Apple 'to reap 50 per cent profit on iPhone'

Apple will enjoy a 50 per cent profit margin on each iPhone sold, according to a breakdown of the handset's component costs by research phone iSuppli. The figure is drawn from analysis of the capacity and features of the phone-iPod hybrid, combined with information from Apple about the materials used plus company sources and third-party publications. iSuppli says that although the figures are preliminary until it gets hands on a physical unit, it has a 'high degree of confidence' in its findings. ...more

eBay bids for Yahoo! auction trade

Yahoo! bows out of European online auctions and signs marketing agreement with eBay. As well as the auction site for the UK and Ireland, Yahoo! has decided to close the sites for Germany, France, Spain and Italy. The Danish site, however, will continue for the moment. ...more

Vodafone announces mobile Web access for Macs

Vodafone is the first UK mobile company to announce Mac support for its 3G/GPRS service that enables laptop users to remotely connect to the Internet. Vodafone Mobile Coonect uses a PCMCIA card - compatible with the 15in and 17in PowerBooks - to provide a 384Kbps connection at a variety of tariffs. There are two versions of the service - one permits full Internet access and the other is for secure connections to corporate networks. ...more

Visual Studio.NET released

It's been a long time coming, but the first major .NET release from Microsoft has been made available to MSDN subscribers. The official worldwide launch date for Visual Studio. ...more

EU warns Microsoft over Vista feature set

The EU Competition Commissioner has warned Microsoft that it will not be allowed to sell Windows Vista in Europe if contains certain features. Neelie Kroes wrote to the company last week to express her concerns, which centre on Microsoft's plans for Internet searching. A spokesman for Kroes said that the EU is concerned that Microsoft could use Internet Explorer 7 to 'unfairly direct computer users to Microsoft's own search service'. ...more