When today Eurostat announced growth numbers of 2.6% (EU25) for the second quarter, analysts were surprised and are now upgrading their growth perspectives for 2006. Most of the growth is coming from consumption, and not export as it used to be. While growth in the US (3.5%) was still stronger the trend is upwards in Europe. Strongest growth numbers were seen in Spain (3.6%), Lithuania (8.6%), Austria (3.1%) and Sweden (5%). The two biggest economies, UK (2.6%) and Germany (2.4%), looked good too, while France should be relatively much weaker (not all data was available yet).

Some time ago I switched my calendar to 30Boxes and have been using it ever since. It works great for me. 30Boxes made the race against Yahoo Calendar and it looks like I am going to stick with it. Now 30Boxes Mobile has been announced last week and I installed it on my Nokia 9300. After using it for a day with GPRS it confirms what I have seen with practically all mobile wireless web applications so far. They are very slow (to the point of not being practically usable anymore), overall program usability is a pain in the neck having to use the tab button or the cursor like a disk jockey dozen times before seeing or doing anything meaningful.

In short, unless you really have no other way of accessing the Internet with your laptop or from a desk PC, using wireless Internet web access from your mobile phone remains a pain in the neck. To me it is still a miracle how someone like, e.g. Opera, can make a living with licensing products to such a market. I can only assume that they have been lucky so far because most of their customers are probably not using it themself in business but just need a browser on their mobile phones pre-installed by default. Let's hope for them (Opera) and others that this all changes soon before cost-conscious buyers within Nokia and others might notice it too and take it off from their BOMs...

Now back to 30Boxes. I continue (as mentioned) to use it on my laptop but unless lightning strikes that machine I won't use it on my mobile phone.

When I read an article in The Inquirer this morning - Intel hopes to bring WiMax to Southern Europe- Where is my signal? - I had to re-read it because it first seemed like I missed something.


Now, if I understand the article correctly, then they say that IF there is no WiMAX basestation in reach then families cannot connect to it, and therefore the writer insists that WiMAX will not be a viable technology for the likes of e.g. Sprint! And also since the reach of a WiMAX basestation is about 2 miles it would only work within that radius.

My comment: Guess what would happen with 2G, 2.5G, 3G or any G network signal if you are outside the basestation reach? Or do you think a 3G network has only one basestation to cover a whole city?

This is a classical example of journalism that is either misused by vendors to build up hype or to fight an upcoming technology. Whatever the reason might be why they write such stuff, it is obvious that they really don't understand what they are talking about. (the other reason could be that they know it and try to manipulate the public, which would be even more outrageous)
In the first case it becomes quite dangerous since they make themself the playball of others who know what they are doing and misuse the press for their interests. So in short, it always requires quite a few to build hype and the less the people who write or comment about it know, the easier it becomes for marketing folks - like us - to tell them some stories and have them write about it to the world. Guys, here's another story that I would like to tell you, will call you later today...

• 8/2006: The IPO of Infineon's memory chip unit Qimonda raises only half of the planned amount (500mio instead of 1bln). General market conditions are mentioned as the reason.
• 8/2006: Mr. Ziszewitz -ex board member of Infineon- admits that he has accepted bribes (260k EUR in total, typically handed over as cash in envelopes) from a car racing sponsoring firm. He says in court that ex-CEO U. Schumacher was also among the "sponsored" Infineon managers.
• 7/2006: Infineon and Tessera stop legal dispute on patent enfringement case. Infineon agrees to pay one-off 50 million USD to Tessera and then pay for licenses over the next 5 years. (est. 20-30 million USD per year)
• 7/2006: Infineon announces higher revenues in Q2 but a loss of 23 million USD after taxes. Lower than analysts expected.
• 7/2006: Infineon opens new headquarter building in Munich: 160'000 m2, for 6'000 employees, 400 million EUR total costs, a special building - originally planned - for the board was not realized because of cost reasons.
• 7/2006: 30 US states announce plans to sue chip vendors for illegal price arrangements. Infineon is also on the list next to Samsung, Micron, Hynix.
• 7/2006: 560 pink slips are to be sent to employees of the outdated logic chip facility in München-Perlach.
• 3/2006: Siemens sells its last remaining shares (18%) in Infineon ending its - formal - relationship.
• 1/2006: The head of a car racing sponsoring company admits bribes to Infineon managers and board members.