Amazon says Kindle books outsell hardbacks

In today's podcast: IBM earnings rise; Siemens warns not to change passwords; and Amazon says Kindle books outsell hardbacks.

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IBM's second-quarter profits were up 9 percent from a year earlier, at 3.4 billion dollars, with increased sales in the U.S. and Asia helping to offset weaker spending in Europe. Revenue from IBM's Systems & Technology segment, including its server hardware, increased by 3 percent. The company is facing a fresh challenge in hardware from Oracle, which entered the business via its acquisition of Sun Microsystems.

Dell plans to acquire Ocarina Networks, a maker of hardware and software designed for compressing and deduplicating unstructured data such as images and e-mail. Those steps mean the data can be stored in less hard disk space, generating savings of space, power and other resources in data centers. Ocarina says its products can free up between 30 percent and 75 percent of a customer's storage capacity. Dell didn’t say how much it will pay for the company.

Although a newly discovered worm could allow criminals to break into industrial automation systems from Siemens using a default password widely circulated on the Internet since 2008, the vendor is telling customers to leave their passwords alone. That's because changing the password could disrupt the systems, potentially throwing large-scale industrial processes that they manage into disarray. Siemens is scrambling to respond to the problem as the Stuxnet worm spreads around the world. Symantec is now logging about 9,000 attempted infections per day. The worm spreads via USB sticks, CDs or networked file-shares.

Nokia is looking for a new CEO, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Monday. While still the biggest phone maker in the world, Nokia has been losing market share in the growing smartphone segment. Some analysts have been suggesting that a leadership shakeup might help reverse market share declines and stagnating revenue at the Finnish giant. In June, Nokia warned that its second quarter earnings report, due out Thursday, would be lower than expected. Current CEO Olli-Pekka Kallusvuo has been with Nokia since 1980, when he joined as corporate counsel.

Predictions for the Kindle's death at the hands of the iPad appear to have been premature, as Amazon on Monday reported strong growth in sales of its popular e-reader after dropping the price to 189 dollars. CEO Jeff Bezos said sales growth had tripled since the price cut, and that the device now has millions of users. Apple last month said it had already sold 3 million iPads. Amazon also said on Monday that sales of Kindle books have overtaken its sales of hardcover books.

And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Peter Sayer in Paris. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.