Munich

Industrial conglomerate Siemens AG is poised to sell its 50-percent stake in the joint venture Fujitsu Siemens Computers to Japan's Fujitsu Group, two people familiar with the deal told The Associated Press on Monday.

Siemens has been contemplating a sale of its half in the joint venture at least since August. Chief Executive Peter Loescher said then that the company was in talks with Fujitsu about the fate of the unit, which makes personal computers and laptops and posted sales of 6.6 billion euros but a pretax profit of just 105 million euros last year.

Microsoft said Thursday that it would set up research centers in France, Germany and Britain to improve its Internet search technology, describing the move as a vote of confidence in the European economy and in the company's ability to close the gap with Google.

Steven Ballmer, the Microsoft chief executive, said at a news conference here that the three "centers of excellence," to be based near Paris, in London and in Munich, would employ several hundred people all together.

In Singapore, the Dutch consumer electronics maker Philips is designing a multimedia server to stream audio and video through the air, from the Internet to any device in the home. In Munich, a former unit of Siemens envisions a cordless phone that would double as a music player, wirelessly drawing music from home computers. In Japan, members of Sony's global "digital home team" are redesigning 90 percent of the company's home electronics components to connect wirelessly to the Internet by 2011.

Reports continue to flood in from U.S. iPhone 3G users about problems with 3G connections and speeds. The problems tend to come from large metropolitan areas, but one informal survey points to the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

"I'd estimate that I see the 3G icon on the phone less than one-third of the time in so-called 3G areas that I frequent in the Bay Area and Austin (Texas)," reported a resident of Santa Clara, Calif.

Reports continue to flood in from U.S. iPhone 3G users about problems with 3G connections and speeds. The problems tend to come from large metropolitan areas, but one informal survey points to the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

The problem, BusinessWeek reported Thursday, may be faulty firmware in a communications chip supplied by Munich-based Infineon. BusinessWeek said its confidential sources backed a report released earlier this week by Nomura Securities analyst Richard Windsor that pointed to the firmware.

Patch May Be Imminent

Reports continue to flood in from U.S. iPhone 3G users about problems with 3G connections and speeds. The problems tend to come from large metropolitan areas, but one informal survey points to the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles.

The problem may be faulty firmware in a communications chip supplied by Munich-based Infineon. A report released earlier this week by Nomura Securities analyst Richard Windsor pointed to the firmware.

Patch May Be Imminent

The European Commission, a thorn in Microsoft's side for its antitrust campaigns against the software giant, is falling short in its own internal attempt to promote competition in the technology sector.

The European Union executive has so far not followed its own policy of purchasing office software and operating systems with open standards, as well as Microsoft products.

"For the moment we are working in a Microsoft environment," said Christos Ellinides, director of corporate IT solutions and services, who recommends software for the commission.

It seems like, these days, the most interesting stories in alternative energy are all coming from the little guys. The entrepreneurs and startups finally getting some money behind their big ideas. But to think that the big dogs are ignoring the possible markets in alternative energy...well, that's just silly. Today, we're lucky enough to talk to the biggest dog of them all, General Electric, and the head of their solar technology platform at their global research center, Danielle Merfeld.

Few businesses are as unforgiving as the one in which Kin Wah Loh has spent his career: computer memory chips. Makers of so-called dynamic random-access memory [DRAM] have a difficult time differentiating their products from those of competitors, and the winner is usually the company that can deliver the most performance for the lowest price in the shortest period of time.

"If the speed is not there, you are punished," says Loh, Malaysian-born chief executive of German chipmaker Qimonda, which may not be a household name but whose products are present in most households.