Five Companies That Dropped The Ball This Week

Apple's Steve Job Resigns

Any time a company's CEO resigns, they're a candidate to drop the ball. But when that CEO is Steve Jobs, it's even more painful. Tim Cook might be the best man for the job, but he's still the second best man for the job.

Samsung Won't Buy HP's PC Business

The aftershocks of HP's announcement to sell off its PC business are still being felt around the channel. It doesn't help when one of the potential buyers publicly states that they have no interest in the business.

Cisco Loses Its M&A Boss

Charles Carmel, a 10-year Cisco veteran most recently vice president, corporate development, has joined Warburg Pincus as a managing director, leaving the company where he helped close several mega deals, including Scientific Atlanta in 2005, WebEx in 2007and Tandberg in 2009.

System Builders Still Waiting For Sandy Bridge Success

Intel says Sandy Bridge is the fastest ramping product in the company's history, but some systems builders say that progress is not translating yet to new business for them.

Sandy Bridge, the code name for Intel's first platform to combine a graphics processor and a CPU onto a single piece of silicon, launched in January and represented a major upgrade in performance for an integrated graphics solution, according to several system builders in the reseller channel.

Google's Android Is Top Malware Target

The success of Google's Android OS may have contributed to HP dumping the TouchPad, but the company can't shake the fact that malware targeting Android outpaced all other platforms in the second quarter, according to a McAfee threat report.

Android malware comprised about 60 percent of the total 1,200 mobile malware samples collected by McAfee researchers during the second quarter, representing a 76 percent from Q1, according to the report.