Gartner Inc.

Yelp under fire as local businesses allege it manipulates reviews for ad sales. Yelp, one of the most popular Web sites that let people post opinions about restaurants, shops and local services, is being sued by several small businesses that claim they've been pressured to advertise on the site in exchange for getting negative reviews squashed.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia Oyj lowered it share of global handset sales after recalculating the size of the market and the scale of the growing "grey" sector in unlicensed and counterfeit phones.

Texas lottery leader decides to proceed with bidding, says conflict question resolved. Bidding on a new lucrative Texas lottery contract should move forward because there's no evidence that state consultant Gartner Inc. and the lottery's current operator GTECH Corp. improperly shared information about the process, a lottery official said Tuesday.

Gartner: PC shipments to grow 20 percent in 2010, driven by tablets like the iPad. Global PC shipments will rise nearly 20 percent this year on the rising popularity of notebooks and next-generation tablets, according to a forecast Thursday from research firm Gartner Inc.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - The cellphone market will rebound more strongly strongly than expected this year as improving economies boost spending on new gadgets and handset vendors push cheap smartphones, research firm Gartner said on Tuesday.

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Nokia and Intel are to merge their top-end smartphone operating systems as they face increasing competition from cellphone industry newcomers Google and Apple.

The big online recruiting sites Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com this week rolled out marketing campaigns to stand out, much like job seekers polish their resumes to compete in a crowded market. During Sunday's Super Bowl XLIV, both online search sites introduced splashy ads - from Monster's fiddling beaver looking for a dream job to CareerBuilder's chatty office workers in underwear - to remind the jobless of the websites' search engine prowess. With the US unemployment rate at nearly 10 percent, it's tough to be in the online job business these days. There's no shortage of workers looking for jobs, but there isn't a lot of hiring, which makes it harder for these sites to make money from companies that pay to post their job listings. Also, people have more choices for job searches with specialized sites such Dice.com, aimed at tech workers, or TheLadders.com, which promotes high-salary executive postings. Folks are also turning to social and professional networking job boards such as

Gartner's 4Q profit drops 24 percent on declining revenue. Gartner Inc. posted a 24 percent drop in fourth-quarter earnings Tuesday, as revenue generated by its information technology research declined.

Apple Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs yesterday unveiled the iPad, the computer maker's new and much anticipated tablet device, and at a gathering of loyalists in Boston, the verdict was swift: Not a world-changer, but not bad. A dozen Apple fans convened at Tech Superpowers, a dealer on Newbury Street, to follow minute-by-minute blog postings as Jobs, in San Francisco, orchestrated the company's biggest product launch since the wildly popular iPhone. ``There's going to be huge demand'' for the iPad, said Luke Ehler, a website developer from Boston, although he said he wouldn't buy one without trying it out. ``I'm not going to go out and throw any one my credit card.'' With its 9.7-inch screen, the iPad resembles a giant version of the iPhone. It runs most of the 140,000 iPhone software applications - programs that allow the user to perform simple, often powerful tasks by touching the screen. A version will be available to consumers in 60 days. E Ink not worried about iPad, B7. The iPa

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc posted better-than-forecast Mac sales and strong growth in Asia and Europe, but iPhone shipments came in just below Wall Street's somewhat heightened expectations.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia will drop the ailing "Comes with Music" offering from the new version of its flagship X6 music phone, hoping a one-third cheaper price tag will boost sales of the model.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc posted better-than-forecast Mac sales and strong growth in Asia and Europe, but iPhone shipments came in just below Wall Street's somewhat heightened expectations.

Even though it recently landed a giant software deal with Japanese electronics firm Panasonic Corp., IBM Corp.'s Lotus unit, based in Westford, is still playing catch-up against archival Microsoft Corp. Bob Picciano, IBM's general manager of software sales, said that up to 380,000 Panasonic employees around the world will abandon Microsoft's Exchange and Outlook e-mail and organization software and rely on Lotus products instead. IBM did not disclose financial details of the agreement, which was unveiled earlier this month. Panasonic is switching to LotusLive, software that's similar to IBM's familiar Notes and Domino products. But LotusLive is a ``cloud computing'' service, which means it will run on the Internet, not on computers in Panasonic's offices. Instead of installing software on thousands of machines, Panasonic employees will go online to get into their e-mail office systems. ``We believe it's the largest cloud relationship that's ever been signed between two companies,'' sai

BERLIN/HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia launched free satellite navigation on its cellphones on Thursday to boost handset sales and prices, a fresh blow for satnav makers whose $25 billion market has already been hit by Google.

AMD posts first profit in 3 years on gain from $1.25B Intel settlement. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. posted its first quarterly profit in three years because it got $1.25 billion in a legal settlement with its archrival.

Gartner expects 2010 technology spending to grow 4.6 percent. Global technology spending will resume growth in 2010 as the broader economy improves slowly but steadily, according to research firm Gartner Inc.

Wrong-footed by rocketing consumer demand, Asian technology suppliers are scrambling to expand capacity before inventories run dry of everything from semiconductors to flat-panel screens.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc's potential departure from China may not prompt others to follow suit, but its high-profile declaration could help shine a light on the business environment in the world's third-largest economy.

Google's threat to leave China is a reminder of the control exerted by `righteous' founders. Google Inc. co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have always said they put their principles before profit, even to the point of using their control of the company to take a stand.

US PC shipments skyrocketed in 4th quarter, bouncing back from bleak 2008 holiday season. Worldwide shipments of personal computers came back strongly in the fourth quarter of 2009, researchers said Wednesday, led by U.S. consumers lured by low prices during the holiday shopping season.