Staff Writers

It’s a rare chance for a geekoid technology journalist to venture into the freak show that is the competitive board-riding scene, but Samsung’s sponsorship of the Quiksilver Pro and Roxy Pro offered just such an opportunity. We couldn’t resist it.

To kick off a two year partnership deal with surf fashion label Quiksilver, brings Samsung into new territory for a consumer electronics brand.

The major sponsorship for the first events on the Foster’s Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) Men’s World Championship Tour and the ASP Women’s World Tour, is the first of many events Quiksilver and Samsung plan for a deal that covers not only the Australian market, but ventures forth into France and the UK as well.

The 2006 Quiksilver Pro and Roxy Pro are running concurrently at Snapper Rocks in Coolangatta at the south end of Queensland’s Gold Coast form February 28th to March 12th.

In support of the sponsorship Samsung is at the event showing off a range of wares it targets at the your demographic. MP3players, the Samsung MiniKet and its mobile phones form the core product offering, but the Samsung presence will no doubt attract plenty of interest with its pre-release demo of the Xbox 360 gaming console from Microsoft.

Samsung has partnered with Microsoft in the Xbox area and its display’s are the ‘preferred’ screens for use with the new console.

Though the 360’s hadn’t arrived when your correspondent was able to attend the surfing extravaganza, the opportunity to sit in on a press conference with the world’s greatest surfer, seven time world champ Kelly Slatter, more than made up for the lack of consoles.

Vowing this year to only turn up to the competitions on the tour he enjoys, Slatter is considering retirement and does not sound like a surfer chasing an eighth world title. But nearing his mid-30’s he’s now an old man in this sport and distractions such as a wave pool project he’s working on may mean this is his last year on the professional circuit.

Asked what preparation he had done in the lead up to this first event of the tour, Slatter revealed that he’d spent the last three months living in Hawaii, but had not really surfed much in the past few weeks, preferring to take it easy in the lead up to the demanding location.

Surfer press conferences are certainly different affairs than your typical consumer electronics press conference and the board shorts and thong uniform is not the only contrast. Though it is doubtful questions such as; “Will you recent romance have any affect on your future plans for retirement?” may well attract more than the non-of your business but I’ll answer you anyway reply from your average CE industry Marketing Manager.

Slater has recently been linked to ex- Leonardo DiCaprio girlfriend, Gisele Bundchen, a Brazilian model. “I don’t know if that has anything to do with you or anyone else in this room,” he said to the reporter who asked the question. That’s my business. It really doesn’t have any impact on what I’m doing,” Slater replied.

Apart from the sun, the surf and the scenery, the Quiksilver Pro is also a demonstration of some pretty serious technology. The event is held right on the beach at Rainbow Bay and the organisation builds a mini city to house the event. This year’s surfing action is available via webcast and there is a wireless network which cover’s not only the main event site, but also links to vantage points in surrounding high-rise apartment buildings and to the jet ski’s out on the water.

Though not a stranger to sports sponsorship, Samsung’s edition to the sponsor list for clothing labels Quiksilver/Roxy for this event is a bit of a turn up. Technical Marketing manager, for Samsung’s AV division, John Fragiadakis told Smarthouse the relationship was surprising comfortable considering the obvious clash of corporate cultures, where the CEO is more likely to wear at-shirt than cufflinks.

Fragiadakis said the Quiksilver acknowledged that Samsun is not just a TV company and has a product set that appeals to the youth market.

The synergy between the companies is already demonstrated through both parties sponsorship of the Australian Winter Olympic Snowboarder Torah Bright and her most recent Olympic efforts in Torino.

Other sports sponsorships we have seen from Samsung include the Sydney Roosters, and A-League Football team Melbourne Victory. Globally, Samsung also supports Chelsea Football Club and major league sports identities such as Wayne Gretski (US National Ice Hockey) and is the global Wireless Communications partner for the Olympic Games.

In return for what Fragiadakis said was a “substantial amount of money” Samsung is putting up in sponsorship, the company will also gain access to Quiksilver and Roxy merchandise, exclusive video content and imagery, exposure on the Boarding Pass TV Program and access to Quiksilver athletes for promotional and PR purposes.

www.aspworldtour.com/quikpro/

From February 28th check out the Quiksilver and Roxy Pro footage captured by Samsung at:

www.samsung.com.au/quiksilver

While Intel, Yahoo and Google have all been punished on Wall Street for their fourth quarter earnings results, chip maker AMD capped off a great year.

Reversing its loss in Q4 2004 to get into the black for last quarter the rival to CPU powerhouse Intel showed it can compete across both server and desktop systems. And although Intel stock was hit hard yesterday after the company failed to meet its own revenue estimates for the final three months of 2005, the number one chip maker has a slew of new chips coming off the drawing board this year which could halt AMD’s marketshare growth.

Even though AMD’s revenues jumped 45 per cent from year ago figures (reaching US$1.84 billion) Intel’s own quarter four returned revenues of US$10.2 billion.

AMD reported profit for Q4 at US$95.6 million – half the earnings per share Intel stock holders managed (US$0.40 vs US$0.21 cents per share).

The market looked favourably on the results, pushing stock 7 per cent higher in after hours trading, despite it falling short of estimates. The results included a non-cash charge of US$110 million associated with the Spansion flash IPO without which would have meant a US$0.45 cents a share result.

AMD had a stellar year in 2005 with its Opteron server processors widely seen as outperforming Intel’s offering and in the desktop and (particularly) notebook space,  AMD achieved considerable marketshare growth according to analysts estimates.

Telecom New Zealand, so far unable to off-load its troubled Australian operations, AAPT, has moved to restructure the organisation resulting in the departure of local Chief Executive Jon Stretch.

He will leave the group at the end of this month and the business will be split into two divisions based on customer segmentation.

The restructure will see consumer and SMB business in one division with Enterprise business making up the other. The two parts will be run by Telecom NZ’s CFO Marko Bogoievski (mass market) and Chief IT services officer, Mark Ratcliffe (Enterprise).

Telecom NZ Chief Executive, Theresa Gattung, said the changes will help the company better focus on the divergent needs of these two customer groups while leveraging investments made in provisioning, billing, customer care and operational support systems.

In the consumer/SMB space the group will attempt to focus on delivering a “tighter core group of bundled services with significantly lower cost”. While in the Enterprise customers will benefit from having a single focused group looking after their needs.

Telecom NZ recently slashed almost $1 billion of its book value of AAPT and continues in talks “with a number of parties about a possible sale or merger” according to Gattung.