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August 26, 2004
Chinese mobile phone users top 310 million
The number of mobile phone subscribers in China totalled more than 310 million at the end of July, according to figures released by China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII).
According to the MII, China had 310.2 million mobile phone subscribers and 299 million fixed-line phone subscribers at the end of July. That represents an increase of 40.3 million subscribers and 36.2 million subscribers, respectively, since the beginning of this year, it said.
Guangdong province, in southern China, had the largest number of mobile subscribers of any single province, with 47.3 million mobile phone subscribers, MII said.
Zhejiang province and Jiangsu province, in eastern China, followed with 21.9 million subscribers and 21 million subscribers, respectively, it said. By comparison, Beijing and Shanghai have 12.7 million subscribers and 12.4 million subscribers, respectively, MII said.
The area with the lowest number of mobile subscribers in China is Tibet, which has 390,000 mobile phone subscribers, it said.
- Sumner Lemon
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:40 PM
August 19, 2004
Linux skills in high demand as IT jobs pick up
The number of IT job listings in up, but the number of IT jobs requiring Linux skills is up over 190%. And, while demand for Linux skills is growing faster than the demand for other IT jobs, what employers are really looking for is experience.
Sharon Gaudin
Internet New.com
Posted by Alexa Wriggins at 11:09 PM
August 18, 2004
Broadband users a majority in US
A majority of U.S. home Internet users now have broadband, according to a survey by NetRatings Inc.
While the total number of home Internet users has reached a plateau in the U.S., those who do use the Internet are adopting broadband at a rapid pace, according to Marc Ryan, senior director of analysis at the audience measurement company.
In July, there were an estimated 63 million broadband users, or 51 percent of all home Internet users, compared with 61.3 million dial-up users, 49 percent of the total. A year earlier, broadband users were just 38 percent of all home Internet users, at about 42.8 million, and dial-up users were 62 percent, or about 70.5 million, Ryan said.
Over the same period, the total number of Americans using the Internet at home grew less than 10 percent, from 113 million in July 2003 to 124 million in July 2004, according to NetRatings. The 2000 U.S. Census listed the total U.S. population at just over 281 million.
Special offers for broadband services, as well as the growing use of multimedia on the Web and the availability of music and video downloads, drove Internet users to the faster service, Ryan said.
"In order to truly experience the Internet at its best these days, a broadband connection is almost a must," Ryan said.
Broadband was most prevalent among people ages 18 to 20, 59 percent of whom used the faster technology, according to NetRatings. The second highest broadband rate was among children ages 2 to 11, at 58 percent. A majority of home Internet users over age 50 still use narrowband, the company said.
NetRatings, based in New York and Milpitas, California, used a panel of 50,000 participants selected through calls to randomly generated phone numbers. Each participating household provides a profile of the users in the home, and a device connected to each Internet-linked PC in the home logs where those users go on the Internet. Users have to log in to identify themselves when they start using the computer, Ryan said.
- Stephen Lawson
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 07:23 PM
August 16, 2004
Gartner revises PC market forecast, warns of downside
The PC market won't grow as fast in 2004 as originally predicted by Gartner Inc. analysts, as concerns about the overall health of the U.S. economy weigh on the market, the market research company said Monday.
Gartner still predicts strong double-digit growth for worldwide PC shipments in 2004. PC vendors should ship 185 million units in 2004, a growth rate of 12.6 percent compared to 2003. However, during this year's second quarter Gartner predicted the market would grow 13.4 percent this year.
PC and chip vendors thought shipments in the second half of 2004 would exceed the usual seasonal growth patterns, but it now looks like growth will stick to those historical patterns, said George Shiffler, principal analyst with Gartner, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut. PC growth in Western Europe and Asia-Pacific has been stronger than expected, while growth in the U.S., Japan and Latin America has been weaker than expected, he said.
Notebook PCs have not kept growing at the record pace that PC vendors enjoyed in 2003. However, shipments are still growing at more than 20 percent so far this year, Shiffler said.
"What's happened is that there was a lot of optimism at the beginning of the year, not just for this market but for the overall global economy. That's faded a little bit, but some people have overreacted to that," Shiffler said.
The corporate market is in the midst of a drawn-out replacement cycle as companies replace PCs they bought prior to 2000. This latest upgrade cycle should start to diminish over the next few quarters as companies roll out new hardware, and overall PC market growth rates will start to fall heading into next year and beyond, Shiffler said.
IDC plans to leave its 2004 PC shipment forecast intact when it releases its latest information at the end of the month, said Roger Kay, vice president for client computing at IDC in Framingham. Last month, the company predicted worldwide shipment growth of 13.5 percent.
A rise in oil prices and several disappointing outlooks from IT vendors have caused some concern among financial analysts that the economy's recovery from the 2001 recession is hitting a few bumps. This means that the PC market is exposed to a greater risk of external events weighing on it than analysts previously expected at the beginning of the year, Gartner's Shiffler said.
"We're in the middle of a recovery. It may not be a very sprightly recovery, but it's a recovery nonetheless," Kay said.
Tom Krazit
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 10:02 PM
August 12, 2004
Politics Pulls Users Online
Traffic is surging on presidential candidate web sites this election season, as users increasingly rely on the internet as a source for political news and information.
Posted by Alexa Wriggins at 12:18 AM
August 11, 2004
Survey: 86 percent of spam from US
WASHINGTON (08/11/2004) - Just under 86 percent of spam sent to 1,000 enterprises between May and July came from U.S. spammers, according to a survey by CipherTrust Inc.
While U.S. IP (Internet Protocol) addresses made up only 28 percent of the spam-sending
addresses in CipherTrust's survey, those U.S. addresses sent out much more unsolicited
commercial e-mail than spammers from other nations, according to the company. In contrast,
nearly 29 percent of the IP addresses sending out spam during the three-month survey were in
South Korea, while only 3 percent of the spam came from there.
The survey, which sampled about 5 million pieces of spam sent to 1,000 CipherTrust customers,
runs counter to some other surveys and some critics of the Controlling the Assault of
Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing (CAN-SPAM) Act, who suggested a U.S. law would have a
limited effect because of the amount of spam that comes from outside the U.S. CAN-SPAM, which
allows fines of up to US$6 million and up to five years of jail time for some fraudulent
spamming activities, was signed into law by President George W. Bush in December.
CAN-SPAM sponsor Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, pushed for the law as a way to go
after a small number of "kingpin" spammers, and Dmitri Alperovitch, a research engineer with
CipherTrust, suggested that the survey shows that there is, indeed, a small number of U.S.
spammers sending millions of pieces of spam.
"I was really very surprised by the numbers," Alperovitch said. "(Kingpin spammers) have
these very high-bandwidth computers, and they're able to send out a large amount of spam."
According to the survey, just under 3 percent of spam came from China and Hong Kong, just
over 2 percent from Canada and about 1.5 percent from the Ukraine. Of the IP addresses
sending spam, 23 percent were from China and Hong Kong, and another 4 percent were from
Brazil.
In contrast, competing antispam vendor Commtouch Software Ltd. in April suggested 40 percent
of spam came from outside the U.S. Commtouch's survey, however, didn't measure the total
number of spam messages sent, but the number of spam "outbreaks," and the company defined an
outbreak as the bulk sending of one spam message.
During CipherTrust's survey, Alperovitch also noticed another trend -- an attempt by some
spammers to make it harder for recipients to unsubscribe from spam messages. While CAN-SPAM
requires that senders of commercial e-mail include an "Internet-based" opt-out mechanism,
some spammers have included only postal addresses in their opt-out messages, requiring
recipients to send paper mail to the spammers to opt out of future spam.
CipherTrust has supported efforts in Congress to attack spam, but enforcement and technology
solutions are needed along with the law, said Jennifer Martin, CipherTrust's manager of
corporate communications. "The teeth that are in (the law) aren't teeth enough," she said.
More enforcement against large spammers is needed, added Alperovitch. "They don't have the
fear of God in them," he said.
Grant Gross
Posted by Alexa Wriggins at 11:51 PM
August 06, 2004
Ecommerce trends upward in Asia
Business-to-business e-commerce will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 59.1 percent in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan) over the next four years, according to IDC. India is expected to show the highest CAGR of 83.7 percent in e-commerce revenue, ahead of a CAGR of 81 percent expected in China.
David Legard
Posted by Chad Dickerson at 01:25 PM
August 04, 2004
Phishing attacks up by 50 percent per month
CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA (08/04/2004) - The number of new phishing attacks reported has risen by an average of 50 percent per month in the first six months of this year, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), which monitors such attacks.
Phishing attacks use spoofed e-mails and fraudulent Web sites to fool respondents into entering personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, which can then be used for financial theft or identity theft.
Phishers launched 1,422 new attacks in June, up 19 percent on the 1,197 recorded in May and more than 12 times as high as the 116 attacks reported in December 2003, APWG reported on its Web site this week.
Most phishing attacks are aimed at customers of banks in the U.S., U.K. and Australia although online e-commerce companies such as eBay Inc. and PayPal Inc. are also targeted.
Citibank Inc. is the current favorite of phishing criminals, with 470 separate attacks made in June, compared to the 285 attacks aimed at eBay. Lloyds TSB Bank PLC was the main U.K. target with 24 attacks in June, and Westpac Banking Corp. of Australia was attacked 11 times.
The APWG has over 400 members including eight of the top 10 U.S. banks, four of the top five U.S. ISPs (Internet service providers) and law enforcement bodies from Australia, Canada, the U.K. and U.S.
Internet security company Websense Inc. issued its own analysis of the APWG report Tuesday, and found that:
-- the U.S. hosted the most phishing Web sites in June, at 27 percent of all sites
-- the average lifespan of a phishing site in June was 2.25 days
-- 25 percent of phishing Web sites were hosted on hacked Web servers
-- 94 percent of phishing Web sites were configured to allow criminals to remotely download captured personal data
David Legard
Posted by Alexa Wriggins at 03:58 PM
August 03, 2004
Wi-Fi Shootout in the dessert
This weekend, Ohio teens made a 55 mile Wi-fi connection using home brewed antennae at the 12th annual DefCon Convention in Las Vegas.
Posted by Alexa Wriggins at 03:59 PM