Yuletide news round-up
HP-Autonomy saga rumbles on; netbooks die and Huawei's name dragged through the mud - again
Although much of the UK shut down over the festive break, the industry was rocked by a slew of stories that made national and even international news headlines.
Starting with the biggest, the HP-Autonomy saga took another twist as HP's 10-K filing revealed that the US Department of Justice is now examining HP's explosive allegations that Autonomy inflated its valuation.
Autonomy founder Mike Lynch immediately hit back, using his Autonomy Accounts website to criticise HP boss Meg Whitman for not using the filing to provide a full explanation of the allegations of accounting impropriety she made a month earlier.
HP's 10-K, released on 27 November, also contained a crumb of comfort for its resellers as the ailing vendor underlined the need to "rebuild our business relationships with our channel partners".
Huawei once again found itself in the headlines for the wrong reasons following reports that it had teamed up with a partner to pitch kit to an Iranian telecoms firm in a move that would violate international trade embargoes.
The revelation comes just two months after US law makers accused the China-based vendor of engaging in intellectual property theft and posing a threat to US national security, more about which can be read here. And remember, this is a vendor that is making a substantial investment in the west, including here in the UK.
Amazon Web Services was another vendor to endure a torrid yuletide as a service outage on Christmas Eve hit many of its customers, most notably movie website Netflix.
Elsewhere, IBM and Adobe got in on the M&A act by acquiring information management vendor StoredIQ and online social portfolio platform vendor Behance respectively.
Three or four years ago, the netbook was the essential stocking filler and the great white hope of the PC market. But reports over the break confirmed the mini form factor's decline - hastened by the rise of tablets - is now terminal, with Acer and Asus shutting down production from yesterday.
This was a form factor that as recently as 2009 was predicted to sell 139 million units this year by some analysts.
In late December fears were raised that Windows 8 is not having the "boosting effect" on an ailing PC market that some had hoped. According to figures from market watcher Context, Windows 8 PCs accounted for about 55 per cent of Windows PC sales by the end of November, less than the 58 per cent achieved by Windows 7 at the same stage. Business adoption of Windows 8 stands at just eight per cent, way behind the 31 per cent achieved by its predecessor, Context added.