COMPANIES

While Australian retail giant Harvey Norman is one of the leading voices calling for lowering of the general sales tax on items purchased overseas, the company's own chief executive, who is also the owner's wife, ironically buys from online shops abroad to save money.

It took only a few months for new Yahoo chief executive Marissa Mayer to finalise an agreement with China’s Alibaba Group, which in the last two years has not come in to terms with the CEOs that came before her.

Microsoft said on Wednesday that another fix on the freshly identified security hole in Internet Explorer will be dispatched in the next few days, insisting that the patch should temporarily protect millions of global users while engineers work for an IE update.

Samsung has become a brand that is preferred and trusted by consumers despite the legal setbacks that the tech giant has been getting lately.

Weak consumer spending continues to batter Australia's retail sector, causing a 40 per cent slump in profits for David Jones and some of the leading local retailers to considering moving out of the country.

Queensland miners have agreed to a compensation plan for the damage their dredging work cause to seagrass beds. The compensation would be used to protect the remaining healthy beds in other areas or restore damaged ones.

A new malware has been unleashed to hostage or pilfer data from computer systems running on Windows, Microsoft said on Monday.

Good news for Yahoo! employees as they get to take home a new smartphone courtesy of the company.

The automotive industry changes constantly. In Australia, the cost of raw materials and fuel is volatile, regulations are tighter and competition is greater. As a result, innovation is encouraged.

A study by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) released on Tuesday identified the top 10 high-paid chief executives in the country. Number one on the list is BHP Billiton Chief Executive Marius Kloppers who earned $11.8 million in 2011 in wages alone.

While Australians prefer home-grown food over imported ones, the case is not true for furniture, health and beauty items, clothes, hardware and household appliances which Aussies prefer to buy imported ones due to lower cost and better value.

The infamous Winklevoss twins, Tyler and Cameron, are now engaged into the social networking business following their legal battles with Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, leaving the two $US65 million richer.

Microsoft’s upcoming Surface tablets will directly challenge iPad’s dominance, according to company chief executive Steve Ballmer, stressing too that the device and Windows 8 will lead to “epic year for Microsoft.”

Nintendo is gearing to morph itself as the premier fun-provider of households the world over as the Japanese firm unveiled on Thursday the new Wii U, touted as “the entertainment hub in the centre of the house.”

Rio Tinto (ASX: RIO) announced on Thursday that it awarded to NRW Holdings the contract to build the miner's Cape Lambert iron ore plant. The scope of construction work includes conveyor link earthworks, relocation of water pipelines and rail formation earthworks.

China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp, currently two of the leading global telecommunication firms, have informed the U.S. Congress on Thursday that they were not willing tools at the disposal of Beijing to spy on other nations.

Apple did just the right thing in stretching the screen size of the new iPhone 5 to 4.0 inches and deploying much-faster cellular connectivity with the gadget, which rolls out beginning Sept 21, a new report said.

Microsoft has unmasked a new malware that reportedly operates from a Chinese domain and spreads through freshly-unboxed PCs that were exclusively assembled by a computer manufacturer, also in China.

Add Nintendo’s Wii U to your holiday gadget shopping list this December as the new game console is likely to hit the global market at around the same time that new tech toys were slated to fiercely compete for consumers’ attention.

Notwithstanding the rollout of a new iPhone, Android handsets will be scooped up in large amounts that by the close of 2013 more than a billion units will be owned by global consumers, according to a new smartphone market report.

Pitting Apple’s new iPhone 5 against Sony’s Xperia Acro S is pretty much watching the technologies from the two tech giants clashing in full force, with ‘minor’ players invited into the fray because their brand architectures are inside the fresh smartphone releases.

Mobile apps are more attractive when offered free, tech research firm Gartner confirmed on Tuesday as latest data showed that global users will likely download more than 45 billion smartphone and tablet apps by the end of 2012.

Much is expected from the new iPhone version. Apart from issuing a reengineered hardware and improved software, all packed into a slick and thin brick, Apple is also pressured to replicate and even exceed what it has been doing in the past half-decade – earning billions and really quick.

Giant tobacco firms call it creative marketing but Health Minister Tanya Plibersek was not impressed at all with the latest ploy of cigarette manufacturers to circumvent Australia’s plain packaging laws, set to take full effect December 2012.

With mining commodity prices on a downward trend, Australian exporters were advised to look into non-resource export to Asia as another profitable undertaking. A study by global business adviser Boston Consulting Group estimated that businesses outside the mining sector could earn up to $126 billion by 2021 if they shift their attention to this market.

Barring unlikely force majeure, Apple’s new iPhone will definitely hit the global market this late September, prompting the tech giant’s closest rival, Samsung, to welcome the handset debut accordingly – with lawsuits.

More job losses will hit ailing PC maker Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the immediate years ahead, purportedly to realise more savings amid the prevailing soft environment in the global personal computer market.

Only 14 per cent of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in Australia are using cloud computing, a study commissioned by MYOB, a business software provider, found.

Everyone’s waiting for the next iPhone version but Aussie telcos may not be overly excited that Apple’s new smartphone will be rolled out this week, a new report said.