European server sales hit rock bottom

European server sales have dropped to the lowest level ever recorded by IDC, says Computing.co.uk.

According to IDC's Quarterly Server Tracker for Europe, Middle East and Africa, server vendor revenue in the second quarter of 2009 reached $2.9 billion. This is 35.8% down on the same period last year, with the number of servers shipped dropping below half a million, 33.9% down on 2008.

"Conditions remain tough because customers have been limiting IT spending to the bare essentials to keep their IT infrastructure running, and this has negatively impacted hardware investment," said IDC analyst for European systems and infrastructures solutions Beatriz Valle.

As the handset industry begins to emerge from its worst-ever decline in sales, mobile phone manufacturers are trying to reverse a narrowing of their margins and fend off competition from PC and software companies, says The Wall Street Journal.

Those goals are reflected in the slate of products planned for the second half of 2009, ahead of the key Christmas sales period, which include phones designed to persuade customers to upgrade to one of the new generation of high-powered and higher-margin devices.

"Customers are asking for the iPhone and for anything which gives [Internet] surf possibilities," said Sofia Stalnacke, a sales representative at a mobile phone retailer in Stockholm.

Palm has accidentally leaked an early edition of WebOS 1.2 to a few lucky users, giving the world a sneak peek at the next version of this smartphone operating system, reports Brighthand.

This is being carefully examined, and there's good news and bad news for those who have a Palm Pre.

The good news is that the next version of this operating system might start using the LEDs that are built into the Pre to notify users of events, like new e-mails. The lack of this feature has drawn much criticism, and Palm appears ready to respond.

An Ealing council employee infected the UK local authority's IT systems with the Conficker-D worm after he plugged an infected USB into a work computer, causing tens of thousands of pounds in damages in the process, says The Register.

The May incident took several days to clean up and landed the west London council with a bill of £500 000 in lost revenue and repairs, The Guardian reports.

The council was unable to process more than 1 800 parking tickets, at an estimated cost of £90 000; libraries lost out on £25 000 in fines and booking fees; council property rent went uncollected; and £14 000 was spent in overtime sorting out delayed housing benefit claims.