Ringing Out the New Year to Come

The New Year is upon us and changes are afoot. Two items –

Fujitsu

Another week, another one bites the dust: although the company the first to introduce plasma televisions, Japan’s Fujitsu group has said it will cease production of plasma TVs because it simply can’t make enough money at it. Fujitsu once offered a broad range of plasma models, but had recently scaled back to offering only high-end units via exclusive European and U.S. retailers, and in 2005 sold off control of a plasma joint venture to Hitachi.

“During the past several years, the pricing and profitability of this segment has compressed beyond the point which our company could realize a satisfactory return on investment,” Fujitsu General said in a statement. Fujitsu General will close out its plasma business by March, and focus on it remaining business in the heating and ventilation market. Fujitsu General is separate from Fujitsu’s operations in consumer electronics and computer manufacturing.

Fujitsu started the whole plasma biz so many years ago. Times change and LCD panels have gotten cheaper and more competitive. They also lack the plasma burn associated with plasma displays.

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Netscape

AOL has a long history on the internet, being one of the first companies to really get people online. Throughout its lifetime, it has been involved with a number of high profile acquisitions, perhaps the largest of which was the 1999 acquisition of the Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was known to many as the thought leader in web browsing, and had developed a number of complementary pieces of software that allowed for a rich suite of internet tools.

At the time of the acquisition, the Netscape team had begun working on converting their flagship product - the Netscape Communicator web suite - into open source software, under a new name: Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, an independent foundation was created to support the continued development of the open source web suite. AOL was a major source of support for the Mozilla Foundation and the company continued to develop versions of the Netscape browser based on the work of the foundation.

From AOL’s press release. This sadly closes a chapter in the internet space. Netscape’s browser initiated a sea change in how computing was to be done. It was also one of the few technologies that caused Microsoft to change their direction. Development stops in February.

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au revoir, to both of them.