Daily Video: Apple’s Jony Ive Promoted to Chief Design Officer

Today’s topics include a top executive promotion at Apple, more details about a failed buyout deal between Microsoft and Salesforce, possible new split-screen and multi-user log-in capabilities for Apple’s iPad and HP’s acquisition of ConteXtream.

Jonathan “Jony” Ive, Apple’s senior vice president of design and an integral part of the company’s design team since 1996, has been promoted to the new post of chief design officer. In this role, he will have freer rein to spend his time on product design and forms, rather than also dealing with managerial duties.

Those duties will be picked up by Apple designer Richard Howarth, who has been promoted to vice president for industrial design and hardware and by Alan Dye, who will become the vice president of user interface design.

Microsoft came fairly close to making a deal to acquire Salesforce.com until the former was hit with sticker shock, according to a new report.

Backing earlier reports that Microsoft balked at Salesforce’s asking price, effectively ending a possible acquisition, CNBC reported that the companies were engaged in “significant talks” this spring until they failed to reach an agreement.

Microsoft was reportedly willing to offer up to an estimated $55 billion to acquire Salesforce. Meanwhile, Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, kept raising the stakes and may have asked for as much as $70 billion.

Apple is looking to include split-screen and multi-user log-in capabilities in its long-rumored 12.9-inch iPad, while the company is also exploring the idea of stylus support for the devices.

The stylus support and split-screen possibilities are mentioned in a May 22 article in The Irish Examiner that said it had located a patent application that shows a stylus that would be capable of 3D input sensing.

Hewlett-Packard is adding to its network virtualization capabilities by acquiring ConteXtream, a software-defined networking company that offers a carrier-grade fabric for network-functions virtualization environments.

The deal is designed to bolster HP’s capabilities in NFV, which company officials say is crucial to communications service providers that are dealing with rapid increases of traffic on their networks and face competition from companies that offer over-the-top services and are more agile and flexible about spinning out these services.