IFPI survey: A good year for music despite illegal downloads

A tenfold increase in digital downloads sales, strong CD sales in the US and UK and a 23 per cent rise in music DVDs helped offset the effect of illegal file sharing on music sales for 2004, according to the IFPI's annual survey. In the four major digital music markets - the UK, US, France and Germany - more than 200 million downloads were sold and returns from the first two months of 2005 indicate that the figure may double in 2005. While CD sales in the UK and US, which together make up 47 per cent of the world market, rose 4. ...more

EU ad ban casts gloom for mobile operators

Valuable advertising revenues could be denied mobile operators as the Government introduces EU directives to ban ads sent to mobile phones. Location-based marketing, where users would receive adverts and information based on where they are, would be a valuable tool to help 3G mobile operators recoup the cost of licences and the funding needed to set up the networks. But the Data Protection Commission has confirmed that this kind of advertising could contravene the new rules. ...more

Fujitsu and SuSE put together out-of-the-box server

Fujitsu has bundled the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 with its PRIMERGY server products. The Linux option is available across the range of servers, which use Intel Xeon processors in numbers from one to 16. Fujitsu says its choice of SuSE was 'in response to strong demand by customers and partners in the EMEA region' (Europe, Middle East and Africa). ...more

IBM claims WiFi chipset breakthrough

IBM is claiming a breakthrough in wireless technology which, the company says, could lead to a new generation of wireless electronic devices that are able to transmit and receive ten times faster than today's advanced WiFi networks. Based around silicon germanium compound, the chipset is able to send and receive information in a portion of the radio spectrum that is currently unlicensed and can carry a much higher volume of data. The new technology uses the portion of the radio spectrum from roughly 30 to 300 GHz, which is referred to as 'millimeter wave' frequency bands, since the waves in a signal within these bands is measured in millimeters. ...more

Ofcom to press ahead with radio spectrum liberalisation

Ofcom is to press ahead with its proposed liberalisation of the radio spectrum. The industry watchdog says it plans to go ahead with the first phase within the next few months. Traditionally the radio spectrum has been tightly controlled in the UK. ...more