Microsoft will make Windows 7 available to businesses and consumers in time for the typically busy holiday shopping season in the fourth quarter of the year, according to company officials.

Vodafone is making a bid for the mobile applications market, by trying to attract developers with the promise of access to its large customer base.

Oracle plans to stay in the hardware business following its planned US$7.4 billion acquisition of Sun Microsystems, CEO Larry Ellison has said, adding more detail to earlier statements made by the company.

IT and communications bellwethers Sprint, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco and Symantec this week reported sagging quarterly sales, but analysts, impressed by cost controls and hopeful that a bottom to the tech market has been reached, raised estimates on share price valuations and earnings of some vendors.

Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday announced it was consolidating the operations of disparate business units in the company.

Cisco Systems' revenue for its third fiscal quarter fell 17 percent from a year earlier, while net income plunged 21 percent to US$1.3 billion, or $0.23 per share.

Wide-ranging reforms of European Union telecom laws were rejected by the European Parliament on Wednesday because of one clause that would have compromised citizens' rights of access to the Internet.

Microsoft on Tuesday announced new job cuts that are part of the 5,000 the company said in January that it expected to eliminate.

Viviane Reding, the European commissioner for Internet-related issues, called Monday for a new multilateral approach to Internet governance once the current system expires at the end of September.

IBM has bought the data discovery software assets of Exeros, and will use them to enhance the services offered by its business analytics consulting division, it said Tuesday.

HP ProCurve is adding a security blade to edge and core switches that enables businesses to insert firewalls, VPNs and IDS/IPSs wherever they have one of the switches.

Although Microsoft Corp. refuses to name a delivery date for Windows 7, it could launch the new operating system as early as August, according to timeline comparisons of significant dates for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

David Donatelli will head up HP's server, storage and ProCurve networking businesses.

SAP reported first quarter net income down 16 percent year on year, and revenue down 3 percent, as customers remain reluctant to spend on new software.

Oracle Corp.'s purchase of Sun Microsystems Inc. last week is reviving calls for Sun's open-source OpenOffice.org suite to be spun out into an independent foundation.

Two years ago, financial services firms tested a pandemic scenario that began with a few flu cases and ended in a workplace absenteeism rate as high as 50%.

A Dutch university has landed a European Research Council grant to continue work on a Unix-type operating system that aims to be more reliable and secure than Linux or Microsoft Windows.

Samsung Electronics became the first major mobile phone maker to launch a smartphone based on Google's Android software.

Chris DeWolfe will hand over his CEO title at MySpace, whose growth has stagnated over the past year while the popularity of rival Facebook booms.

Microsoft missed analyst expectations for its third fiscal quarter, blaming the most difficult economic conditions the company has faced in its history.