Nancy Gohring

First it was Microsoft Corp., now it's Google Inc. and Comcast Corp.: It seems everyone wants a piece of America Online Inc. (AOL). Fresh rumors surfaced on Thursday of negotiations regarding Google and Comcast buying a portion of AOL.

Pushing an end-to-end package to enterprises, Nokia Corp. on Wednesday introduced the first three phones in a new series aimed specifically at business users.

Mobile e-mail isn't just for the chief executive and president anymore. At least, that's what many of the companies presenting at Symbian Ltd.'s Smartphone Show said. Companies are all talking about their "push" e-mail applications that aim to be attractive throughout the enterprise as well as to smaller businesses.

Nokia Corp. on Tuesday introduced a new software platform to support mobile business applications, starting with push e-mail. The company joins a handful of other enterprise e-mail providers and vendors that are trying to penetrate a market dominated Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM) with its Blackberry devices and software.

Oracle Corp. has agreed to acquire business applications vendor Siebel Systems Inc. in a deal valued at approximately US$5.85 billion, or a net value of $3.61 billion taking into account Siebel's cash reserves, the companies announced Monday. The deal marks Oracle's latest step in its bid to remake itself as a global business applications powerhouse, following the closure of its $10.3 billion acquisition of PeopleSoft Inc. at the start of the year.

A Gartner Inc. study cited educational, cultural and financial reasons for what it concludes is a low rate of Wi-Fi hotspot use among business travelers. With more than 60,000 hotspots around the globe, 25 percent of U.S. and 17 percent of U.K. business travelers use hotspots, the study found. "If you look at a smaller segment of the audience, like the business traveler, the expectation is that there'd be more traction in that group as opposed to the entire population, where you'd expect it to be a small percentage," said Delia MacMillan, a research vice president at Gartner and the report's author.

Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to introduce a new line of servers, code-named Galaxy, in New York City on Sept. 12, company officials said. With these new servers, which will use Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s Opteron microprocessors, Sun may be attempting to regain some of the market might it once wielded.

Mobile operators continue their efforts to restore service in the area hit by Hurricane Katrina. T-Mobile USA Inc. appears to be offering the most coverage in New Orleans, a city that is still underwater and dangerous to enter.