The hi-tech industry was delivered a shock by Apple, when the company announced that its chief executive Steve Jobs, will no longer be making his keynote annual address to the industry at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco.

The roll out of Network on wheels’ (NOW) Van programme was today announced by the networking behemoth Cisco across the Eastern region of the country. Furthermore, the company shared its plans to address the Information Technology (IT) needs of the growing Small and Medium Business (SMB) segment in the area.

The company’s NOW van will cover the key industrial cities of the eastern region including Durgapur and Ranchi, among others. It already covers New Delhi, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Karnal, Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bhubaneswar.

Since miscreants stepped up attacks targeting a vulnerability on hundreds of thousands of WebPages, a rare emergency update has been issued by Microsoft for its Internet Explorer browser.

Acer, a worldwide maker and distributor of computer product,s has rolled out its Aspire One range of Netbooks at affordable prices for its Indian customers.

According to sources, thru new range Netbooks, Internet and basic computing can easily be available while on the move.

Weighing less than a kilogram, the notebook runs on advance Intel Atom processor technology. It comes packed with 1 GB of RAM and a 160 GB hard drive. It is accessible with operating system options of Linpus Linux Lite or Windows XP Home.

Samsung Electronics has announced the introduction of its latest two CDMA phones from the MPower series christened MPower 569 and MPower 309.

According to sources, the Mpower series of CDMA phones (MPower 569 and MPower 309) have the capability to inter operate on Reliance Mobile, Tata Indicom and Virgin Mobile.

Moreover, the phones also support high speed wireless data of up to 153kbps and offer fast internet browsing experience.

The company claims that the handsets can also be used as external storage and store data via Bluetooth or data cable.

San Francisco  - Global mobile phone sales are set to slide for the first time since 2001 as a result of the global economic crisis, market research firm IDC Corp forecast Thursday.

The report predicted that total mobile phone sales will fall 1.9 per cent in 2009 after several years of double-digit annual growth fuelled largely by demand in now spluttering emerging markets. According to IDC, the expected growth in 2008 is 7.8 per cent.

The company said it did not expect the downturn to continue past 2009, with the market in 2010 showing signs of revival as the economic recovery takes effect.