Microsoft is planning to introduce a subscription-based digital music service, to compete both with rival Apple's dominant song store and other subscription models from Yahoo and RealNetworks, CNET News.com reported, citing sources familiar with the plans. "We think that the subscription model is very interesting," MSN lead product manager Christine Andrews told News.com. "It is something that we will continue to look into." Microsoft is reportedly asking record labels for the rights to offer prospective subscribers to its service a Microsoft-formatted version of any song they purchase from the iTunes Store, so they can be played on devices other than an iPod. The company is also planning introductory pricing for the subscription service in line with Yahoo's offering; at $6.99 per month, the current pricing of Yahoo's service undercuts competing services from Napster and ReaNetworks, which charge $15 a month.
Semiconductor forecasts rarely move enough to reshape an enterprise boardroom budget conversation. Omdia's latest worldwide market study findings does exactly that. The research firm has raised its 2026 global semiconductor revenue forecast to 94.1 percent year-over-year growth, an increase driven almost entirely by memory pricing tied to artificial intelligence infrastructure. For technology executives, the number itself matters less than what sits underneath it. Applied-AI demand has now outrun the industry's capacity to produce and package the chips it needs, and Omdia expects that imbalance to persist through early 2027. The Semiconductor Forecast Revision Memory integrated circuits, DRAM and NAND combined, are now projected to account for more than 50 percent of total semiconductor revenue in 2026. That threshold has rarely been crossed in the industry's history. It marks a structural shift in where chip economics get decided. Logic used to set the pace of the industr...