Acer delays Windows RT tablets

31 October 2012 Last updated at 10:35 ET

Taiwanese computer maker Acer has put back the launch of its Windows RT tablets following mixed reviews for Microsoft's own Surface device which is powered by the new operating system.

Acer said it was now unlikely to distribute the product before April.

Windows RT appears similar to the full Windows 8 system and is designed to run on ARM-based processors.

However, it lacks some of the functionality of its sibling, resulting in a paucity of compatible software.

Unlike Windows 8, Microsoft only allows Windows RT to install third-party software from its own online store, and the apps can only run via the system's touch interface and not in the traditional desktop mode.

However, in return for this trade-off Windows RT computers are likely to offer longer battery life and cheaper prices.

Acer is the world's fourth biggest PC maker based on the number of computers shipped.

Less aggressive

Microsoft decided to launch its own Windows RT-powered Surface tablet to help promote the new software. Early reviews of the machine praised the hardware but noted there were far fewer apps available for it than for Windows 8 PCs powered by x86-based chips, or on other rival tablet or PC systems.

In addition several writers complained about glitches in the software that was available, and there were claims that it stuttered when playing some high-definition 1080p video.

Updates and new releases may solve these issues over time, but they appear to have given Acer cause for concern.

"Originally we had a very aggressive plan to come out very early next year, but because of Surface, our R&D development doesn't stop, but we are much more cautious," Acer's president Jim Wong told Reuters.

"Originally our plan was Q1 [January to March], but now I don't think it will be earlier than Q2 [April to June]."

Mr Wong indicated his concerns were also linked to the price of Surface.

Microsoft is charging £399 for its entry-level device with 32 gigabytes of storage, which does not include a keyboard cover.

That is the same price as an iPad featuring half the amount of storage, albeit with less space taken up by Apple's operating system.

Mr Wong noted that other firms, including Lenovo and Asus, had detailed plans for more expensive Windows RT tablets before Microsoft's Surface announcement caught them by surprise.

Acer also told reporters that it believed Windows 8 would only boost its fourth-quarter sales by 5%-to-10% because the software had been launched so late in the year.

It is not the first time that Acer has appeared critical of Microsoft's tactics. In August Acer's chief executive told the Financial Times that the release of Surface would have "a huge negative impact for the [Windows] ecosystem and other brands".

Gartner - a tech consultancy - said the fact Windows RT offered Microsoft's Office software suite, would act in its favour, but might not be enough to compensate for other "missing" software.

"With regards to RT we have also been a bit sceptical about the initial uptake because the app ecosystem is still weak compared to Apple's iOS and Google's Android," analyst Roberta Cozza told the BBC.

"That limits what you can do with it as regards to entertainment apps, which is an issue bearing in mind Microsoft is pushing Surface as a consumer device."

Coupon compensation

For the time being a more pressing issue for Microsoft appears to be coping with the existing demand for the tablet.

Its website now says it will take up to three weeks for any model of Surface to be delivered. It is also offering compensation of differing amounts to UK and Canada-based customers who had pre-ordered the tablet before its 26 October launch expecting to receive it on Friday, only to be disappointed.

"We apologise for any confusion caused by emails stating an earlier or later arrival date," the firm said in a statement.

"To make up for this inconvenience, we are giving impacted customers a single-use coupon for up to £50 (or $50 Canadian dollars) toward their next purchase from the Microsoft Online Store."

Despite the setback Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer appeared satisfied with the various Windows 8 launches when he appeared at a developers conference in Redmond, Washington, on Tuesday.

"In just the last three days, we have sold four million Windows 8 upgrades," he said. "The level of embrace from enthusiasts is very, very high."

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IBM Watson system to train medics

31 October 2012 Last updated at 16:41 ET

IBM's Watson supercomputer is to help train doctors at a medical school in Cleveland, Ohio.

The machine gained fame when it beat two human contestants on the US quiz show Jeopardy last year.

Its technology will now be put to a more practical use helping students to consider challenging cases and offering potential diagnoses.

But some critics say the information artificial intelligence (AI) systems draw on is flawed.

IBM's announcement marks the US firm's latest effort to develop its product for the healthcare sector.

Watson is already involved in another project with a New York-based cancer centre, and is also being tested by health insurance provider Wellpoint to tailor treatments and claims forms for its members.

IBM believes the medical sector is one of the areas it will be able to make money from its artificial intelligence system. Others include customer service hotlines and the financial investment industry.

Computer clinicians

Watson is designed to "understand" natural language requests and then access vast quantities of unstructured data to find the best answers to questions.

In a healthcare scenario this would involve analysing both patient records and medical literature.

Watson has been designed to create a list of potential answers to a medic's request, rank them in order of likelihood and then present the most likely solutions along with information about how confident it is of their likelihood.

IBM said it would be used at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine to help students evaluate medical case scenarios and find evidence to support their judgements.

"Cleveland Clinic's collaboration with IBM is exciting because it offers us the opportunity to 'think' in ways that have the potential to make it a powerful tool in medicine," said the centre's chief information officer Martin Harris.

IBM, in turn, said it hoped that Watson would get "smarter" at handling medical language.

"Being able to work with the faculty and students at an organisation like Cleveland Clinic will help us learn how to more efficiently teach and adapt Watson to a new field through interaction with experts," said David Ferrucci, principal investigator of the Watson project.

The effort builds on IBM's work with the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's research unit in Manhattan, New York.

The two are working to develop an application that could help find the best treatment for a patient with lung, breast or prostate cancer. They hope to pilot an application with a wide group of oncologists by the end of 2013.

Money from medicine

The moves could be lucrative to IBM in the long run.

The US alone spent more than $2.6 trillion (£1.6tn) on health spending in 2010, representing 17.6% of its GDP, according to a recent report by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

IBM's marketing materials suggest that as many as one in five diagnoses are incorrect or incomplete and nearly 1.5 million medication errors are made in the US every year.

Moreover it says the amount of medical information is doubling every five years making it harder for medics to stay across all relevant developments.

The company has indicated that it would request a "share of the value" of any benefit derived from its technology rather than a set fee.

Flawed data

IBM is not the only one aware of the sector's potential.

Researchers at the Clinical Decision Making Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have also looked at applying artificial intelligence to medicine, while software such as Dxplain and Isabel already exist to help medics make the right call.

However, one healthcare tech specialist has suggested we are still 30 years away from computers becoming reliable diagnosticians.

Fred Trotter, technology director at the Cautious Patient Foundation, believes part of the problem is that much of the information that AI-driven systems have to draw on is flawed.

"It simply does not matter how good the AI algorithm is if your healthcare data is both incorrect and described with a faulty healthcare ontology," he wrote on the subject.

"My personal experiences with health data on a wide scale? It's like having a conversation with a habitual liar who has a speech impediment.

"I promise you we will have the AI problem finished long before we have healthcare data that is reliable enough to train it. Until that happens, imagine how Watson would have performed on Jeopardy if it had been trained on Lord of the Rings and The Cat in the Hat instead of encyclopaedias."

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Russia blacklist law takes effect

31 October 2012 Last updated at 20:06 ET

A law that aims to protect children from harmful internet content by allowing the government to take sites offline has taken effect in Russia.

The authorities are now able to blacklist and force offline certain websites without a trial.

The law was approved by both houses of parliament and signed by President Vladimir Putin in July.

Human rights groups have said the legislation might increase censorship in the country.

The law is the amendment to the current Act for Information.

The authorities say the goal is to protect minors from websites featuring sexual abuse of children, offering details about how to commit suicide, encouraging users to take drugs and sites that solicit children for pornography.

If the websites themselves cannot be shut down, internet service providers (ISPs) and web hosting companies can be forced to block access to the offending material.

The list of banned website will be managed by Roskomnadzor (Russia's Federal Service for Supervision in Telecommunications, Information Technology and Mass Communications). It is meant to be updated daily, but its contents are not available to the general public.

Continue reading the main story

It will be [an attack on] the freedom of speech on the internet"

End Quote Yuri Vdovin Citizens' Watch

Critics have described it another attempt by President Vladimir Putin to exercise control over the population.

"Of course there are websites that should not be accessible to children, but I don't think it will be limited to that," Yuri Vdovin, vice-president of Citizens' Watch, a human rights organisation based in Saint-Petersburg, told the BBC.

"The government will start closing other sites - any democracy-oriented sites are at risk of being taken offline.

"It will be [an attack on] the freedom of speech on the internet."

Mr Vdovin said that to close a website, the government would simply have to say that its content was "harmful to children".

"But there are lots of harmful websites out there already, for example, fascist sites - and they could have easily been closed down by now - but no, [the government] doesn't care, there are no attempts to do so," he added.

A risk for websites?

Besides NGOs and human rights campaigners, websites including the Russian search engine giant Yandex, social media portal Mail.ru and the Russian-language version of Wikipedia have all protested against the law.

The latter, for instance, took its content offline for a day ahead of the vote in July, claiming the law "could lead to the creation of extra-judicial censorship of the entire internet in Russia, including banning access to Wikipedia in the Russian language".

Yandex temporarily crossed out the word "everything" in its "everything will be found" logo.

"The way the new law will work depends on the enforcement practice," said a spokesman.

"Yandex, along with other key Russian market players, is ready to discuss with lawmakers the way it is going to work."

In July, the Russian social networking site Vkontakte posted messages on users' homepages warning that the law posed a risk to its future.

However, the country's telecom minister Nikolai Nikiforov, suggested that such concerns were overblown when he spoke at the NeForum blogging conference this week.

"Internet has always been a free territory," he said, according to a report by Russian news agency Tass.

"The government is not aimed at enforcing censorship there. LiveJournal, YouTube and Facebook showcase socially responsible companies.

"That means that they will be blocked only if they refuse to follow Russian laws, which is unlikely, in my opinion."

There is also evidence suggesting public support for the move.

A survey conducted by pollster Levada Centre in late July indicated that about 62% of those asked supported the idea of a blacklist, with only 16% opposing it.

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Sharp issues warning on survival

1 November 2012 Last updated at 05:46 ET

Japan's Sharp has issued a warning about its future saying that it has found it tough to raise money amid mounting losses.

It issued the warning as it forecast a loss of 450bn yen (5.6bn; £3.5bn) for the year to 31 March 2013.

Sharp, which has struggled amid falling sales and a rising yen, has had its credit rating cut to "junk" status.

It said it was looking to restructure its business in an attempt to return to profitability.

When a firm's bonds are rated as "junk" it means some institutions may no longer invest in them, making it harder for them to raise fresh capital.

"Sharp is in circumstances in which material doubt about its assumed going concern is found," the company said in a statement.

Analysts said that given its troubles, Sharp may find it tough to survive in the long run.

"Perhaps it will not fail within this year, but I don't think Sharp has a viable business in the next three to five years," said Tetsuro Ii, chief executive of Commons Asset Management in Tokyo.

"The company hasn't got much time left and they need to cut off businesses that they can, conserve cash and... produce something that's really competitive."

Growing troubles

Sharp's troubles are not isolated. Most of the big Japanese electronics giants have seen their fortunes tumble in recent times.

Also on Thursday, Sony reported a loss of 15.4bn yen for the July to September quarter.

On Wednesday, Panasonic said that it now expected to make a loss of 765bn yen in the current financial year. It had previously forecast a profit of 50bn yen.

Japanese electronics makers have been hurt by a slowing demand and falling prices of TVs in key markets.

At the same time, rising competition from low-cost manufacturers coupled with a strong yen - which makes Japanese goods more expensive - has also hit their competitiveness.

Faced with these challenges, Sharp, Sony and Panasonic have all announced plans to restructure their business in an attempt to cut costs and improve profitability.

However, analysts said that while these attempts were a step in the right direction, it was unclear how the firms will drive future profit growth, not least because demand for their key products continued to remain subdued.

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Dotcom reveals Mega download site

1 November 2012 Last updated at 07:04 ET

Kim Dotcom has announced plans for Mega, a service to replace his shut down file-sharing website Megaupload.

Mega is expected to use encryption methods which will mean only users will know what they are uploading.

It will be decided in March whether Mr Dotcom should be extradited from New Zealand to the US to face charges relating to copyright theft.

The 38-year-old said he would launch Mega on 20 January 2013 - a year to the day since his arrest.

By keeping details of files uploaded on Mega secret from the site's administrators, Mr Dotcom said he believed this would mean the site was not in violation of US laws.

"The new Mega will not be threatened by US prosecutors," he said.

"The new Mega avoids any dealings with US hosters, US domains and US backbone providers and has changed the way it operates to avoid another takedown."

'LOL!!!'

Announcing the new site on Twitter, Mr Dotcom said the holding page - hosted at Me.ga - was already getting "millions" of hits.

He said many of the visits were from US authorities themselves, tweeting: "All FBI agents pressing reload hahaha... We see their IP addresses. LOL!!!"

Exact details of the encryption methods on the upcoming site have not been released. However, it appears to look to shift responsibility for unlawful content onto the users, rather than the site's owners.

"In the past, securely storing and transferring confidential information required the installation of dedicated software," a message on Mega's holding page said.

"The new Mega encrypts and decrypts your data transparently in your browser, on the fly. You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."

In an interview with Reuters, Mr Dotcom suggested that content owners might even get direct access to users' uploaded files "if they agree not to make us responsible for actions of users".

The site's servers will not be hosted in the US, Mr Dotcom added. A page on the Mega site makes a plea to encourage more investors for the service.

"We have raised sufficient funds to cover the launch," the message reads, "but we would like to provide Mega free of charge for as long as possible."

Mr Dotcom had previously released details of a sister service, Megabox, which will offer music-related downloads.

Unlawful raid

Mr Dotcom - formerly Kim Schmitz - currently resides in his New Zealand mansion which was raided by local authorities at the start of this year.

The raid and seizure of assets was later deemed illegal by a New Zealand court.

It was also later ruled that intelligence agencies had illegally spied on Mr Dotcom - an incident which drew an apology from New Zealand Prime Minister John Key.

"We failed to provide that appropriate protection for him," he said.

"It is the GCSB's [Government Communications Security Bureau] responsibility to act within the law, and it is hugely disappointing that in this case its actions fell outside the law."

If extradited and convicted in the US, Mr Dotcom faces up to 20 years in prison.

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Man beats robot car on race track

1 November 2012 Last updated at 08:26 ET

A race between a robot car and a human has ended with a win for the humans - but only just.

The race was run on Thunderhill Raceway in California between an Audi TTS that can drive itself and a racing car driver familiar with the circuit.

The human driver completed a lap around the circuit a few seconds faster than the robotic car.

The race was part of research to develop control systems that will help to make domestic cars more autonomous.

Human race

The robot car in the race has been developed by researchers at the Centre for Automotive Research at Stanford University (Cars).

Called Shelley, the autonomous vehicle is fitted with sensors that work out its position on the road, feed back information about the grip of its tyres and help it plot the best route around the circuit.

Prof Chris Gerdes, head of the Cars Lab at Stanford, said Thunderhill was chosen because its 15 turns present the car's control systems with a wide variety of challenges. Some corners can be taken at high speed, some are chicanes, others are sharp and come at the end of long straights down which the car hit a top speed of 115mph (185kph).

Once familiar with the three-mile circuit the car was raced against one of Thunderhill's staff who was very familiar with the track and logged a slightly faster time.

"What human drivers do consistently well is feel out the limits of the car and push it just a little bit further and that is where they have an advantage," said Prof Gerdes.

He added that follow-up work had been done to record what the best human drivers did with the car's brakes, steering and throttle as they drove so this could be incorporated into the control systems the Stanford team is developing.

Continue reading the main story

"It's not so much the technology as the capability of the human that is our inspiration now."

End Quote Prof Chris Gerdes

For instance, he said, in situations where the car is being driven at the limit of the grip of its tyres, the car cannot be turned via the steering wheel. Instead, said Prof Gerdes, race drivers use the brake and the throttle to force a car round a corner.

"We're learning what they are doing and it's those counter-intuitive behaviours that we are planning to put in the algorithm," he said.

"Our ultimate objective is not really to robotify [car racing] but to take these sorts of technologies, learning from the very best human drivers and turn those into safety systems that can work on cars," he told the Big Science Summit, a conference organised by The Atlantic magazine.

Currently, he said, driver assistance systems in vehicles actively prevent them performing manoeuvres that the best drivers use to avoid or get out of trouble.

Driving fast on a race track was one way to expose those high level abilities, he said. The maths of making a car steer safely at high speed around a tight bend was very similar to that needed to keep a car on the road if it hits a patch of ice. Both, he said, involved a calculation based on how much friction there was between the road and the tyres.

"As we set up these systems in the future, it's important not to build autonomous vehicles that are merely a collection of systems designed for human support but to think a little bit more holistically about making them as good as the very best human drivers," said Prof Gerdes. "It's not so much the technology as the capability of the human that is our inspiration now."

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Vodafone fixed contracts to rise

By Declan Harvey
Newsbeat reporter

Vodafone has increased the cost of existing fixed contracts by 2.4% telling customers it is to keep up with rising inflation.

Providers are able to change the contracts because of "hidden" clauses in their terms and conditions.

Orange/T-Mobile (EE) and the 3 network introduced similar increases this year.

After customer complaints, the industry regulator Ofcom has said stricter rules could be introduced as early as January.

Continue reading the main story

Four of the five major networks have increased the cost of their fixed-term contracts this year:

• ORANGE, Jan 2012, +4.3%
• T-MOBILE, May 2012, +3.7%
• 3 Network, July 2012, +3.6%

O2 is the only provider not to have raised its prices, but its T&Cs allow them to.

It means Vodafone customers on £15 per month contracts will pay an extra 54p.

£30 a month contracts will rise by £1.08.

In a statement Vodafone said: "From 1 November, we are introducing an average price rise of 59p to our pay monthly line rental in accordance with inflation (as measured by the Retail Price Index).

"We're changing the cost of calling some premium and 118 numbers at a time when we're seeing rising costs within our own business.

"We also recently introduced the Red plan offering unlimited calls and texts to all contract customers, regardless of where you are in your contract."

Ofcom says the providers need to "watch out" and says some of the options being considered include giving customers the choice to drop out of their contract or forcing companies to make the clauses clearer when agreements are signed.

The watchdog says customers should not be expected to read all the small print in the T&Cs.

Last October Vodafone increased bills by rounding them up to the nearest 50p.

Gareth Shaw from consumer group Which? called the latest increase "shocking" and said the contracts were "misleading".

Meanwhile, O2 has been criticised after raising the cost of using a mobile phone outside the EU.

The firm is adding 30p per minute to call charges from 28 November.

Receiving calls will go up by 51p a minute and sending texts are also being raised by up to 15p.

Within the EU call charges are capped at 28p per minute.

Advice from Which? about price rises

• Contact your mobile company if you are unhappy
• Make sure the company has given you 14 days notice of the price rise as per terms and conditions
• As loyal customers, you should drive a hard bargain
• Ask if they will compensate you for the price rise or if they can switch you to a different tariff
• If you're still unhappy, you should tell them you will switch providers once your fixed term ends

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Uganda delays mobile switch-off

1 November 2012 Last updated at 10:13 ET

Uganda has delayed plans to switch off "fake" mobile phones until 1 July 2013.

The crackdown - which is designed to prevent counterfeit handsets connecting to local networks - had originally been planned to come into effect this month.

Kenya implemented a ban in October disconnecting millions of devices.

The Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) has suggested about 30% of East Africa's 17 million mobiles are illegitimate copies of popular brands and models.

Users have until March to make sure their Sim card is registered with the regulator ahead of the action.

They are also asked to verify the 15-digit IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) code of legal devices. Fakes usually do not have an IMEI code or have copied another one.

The UCC says the moves will help law enforcement agencies track criminals who use unregistered devices for illegal activities.

Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania are among other African nations to have discussed counterfeit phone bans.

Dropped calls

Fake phones are popular because they are sold at significantly cheaper prices than official models - in part because retailers have avoided paying import taxes.

But officials suggest they can pose health risks. They say the handsets have not been tested to meet safety standards meaning that they may suffer higher than recommended radiation levels or battery leaks.

They also say that because the phones had not been properly configured for local networks that they can cause dropped calls for all users.

The UCC has faced complaints that service quality has worsened over recent months.

The regulator has also threatened network providers with fines if they are responsible for other causes of blocked or dropped calls, or loss of coverage.

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Apple slammed over Samsung notice

1 November 2012 Last updated at 10:39 ET

Apple has 48 hours to re-write a statement on its website relating to its design rights dispute with Samsung, UK judges have ruled.

Apple was forced on 18 October to publish a message making it clear that Samsung had not infringed the iPad's registered design.

However Samsung complained the statement Apple had posted did not comply with the court order.

Judges agreed and have told Apple it must be removed within 24 hours.

A new, compliant version must then be posted.

Michael Beloff QC, representing Apple, told judges that the company had thought that it had complied with the court order.

"It's not designed to punish," he said.

"It's not designed to make us grovel. The only purpose must be to dispel commercial uncertainty."

He asked that the company be given 14 days to post the replacement - but the request was firmly denied.

Lord Justice Longmore told Mr Beloff: "We are just amazed that you cannot put the right notice up at the same time as you take the other one down."

Sir Robin Jacob added: "I would like to see the head of Apple [Tim Cook] make an affidavit about why that is such a technical difficulty for the Apple company."

Apple told the BBC it did not want to comment further.

'Horse's mouth'

Samsung complained that the notice posted by Apple was "inaccurate and misleading" because it added comments about other rulings in Germany and the US that had gone in the iPad-maker's favour.

"This has received enormous publicity and has perpetuated confusion as to Samsung's entitlement to market the Galaxy tablet computers in issue," a Samsung lawyer said in a written statement to judges.

"It has created the impression that the UK court is out of step with other courts."

The UK's ruling applies to the whole of the EU.

The court order is the latest twist in an ongoing legal saga involving the two companies.

Apple brought the case to the UK courts, alleging that Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10 had infringed the design of its iPad.

But in July, Judge Colin Birss disagreed on the grounds that Samsung's product was not as "cool".

His ruling meant that Apple was denied the opportunity to impose a sales ban on Samsung's products.

Apple was unsuccessful in appealing the ruling, and was ordered to place a notice on its website, newspapers and magazines explaining that Samsung had not infringed its designs.

The intention, judges said, was not to make Apple "grovel", but to remove "commercial uncertainty" surrounding Samsung's products.

"A consumer might well think: 'I had better not buy a Samsung - maybe it's illegal and if I buy one it may not be supported'," Sir Robin said.

"Apple itself must (having created the confusion) make the position clear: that it acknowledges that the court has decided that that these Samsung products do not infringe its registered design.

"The acknowledgement must come from the horse's mouth."

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Comet to go into administration

1 November 2012 Last updated at 12:26 ET

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Dan Wagner, Powa Technologies: "They failed to leverage their physical presence... ten years ago"

About 6,500 retail jobs are at risk after electrical chain Comet confirmed that it would be put into administration next week.

Private equity firm OpCapita, which owns the 240-store business, has lined up restructuring specialist Deloitte to act as administrator.

OpCapita bought Comet last year for £2, but the business has struggled from the downturn in consumer spending.

Comet's demise is one of the biggest High Street casualties of recent years.

Two weeks ago, OpCapita said it was examining a number of potential bids for the retailer.

The administrator will run the business as a going concern while it assesses options for sales, closures and liquidation.

Comet said it was "urgently working" on plans to secure the company's future. Customers with outstanding orders are being told it is "business as usual until further notice" and that the group intends to fulfil deliveries of products that have been paid for.

Comet's customer care team is handling customer inquiries on 0844 8009595.

Continue reading the main story

• Any customers with Comet vouchers or gift cards can use them in stores at present
• Administrators would decide whether they would be honoured were the business to enter administration
• Generally, gift card holders are fairly low on a list of creditors when a business folds
• Were Comet to cease trading, then a trust fund would be set up to meet obligations to customers who hold extended warranties
• The Comet website is currently out of action
• Customer enquiries are being answered by its customer card team on 0844 8009595

Shares of Comet's rivals rose on news of the planned administration, with Dixons Retail, which owns PC World and Currys, jumping 15% as investors speculated that a major competitor could be removed from the market.

OpCapita bought Comet last February from Kesa Electricals, which had itself struggled to turn around the business. Comet is thought to have had operational losses of about £35m last year.

'Market failure'

The economic downturn and pressure on consumer spending has led many people to put off purchases of big-ticket items such as TVs and large appliances. But sales of such items have also moved increasingly online.

Dan Wagner, a technology entrepreneur who has backed several internet businesses, told the BBC that Comet "was an accident waiting to happen" because successive managements had failed to understand the online world.

Retailers must now offer multi-channel options - shops, a website, purchases via mobile phones - to be successful, he said. "Comet failed to understand the importance of this for driving business."

Jon Copestake, retail analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, also felt that Comet's problems "come as little surprise".

He said: "Not only has Comet faced deflationary pressures thanks to stiff competition and cheaper production costs, but core audio visual products are being undermined by combined platforms on smartphones and tablet computers."

Comet is one of the biggest retail casualties since the demise of Woolworths in 2008. Other recent High Street collapses have included JJB Sports, Clinton Cards, Blacks Leisure, Game, and Peacocks.

America's Best Buy recently pulled the plug on 11 giant electrical stores after failing to make inroads into the UK market.

Comet was founded in 1933 as a business charging batteries for wireless sets. It opened its first store in 1968, in Hull, and was bought by Kingfisher in 1984, which expanded the Comet brand into one of the most familiar names on the High Street.

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