European iTunes Music Stores shift 200 million songs

Apple has announced that it has sold more than 200 million songs through its European iTunes Music Stores in the last two years. Since Apple CEO Steve Jobs opened the UK, France and Germany stores in June 2004, iTunes digital music catalogue has tripled to include more than three million songs and expanded into 14 more countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes said that Apple has sold 150 million downloads in the last year alone. ...more

Microsoft loses China contract at last minute

The Beijing municipal government has pulled out of a deal to buy Microsoft software. In a victory for local suppliers, the local authority is instead expected to sign a deal with indigenous suppliers according to the Chinese website Pacific Epoch. The deal, in which the local government would gain the right to unlimited licences of Microsoft software over three years in return for $3. ...more

Mobile phones to hit 2 billion total by 2008

The worldwide number of mobile phone users is set to hit 2 billion by 2008, reports the Baskerville research company. This means another 800 million new customers, most of whom will be in China and India according to the Baskerville Global Mobile Forecasts to 2010 report. To be precise, sixty per cent of the growth will be in the Asia Pacific market. ...more

IT Forum 2005: The rolling roundup

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Pioneer begins shipping Blu-ray drives

Pioneer has begun shipping the first Blu-ray drive units for computers. The BDR-101A is bundled with Sonic Solutions Roxio Blu-ray Disc software and blank media from TDK that will store up to 25GB of data and recorded content. The unit doubles as a DVD read/write drive (DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/+RW). ...more