IT News & Views

Tapping no successor yet, Jack Ma, 48, said Tuesday he would be resigning as CEO of Alibaba on May 10 because he is no longer young enough for the Internet business. "The Internet belongs to young people," he said. "This year, most of the Alibaba leaders who were born in the 1960s will retreat from management and execution roles as we hand over leadership responsibility to colleagues from the '70s and '80s generations. Because, we believe that they understand the future better than us, and they have a better chance at seizing the future." He will remain chairman of the giant Chinese e-commerce company he started in 1999 responsible for its strategic direction while cultivating younger talent. Alibaba is expected to IPO and has reportedly hired Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse to take it out although Alibaba denies it. It bought back half the 40% share in Alibaba hel... (more)

Symantec Wants to Dump Altiris: WSJ

Symantec has reportedly put Altiris on the block and, according to the Wall Street Journal, is getting feelers from private equity. It acquired the IT management software shop for around $830 million in 2007 and doesn't expect to make the investment back. Altiris manages end point connections such as laptops and mobile devices. Symantec CEO Enrique Salem was removed last year because the company was under-performing. He was replaced by GE veteran Steve Bennett, who's been trying to turn the joint around by uncluttering its holdings. Symantec, an antivirus company, at its core has ... (more)

Lenovo Introduces an ‘Interpersonal Computer’

Remember Microsoft's Surface? Well, Lenovo's got this thing called the IdeaCentre Horizon Table PC that it's touting as the first "interpersonal computer." It's a Window 8 dingus with a 27-inch screen that can be laid down or stood up so four people can use it all at once as though it was a big board game, which went fitted out with paddles and joysticks appears to be its main purpose. Surface, now called PixelSense, was designed for store displays and other commercial applications. The Table PC's screen, which is the size of eight iPads sewn together, is said to respond to 10 fi... (more)

Tablet & Phones Take Toll on PCs

PCs shipments were down 4.9%% globally in Q4 to 90.3 million units because of "must-have" tablets and the dicey state of the world's economy Gartner said. The researcher figures "Tablets have dramatically changed the device landscape for PCs, not so much by ‘cannibalizing' PC sales, but by causing PC users to shift consumption to tablets rather than replacing older PCs. This transformation was triggered by the availability of compelling low-cost tablets in 2012, and will continue until the installed base of PCs declines to accommodate tablets as the primary consumption device." ... (more)

Google’s Chairman Lands in North Korea

Despite State Department sensitivities, Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen, a former State Department policy wonk who now heads Google's New York-based think tank, landed in Pyongyang, North Korea, Monday as part of the entourage accompanying former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. The US State Department opposed the four-day visit as "unhelpful" because it follows so closely on North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket last month that deployed a satellite into space, a move the United Nations Security Council condemned as a viol... (more)