AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Said to Plan Samsung Tablet to Rival IPad

Bloomberg

 

AT&T Inc., Sprint Nextel Corp. and Verizon Wireless plan to sell a tablet computer from Samsung Electronics Co. to rival the iPad, said three people familiar with the matter.

AT&T and Sprint plan to offer the device, called the Galaxy Tab, for less than Samsung’s wholesale price by bundling it with monthly wireless service contracts, two people said. Samsung, the world’s second-largest maker of mobile phones, is scheduled to announce the carriers’ support at a Sept. 16 event in New York, said the people said, who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t public.

Subsidies may help tablets such as the Galaxy stand out against Apple Inc.’s iPad, which starts at $499. Verizon Wireless hasn’t yet decided on such subsidies, said one person.

“The carrier-subsidized model would be very interesting,” said Ashok Kumar, an analyst at Rodman & Renshaw. “The market is going to be very crowded.”

Several companies including Hewlett-Packard Co. and LG Electronics Inc. are introducing tablet computers following the success of the iPad, a 9.7-inch touch-screen that acts as an e- reader, media player, word processor and calendar. The PCs access the Web through data plan contracts that represent the fastest-growing source of sales for the carriers.

Ashley Zandy, an AT&T spokeswoman; Cristi Allen, a Sprint spokeswoman; Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon Wireless spokesman, and Ashley Lane, spokeswoman for Suwon, South Korea-based Samsung, declined to comment.

First in Europe

The Galaxy tablet goes on sale in Europe in October, before the U.S., and the company has plans for more of the devices next year, WP Hong, Samsung’s head of global planning, said at a electronics conference in Berlin this month.

The device, based on Google Inc.’s Android operating system, has a 7-inch screen and is able to play high-definition videos. The Galaxy has a global-positioning system, cameras on each side for video calling and acts as a mobile phone.

Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of BlackBerry smartphones, plans to introduce a tablet in November, people familiar with the plans have said. Motorola Inc., which makes Android-based smartphones, is also planning a tablet device for the holiday season, people familiar with the matter had said.

“I don’t think any of them are going to seriously challenge Apple for the lead over the holiday season at this point,” said Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at researcher iSuppli. “From a manufacturing standpoint, it would be a huge hurdle unless they’re going to start out of the gate at the volume that Apple is doing -- which would be risky at best.”

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, sold more than 3 million iPads in the first 80 days after it went on sale. To compete, tablet makers will have to offer something unique that the iPad doesn’t have, or cut their prices, Alexander said in an interview.

Digital Forensics Program Teaches Cybercrime Fighting Skills

Tech Times

 

Crime investigation is going digital in today's high-tech society, where devices from laptops to phones and even GPS units store digital paper trails. To retrieve and sort through the massive amounts of data stored on computers and other gadgets, companies, law enforcement and federal agencies are looking to digital forensics specialists for help.

TSTC is one of just two colleges in Texas offering an associate degree in the fast-growing field of Digital Forensics Technology (DIF). With its hands-on labs using industry-standard software and law classes, Senior Instructor Linda Shorter said DIF students are getting the skills agencies want in new hires.

"Companies and law enforcement are glad we're doing this training, because they need help with the imaging and analysis work. Around 95 percent of all crimes have something digital tied into them, whether its cell phones, PDAs or computers, everything you touch gets a record," Shorter said. "They need more people who know the software, and that's what we're teaching."

Shorter teaches students to use Forensic Toolkit (FTK), one of the top-of-the-line products used in the digital forensics industry. The FTK software can perform various searches on computers to pull up records of deleted files, log in information, e-mails sent and received and websites visited, etc. One of the first lessons students learn is that a file is not really deleted until it's written over.

"I've learned that people leave all kinds of data whenever they use computers," DIF student Eric Watson said. "Even with files on a flash drive, deleted files can be recovered. Cell phones too. These days cell phones are just small computers."

With the correct validation and proper handling, digital evidence can be used in criminal cases. The program's Department Chair Derek Smith said validation is critically important when it comes to digital forensics. That's why the program requires students to take classes in both criminal and cyber laws.

"You have to know the law when you're retrieving digital evidence, because without the proper validation, evidence could be thrown out," Smith said. "Hash values or numeric values authenticate the data from a computer to prove it hasn't been changed and that no tampering has occurred."

Because the program is new, it has yet to graduate its first student. However, Smith said interest in the program has increased each semester, especially with the added bonus of the faster dual degree track.

"One of things we've done to make our program appealing is to offer a dual major for network security and digital forensics. It's only seven semesters to get both forensics degrees because many of the classes overlap," Smith said. "The students are jumping all over that because they only have to stay two more semesters to get a second associate degree. It makes them more marketable when it comes to finding a job, too."

One such dual major student, Enrique Cervantes, said he hopes to find work as a network security specialist or a digital forensic analyst when he graduates because it's an exciting field to be in right now.

"With network security, you're protecting the network and your clients and with digital forensics you're uncovering digital secrets, and that's what caught my attention," Cervantes said. "So I started the DIF program last semester. Even though I've been in it the least amount of time, I'm more interested in this program than all the other computer fields I've studied."

Apple Eats Into Nintendo, Sony Sales as the IPhone Plays to Gamers

Bloomberg

 

When Max Batch wants to play a video game, he turns to his Apple Inc. iPhone.

The 22-year-old German has shunned hand-held consoles such as Sony Corp.’s PSP and Nintendo Co.’s DS, joining a growing number of people who use their smartphones for online and other games, eroding sales of the dedicated handsets.

“It’s not worth having a hand-held,” said Batch, who spends about 2 euros a month on mobile-phone games and tried out Sony’s Playstation Portable at the Gamescom fair in Cologne, Germany, last month. “I have an iPhone and when I want to play, I download something from the app store.”

With more processing power and better graphics than their predecessors, smartphones are eating into the market dominated by Nintendo and Sony. Shipments of game-capable mobile phones are set to rise 11.4 percent to 1.27 billion this year, researcher iSuppli said last month, while those of video-game consoles may be little changed at 52.3 million and portable units may drop 2.5 percent to 38.9 million.

“With casual gaming dominating the market, the iPhone is starting to give the traditional hand-held DS and PSP models a run for their money and will likely continue into the future,” iSuppli researcher Pamela Tufegdzic said. Revenue from hand-held gaming units is estimated to be little changed between $5 billion and $6 billion this year, iSuppli said.

IPad Threat

Apple’s iPad is another threat. With the success of the tablet computer prompting companies such as Toshiba Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and Research In Motion Ltd. to develop similar devices, console makers may be set for more competition.

“There’s certainly increased competition between the hand- held platforms and the mobile devices,” John Schappert, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts Inc., said in an interview. “I think there’s going to be incredible growth happening on the iPad and the iPhone and the Android devices.” Android is Google Inc.’s operating platform.

The multi-purpose capabilities of mobile phones are making them the platform of choice for young gamers.

“In some countries the first digital entertainment device that people there might touch is a mobile phone rather than a PC,” Chris Lewis, vice president of Microsoft Corp.’s EMEA Interactive Entertainment Business, said in an interview.

Windows Phones

Microsoft, the maker of the best-selling Xbox360 console, doesn’t have a dedicated hand-held device. It now wants to attract players on the move with games on phones that use its Windows Phone 7 operating system.

The boom in mobile-phones games is prompting software makers to adopt existing games to the new market segment.

Some games, such as “Max and the Magic Marker” from the Danish studio Press Play ApS have their roots in the console and hand-held market and will now be available on the Windows 7 Phone, Matt Booty, general manager of Microsoft’s mobile game studios, said in an interview.

“A lot of children have hand-me-down phones as opposed to having dedicated portables like the DS or the PSP,” Booty said. “We definitely see that as a potential target market where we would like to compete.”

Microsoft has announced 50 games titles that will be available when Windows Phone 7, scheduled for release in October, becomes available.

Game Center

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, has shipped more than 120 million devices that run its iOS operating system, including the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. The company earlier this month added a Game Center feature to the operating system that offers multiplayer games.

Mobile phones on which users can potentially play games made up 93 percent of all games hardware in 2009, while consoles accounted for 3 percent, according to iSuppli. Still, hand-helds had a 67.1 percent share of the worldwide games software market in 2009 with the rest for mobile phones.

Hand-helds still have the advantage of buttons and specific gaming capabilities, while smartphone games are usually played with less accurate touchscreen controls, executives at the console makers say.

Comparing smartphones to hand-helds “is like comparing apples with oranges” and the current development of handset sales isn’t connected to the rise of smartphones, said Bernd Fakesch, Nintendo’s general manager in Germany. “It has to do with the Nintendo DS having reached a market penetration that has never been seen before for any console.”

‘World of Games’

DS hardware sales fell 47 percent to 3.15 million players in the three months ended June 30, while software sales dropped 23 percent to 22.4 million units, Nintendo said July 30. Mobile game consoles accounted for 27 percent of revenue last year, making them the company’s biggest sales generator.

“The hand-helds will continue to be successful if they bring something different and more interesting for gamers,” said Yves Guillemot, chief executive officer of Ubisoft Entertainment, Europe’s biggest video-game producer.

Brian Farrell, CEO of wrestling video games publisher THQ Inc., said a good example is Nintendo’s 3-D version of the DS hand-held, which has a 3-D screen that doesn’t require users to wear special glasses.

Some executives say the discussion about whether mobile phones and tablet computers will usurp traditional gaming consoles and hand-helds is misleading, as phone games may help to expand the total computer-games market.

“If even a small percentage of the casual gamers say that this is something I really like and enjoy, some may go out and buy a PlayStation 3,” said Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony’s Networked Products & Services Group. Mobile-phone games may be a “good way to get people into the world of games.”

Nokia Fires CEO as it Fights Fierce Competition

USA Today

 

HELSINKI — Nokia is replacing CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo with top Microsoft executive Stephen Elop as the world's largest mobile phone maker struggles to keep pace with smaller and more innovative rivals, particularly in the smartphone market.

Elop, head of Microsoft's (MSFT) business division, has held top posts at Juniper Networks, Adobe Systems, Macromedia, and, as a systems executive, Boston Chicken.

He takes over Sept. 21, the company said Friday.

With Nokia stock down more than 20% this year because of two profit warnings, Nokia veteran Kallasvuo had come under increasing pressure and speculation he would be ousted.

Investors welcomed the news, and sent the company's share price up about 5% in Helsinki.

"The time is right to accelerate the company's renewal — to bring in new executive leadership with different skills and strengths in order to drive company success," Chairman of the Board and former CEO Jorma Ollila said in a statement.

Ollila said that Elop, age 46, has a "strong software background and proven record in change management (which) will be valuable assets as we press harder to complete the transformation of the company."

A Canadian, Elop is a computer engineering and management graduate from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He became CEO of Macromedia, maker of Flash software, in 2005 just months before Adobe bought the company. Flash allows people to use their Web browsers to watch Internet video and animation, and the software is now increasingly used on mobile phones.

The 57-year-old Kallasvuo, who joined the company in 1982, will leave as president and CEO on Sept. 20 and give up his seat on the board of directors with immediate effect and be replaced by Elop, who heads Microsoft's business division.

Kallasvuo will continue to lead the board of the Nokia Siemens Networks unit in a non-executive capacity, the company said.

Although it is still the world leader in handset sales — with a 33% market share — Nokia has been slow at detecting new trends, like folding clamshell models and touch screen handsets.

Markets have been expecting something new from the company that once had the innovative edge in the industry but that has not happened since Kallasvuo took over in 2006. He has also been unable to tackle problems in the North American market, the company's worst performer, despite a pledge to make it a top priority.

Nokia has predicted that while global mobile market will grow 10% this year its own growth will remain flat and its ailing network sector, Nokia Siemens Networks — a joint venture between Nokia and Siemens of Germany — continues to see revenue fall.

Kallasvuo's departure was hinted at as early as July. When announcing the company's second-quarter earnings report, he conceded that rumors that he might be replaced were "not good for Nokia, and in one way or other we should be able to solve the problem to end the speculation."

As cellphone markets have become saturated, Nokia increasingly has turned to providing more services, such as music and video downloads, navigational maps and games, in a global online market it estimates will reach 100 billion euros this year, with some 300 million active users by 2011.

The appointment of Elop thus fits well into the pattern of closer ties between the world's top handset maker and the software giant, which have grown in recent years.

In 2009, Nokia launched its first laptop, a netbook with a 10-inch screen that runs on Microsoft's Windows 7 software. Previously, access to some of Microsoft's most popular Web services, like Hotmail and Windows Live Messenger, have been built into Nokia phone models.

Nokia, based in Espoo near Helsinki, employs 130,000 people worldwide.

Android App Developers Endure Lower Sales in Search of Growth

Bloomberg

 

Pinger Inc., a developer of mobile applications, can get twice as much in sales from programs for Apple devices than for phones powered by Android software. That’s not stopping it from creating its first Android app.

“Even if the revenue generation might be less, we think it’s still going to be significant,” said Joe Sipher, chief product and marketing officer at San Jose, California-based Pinger, which makes text-messaging and other programs. “Our users are saying, ‘Gosh, I switched to an Android phone, can you put your Textfree app on Android?’”

Pinger and other programmers don’t want to miss out on the $40 billion that Booz & Co. estimates will come from sales of apps by 2014, much of it from Google Inc.’s Android platform. Android unseated Research In Motion Ltd.’s software as the top mobile operating system in the U.S. last quarter. That’s making developers more willing to put up with its drawbacks, including higher app-creation costs and an online marketplace some users consider harder to navigate than Apple’s App Store.

PopCap Games Inc., maker of the “Bejeweled” and “Plants vs. Zombies” games, doesn’t yet have any titles in the Android Market. By mid-2011, the Seattle-based company expects to release games simultaneously for iPhone and Android handsets.

‘High Hopes’

“Even though we are not making any money on Android right now, we have pretty high hopes for it,” said Andrew Stein, PopCap’s director of mobile business development. “There’s really no reason why users shouldn’t consume and buy content to the same extent on an Android phone as they are on an iPhone.”

Android phones like Motorola Inc.’s Droid X and HTC Corp.’s Droid Incredible are gaining devotees. Stein said he expects revenue generated from Android games to approach that of its iPhone versions by the end of 2011.

A wide variety of apps -- as well as the availability of the most popular ones for games, location, texting and content -- is critical to luring phone buyers. Apple has more than 250,000 apps available, compared with about 70,000 for Android.

Like Apple, Google takes a 30 percent cut of revenue from apps sold in its marketplace.

“We want to reduce friction and remove the barriers that make it difficult for developers to make great apps available to users -- across as many devices, geographies and carriers as possible,” said Randall Sarafa, a Google spokesman.

Google rose $10.32, or 2.3 percent, to $460.34 yesterday on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has lost 26 percent this year.

Android Remedies

Google may be taking steps to remedy some of the issues that make Android app creation less lucrative to developers.

Apple iTunes users can do one-click shopping because iTunes saves their information. While Android buyers can do the same if they sign up for Google Checkout, that service doesn’t have as many users. Android Market also lacks features for in-app purchases, which some developers of Apple apps use to sell new game levels or virtual products, said Tim Chang, a venture capitalist at Norwest Venture Partners, whose investments includes iPhone-game maker Ngmoco.

Google is in talks with EBay Inc.’s PayPal to add its payment service, three people familiar with the matter said last month. That may ease the process for buyers. Google may also offer tools that let developers sell subscriptions and virtual goods from within apps, Andy Rubin, Google’s vice president of engineering, said in June.

For now, producing programs for Android isn’t as lucrative. Loopt Inc., the maker of an app for locating your friends on a map, and Zecter Inc., which offers the ZumoDrive file storage service, said they derive less in sales from Android apps than iPhone versions. Neither of the Mountain View, California-based companies would specify the difference.

Paid Versus Free

“There’s no question Android has a lot more phones out than six months ago, but that’s very different from saying Android is a more appealing platform for developers,” said Sam Altman, chief executive officer at Loopt.

ZumoDrive makes money by getting people to download the free program and then upgrade to a paid version. Thirty percent more iPhone customers do that, said CEO David Zhao.

Besides attracting fewer paid app downloads, fewer people click on ads in Android programs, according to data from Smaato Inc., a Redwood City, California-based mobile-ad firm. In July, the iPhone had a “click-through” rate of 140 in the U.S., compared with 103 for Android, Smaato said, citing data that measures which operating system had users that clicked on advertisements more often.

Plus, the market share Gartner Inc. measures for Android -- 34 percent in the U.S. last quarter -- doesn’t mean there are that many customers for apps, said Pinger’s Sipher. Some Android phones don’t have the ability to access Google’s app store and the proliferation of different models means some programs won’t work on some phones.

Product Variables

App creators have to contend with various versions of Android and differences in screen resolution and keyboard. That makes it more expensive to test programs and can force developers to design for the lowest common denominator, said Bill Predmore, president of POP, which builds mobile applications and ads for clients including Google, Microsoft Corp. and Target Corp.

Still, the accelerating rate of Android phone sales is luring some developers that keep long-term prospects in mind. While Zumobi, which makes MSNBC’s mobile app, gets less than 3 percent of its mobile SEO traffic from Android, the developer is investing almost as much in Android apps as it does for the iPhone, said co-founder John SanGiovanni. Zumobi’s free, ad-funded programs get about the same revenue, and in some cases, even a bit more, from Android, he said.

‘Senseless’

Google, itself, could help narrow the revenue gap for developers, according to Trip Hawkins, the founder of Electronic Arts Inc. who now runs mobile-gaming company Digital Chocolate. He calls Google’s policy of letting consumers use paid apps for as long as 24 hours and return them for a full refund “senseless and lazy.”

“As a game platform right now, Android strikes out,” Hawkins said. “As long as they keep selling devices, Android could be a good game business by 2012, but it would blossom now if Google would get out of their own way.”

Dell's Enterprise Challenge Remains after 3PAR

Associated Press

 

Dell Inc. doesn't have to start over in its quest to become a significant purveyor of technology for businesses after losing a multibillion dollar bidding contest for an obscure data-storage maker.

But it won't be easy, either, for Dell to shake its "Dude, you're getting a Dell" image and move into the more profitable business of selling powerful behind-the-scenes technology to other companies.

Dell, which launched the bidding contest for 3Par Inc. on Aug. 16, conceded defeat Thursday and said it won't match the latest offer from its archrival, Hewlett-Packard Co.

HP raised the stakes to $33 per share, or about $2.07 billion - 83 percent above Dell's first offer and more than three times what 3Par stock was trading at then. Dell's latest offer had been a dollar per share less, or about $2 billion.

Dell was hoping to buy 3Par so it could diversify its business more quickly.

Dell's made-to-order computer business helped make PCs inexpensive and ubiquitous, but other companies including HP found ways to build even cheaper machines using contract manufacturers.

Although HP was able to expand beyond the business of selling computers, Dell has remained very much a computer company, with more than half its revenue coming from PCs last fiscal year. Rising component costs and the PC industry's race to rock-bottom prices, accelerated by the rise of cheap netbooks from competitors such as Acer Inc., combined to sap much of the profit out of Dell's core business.

Through a string of acquisitions, Dell has raced to follow IBM Corp., HP and other high-tech companies into the more lucrative business of selling data-center hardware and consulting services.

And while its servers do not generate as much revenue as its PC business, Dell is a leading maker of x86 servers, a low-end product for companies and data centers. Those servers are seeing a surge of demand as improvements in technology make them increasingly competitive with more expensive servers. In the second quarter, Dell was the second-largest maker of server computers by number shipped, according to Gartner Inc.

But Dell's ambitions have often been met with skepticism because of its lower-end focus, and because it started branching out later than its competitors. In the meantime, the market has grown more crowded; database software maker Oracle Corp. began selling servers after acquiring Sun Microsystems in January, and networking equipment king Cisco Systems Inc. started to build its own servers last year.

Even Dell's biggest acquisition to date, Perot Systems, didn't carry the weight Dell might have hoped, Forrester Research analyst Andrew Reichman said. The large technology-consulting business, which Dell bought last fall for $3.9 billion, isn't influential enough "to really move the needle as much as Dell would need to be on an equal footing with HP and IBM," Reichman said.

"People see them (Dell) as box-pushers," he said in a recent interview.

Dell defends its strategy of staying away from huge storage or server systems and says it sees more value in selling building block servers and storage appliances that customers can link together when they need to grow.

"For those customers who have bought from us, who are our customers, even the largest ones are very satisfied with our ability to solve their data-center needs and really stick with us," said Praveen Asthana, Dell's vice president of strategy for its enterprise technology segment.

But Dell, like its competitors, is eyeing cloud computing, a massive shift just under way in data-center technology, as the next area of rapid growth and sweeter profits.

To take advantage of it, Dell needs to beef up its product line and set itself apart from the competition. Dell could have used 3Par, which makes the sort of massive, high-end systems that Dell had stayed away from.

But that isn't the only option, especially at such a high price, said Morningstar analyst Michael Holt. Dell can still consider other storage providers, companies that make data-center management software or makers of networking equipment, he said.

Increasingly, companies aren't buying their own computer servers for certain tasks anymore. Instead, they're paying to have software they would have stored on those machines delivered to them over the Internet.

Cloud computing is attractive to Dell and the others because the systems are designed to be shared by multiple customers, which spreads out the cost of operating pricey equipment. Servers and storage computers need to ramp up or scale down quickly based on demand to give all the customers the same high level of service. Storage machines from 3Par are made for that kind of system.

Dell, HP and others are trying to decide how many pieces of the cloud puzzle they need to own, and how many they can offer through partnerships. All are trying to make their data-center solutions more flexible and less expensive, and make it easier for customers to get new programs running.

Owning the entire range of products might make it faster to get a customer up and running, but it might mean some parts are not the best of breed, said Adrian O'Connell, an analyst for Gartner Inc. Every company will see the trade-offs differently.

For Dell, O'Connell doesn't believe 3Par would have been a critical piece. Dell's bigger challenge, he said, is to come up with a unique vision for the entire data-center structure.

Dell also needs to train its sales staff to sell that vision to high-level technology executives. Gaining their trust takes time, he said.

"If you're an IBM or an HP or a Sun/Oracle, you've got a heritage of many, many years of selling mission-critical systems into those very large customer environments," O'Connell said. "Dell has to prove it's got a right to be there."

Mark Hurd Joins Oracle as President After HP Exit; Charles Phillips Quits‏

Bloomberg

 

Oracle Corp., the world’s second- biggest software company, hired former Hewlett-Packard Co. Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd as a president and member of the board, reporting to CEO Larry Ellison.

The company also said in a statement that Charles Phillips resigned as president and director. Hurd, who exited HP last month after the company said he violated standards of business conduct, will serve alongside Oracle President Safra Catz.

At HP, Hurd more than tripled profit by cutting costs and expanding beyond the company’s core business of computers and printers. He oversaw an acquisition spree of more than $20 billion, letting the company branch out into services, networking equipment and smartphones. Oracle, which also has bulked up through takeovers, would draw on Hurd’s background blending software and hardware as it expands into server sales.

“It’s a great fit: As Oracle transitions from a software to a hardware company, who better than him?” said Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS AG in San Francisco who recommends buying Oracle shares. “They’re looking for someone who can take the company above $30 billion; he ran a company that was more than $100 billion. He’s got a very big role and is very capable of running the company someday.”

Replacement Candidate?

Hurd brings to Oracle experience running a computer company triple Oracle’s size, a track record of delivering shareholder returns and the ability to one day become CEO should the 66- year-old Ellison step aside, Thill said. The addition of Hurd could also aid Oracle’s acquisition strategy, he said yesterday in a note to clients.

Hurd, 53, exited HP after an investigation of a sexual harassment allegation found inaccurate expense reports filed by Hurd or in his name. While the company determined that Hurd didn’t violate the harassment policy, it found that he concealed a personal relationship with his accuser, Jodie Fisher, a former actress who handled executive events. Hurd and Fisher, 50, settled her complaint out of court.

Prior to HP, Hurd led a turnaround at NCR Corp., where he helped integrate the company’s hardware business with the acquisition of Teradata Corp., a software maker. Ellison cited that experience, along with Hurd’s time at HP, when he named him to the job.

‘Brilliant Job’

“Mark did a brilliant job at HP and I expect he’ll do even better at Oracle,” Ellison said in a statement. “There is no executive in the IT world with more relevant experience than Mark.”

Ellison upbraided HP’s board last month for letting Hurd go, comparing the move to Apple Inc.’s firing of Steve Jobs in the 1980s. In a letter to the New York Times, Ellison said, “The HP board just made the worst personnel decision since the idiots on the Apple board fired Steve Jobs many years ago.”

Oracle, based in Redwood City, California, rose 44 cents to $22.92 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading on Sept. 3. The shares have slumped 6.6 percent this year.

At Oracle, Hurd will work for a CEO who has bought more than 60 companies since early 2005, including Sun Microsystems Inc. for $7.3 billion this year, pushing the software maker into the market for servers -- machines that run websites and corporate networks.

Contending With Catz?

Hurd would be a CEO contender alongside Catz, 48, who was credited by Ellison for the company’s 18-month takeover of PeopleSoft Inc., which transformed Oracle into the second- biggest maker of business-management software. “If I dropped dead tomorrow, Safra Catz would be the CEO of Oracle,” Ellison said at a September 2005 conference in San Francisco. “She is clearly our chief operating officer.”

Phillips “expressed his desire to transition out of the company” in December, Ellison said in yesterday’s statement. He said he asked Phillips to stay on through the integration of Sun.

Phillips, 51, joined Oracle in 2003 from Morgan Stanley, where he was a software analyst, and became co-president in January 2004. A former captain in the U.S. Marine Corps, Phillips was appointed last year to President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a panel of advisers asked to propose solutions to the economic crisis.

“Charles has evolved our field culture toward a more customer-centric organization and improved our top line consistency through a period of tremendous change and growth,” Ellison said.

Extramarital Affair

Phillips said in January that he had a “serious relationship” with a woman who was not his wife for 8 1/2 years, through the middle of 2009, and that the affair had since ended. The statement came after billboards in New York carried images of Phillips and the woman, YaVaughnie Wilkins.

Analysts project that Oracle will reach sales of $34.1 billion in the fiscal year ending in May, according to a Bloomberg survey. It ranks second to Microsoft Corp. among companies whose main business is software. Hewlett-Packard, the biggest technology company by revenue, is expected to top $125 billion this year, analysts estimate.

In addition to taking on Phillips’s sales and marketing responsibilities, Hurd will manage Oracle’s customer support, said Oracle spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger.

Hurd will be “doing everything Charles did, plus customer support,” Thill said. “He’s very capable of taking this company further, probably faster than Charles could have.”