Critics of the EU often point to the abuse of structural funds (€703m, up 17% with 60 out of 95 audited projects showing “material errors” in last audit.)

Yet, this fraud pales when compared to VAT fraud, a crime typically associated with our industry, with our small-but-valuable (and easily portable) components and devices such as chips and phones.

Carousel and VAT fraud is a giant that dwarves Europeans' other favorite financial fiddles, For example, carousel fraud accounted Continue reading...

The combo printer, copier and multifunctional product (MFP) shipments in EMEA in 2007 totaled 52.6-million units, up 4,3% says Gartner.

This year of growth was driven by demand for MFPs, which outsold printers. Colour-page devices grew again in EMEA (up 34%) but monochrome-page was the predominant office choice (up 18% and 85% share of the page market).

HP held Number 1 position while Lexmark lost market-share trying to pull out of the lower end of the market to focus on high-end workgroup space. Continue reading...

Cisco’s CEO makes it clear why vendors want to focus on India, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

“This last year,” says John Chambers, “…emerging markets passed the developed markets for the first time in hundreds of years in GDP. In terms of purchasing power, the emerging markets are for the first time bigger than the developed markets. GDP growth in emerging markets is dwarfing that of the developed markets.

“And unlike what occurred a decade or two ago, Continue reading...

More than a year after the EC abandoned a similar effort, European Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, says (again) he wants to simplify copyright levies in the EU.

For example, levies on MP3 players range from 0 to 15 Euro depending on the country. According to EICTA, fees have more than tripled since 2001, when the EU passed its copyright law for the digital age. The law permitted copying of copyrighted works such as music for personal use, but allowed individual member states to set levels of levies Continue reading...

Asia leads the world in spam. While USA generated far more spam than any other single country, Europe for the first time surpasses USA--with Russia (8.3%), Turkey ( 3.8%) Italy (3.5%) Poland (3.4%) Germany (3.2%) Spain (3.1%) and UK (2.5%) all in the Top 12.

SophosLabs reveals a dramatic rise in the proportion of the world's spam messages come from compromised Russian computers. The country now accounts for 8.3% of the world's spam (or 1 in every 12 junk mails in our In Box).

"Responsible Continue reading...

Service providers are rapidly increasing their deployments of residential gateways for connected home applications, says a new report by Parks Associates. The number of households worldwide with service provider-deployed residential gateway solutions could grow to more than 71m by Q4 2012.

 “Service providers worldwide are scrambling to add value to broadband, communications, and other services,” says Kurt Scherf, Parks Associates’ Vice President and Principal Analyst.

The strategy Continue reading...

The Romanian PC market continued to grow rapidly in the third quarter of 2007 in terms of both shipments and value. According to IDC, shipments soared by more than a third year-on-year to 193,541 units and the value of the market jumped up by almost a half to reach nearly $165m.

Notebook shipments continued to rise steeply in 3Q 2007, by 92.0% compared to the same period last year. Desktop PCs grew almost 17.5% year-on-year in shipments.