Now SAP’s chairman, the 68-year-old engineer is trying to take advantage of cheaper memory chips in servers to speed up complex business calculations and allow companies to do in seconds what currently can take hours or days. The aim is to allow executives to quickly access and analyze business data even on hand-held devices.

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The world’s largest cell-phone company by volume posted a net loss of €68 million ($93.6 million), beating Wall Street expectations of a €321 million loss. Sales dropped 13% to €8.98 billion.

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The project is a Linux-based operating system code-named Meltemi, the Greek word for dry summer winds that blow across the Aegean Sea from the north. It is being led by Mary McDowell, the handset maker’s executive vice president in charge of mobile phones, these people say.

A spokesman for Nokia, Doug Dawson, declined to comment on the Finland-based company’s future products or technologies.

Nokia’s attempt to build its own software is another sign that the value in the technology industry is shifting from hardware to software. In the past year, Google Inc.’s Android software has dominated the midrange smartphone market while Apple Inc.’s iPhone, which runs Apple’s iOS software, has captured the high end.

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Strong demand for SAP’s business software amid the global economic recovery has fueled the share price rise. Despite those gains, SAP’s narrow focus and relatively modest size have fed speculation that it would be an attractive target as the maturing tech sector consolidates around industry giants such as International Business Machines Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.

“The best medicine for SAP to stay independent is to stay successful,” Mr. Snabe said in the interview at the CeBit technology conference in Hannover, Germany.

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The result is a battle for content and viewers in Europe that could mean billions in revenue for the winners. That’s because Europe is a fertile market for these types of services, still lacking large dominant players that are able to cross borders.

European countries such as the U.K and France were early pioneers in delivering basic television programming over broadband, in a service similar to cable called Internet protocol television, or IPTV. For that reason, there are nearly twice as many paying IPTV subscribers in Europe compared with the U.S..

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The result is a price war in midrange smartphones this holiday season. Wireless carriers and handset makers are focusing on more affordable smartphones—which skimp on features such as screen resolution and camera quality but allow users to surf the Internet and download applications.

“At the end of the day, if you want to address a bigger part of the market, [the midrange smartphone segment] is important,” said Florian Seiche, European president of Taiwan’s HTC Corp., which is vying for a foothold in that market with its Aria smartphone, which launched in the U.S. in June and sells through AT&T Inc. for $130 with a phone-service contract.

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As Nokia promotes its new MeeGo operating system this week at European conferences targeted at applications developers, it is being pressed to explain how the platform will enable the Finnish handset giant to reverse its dwindling share in some of its biggest markets, and the U.S., where Apple Inc.’s iPhone and Google have all but shut Nokia out of the smartphone business.

Meanwhile, the rapid success of Google, whose Android platform has become the world’s second-largest smartphone operating system in just two years, has prompted another question among investors and industry insiders: Would Nokia be better off scrapping its independent platforms and join the Android bandwagon?

“Android probably looks like what Nokia could have put out and should have put out a long time ago,” said Hakim Kriout, a New York-based portfolio manager at Grigsby & Associates Inc., which holds Nokia shares. As to whether Nokia could still adopt Android, “it’s not too late,” he added.

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As previously reported, Nokia (NOK) has high hopes for the MeeGo operating system, which merges Intel’s (INTC) Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo Linux-based operating systems, to lead its next-generation mobile devices, including smartphones and tablet computers.

In a blog post directed at software developers on the MeeGo Community website Wednesday, Nokia’s Harri Hakulinen hinted that the MeeGo operating system could be available on the N900, Nokia’s mobile computer, as soon as mid-November when MeeGo has its first developer conference in Dublin. Mr. Hakulinen would know, since, according to the blog, he leads the project to adapt the MeeGo software to the N900.

In the blog post, titled “MeeGo calling – on N900,” Mr. Hakulinen said that after months of work the team is in its last phase of development for MeeGo version 1.1, which will give smartphone application developers something tangible to work with. Mr. Hakulinen also said they’re close on an update that will allow users to run both the current N900 operating system, Maemo, and MeeGo on the device.

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Discussions with developers show that Nokia (NOK) is making some headway in proving its value in a Silicon Valley preoccupied with Steve Jobs and Google (GOOG), but it’s still got a ways to go.

Nokia approached Andy Sheldon, founder and chief executive of San Francisco-based Fizwoz, at a Silicon Valley event in December, after he had showed off his Fizwoz application, a mobile auction application that connects cameraphone users to photo editors who could potentially buy their images. A month earlier, the company had launched a beta version of its application in the Apple App Store.

Mr. Sheldon says Nokia sat down with him and explained its geographical reach, and how it sells more smartphones a day than the competition. Nokia waived its access fees for the Ovi Store and even pointed Fizwoz to freelance developers it could use to develop the application for Nokia.

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At Nokia World in London, the outgoing executive talked about what he did right in his nearly 20 years with the company, what went wrong and why the Finnish handset maker is struggling in the smartphone market. He also had some things to say about the competition, and explained exactly why he resigned just one day after former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop was appointed Nokia’s new CEO.

“I didn’t become the CEO. It is as simple as that,” Mr. Vanjoki said when asked why he resigned.
“You know who the guy is it’s not you…so what do you do, you stay or you leave. I decided to leave,” the 54-year-old executive said.

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According to a telephone survey of 1002 U.S. adults in March that was commissioned by Sharp Electronics, it appears they are. It found that Americans are three times more likely to pay more up front for a product that saves on their electricity bills in the long run than they are to purchase the less expensive product now.

That’s not to say their budgets are unlimited as far as spending on green products. Some 72 percent of respondents said they are much more inclined to choose an energy-saving product if cost is not an issue.

Bob Scaglione, a senior vice president at Sharp, says the results surprised him. “We had our own feelings that consumers generally were not willing to pay extra when they are standing in front of the product ready to buy. That is why we haven’t charged more,” he says.

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Next week, the Consumer Electronics Association is coming out with a new study in a salvo against the CEC over proposed rules for specific energy standards for TVs sold in California. Under the CEC’s proposed rules, 42-inch TVs sold in California must consume 183 watts or less by 2011, dropping to 115.5 watts by 2013. The CEC says it’s trying to make TVs more efficient to save the state and consumers money.

But the CEA’s new study, which the industry group commissioned earlier this year from consulting services firm Resolution Economics LLC in Los Angeles, tries to debunk some of the CEC’s reasoning for the new rules.

Doug Johnson, the CEA’s senior director of technology policy and international affairs, says consumers won’t save any money under the proposed rules and will end up paying more for TVs if the rules go into effect. The study notes that TV makers currently charge more for TVs that currently meet the government’s Energy Star standard, which is given to those products that meet strict energy efficient guidelines set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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That someone is Legacy Locker, a new online service announced Tuesday that allows people to securely store usernames, passwords and other access information for all their digital assets–from Facebook and MySpace accounts to Gmail and PayPal–and pass that information along to beneficiaries in the event of their death.

Jeremy Toeman, co-founder of Legacy Locker, a San Francisco start-up, says this kind of system is a lot easier than trying to wrestle the information out of social-networking sites and Web companies as a family member of the deceased. “It’s the online equivalent of a safety deposit box,” Toeman says.

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So what if you’re someone who wants to watch the big game in HD, but without skimping on the basic luxuries like food and clothing? Well, we’ve found some options for you.

For one, the government postponed the date when broadcasters switch to digital TV signals to June 12 from February. That means that we’ll likely see TV manufacturers and retailers continue to discount new flat panel TVs to lure those of us who haven’t yet upgraded from the bulky old-school tubes.

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In this era of corporate malfeasance, office supply retailer Staples, the official shredder supplier for the CES room, is touting the its latest line of high-tech shredders at the CES trade show.

We at the Digits blog didn’t know shredders could come with so much built-in technology. Staples is showcasing some shredders with V-Track, a blade technology that centers the paper as it shreds, which prevents paper jams.

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The evidence suggest that people’s views on devices such as televisions, notebook computers and mobile phones are changing, says Shawn DuBravac, economist for the Consumer Electronics Association. Through November of 2008, 17.22 percent of total durable good purchases were tech goods, the highest share in 50 years, he says.

“While these are typically discretionary purchases, consumers are treating them like nondiscretionary purchases,” says Mr. DuBravac.

That doesn’t mean that consumers aren’t making cutbacks. In fact, in many categories, consumers seem to be gravitating toward lower-priced items for varying reasons. For example, coming out of the 2007 holiday season, nearly 50 percent of all flat panel sales were over 40 inches. Today, Mr. DuBravac says, that numbers stands closer to 35 percent.

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