Sun Microsystems profit, revenues in Q4 slide
San Francisco: Network computer maker Sun Microsystems has reported that its quarterly profit fell 80 per cent as revenue declined for the ninth consecutive quarter on weak demand for computer servers. Shares fell almost 10 per cent in after-hours trade in reaction to the lower earnings, which excluding items, were below the average Wall Street estimate. "The quarter's performance is certainly uninspiring," said Richard Chu, an analyst at SG Cowen, according to agency reports.

Sun, which designs most of the components for its servers, in contrast to most rivals, who buy software and hardware from large suppliers, spent $1.84 billion on research and development in fiscal 2003, up slightly from 2002. While spending on information technology has been moribund for the past three years, Sun has been hit harder than most of its rivals.
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Lehman to acquire Neuberger for $2.6 billion
New York: Lehman Brothers Holdings has said that it is will buy asset manager Neuberger Berman for $2.6 billion, more than doubling the investment bank's client assets under management. The deal values Neuberger at $41.48 per share — a 2.6-per cent premium above the company's closing price on Monday. However, the price marks a 20.5 per cent premium above Neuberger's trading price before the merger talks became public last month.
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HotJobs unveils new recommendation engine
Los Angeles: Online job search site HotJobs has introduced a new feature that recommends available jobs to users based on other job postings they have seen. HotJobs, a unit of Yahoo Inc, said it is using some of the same technology as Yahoo's personals site, which recently released a feature that recommends potential matches to users based on other people whose profiles they have examined. "It's got some of the same underpinnings, but some new ones," Dan Finnigan, executive vice president and general manager of HotJobs, told Reuters. "We will be providing these kinds of features and functions for our recruiters as well sometime soon."

Once users perform searches and save their results, Finnigan said, the new engine kicks in and begins looking for and generating suggestions of potentially-compatible jobs. Eventually, using the new technology, recruiters might also be directed to potential candidates based on the kinds of people they have considered for their positions, he said.
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Nokia says it will overtake Motorola in China
Beijing: Nokia, the world's biggest maker of mobile phones, says it will overtake Motorola Inc to become the leader in China's handset market in the second half of 2003. Dozens of foreign and domestic suppliers are competing to dominate China, the largest mobile market by users, and the world's top two producers have been locked in a tight race to be No 1. He said the two firms currently claim roughly equal percentages of the China market, but he declined to give specific figures.

Finland-based Nokia, which derived about 10 percent of its total revenue of from China last year, plans to roll out some 15 new handset models this year in an effort to entice price and style-conscious Chinese customers and win market share, he said. "Sales this year have een pretty good. There was obviously a period of SARS which affected retail sales, but otherwise it's been a fairly good year," Giles said.
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