Beware old tech seeking fountain of youth

Kings of León

Reuters

Animal health carve-ups to come two by two

Opening the ark

Business Standard

Not so secret

BlackBerry's liquid infusion won't douse cash burn

Not dead yet

Pfizer on right path for others to follow

Conjoined triplets

Apple's simplicity complicated by status quo

Simple*

Microsoft results deliver blunt hint to next CEO

Taking a hint

Cheaper lunch

Hope tweets eternal for Twitter IPO valuation

Discount hope

Searching for ideas

Twitter's sky-high R&D hits the right spotTwitter's research and development spending might be sky-high, but it hits the right spot. At 44 per cent of revenue in the first half of the year, the microblogging site is spending far more as a proportion of its top line than Facebook. But with a lower number of users than its rival, Twitter needs to grow to make new investors happy.Technology tends to be a winner-takes-all - or almost all- market. If a company can establish a useful standard or platform, network effects usually mean users will flock to it. Twitter is a good example, with monthly active users growing more than fivefold over the past three years to 218 million. That's a big reason revenue is growing at an even faster pace. It should hit around $700 million this year, well over 20 times larger than in 2010.Twitter is also growing into its spending. Granted, R&D expenses more than quadrupled over the past two years. But the amount it spends as a percentage of revenue ha

Protect the nerds

Twitter stakes claim as least-evil tech IPO

Purity in form

Maybe Gates should follow Ballmer out of Microsoft

Out the Windows

BlackBerry shares finally find bottom of sorts

I'm melting

Dell hell concludes, lessons probably unlearned

Not with a bang

Apple event more likely evolution than meteor

Punctuated evolution

New Microsoft CEO needs "less is more" mindsetThe next boss of Microsoft needs a "less is more" mindset. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Steve Ballmer is finally on the way out. A $20 billion bump in the company's value following the news shows just how badly investors wanted a new approach. The wasteful "try everything" strategy should go.Ballmer inherited a near-monopoly in the Windows operating system and Office productivity software, and has done well fattening that cash cow. Microsoft earned $22 billion last year, more than twice as much as in 2000, when he became CEO. But his empire-building ambitions are evident in sales, which have increased more than three-fold.About three-quarters of profit still comes from Windows, Office and the like, with the company's server & tools division making up most of the rest. The online services division, which contains search engine Bing, has been bleeding cash, losing $12 billion in the past three years alone. The entertainment and devices d

Fewer windows

HP throws M&A wrench in turnaround gearsHewlett-Packard has thrown an M&A wrench in its turnaround gears. Chief Executive Meg Whitman helped the troubled tech firm regain investor trust by patching the hole left in its balance sheet by her predecessors' deal-making. Now she reckons a return to M&A could help stem HP's declining revenue. No wonder shareholders had, by midday on Thursday, vaporized $6 billion of the stock's value.The company's awful quarterly results highlight the continuing meltdown in HP's markets. Revenue shrank eight per cent compared to the same period last year as every division except its small software unit suffered from declining sales. The growth of mobile devices and online software services means there's no reason to think HP's bread and butter businesses - PC, printing and consulting - will reverse this trend anytime soon.Yet, HP's stock has been on a rocket ride this year. As of yesterday's market close, shareholders enjoyed a 70 per cent return

355 degrees

Facebook effort could help poor, itself - and you

Better than texting

Carl Icahn makes #activism look easy at Apple

Introducing iCahn

Plummeting BlackBerry would stain any buyout

Robert Cyran