Struggling electronics and entertainment conglomerate Sony said it would cut about 7 percent of its global work force, sell more than $1 billion in assets and post a loss this year.
With a restructuring plan that failed to excite some analysts, Sony (SNE) hopes to reverse its fading fortunes and catch up with rivals such as Matsushita (MC) and Sharp in flat TVs and Apple (AAPL) and its popular iPod player in the portable music industry.
The inventor of the Trinitron TV and Walkman cassette player said it would book 210 billion yen in restructuring charges in the two business years through March 2007 as it closes plants and slashes 10,000 jobs.
Sony estimates the restructuring will produce cost savings of 200 billion yen by the end of the business year to March 2008, when it aims to achieve an annual group operating profit margin of 5 percent and more than 8 trillion yen in revenues.
Sony unveiled plans to sell real estate, stocks and non-core assets worth 120 billion yen by 2007/08, vowed to reduce the number of product models by one-fifth and close 11 of its 65 global factories.
Sony has already cut 20,000 jobs and significantly lowered fixed costs under a previous three-year restructuring plan that was scheduled to end in the current business year.
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Free opera: Opera Software is now giving away its web browser and removing ads in an effort to broaden its user base and capture revenues by referring traffic to search engines and e-commerce sites.
Before the availability of Opera version 8.5 this week, users who downloaded the browser had to either pay $39 or view ads while browsing. Its competitors, including Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox, carried no such requirement.
In addition to getting revenue from fees and ads, Opera's browser also had revenue-sharing agreements with other sites, primarily Google (GOOG), for directing traffic through the browser's built-in search box.
By expanding the number of users, Opera can expect to earn more through such deals, Krogh said. A wider presence on desktops, he said, also could help Opera get on more mobile devices, where Opera has an advantage because its underlying code is more compact than its rivals'.
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Cell for 400 families: Verizon expects to save about $250,000 a year on commercial power costs as a result of a fuel cell pilot project aimed at finding alternative energy sources.
The phone company said that the Garden City facility, which handles calls for about 35,000 phone lines and has 900 employees, uses fuel cells for much of its power, but is still connected to the commercial power grid and other backup sources.
It has installed seven fuel cells which are each capable of generating 200 kilowatts of power an hour, or nearly enough energy for 400 single family households.
Verizon (VZ) said that production of this much power in a fossil-fuel based plant would have caused emissions of 11.1 million pounds of carbon-dioxide in one year.
The additional power source could help Verizon keep its network more reliable in an emergency. Telecommunications networks had to run on backup power generators during the August 2003 power blackout in the United States and after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
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The legal lion: Researchers at Penn State and other universities have developed a tool to more easily share or search for large academic files -- using the principles most associated with trading music and movies illegally.
But unlike the free "peer-to-peer" file-sharing systems that have drawn complaints and lawsuits from the entertainment industry, people who allow data to be exchanged over LionShare can place limits on who can view specific files.
The secure, private network is meant for faculty, researchers and students to trade photos, research, class materials and other types of information that may be not be easily accessible through current technology.
Normally, a researcher looking for data would need to conduct separate, time-consuming searches at individual repositories. It may also difficult to download large data sets or video of, for instance, a deep-sea expedition.
LionShare, now being tested and slated for general release Sept. 30, combines the concepts of file-sharing and repository searching into a single search.
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Compiled by Keith Axline. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
