Tech wrap: Huawei takes slimmest smartphone crown
Huawei, China’s largest maker of telecommunications gear, unveiled the “Ascend” smartphone, touting it as the slimmest on the market as it moves to boost its share on the global consumer market. Huawei unveiled the Ascend smartphones – available in black, white and pink – at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The 6.68-mm thin phone will be available in April 2012 in markets from North America, Europe to Asia and will cost roughly $400, but the final price has not been set, the company said.
AT&T announced plans to launch seven new smartphones and a tablet computer early this year for a new wireless network it is building. The product line-up will include a phone with a 16 megapixel camera from HTC using Microsoft software along with Microsoft-based smartphone from Nokia. AT&T said it will also sell three new high-speed smartphones from Samsung as well as a high-speed phone from Sony and Pantech. In an unusual pricing move, AT&T also announced that it would sell Pantech Element, a waterproof tablet based on Google Android software with a smartphone, the Pantech Burst, for a combined price of $249.
Olympus sued its current president and three ex-directors for several million dollars in compensation, sources told Reuters, as the company seeks to draw a line under one of the nation’s worst accounting scandals. The company filed suit against its president, Shuichi Takayama, with the Tokyo district court on Sunday, along with three former executives identified by investigators as having engineered or helped cover up a $1.7 billion fraud at the firm, the sources said.
Netflix launched in Britain and Ireland, taking on BSkyB’s premium drama and movies offerings and prompting Amazon-owned rival Lovefilm to offer a new cut-price service. Lovefilm, which has 2 million customers in its core British market, immediately announced Lovefilm Instant — an Internet streaming-only offer to undercut Netflix — in addition to its current offer that combines streaming and DVD rental by post.
Deutsche Telekom is overhauling its strategy for its U.S. wireless unit T-Mobile USA after AT&T last month dropped its planned $39 billion takeover of the unit, a person familiar with the strategy planning said, adding that no date had been set to unveil the plan but it would certainly not be before 2011 results are published on February 23. The company’s Chief Financial Officer Tim Hoettges said one of the first steps could be to sell and lease-back the company’s mobile phone masts.
A group of Chinese authors sued Apple for 11.9 million yuan ($1.9 million) in compensation for allegedly providing copyright-infringing books for download through its online store, Chinese financial magazine Caixin reported. The group of nine authors, under the mantle of the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS), sued Apple in Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court for copyright infringement of 37 works, Caixin reported on Friday.
‘Devil’ battles Tom Cruise’s ‘Ghost’ at box office
At theaters this weekend, low-budget horror movie “The Devil Inside” will try to push Tom Cruise off his perch at the top of the movie box office. Cruise’s “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” the fourth movie in the franchise, has ranked as the No. 1 film in the United States and Canada for the past two weekends. Paramount distributes “MI4″ and is now bringing competing movie “Devil Inside” to more than 2,200 theaters. The Viacom unit acquired “Devil Inside” for $1 million and expects debut weekend domestic sales around $8 million. The story about a woman who investigates her mother’s exorcisms is the only new wide release for the weekend, as January is typically a slow period for movie-going.
Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures
Tech wrap: Samsung savors smartphone supremacy
Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips and smartphones, reported a record quarterly profit, aided by one-off gains and best-ever sales of high-end phones. The South Korean firm posted 5.2 trillion won ($4.5 billion) in quarterly operating profit, beating a consensus forecast of 4.7 trillion won by analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Samsung, which surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker in the third quarter, only entered the smartphone market in earnest in 2010, but its handset division is now its biggest earnings generator.
Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC recorded a worse-than-expected yearly profit decline in the fourth quarter, and the first decline in two years. The former investor darling shocked markets in November by slashing its fourth-quarter revenue guidance, sending its shares down 28 percent in two weeks and 15 percent to date. Investor concerns linger over whether HTC still has the innovative streak that catapulted it from an obscure contract maker to a top brand.
Sony will promote its consumer business chief Kazuo Hirai to the role of president as early as April, taking the title away from Howard Stringer, who is expected to remain chairman and CEO, the Nikkei newspaper reported. Such a move would give Hirai, 51, who made his name in Sony’s PlayStation video game division, more influence over the whole company and its wide range of technology and entertainment businesses, likely cementing expectations he would succeed the 69-year-old Stringer eventually.
Two weeks after disclosing that its website had been hacked, private intelligence analysis firm Strategic Forecasting warned subscribers that hackers were now circulating false emails offering the company’s services for free. Strategic Forecasting, also known as Stratfor, urged subscribers not to open attachments to the fraudulent emails, which offered subscribers the company’s premium content for free as compensation while it tried to secure its website. Stratfor CEO George Friedman said he deeply regretted any inconvenience caused by the latest incident and said the company was still working to reestablish its data systems and Web presence.
Israeli officials said they were concerned the country may be under cyber attack after a wave of credit card code thefts in the past week by a hacker who claims to be operating out of Saudi Arabia. Credit card company officials said 14,000 numbers had been posted on line Tuesday and another 11,000 Thursday. However, they said some of the codes had expired and that the active cards were all being cancelled.
Is Scott Thompson the ‘back to basics’ guy Yahoo’s needed all along?
Yahoo has once again gone outside the company to breathe new life into the once-mighty Internet titan: Scott Thompson, most recently the president of eBay’s PayPal division, takes the helm on Monday, January 9th.
The four-month search ends the latest period of uncertainty for Yahoo, which has been struggling to regain its rightful place in the hearts and minds of the digerati — to say nothing of an indifferent Wall Street.
Investors have been sour on Yahoo for a while. The news of Thompson’s hiring was met with boos on NASDAQ, where Yahoo closed Wednesday at $15.78, down 51 cents. With a “fool me twice” attitude, potential will be no substitute for results. And given the spectacular flame out of former CEO Carol Bartz, investor patience must be wearing thin (if, that is, it still exists at all).
Thompson seems to be arriving with a clean slate and marching orders that give him a fairly free hand — “he will work closely with the Board as we continue the strategic review process to identify the best approaches for the Company and its shareholders.” Indeed, Thompson hadn’t even met with the top Yahoo executives, which I would take as a sign that his allegiance is entirely to the board.
That’s a good thing, because Thompson has his work cut out for him. Consider this reaction from Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO investors, which owns Yahoo shares.
“It’s a positive outcome,” Haverty told Reuters, “but not as positive as a sale of the company.”
Ouch.
Social-studying site Piazza snags funding
Piazza, a Facebook-alumna created site that is trying to bring a little social-networking pizazz to university education, has secured $6 million in funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Kapor Capital, and Felicis Ventures.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based site, launched last year, is helping university students collaborate in online study groups under the guidance of their instructors. The cash will help Piazza expand beyond the several hundred schools where students use it today, said founder and chief executive Pooja Sankar, and into new study areas. Currently, it has the most traction in science, technology, engineering and math.
The site is free to its users, but Sankar plans to build revenue streams down the line. She envisions charging licensing fees to companies or other noneducational users who would like to use the platform to train employees, for example. Piazza currently has about 100,000 students from several hundred universities enrolled.
Sankar, a former Facebook sofware developer, has become the latest in a string of Facebook alumni to bring social networking to a niche area. Notably, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and engineering manager Justin Rosenstein left Facebook in late 2008 to start Asana, which harnesses social networking for the workplace.
The education theme has become increasingly popular with VCs. Online textbook rental company Chegg, student-networking company Edmodo, and test-preparation Grockit have all raised funds in recent months.
Tech wrap: Nook too costly for Barnes & Noble?
Barnes & Noble cut its Nook sales forecast for this year and shocked investors by saying it was considering a sale of the electronic reader and tablet business, sending its shares down sharply. The bookseller has been banking on the Nook for growth, so news that holiday sales of the basic touchscreen e-reader were disappointing raised investors’ fears that Barnes & Noble was struggling to keep up with Amazon.com’s Kindle. ”They’re going to have to raise capital for Nook if they want to stay viable,” said Morningstar analyst Pete Wahlstrom.
Michael Woodford, the former CEO of Olympus, is dropping his bid to retake control of the troubled company because of lack of support from Japanese institutional investors, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Woodford will announce his decision to give up a proxy battle with management on Friday, the report said, citing an unidentified aide. Woodford was fired as chief executive in October and blew the whistle on a $1.7 billion accounting scandal at the Japanese maker of medical devices and cameras.
AT&T is on track to finish its wireless network upgrade with faster mobile Web services by the end of 2013, having exceeded its target for 2011 by 4 million people, a top executive said.
General Motors said it has developed a proposed fix to the battery pack for the Chevrolet Volt to eliminate the risk of a fire being triggered days after a crash. GM said it would strengthen structural protection for the 400-pound lithium-ion battery in the Volt by adding steel reinforcements and take other steps to prevent coolant fluid from leaking and triggering a fire. GM will notify Volt owners of the fixes in the coming days. Owners will be able to have Chevrolet dealerships conduct the needed repair work starting in February, the automaker said.
Blogging on Research in Motion’s downward spiral, Kevin Kelleher argues that:
…more than iPhones or Android phones, the main reason for RIM’s precipitous decline is the sense of complacency and even denial by its co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who greeted the new wave of touchscreen phones with indifference, as if they best knew the smartphone market they helped to pioneer. But markets evolve in unpredictable ways, and instead of building on the loyalty that Blackberry users felt for the brand, Lazaridis and Balsillie took it for granted.
British children adopted after abusive childhoods are at risk of fresh emotional turmoil as some birth parents turn to Facebook and other social networking sites to track them down, adoption agencies said. “Social networking sites have blown things open — you can’t keep things secret,” said Julia Feast, consultant at the British Association for Adoption and Fostering.”It really unsettles the whole family,” she told Reuters. Since 2005, adopted adults and their birth relatives have had the legal right in the UK to ask for intermediary services from an approved agency to help them make contact with each other, but this can be turned down if there are concerns following an assessment. It’s not known how many birth parents are using social networking sites to get around this, but the BAAF said it was receiving “more and more cases.”
from Entrepreneurial:
How to sell anything using social media
This article by John Jantsch first appeared on Duct Tape Marketing. Any opinions expressed are his own.
One of my predictions for 2012 is that more people will come to understand that you can indeed do business using social networks and, frankly, I’m already seeing it.
First off, people are getting more comfortable with social media and social behavior. The idea is fading that social media is a pure engagement temple mentality.
More importantly, however, is that smart marketers are testing, tweaking and trying lots of things and figuring out how to build know, like and trust – the path to selling anything, anywhere – on social networks.
In my own experimenting I can tell you that generating and converting leads using social media takes a more patient approach, but once you find the right path, it’s actually a better way to sell in any environment.
The reason I see many people’s social media marketing efforts fail is that they are still simply broadcasting sales messages. This approach still works to some degree in an advertising setting because people often stumble upon your ads with a buying intent. It still works to some degree in email marketing efforts because people have asked to get your messages and you can easily earn the right to sell in that relationship.
However, most people don’t participate in social networks to shop so any sales message can feel sort of harsh and in the snack sized, feverish world of tweets, shares and likes any and all messages are very easy to ignore.
Chip start-up SuVolta secures scarce venture capital funding
SuVolta, a Silicon Valley start-up working to slash power used by microchips, has secured $17.6 million in new funding from its venture capital backers to help it continue its research.
The funding round came from existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, August Capital, New Enterprise Associates, Northgate Capital and DAG Ventures, and for the first time included Bright Capital.
SuVolta sent along with its news release a graphic illustrating the pace of venture capital investment in semiconductors over more than a decade. Using data supplied by PricewaterhouseCoopers along with estimates for the fourth quarter of last year, it shows that investment in microchips remains much lower than pre-recession levels in 2007 and earlier.
Developing semiconductor technology is a risky endeavor that can take years to pay off. Along the way, start-ups face hefty costs as they design and churn out test chips using high-tech manufacturing equipment.
Venture capitalists bet $819 million on semiconductor startups in the first three quarters of 2011, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association.
By comparison, the software industry attracted $4.8 billion during that time and venture capitalists put over $2 billion into media and entertainment.
Chip industry suppliers received just $272 million in funding in 2010, down from $717 million before the recession in 2007, according to The Global Semiconductor Alliance.
Research in (downward-spiraling) Motion
By Kevin Kelleher The opinions expressed are his own.
Failure is a funny thing in the tech world. An entrepreneur can get fired from a company he founded and his peers will watch to see what he does with the lesson. A young company can burn its cash like a Viking setting his ship on fire, but be remembered wistfully once it’s bankrupt. For startups, failure sometimes seems like a rite of passage – the painful second act of a three-act story with a happy ending.
But it’s different when a big company stumbles, losing its place at the top of the heap. Nobody cheers you on. You just seem like a stock character in someone else’s legend – the hoary old giant descending so that another can ascend. For big tech companies, failure is the grim final act that can stretch on for years and years. Until no one wants to watch anymore.
In the annals of tech brands that have risen and fallen – DEC and Wang in early computing, Sony in consumer electronics, AOL and Yahoo in the Internet – the declines have taken several years, at least. But few tech giants have fallen as quickly, or as dramatically, as Research in Motion.
By some measures, Research in Motion still appears healthy. Its Blackberry smartphones have 70 million subscribers around the world, and it’s far from losing money – analysts expect the company to post revenue of $19 billion and a per-share profit of $4.13 this year. But they also expect profit to fall 50% this year (even after 2000 layoffs since July) and another 30% next year. The key reason: Blackberries are quickly losing market share, which fell to 16.6% from 19.7% between August and November.
The severity of the decline is clearer in RIM’s stock, which ended 2011 near a seven-year low, having fallen more than 90% in the last two and a half years. In 2011 alone, RIM has lost $27 billion in market value – more than Nokia is worth and more than twice as much as Google is paying for Motorola Mobility.
And the highs from which RIM has fallen were high indeed. In 2009, Fortune magazine reckoned it was the fastest growing company in its survey of global companies. Back then, RIM commanded more than half of the U.S. market for smartphones. That was two years after the release of the iPhone, the Apple smartphone that would – along with the Android phones that followed – eventually eat into RIM’s dominating market share.
I am using Blackberry tour . I very satisfied as it fulfills my basic needs : daily mails ,messenger , social networking with some business apps ..
I think major factor which is responsible for the fall of RIM is that they forgot what their strength is . Concept of BBM and BB enterprise server is very unique . But in-spite of developing and improving it RIM focused on developing smartphones to compete against i phone . i phone has its own unique features ( not to mention SIRI in I phone 4s ) but on the other hand RIM has ( or used to have ) its own market segment .
This lead to a catastrophe . . which I think RIM is still figuring out how to get out of it !!
Wal-Mart buys mobile app developer Small Society
Wal-Mart Stores - or rather @WalmartLabs, the Silicon Valley-based e-commerce unit of the largest retailer - unveiled its latest acquisition on Wednesday.
Small Society develops apps for smart phones – something @WalmartLabs is very interested in. Wal-Mart did not disclose a purchase price, but the deal looks like a combination of an acquisition and the hiring of all or most of the start-up’s software developers.
The Portland, Oregon-based firm has developed apps for the Democratic National Committee, Starbucks and Zipcar.
The Zipcar app seems to have particularly impressed @WalmartLabs, led by tech entrepreneurs including Anand Rajaraman, Venky Harinarayan and Gibu Thomas.
“The app is a spot-on intersection of technology, brand and business,” @WalmartLabs wrote in a blog. “It enables Zipcar members to find and book a Zipcar quickly, but also to honk the horn and lock or unlock the doors—all from their iPhone.”
@WalmartLabs hopes that Small Society will develope similarly nifty apps for Wal-Mart shoppers now.
