Update: HP Corp. has made a higher offer for 3PAR this evening, beating out the latest offer of $24.30 per share ($1.6-billion valuation)  from Dell. HP is offering $27 per share in an all cash deal, valuing 3PAR at $1.8-billion. HP says it has the capital to make the acquisition and it has already been approved by the board.

3Par Corporation has announced today they have agreed to Dell’s increased bid to acquire the company for $24.30 per share, valuing the acquisition price at $1.6-billion, net of cash.

The 3Par stock (NYSE:PAR) has traditionally traded with low variability, until August 16 when the price jumped from under $10 per share to $18 per share, and only five days later propelling up to $26 per share as a takeover agreement was imminent and the acquisition offers were considered fair going forward.

Under the tender offer deal, there is still a small likelihood that the acquisition could still fall through, as Dell has options to forego the acquisition, but the company would have to pay a $72-million termination fee as per the amended acquisition agreement that reflects the new bid price.

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The Canadian maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion Limited (RIM), has confirmed it’s latest acquisition, this time the company cellmania, which develops mobile application store infrastructure.

It is widely believed RIM made the acquisition as the company pushes to make its platform more attractive to the consumer segment by making available more comprehensive and diverse applications for its BlackBerry smartphone.

Cellmania offers a broad range of features for its app store platform, including the ability to fully manage billings, push downloads and media over-the-air, digital rights management (DRM), and other content management features and reports.

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The second-top parcel delivery company in the world, FedEx, today upped earnings projections for the current fiscal quarter and for full year earnings.

The company’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Alan Graf, made the announcement early today in a written statement.

Mr. Graf said the increase in earnings projections were a direct result of better-than-anticipated volume growth with Express and Ground shipments.

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According to new SEC published report, the computer giant Dell Inc. has agreed to pay a $100-million fine to the commission following five years of litigation relating to a fraud case involving the company and its top executives.

The SEC alleged the company failed to disclose its relationship with Intel Corporation, who was providing huge payments to Dell in exchange for exclusively using Intel microprocessors in Dell products.

The issue was that the payments that were made by Intel were material over several fiscal quarters hence distorted true operational earnings that ultimately mislead investors into believing that the company was more profitable than it really was.

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The top mobile phone maker by volume in the world, Nokia, today released earnings for the second quarter of 2010.

The company reported a massive operating loss of EUR 295-million, marking a significant 31-percent increase in operating losses compared to the same period last year.

Nokia is still shipping the most volume when it comes to mobile phones in the world, posting net sales of EUR 10-billion (shipping 111.1-million units in the period), up 1-percent YoY, but the company is suffering from slumping profits because it is selling fewer smartphones that normally carry higher margins.

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The New York City-based financial intermediary, Citigroup, today announced earnings for the second quarter of 2010.

The bank reported total revenue of $22.1-billion, and a strong $2.7-billion ($0.09 per share) net profit for the period, marking the second straight quarter of consecutive growth.

Net earnings topped The Street’s expectations, but the Citigroup stock (NYSE:C) is trading more than 3.70-percent down to about $4 per share as actual revenue missed expectations.

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The Research In Motion stock (TSE:RIM) is surging in past mid-day trading as the company confirmed today it would launch a new BlackBerry application store in China.

BlackBerry smartphones already available in China through China Telecom, but the application store comes as the company tries to make its devices more consumer friendly as competing products such as the iPhone from Apple become more enterprise capable.

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The Toronto-based IT provider, CGI, has won a new multi-year contract to provide IT services to The Beer Store in Ontario.

The Beer Store distributes and sells beer in the province, and is operated by the government.

The Beer Store has an 85-percent market share in Ontario, and distributes beer to more than 16,000 bars and restaurants in Ontario, and also services 604 LCBO stores in the province.

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One of the top five semiconductor makers in the world, Japan-based Renesas Electronics Corp., has entered into a definitive agreement with the Finnish phone maker, Nokia, to acquire part of the firms mobile operations.

The deal worth $200-million, will give Renesas exclusive ownership over previously held Nokia assets, including various GSM patents, and will see the acquisition of Nokia’s modem business unit.

Additionally as part of the deal, the company will also acquire a part of Nokia’s research and development division, which will consist of about 1,100 Nokia professionals who work mainly in Finland and India.

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IBM has announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the California-based IT security software firm BigFix, with the details of the acquisition largely being kept private.

BigFix Inc. develops security and compliance software that companies implement in order to oversee and monitor computer networks, and to create policies for various machines to follow.

With infrastructure powered by BigFix, firms can implement numerous complex IT policies across hundreds of thousands of machines globally, including various administrative and control privileges, can execute tasks based on time/actions, can directly monitor and control machines across various operating platforms, among other complex tasks.

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