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Troubled Satyam Computer Services attempted on Thursday to reassure customers and investors that it could keep the company afloat, but did not discuss specific measures. The Indian outsourcer is working on various options to improve liquidity on its balance sheet.
In addition, company executives had reached out to customers, and spoke to some of them individually, to assure them of the continuity of Satyam’s services. The company’s chairman, B. Ramalinga Raju, resigned on Wednesday after admitting to inflating the company’s profits for several years. The moves at Satyam come even as Ramalinga Raju, who admitted to fiddling with the accounts, is still at large.
Palm is hoping to get back on track with its new Pre touch phone, which comes equipped with the equally new operating system webOS, both announced on Thursday at the Consumer Electronics Show. The Pre and the operating system use a couple of key concepts to make the phone easy to use, and to tightly integrate it with Internet services for e-mail, instant messaging and search, as well as with Facebook. For example, the phone organizes multiple active applications using “activity cards,” large icons that line up on the display. Using the touch interface, users can flip through them, move them around, or throw them off screen by dragging a finger from the bottom to the top of the screen.
Asustek Computer, the world’s largest motherboard maker and developer of the popular Eee PC line of netbooks, slashed its fourth quarter shipment outlook on Thursday, citing slower than expected demand for its products. The announcement comes just a day after chip giant Intel and PC vendor Lenovo made similar downgrades to their fourth quarter views and shows how global financial woes are hurting the PC industry. Sales of Asustek’s Eee PCs suffered in the fourth quarter. The company revised down its shipment target for the netbooks to 1.4 million to 1.5 million from a previous estimate of 1.6 million to 1.8 million.
Advanced Micro Devices CEO Dirk Meyer on Thursday said the company will deliver high-definition gaming and movies to devices like smartphones in an attempt to bring more usability and interactivity to the devices. To deliver the content, AMD announced that it would build a supercomputer that will host the high-definition games and movies. Technologies like HD gaming and movies will change the way content is created and how people will interact with their smartphones and PCs, Meyer said during a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. A visual experience could add more usability to the devices, Meyer said.
…And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.