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Clearwire, the Kirkland-based company that now operates wireless broadband assets from Sprint Nextel, is rolling into the WiMax market with the thunderbolt name Clear.

The company said Monday it determination sell its wireless broadband services under that family, which is replacing the Xohm brand that one of a firm Sprint Nextel has used since September.

In joining, Clearwire Chief Executive Ben Wolff said Monday that if a rival ensign to WiMax broadband becomes besides popular, Clearwire will be able to switch technologies.

The developments came as Clearwire’s merger with Sprint’s WiMax network was closed Friday.

WiMax, a technology sometimes described as Wi-Fi on steroids, is considered the next generation — the fourth — of wireless broadband technology, one that provides Internet access covering entire markets and providing faster data speeds than most current third-generation cellular broadband networks.

Sprint began offering WiMax service in Baltimore in September but hasn’cheek by jowl disclosed how many customers have signed up. Clearwire plans to begin selling WiMax in Portland in the first position of 2009 and already has about 400,000 customers upon a pre-WiMax network in 46 cities, including Seattle.

Wolff told analysts and reporters instead of the period of a conference call Monday that the company will focus on upgrading that system to WiMax next year, as well as breach commercial purpose in several other cities.

Overland Park, Kan.-based Sprint testament own 51 percent of Clearwire, while investors in the original Clearwire, founded by alveolate pioneer Craig McCaw, wish own about 22 percent. The rest of the company desire be owned by investors including Comcast, Intel, Time Warner Cable, Google and Bright House Networks, which have put in a full of $3.2 billion in cash.

One issue Wolff discussed Monday was how the company can move from WiMax to a technology called Long Term Evolution, or LTE, if enough customers want it. Clearwire chose WiMax inasmuch as it may be four years before LTE is ready for commercial appliance, he said.

AT&T and Verizon Wireless, Sprint’sitting larger competitors, be the subject of said they resoluteness employment LTE to build completely so-called fourth-generation networks, which will provide faster Internet access than those used today. Nortel Networks, North America’s biggest maker of phone equipment, has in like manner said it will devote more resources to LTE than WiMax.

“Everyone else in the world is using LTE technology,” related Christopher King, an algebraist at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore. He has a hold rating on Clearwire and doesn’t own any of its shares. “They distress to be flexible, certainly, to the length that investors are skeptical” on the point WiMax.

The technologies have a lot in common, and Clearwire’s suppliers will be able to deliver rigging for an LTE network if needed, he said.

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Jonathan Miller, one of the brace would-be leaders named in the weekend’s widely discredited Yahoo romance from The Sunday Times of London, is afresh in the headlines. This time, the former AOL CEO is declared to be drumming up investors to purchase everything or part of Yahoo, according to unnamed sources quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

“Mr. Miller has been talking to private equity investors and sovereign wealth funds for months in hopes of raising currency notwithstanding a Yahoo deal, and it is unclear whether the talks have progressed or are merited continuing, these people say.

“Mr. Miller believes he can do a deal that would be worth around $20 to $22 a share to Yahoo shareholders, these populate say, what one. would involve raising about $28 billion to $30 billion to purchase the sheer company.

…

“It is unclear whether Microsoft Corp., which has indicated that it is still open to doing some be adapted to of deal with Yahoo, would be involved in any transaction.”

It was unclear from the story what relationship, if any, these latest developments have to the weekend report, which described a webwork transaction involving Microsoft, Yahoo, private investors, Miller and Ross Levinsohn, his associate in tempt fortune first in importance fund Velocity Interactive Group.

Levinsohn publicly called the Times of London story “amount fiction.”

But clearly, Miller, at least, has been involved in the ongoing Microsoft-Yahoo saga. The Journal reports he “has been a behind-the-scenes player in discussions between Yahoo and Microsoft for months, advising both sides on how to make a deal between the two companies work.”

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Troubled Seattle software company Entellium filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, paving the way for more assets to be sold to financial software maker Intuit, company representatives said.

Entellium is selling its intellectual property to Intuit, Entellium acting Chief Executive Charles Miller said today. Miller and about 10 other Entellium employees have been keeping the company operating seeing that October, whenever its chief charged by execution and financial officer abruptly resigned and most employees were laid off.

Former CEO Paul Johnston and financial officer Parrish Jones have since been charged with stratagem because of grossly inflating company revenues to lure investors.

Today’s filing “allows the company to reorganize and basically gives the meeting of friends some aspiration room, not only from lawsuits but also time to congeal altogether its debts and administer the estate in an systematic mould,” said Katriana Samiljan, an attorney by Bush, Strout and Kornfeld who is representing Entellium.

Entellium’s bankruptcy filing in treaty court says the company has $37.7 million in assets and $12.7 million in debts. It lists intellectual property possessions as six registered trademarks and trademark applications, including its Rave brand customer relationship guidance software, and 22 registered domain names.

The bankruptcy filing lists creditors as Ignition Venture Partners, WestRiver Capital of Kirkland, Malaysia Venture Capital Management, Middlefield Ventures, Sigma Partners and Silicon Valley Bank.

The filing includes each 11-page catalogue of equity security holders across the U.S. and in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Dubai and Sri Lanka.

In a separate filing late Monday, attorneys with regard to Johnston and Jones agreed to extend the deadline for an indictment to Dec. 29. And Jones’ attorney said he has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to resolve the case and expects to set a plea hearing the week of Dec. 15.

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com

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Microsoft is taking a new approach to building the massive data centers that run its growing suite of online services, which are fast right central to its business. The gang plans to build modular data centers, which use shipping containers preloaded by up to 2,500 server computers that can be built in moiety the time as conventional data centers.

More details and a video explaining it all notwithstanding the jump.

“Our ‘Gen 4′ modular data centers will take the flexibility of containerized servers — like those in our Chicago data center — and apply it across the not notched facility,” wrote Michael Manos, general manager of Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services, in a blog post describing the new strategy. “So what do we mean by the agency of modular? Think of it partiality ‘building blocks’, to which place the data center will be composed of modular units of prefabricated involuntary, electrical, security components, etc., in addition to containerized servers. … We believe it is one of the most revolutionary changes to happen to data centers in the last 30 years.”

Manos is in charge of “global data center design, construction and ongoing operations for Microsoft’s online services.” These data centers are the foundation upon that Microsoft’s cloud services are built. Manos wrote that the company has to a greater degree than 240 online products and services.

Microsoft has a major facts center in Quincy, Grant County. Other major Internet companies, including Google and Yahoo, have built given conditions centers elsewhere in the Northwest to take advantage of cheap hydroelectric power.

Microsoft is planning to “modularize the whole given conditions center,” Manos wrote. “Not true the server side (like the Chicago facility), but the mechanical and electrical space similar to well. This resource using the identical kind of parts in pre-manufactured modules, the ability to use containers, skids, or rack-based deployments and the ability to tailor the Redundancy and Reliability requirements to the putting into practice at a very specific level.”

The company’s interest in this type of data center has been public since at least April 2007, when it was reported by Data Center Knowledge.

The benefits of this approach, according to Manos, take in:

– Capital cost savings of 20 to 40 percent;

— Easier increases in magnitude to meet demand, free from huge upfront investments;

– Water practice, for chillers, potentially reduced to zero. (”Today’session data centers use massive amounts of water and we see water as the next scarce resource and have decided to take a proactive stance on fabrication water conservation part of our plan.”)

– Improved energy efficiency in construction and operation. (Microsoft Research is also focused on improving data center efficiency. Second item in this novel.)

“In curt, we are striving to fetch Henry Ford’s Model T factory to the data center. … Gen 4 volition move facts centers from a custom design and build pattern to a commoditized manufacturing draw near,” Manos wrote.

Manos described this video, complete with mellow futuristic piano harmony, as “a inspect into what we think is the future.” (One big dispute: no canopy.)

Video: Microsoft Generation 4.0 Data Center Vision

You may have noticed the “edge” copy depicted in the video is in Seattle near Qwest Field. A Microsoft spokeswoman says it’s just an example, “not anything that’s in the works.” Although one power suspect from the video that Microsoft is planning to build these smaller “edge” centers in major cities round the world.

For a glimpse of the present, accompany this video tour of Microsoft’s Quincy data center from the BBC.

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In a mass layoff that also could shake Seattle’s real-estate mart, JPMorgan Chase is cutting about 80 percent of the Seattle work compulsion at Washington Mutual.

About 3,400 chiefly high-paid headquarters employees exercise volition be let go, while workers at WaMu’s 185 Washington branches direction keep their jobs.

As it shrinks staff, JPMorgan decision empty in the greatest degree of the leased extension in downtown Seattle used by WaMu, the biggest occupant of downtown customary duty property. It may so much as empty a big piece of its 2-year-old WaMu Center headquarters tower, now owned through JPMorgan.

“We are going to build a great company towards the long run. Unfortunately, that entails tough decisions in the short run,” said JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who visited Seattle this week for the first time since his bank bought greatest part of WaMu’sitting assets in imitation of federal regulators seized the thrift Sept. 25.

One of Dimon’s big messages to corporate and civil leaders Monday was that JPMorgan next year will vindicate WaMu’s 2008 charitable donations of $2.65 million to Washington state nonprofits, primarily in Seattle.

That’s little solace to WaMu employees, some of whom feel they were misled by dint of. Dimon and his cadre of New York bankers.

Right hind WaMu was bought, said one person in the credit-risk department who skilled Monday she is life laid off, “we went from conference call to conference call judicial examination, ‘We really love you guys, we’re going to keep the majority of the people and work to get people jobs in other areas.’

“I expected to at least have somebody talk to me near what could I do and that which am I interested in,” said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

JPMorgan executives should have made clear they wanted mostly the workers in WaMu branches, not the headquarters, she said.

Only about 20 percent of WaMu’s nationwide work force of 43,200 is being laid off, embank officials said Monday.

JPMorgan, known for cutting costs after making acquisitions, slashed more deeply after buying investing. bank Bear Stearns last summer. It offered jobs to only 6,500 of Bear’session 14,000 workers, and also cut 2,000 JPMorgan positions.

Biggest hit

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From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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MERRILL CUTS GENERAL ELECTRIC EPS ESTIMATES

Merrill Lynch analyst John Inch says General Electric’s (GE) CFO and top members of GE Capital are scheduled to talk tomorrow about the society’sitting fundamentals and actions taken to ameliorate Capital’s positioning in 2009 and at a distance.

Inch thinks a portion of the talks will be directed toward the company’s ability to sustain $1.24 dividend payout through 2009, which he thinks GE will be able to do. He notes this has been a originator of market concern in the exceeding few weeks.

Still, he cuts EPS estimates to deliberate incrementally worse industrial and financial services environment; he now sees $1.55 2009 EPS and $1.70 against 2010. He has a $21 price target on the stock.

STIFEL NICOLAUS CUTS EBAY ESTIMATES, TARGET

Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt cuts estimates for eBay (EBAY) due to the current environment and the fellowship’s continued business model challenges.

Devitt cuts $2.2 billion fourth quarter revenue estimate to $2.1 billion, and maintains adjusted EPS at $0.40. He cuts $9.0 billion 2009 revenue estimate to $8.8 billion, $1.78 adjusted EPS to $1.69.

He notes that in a 4-year period, eBay’s main marketplace business has gone from heart heart of eCommerce industry to more of a recess marketplace for unique and collectible items. He says eBay is trying to make its custom outer part toward relevance by its diamond seller program and software platform dubbed Large Merchant Services.

He cuts $20 price target to $17. He keeps a buy estimation.

RBC CAPITAL DOWNGRADES HOST HOTELS TO SECTOR PERFORM FROM OUTPERFORM

RBC Capital algebraist Mike Salinsky says hurried deterioration in Host Hotels & Resorts (HST) operating fundamentals over the past two months and the company’s greater dependence steady brand managed properties, which historically have been greater quantity rigid with mark to cost containment initiatives to limit margin erosion, now suggest even greater than previously anticipated profits. and EBITDA vitiation over the next several quarters.

Salinsky notes that demand is moderating across every one of segments. He cuts $1.79 2008 reported FFO/share estimate to $1.69, $1.25 for 2009 to $1.17, and $1.17 for 2010 to $1.08. He cuts $13 price target to $9.

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S—P thinks the airline can leverage cost savings from its merger with Northwest and ranks the shares strong buy

By Jim Corridore From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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We view Delta Air Lines (DAL: recent price, 9) for example the beyond all others positioned U.S. airline to convey advantage of the industry environment entering 2009. Overall, we think the toil as a whole is likely to benefit from a sharp pullback in the excellence of oil and the resulting decline in jet fuel costs since late July 2008. We also believe the industry has already moved to pull down domestic seat containing power, which should grant supply and demand to remain in remainder. despite the expected decline in air travel demand that we see resulting from the global relating to housekeeping recession.

On summit of the positive trends, we anticipate pathetic the overall industry in 2009, we think Delta should be able to leverage its recently closed merger with Northwest Airlines to achieve require to be paid and revenue synergies, allowing it to outperform U.S. industry peers financially to boot the next few years.

Investors clearly have been spooked by the overall stock market woes, worries about the economy, and concerns in various places the pack together of both on the outlook for air travel demand. Year to date from one side Nov. 28, the S—P Airline subindustry index declined 29.1%, vs. a 39.0% decline in the S—P 500 over that same period. Year to date through Nov. 28, Delta shares were down about 41%.

In our scan, investors initially pushed airline stocks down on worries related to oil prices, which closed at a high of $147.27 a barrel on July 11, 2008. Since then, oil has dropped about 64%, to $53, but airline stocks have not seen the benefit. Instead, we believe investors moved on to new worries in all parts of the U.S. and global management, the housing, pecuniary, and stock-market meltdown as not amiss as the potential impact of those issues on open air travel.

We think investors are discounting a worse impact on air travel question than we expect and are not properly factoring in the lower-cost environment we care for from the wide and rapid drop in the recompense of oil. Specific to Delta, we believe investors are not in a strict sense appreciating the in posse benefits of the Northwest merger. In our view, the shares, ranked 5 STARS (strong buy), provide a compelling chance; fit for potential capital appreciation over the next 12 months.

COMPANY OVERVIEW

On Oct. 29, 2008, hours after receiving final approval from U.S. regulators, Delta Air Lines reshaped the U.S. airline industry by the agency of completing its merger through Northwest Airlines. This merger created the largest airline in the world, through an estimated $32 billion in annual revenues as a starting base. Internationally, the deal merges a carrier with a major presence in trans-Pacific flights (Northwest) by another that is healthy on trans-Atlantic routes (Delta). The combined operation, operating from hubs in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Detroit, Memphis, Minneapolis, New York, Salt Lake City, and Tokyo, serves 375 destinations in 66 countries throughout the world and carries more than 170 the masses passengers annually. The combined operation will endure to operate for that which is less than the Delta brand name.

We expect the combined essence to have strong liquidity and end 2008 with total cash of about $6 billion, what one. we see as more than adequate to fund operations and pay debt obligations and interest charge from one side to the other the next two years.

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Fresh data point to December 2007 as the start of the pullback, which is alarmingly hot. The market swallowed this news and swooned

From Standard & Poor’s Equity Research

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Now it’s functionary. On Dec. 1, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research—the widely acknowledged arbiters of when the U.S. economy enters and exits economic downturns—pegged the arise of the current U.S. pullback to December 2007. And as if to forge the place household, investors eyed reports on manufacturing and mode of constructing released on Dec. 1 that revealed contracting activity in those key sectors of the U.S. arrangement, including the lowest reading on the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM) manufacturing index since 1982.

Investors clearly didn’t partiality what they saw, and the gloomy data—along with continued uncertainties about U.S. holiday retail spending and a cautionary note on U.S. consumer credit from Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitne —helped spark a sharp stock market sell-off (BusinessWeek.com, 12/1/08) on Dec. 1.

BusinessWeek and S&P MarketScope staff on Dec. 1 compiled the following insights from Wall Street economists and analysts:

The Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research met by conference call without interruption Friday, Nov. 28. The committee maintains a chronology of the initiation and ending dates (months and quarters) of U.S. recessions. It determined that a peak in economic sprightliness occurred in the U.S. economy in December 2007. The peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous extent of the 1990s lasted 120 months.

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity divulge across the plan and lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real gains, and other indicators. A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough. Between depression and peak, the system is in an expansion.

Because a recession is a broad contraction of the good housewifery, not confined to undivided sector, the committee emphasizes economywide measures of housekeeping activity. The committee believes that domestic production and being busied are the main conceptual measures of economic activity.

The committee views the payroll employment measure, that is based on a large survey of employers, as the most reliable comprehensive estimate of employment. This series reached a pinnacle in December 2007 and has declined every month since then.

The manufacturing sector is now in the grips of a major recession—and conditions are that may be liked to get a good distribute cards worse before they acquire in any degree better. ISM data were about while we expected but weaker than consensus. The composite manufacturing ISM director fell a further 2.7 points in November, to 36.2, another new low since 1982. The key orders (27.9, along the course of from 32.2), production (31.5 vs. 34.1), and employment (34.2 vs. 34.6) gauges whole extended their recent collapses to fall deeply into recessionary territory. Weakness in orders has been particularly pronounced, through the gorge hit in November exceeded only in couple prior months, both in 1980.

The weakness was again broadly based across industry groups. The only industries reporting expansion in November were apparel and paper products. The prices-paid gauge slipped all the way to 25.5—the lowest reading since 1949. As recently in the same proportion that June, the price carpenter’s gauge was at 91.5, the highest since 1979. There has never before been like a massive collapse over such a short period that has get to anywhere near the kind of has occurred in this digression. Domestic activity has now deteriorated into a satirical contraction, and exports are now starting to show some major softness as the U.S. recession goes global. An inventory overhang is also starting to be proper for more apparent.

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The S&P 500 and Nasdaq each tumbled nearly 9% Monday after sad reports forward U.S. manufacturing sentiment and construction spending

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Different month, same stock market.

U.S. funds suffered a attentive sell-off on the first day of December, and closed at their overcome levels of the session. The large-cap S&P 500 index and the technology-heavy Nasdaq complex exponent each sank nearly 9%. The declines in major U.S. indexes erased most of the gains from the market’s five-session rally.

On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average finshed lower by 679.95 points, or 7.7%, at 8,149.09. The broad S&P 500 index dropped 80.03 points, or 8.9%, to 841.35. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index sank 137.50 points, or 8.95%, to 1,398.07.

Things were even worse in other corners of the market. The S&P MidCap 400 fore-finger tumbled 10.9% Monday.

The U.S. stock market “is facing a just discovered circuitously of selling pressure as the financial picture is compose a question mark,” said Jay Collins of DT Trading in Chicago. “[The U.S. jobs report] due forward Friday is the news story of the week and is expected to reinforce the cheerless jobs picture that lies ahead.”

“The downturn happened so fast today in that place wasn’t much turn up to posture for it,” said S&P technical analyst Chris Burba.

Wall Street was spooked through fresh reminders of economic weakness in the U.S. and around the globe. Among the items driving the selling: A give out released Monday by means of the Institute of Supply Management showed that U.S. manufacturing contracted at the steepest rate in 26 years in November. Another reports showed construction spending slumping in October.

To put an exclamation point on the administration’s troubles, the National Bureau of Economic Research’s occupation cycle dating committee, widely recognized as the arbiter of U.S. recessions, said the good husbandry began its current downturn in December, 2007.

Meanwhile, Treasuries experienced an enormous rally as investment capital flowed heavily

out of equities. Traders cited speculation of more rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and possibly government purchases of Treasuries in order to keep yields down and support lending.

Oil futures plunged to finish below $50, their lowest close in three years. The U.S. dollar index was higher. Gold futures plunged on make necessary worries.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Monday that the central course will act as needed to preserve the viability of key institutions and that

further interest-rate reductions are “certainly feasible.” Bernanke aforesaid the thrift remains under “considerable stress” and acknowledged that the Fed’sitting various liquidity programs have failed to return private credit markets to normal.

Also, U.S. retail data from the first weekend of the holiday shopping season were mixed and “not really impressive” according to S&P MarketScope.

On the New York Stock Exchange Monday, 28 public funds were lower in price in opposition to each four that posted gains. The proportion upon the body the Nasdaq was 24-4 negative.

Equity markets in Europe finished sharply grow less, with major indexes the floor 5.2% in London, 5.9% in Frankfurt, and 5.6% in Paris registering declines. Asian markets ended mixed, with Tokyo stocks falling 0.9%, Hong Kong climbing 1.6%, and Shanghai gaining 1.3%.

Wall Street looked to news on the sell in small quantities sector as the all-important holiday shopping season kicked off on Friday, Nov. 28. “We believe consumers remained spooked by the agency of market turmoil and refrained from shopping during [November]. We are projecting one of the weakest Holiday shopping seasons on memorandum,” wrote Merrill Lynch analyst Lorraine Maikis in a note Monday.

Technology shares were hard-hit Monday. Intel (INTC) was amidst the stocks leading the tendency of action lower with a decline of 9%. The Semiconductor Industry Association reported Monday that worldwide sales of semiconductors declined 2.4% in October to $22.5 billion compared to sales of $23.0 billion in October, 2007.

Among the other industry groups hard-hit in Monday’s session: The S&P Investment Banking & Brokerage index implacable 15.2% as Ladenburg Thalman analyst Richard Bove cut his earnings estimate for Goldman Sachs (GS), citing the impact of changes in the value of the company’s holdings in China and Japan.

The S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production index plummeted 14.8% amid the excruciating decline in crude oil futures.

The Diversified Metals & Mining index slumped 12%. Bloomberg reported that copper fell for a second day in Shanghai hinder China’session lessening in manufacturing signaled the extending danger of a slump in the world’session biggest consumer of the metal. The S&P Gold index fell 8.1% amid a sharp drop in prices for the yellow metal.

The Automobile Manufacturers index dropped 8.7% amid fresh developments in the beleaguered sector. Ford Motor Co. (F) announced that it be inclined re-evaluate strategic options for Volvo Car Corp., including the possible sale of the Sweden-based recompense automaker. Ford said the decision comes in response to the significant marasmus in the global auto industry singly in the past three months and severe household instability worldwide.

General Motors’ (GM) management on Sunday was racing to finalize a viability project to take to Congress, with a boardroom hellbent on securing a treaty rescue loan, according to a Wall Street Journal report. At the same time, directors — diverse chief executive Rick Wagoner — are also insisting that all options stay in continuance the table, including a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, if a bailout doesn’t come through, said the Journal.

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