Android and iPhone smartphones together made up 82% of all such devices shipped to retailers in the first quarter of 2012, IDC said Thursday.

Even for organizations with a stellar full-time IT staff, situations often arise where temporary outside help is needed. A big Web project might demand a few extra programmers to meet a tough deadline, for example, or a rollout of tools to support a sales force bent on capturing a broader market may require expertise not available in-house.

Android smartphones made up 56% of the global smartphones sold to end users in the first quarter of 2012, giving them a far higher share than the 22.9% held by Apple's runner-up iPhone, Gartner said Wednesday.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 is set to go on sale at retailers nationwide Sunday for $399.99, furthering the variety of tablet sizes from the vendor.

The market for software related to the Hadoop and MapReduce programming frameworks for large-scale data analysis will jump from $US77 million in 2011 to $US812.8 million in 2016, a compound annual growth rate of 60.2 per cent, according to a new report released by analyst firm IDC.

Tablets will become most users' main computing devices within the next four years, Forrester Research analyst Frank Gillett has predicted.

All the momentum and vision that Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson has been building for the struggling company may have been thrown off course.

Is Apple cutting the MacBook's throat with the iPad?

2011 was a bad year for natural disasters. Several nations were rocked either by earthquakes, tidal waves, or floods. There was even a nuclear accident. But has the tumultuous year convinced businesses to bolster their disaster recovery?

Big data is an IT buzzword nowadays, but what does it really mean? When does data become big?

It's free, easier to use than ever, IT staffers know it and love it, and it has fewer viruses and Trojans than Windows.

Market research firm IDC makes a number of tech-related predictions near the end of every calendar year, but its prognostications for 2011 may well be among the company's most dramatic yet.

I came across a link to a new report from IDC called the "2010 Digital Universe Study".

It’s not new technology, but to SMBs, virtualisation can still be a scary unknown quantity. MATTHEW SAINSBURY investigates ways partners and vendors can allay those fears to the profit of everyone.

A venerable New Year's tradition in the tech world entails trotting out year-old predictions by analyst shops and laughing at their off-base prognostications. But here's a surprise: The two biggest analyst firms still standing -- Gartner and IDC -- did a pretty good job a year ago forecasting the shape of IT in 2009, as did the smaller Forrester Research and 451 Group.

Mobility has become the dream for corporates both large and small, and an opportunity for the channel to tackle. But presenting a comprehensive mobility solution is a significant technology and business challenge. GEORGINA SWAN reports.