Latin America

Lenovo Group expects wireless Internet products to account for up to 80 percent of its sales within five years as it pursues expansion in faster-growing emerging markets, CEO Yang Yuanqing said Friday.

Lenovo, the world's fourth-largest personal computer maker, jumped into the mobile Internet market in January with the unveiling of a smart phone and two Web-linked portable computers.

IT industry, get ready to rejoice. According to two new reports, 2010 is going to be a good year. A report from Forrester Research and a soon-to-be-released survey from Information Technology Intelligence Corp. (ITIC) point to a recovery for IT.

The Forrester study said U.S. spending on IT will grow 6.6 percent this year to about $570 billion, following an 8.2 percent decline in 2009. On a global level, the report predicts a rise of 8.1 percent to more than $1.6 trillion.

Despite the buzz around Google's Nexus One smartphone, other Android device makers are working to rise above the noise at this week's Consumer Electronics Show. Motorola's latest Android smartphone is the Backflip, but analysts aren't too sure the market will do cartwheels over the device, especially in the wake of Google's big announcement.

Hewlett-Packard webcams may have difficulty tracking the faces of people of color if there is "poor foreground lighting," an executive said Monday after an African-American man, in a widely viewed YouTube video, blamed the glitch on racism.

"I'm going on the record and I'm saying it," said the man, identified only as Desi. "Hewlett-Packard computers are racist."

by Michael Blim

by Michael Blim

Nikil Saval in n + 1:

Zia Sardar i

Zia Sardar i

The year 2009 will go down in IT history as a year of drastic budget cuts. But 2010 should see a software spending resurrection as companies in many countries increase their budgets and prepare for growth.

So says a Gartner survey that reveals organizations plan to increase their software budgets an average of 1.53 percent in 2010. Although North America will continue to see a slight spending decline, there is a clear growth opportunity in developing nations. Specifically, software budgets will rise 2.54 percent in Latin America and 4.34 percent in the Asia/Pacific.