The weekly news roundup - Friday 23 March

Keep abreast of the news with our weekly roundup of the week's main tech stories. In what has been a relatively quiet week, as CeBit 2007 winds down, the stand out news is the UK arrival of Sony's next generation console, the PS3. The highly-specced machine, which comes at a high price, features an IBM 3. ...more

AOL blocks a billion viruses in a year

AOL is claiming that it has prevented over one billion viruses, worms and other nasties from reaching its members' machines in the past year. The company says it has fended off some 30 major virus attacks or roughly one every ten days. The system peaked last summer with the outbreak of the Sobig. ...more

PDA markets dips below 2m shipments

The basic PDA doesn't appear to be able to pull out of its terminal nosedive, according to the latest IDC figures for the sector. Mobile devices acting as digital filofaxes and information managers saw their fifth consecutive quarter in decline. IDC's figures for the first quarter of this year showed a more than 30 per cent sequential drop in shipments - down 12 per cent year on year to 1. ...more

Apple joins campaign against Swiss music player levy

Apple has joined a legal campaign to prevent the Swiss Government from imposing a levy on portable music players such as the iPod. The Swiss want the levy, which could add as much as ?10 to the price of an iPod nano, to 'compensate' the music industry for unauthorised file sharing and copying. However the player manufacturers insist the levy will hurt business and is unfair on consumers who have already paid royalties on the music they have bought. ...more

Microsoft returns once more to the iPod battle

Microsoft has launched a venture in Japan with Toshiba, JVC and local telecoms provider DoCoMo in another attempt to end the iPod and Apple's dominance of the digital music market. The three companies will be joined by five others to develop portable players for the Japanese market, with Microsoft providing the software, Bloomberg reports. While Toshiba and JVC will concentrate on building new MP3 players, DoCoMo plans to introduce a mobile phone handset that will be compatible with the Microsoft software. ...more