The company gave up making cell-phone equipment, but does make equipment for wireless broadband, which uses radio waves to distribute data or video in a city.
Tough laws, it is said, are needed to limit the abilities of governments (or firms) to record, store and distribute data on individuals.
Network Appliance, whose computers and software both store and distribute data for customers including the Vatican, said yesterday that second-quarter net income gained 14percentt on higher sales.
"The potential to be able to geographically distribute data over the Internet has very nice properties," said Steve Tuecke, a founder and chief technology officer of Univa, in Lisle, Ill.
Shares of Network Appliance Inc., whose products store and distribute data for clients including the Vatican and Coca-Cola, rose about 13percentt after the company said profit and sales could top analyst estimates in the current quarter, the company's fiscal second quarter.
Just as the power of the Internet to distribute data globally only came into its own after the World Wide Web had been invented, and a user-friendly browser (Mosaic) had been devised to visualise what was stored, so genomic data will not be able to add value to the business of discovering new drugs until those data can be easily analysed and manipulated.
