Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
In an effort to boost flagging sales in the wake of a perfect storm of issues, Microsoft has followed up price cuts to its Xbox 360 range in the US, with cuts in Europe. According to a Reuters report Microsoft will shave 50 euros off the price of its most popular 20GB Xbox 360 console from August 24.
The European price cut and similar cut in
Australia last week make a mockery of indications from Microsoft that
there would be no price drops in Europe. Microsoft seems to be
following Sony's strategy of simply telling the media one thing (no
plans for a price cut) and then literally the next day going ahead and
doing the exact opposite.
The fact is, however, that Microsoft had little option but to go into
price slashing mode. Faced with serious hardware reliability issues,
resurgent PlayStation 3 sales after Sony aggressively slashed the
console's price in the US by $100, and a remarkable continuing roll at
the check-out counter by Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft had its back to the
wall.
The good news for Xbox 360 is that the release of Halo 3, the latest
installment in the phenomenally successful Microsoft games franchise,
is just around the corner on September 25.
As 2007 has shown, the games business is all about software and
exclusive titles like Halo 3 are few and far between this year. The
blogosphere is well and truly buzzing with irate Xbox 360 owners who
have suffered the "red ring of death" hardware failure but who also
would never consider abandoning their Microsoft console because it's
the only platform that will have Halo 3.
Some market watchers have predicted that July's PS3 price cut in the US
will result in the Sony console passing Xbox 360 sales for the first
time in that month. However, the same analysts believe that Xbox 360
will bounce back strongly as a result of the current price cut and the
release of Halo 3.
The pressure is now back on Sony, which has not cut the price of its console outside of North America.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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