• LG has unveiled a new phone that looks like the new Apple iPhone. The price is higher (600 EUR) than Apple's phone. It has been co-developed with the Italian fashion company Prada. "We designated one concept to be developed from the beginning with them," said Chang Ma, an LG vice president. "We then collaborated in all aspects of the phone." This could well also be interesting timing because the phone will already be available in Europe and Asia in February and March. Of course there is more to a product than simply building one that looks similiar (by accident, I guess) to Apple's, as the many MP3 player vendors know quite well from competing with the Apple iPod.
• Motorola announced today what had been expected: much lower net income for Q4 2006 (48% less than a year ago). This is primarly due to much lower prices for its RAZR phone, but also due to to the fact that other business units don't seem to be contributing that much to the profits. While profits are down, market share and sales revenue are up (17% higher total revenue). Now the reaction from the CEO has followed quickly: they will lay off 3'500 people.
• IBM brought in a reliable result with 26bln USD revenue and 3.5bln profit. Profits included the one-time sale of its PC business to Lenovo. Below you can see a chart that shows the revenues and profits every quarter (over 28 quarters) from Q1 2000 to Q4 2006. Analysts were not happy, though, and the stock dropped.

Tech startups in Silicon Valley are raising less money and also keeping it longer before they raise a new round of funding (on average now 17 months between rounds). That's what the WSJ (subscription required) write, and what one would have guessed in the light of the many Web 2.0 startups that don't need much cash to get going and whose founders also often have experience of the dotcom bubble burst. That approach is quite typical for European startups of course, but for a different reason: there's simply not that much money around to waste...

The WSJ article can also be read below.

The Swiss "Bundesamt fuer Statistik" has set up a website that let's you conveniently compare demographic statistics of European countries. At first sight this seems to be a very nice - and free - service right at your fingertips. Check it out for yourself.