Palm closes retail stores

Palm plans to close its retail stores in an effort to focus on fewer programs and better compete, reports PC World.

All of Palm's eight branded retail stores, as well as its 26 stores within Airport Wireless shops, will close.

The move may stem from increased competition from Research In Motion's BlackBerry products. Prior to about a year ago, BlackBerry dominated the enterprise market and Palm was popular among prosumers, who typically buy devices in retail outlets, said Bill Hughes, an analyst at In-Stat.

Analysts are mulling over Apple's iPhone sales numbers and are alarmed at a perceived discrepancy in the figures, says PC World.

Apple claims slightly over 3.7 million iPhones were sold in 2007, yet AT&T this week revealed it ended the year with "just at or slightly under two million iPhone customers". That two million has been boosted somewhat by an estimated 300 000 to 400 000 sales in Europe, analysts believe.

The 3.7 million iPhones Apple says it has sold and the estimated 2.4 million sold by its network partners still leaves 1.3 million of the devices unaccounted for.

Microsoft has pushed back the release of SQL Server 2008 until the third quarter, reports Information Week.

The company had planned for a second-quarter release of the product, but insisted the later date still keeps the company on track to ship the database software within the original goal of 24 to 36 months after SQL Server 2005. "We are on track to reach this goal," the company said.

In releasing what Microsoft called a "clarification on the road map", the company said there have been more than 100 000 downloads of the test version of the software, or community technology preview. SQL Server 2008 is a major release for the company because it not only improves on the capabilities of the 2005 product, but it also provides the foundation for Microsoft's business intelligence software.

Charter Communications, a US provider of cable TV and Internet services, has blamed a "software error" for completely deleting the contents of 14 000 of its customer e-mail accounts, says TG Daily.

During routine maintenance, Charter "erroneously deleted active accounts along with the others", according to a spokesperson.

The company said there is no way to restore the lost e-mails. "We really are sincerely sorry for having had this happen and do apologise to all those folks who were affected by the error."