Palm's lifeline splits in two

Palm has announced a restructuring of its business operations into two parts. At the end of last week, the company announced it will turn the Platform Solutions Group - which is responsible for the development of the Palm OS and its licensing - into a wholly owned subsidiary by the end of 2001. The Platform Solutions Group will take some infrastructure and staff services from the Solutions Group, which will continue to make handheld devices and license the Palm OS from the subsidiary. ...more

SiS, ALi to feature non-Springdale products at IDF

With technology licensing issues over the new Springdale platform still not settled, Silicon Integrated Systems (SiS) and ALi Corporation (formerly Acer Laboratories) are expected to put the spotlight on their current Pentium 4 chipsets and peripheral-use chips at this year's Intel Developer Forum (IDF), which will kick off on February 18 in San Jose. Intel's change in Springdale specifications last November made all three Taiwanese chipset designers fall behind in the launch schedule of their new P4-supporting chipsets. Though SiS and ALi are said to have no problem producing their Springdale-based chipsets at the moment, the two companies are not planning to display the chip samples at IDF due to the concern about the licensing issue. ...more

Microsoft completes Sybari acquisition

Microsoft has axed Sybari's support for its Unix and Linux products upon completion of its acquisition. Upon announcing the takeover in February, Microsoft had said that this was its intention and says it will continue to support customers of the Linux and Unix versions of Sybari's Antigen, although it will no longer sell them. 'Customers have told us they want powerful security solutions for the enterprise to help protect their messaging and collaboration servers from viruses, worms and spam,' said Mike Nash, corporate vice president of the Security Business & Technology Unit. ...more

Virgin enters iPod territory in US

Virgin has joined the lengthening list of companies trying to grab some of iPod's share of the digital music player market. Its Virgin Electronics arm has unveiled the literally-named 'player 5GB' in the US to complement the Virgin Digital online store that opened last month. The hard-drive based player sells for $249. ...more

Microsoft settles anti-trust law suit with South Dakota

Microsoft has settled its legal disputes with another state - South Dakota. The class action lawsuit had alleged that Microsoft violated South Dakota's unfair competition laws. Under the terms of the settlement agreement, $9. ...more