closely at Web site traffic, advance sales and game sales, along with monitoring how consumers were reacting to the game in online discussions. "We'll be able to get closer to measuring what's working and not working, but there's still a little bit of art in identifying performance in the new media space, versus being all science," he said.
In print and television, the ads will emphasize the new features of The Sims 3. Along with the town setting and the personality traits, it will be the first time that players can minutely adjust features like the squareness of a character's chin, the depth of its eyes, or its weight. The campaign's tagline is "Let There Be Sims."
"It's referring to the fact that there are almost little people that live in your computer, and because of these new personalities and traits, they have a life of their own and do what they want," said Aaron Allen, a creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, which created the print and television ads. One TV ad shows a house on fire and people stealing a television--to appeal to the subset of Sims players known affectionately as deviants--and then, for the romantics, a couple finding one another.
"The Sims is all about the characters, and it's characters that are written into the game and characters you create, and every interaction you have, you get a different response," said Ian Schafer, the chief executive of the digital-marketing firm Deep Focus, which did not work on the campaign. "That's the beauty of the game, and that's the beauty of the campaign," he said.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/
HP laptop batteries recalled for overheating
by Erica Ogg
After two reports of flaming laptop batteries, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday that Hewlett-Packard is voluntarily recalling 70,000 lithium-ion batteries that shipped with several models of its HP and Compaq laptops.
HP's Pavilion dv9500 is one of 21 HP laptops affected by Thursday's battery recall.
(Credit: CNET)
The recall affects nine models of HP Pavilions, nine models of Compaq Presarios, two models of HPs, and one HP Compaq laptop model sold between August 2007 and March 2008. For the full list, see the CPSC's site.
There were two separate reports of batteries that "overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage" but no injuries, according to the CPSC report.
HP is instructing consumers who may be part of the recall to remove the battery from their notebook and contact HP to find out if theirs is affected. HP says it will provide a free replacement battery. For more information, see HP's Battery Replacement Program site.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP is the world's largest computer vendor, and like many of its peers in the industry has been part of several similar battery recalls. The most recent incident involved 100,000 Sony-made batteries faulted for overheating late last year. HP had sold 32,000 of the affected batteries in its laptops. But that was tiny by comparison to the massive recall caused by Sony batteries in 2006.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/
by Erica Ogg
After two reports of flaming laptop batteries, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Thursday that Hewlett-Packard is voluntarily recalling 70,000 lithium-ion batteries that shipped with several models of its HP and Compaq laptops.
HP's Pavilion dv9500 is one of 21 HP laptops affected by Thursday's battery recall.
(Credit: CNET)
The recall affects nine models of HP Pavilions, nine models of Compaq Presarios, two models of HPs, and one HP Compaq laptop model sold between August 2007 and March 2008. For the full list, see the CPSC's site.
There were two separate reports of batteries that "overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage" but no injuries, according to the CPSC report.
HP is instructing consumers who may be part of the recall to remove the battery from their notebook and contact HP to find out if theirs is affected. HP says it will provide a free replacement battery. For more information, see HP's Battery Replacement Program site.
Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP is the world's largest computer vendor, and like many of its peers in the industry has been part of several similar battery recalls. The most recent incident involved 100,000 Sony-made batteries faulted for overheating late last year. HP had sold 32,000 of the affected batteries in its laptops. But that was tiny by comparison to the massive recall caused by Sony batteries in 2006.
Source: http://news.cnet.com/
