Tech wrap: Apple cares, says CEO Tim Cook
Apple has never turned “a blind eye” to the problems in its supply chain and any suggestion it does not care about the plight of workers is “patently false,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an email to employees. Cook was responding to a report in The New York Times about working conditions at Apple’s main contract manufacturer, Foxconn, in China, an issue that for years has been a thorn in the company’s side.
Facebook plans to file documents as early as Wednesday for a highly anticipated IPO that will value the world’s largest social network at between $75 billion and $100 billion, the Wall Street Journal cited unidentified sources as saying on Friday.
Jon Rubinstein, who was instrumental in crafting Apple’s iPod music player, has left Hewlett Packard after two years on the job there. Rubinstein was CEO of smartphone maker Palm when that company was acquired by HP in 2010. He last held a product-innovation role within HP’s Personal Systems Group headed by Todd Bradley.
Samsung Electronics posted a record $4.7 billion quarterly operating profit, driven by booming smartphone sales, and will spend $22 billion this year to boost production of chips and flat screens to pull further ahead of smaller rivals.
Tech wrap: Era of .yournamehere domains arrives
ICANN, the body that oversees the Internet’s naming system, gave the green light for organizations to begin applying to name and run their own domains instead of entrusting them to the operators of .com, .org, .gov and others. Up to 2,000 applications were expected for the so-called “top-level” international domains. At $185,000 per application, estimated start-up costs of $500,000 and annual running costs of about $100,000, a .yournamehere domain will be out of reach of the smallest companies and organizations. But applications were expected from cities or regions with strong identities, such as .london and .mumbai, from companies aiming to build a business based on new domains, and from community identifiers like .eco or .gay.
Samsung is open to forging an alliance with troubled Olympus, potentially joining other electronics firms in circling one of the world’s biggest names in medical equipment, sources said. Samsung has ruled out any interest in Olympus’s loss-making camera business, but a company source said that it might consider an alliance with Olympus in other areas. Earlier, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper reported that Olympus was scouting for a friendly investor to take a minority stake in the company, and that Olympus had drawn up a short-list of five potential partners, including Samsung, Sony, Panasonic, Japanese medical-equipment firm Terumo, and Fujifilm Holdings.
LG is in talks with various parties on possible partnerships, the head of LG’s mobile business said, as the world’s No.3 handset maker seeks to turn around its struggling handset operation. The firm, however, remains committed to its mobile business and does not have any plan to ditch the loss-making operation, Park Jong-seok, chief executive of LG’s mobile communications business, told Reuters.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said that he had received bi-partisan support from a group of U.S. senators for so-called “incentive” auctions of wireless spectrum without legislative restrictions. Genachowski is looking for approval to give broadcasters a financial incentive to return unused spectrum licenses to the FCC so it can then auction off the spectrum to companies offering mobile data services.
TomTom said an official probe had cleared it of accusations that it violated Dutch data protection laws by sharing its customers’ individual location and traffic information with third parties, including Dutch police. The navigation equipment and map maker came under scrutiny in April after reportedly selling information gathered through its customers’ personal navigation devices in their cars, to third parties, without their consent.
I expect dot brand to be a game changer in Search potentially taking away traffic from Google. Here’s an example.
2015, I see an ad for Nike’s new T100 and want to know more. What are my options?
1. Google search for “T100 Nike”. Nike’s site will appear together with a lot of other sites. I click on the Nike site, but it’s not guaranteed I will end up on the T100 info page.
2. I type in nike.com in the browser and use Nike’s internal search tool to find T100.
3. I type t100.nike in the browser and go directly to the info page at Nike’s website.
If you are a native internet users you will quickly adapt to search like this, and which option do you think that Nike prefers?
Tech wrap: Nokia throne in Samsung’s sights
Samsung CEO Choi Gee-sung told reporters in Las Vegas the company overtook Nokia in handset revenue terms in its latest reported quarter and was confident of topping the Finnish group in shipments this year. Samsung’s bullish forecast is in line with some analysts, including Royal Bank of Scotland, but on average analysts have expected Nokia to keep its lead on the market. According to the latest polls by Reuters, Nokia was expected to sell 418 million phones in 2011, versus Samsung’s 320 million, the gap narrowing this year to 388 million versus 359 million.
Google made changes to its search engine, combining content posted by users of Google’s social network Google+ and pic sharing site Picassa with regular search results. Links shared by a Google+ user’s connections are given more weight and will show up in Web search results with a person icon beside them, VentureBeat’s Jolie ‘Odell writes. The changes increase Google+’s prominence online, which is lagging behind Facebook in total number of users.
Sony’s videogaming business, led by its just-launched handheld “Vita”, will prove pivotal in returning the company to profitability, Kazuo Hirai, the executive pegged to succeed Howard Stringer as president, said.
YouTube is looking to increase viewership on its online video service by making the service available on an array of connected devices and by adding new content, according Robert Kyncl, vice president in charge of content partnerships. Kyncl spent 2011 forging new partnerships with content providers to expand YouTube’s offerings. YouTube has also reorganized its website to offer consumers video “channels” to cater to personal interests with an aim to making the site more appealing. Kyncl said that from about 500 content provider proposals YouTube received last year, YouTube had signed on about 100 partners, with whom it shares advertising revenue.
The U.S. government embarked on a rare criminal trial against a publicly traded company, AU Optronics, indicted in 2010 for fixing prices of liquid crystal display panels. The conspiracy illegally cost the U.S. economy billions of dollars, a U.S. prosecutor said in court on Tuesday. Several other companies, including LG, have already pleaded guilty in the LCD probe, while Samsung cut an early deal to avoid prosecution.
Telecom startup LightSquared is mounting a last-ditch effort to win U.S. regulatory approval for a new wireless network after being outmaneuvered by the GPS industry, which has spun doomsday scenarios of interference problems that could cause planes to fall out of the sky and threaten national security, Jasmin Melvin writes. It is a long shot, analysts say, for LightSquared to overcome the scare tactics effectively sold to lawmakers by the GPS industry. The company is staring down an end-of-the-month deadline for the government to give the green light, before partners start bolting and as its cash position gets more dire, Melvin adds.
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.
Samsung takes the Sony media route with ex-AOL, ex-YouTube hire
Samsung, the South Korean consumer electronics giant, has spent most of the last two decades eating the lunch of rival Japanese electronics giant, Sony. While Sony has had struggled with all types of existential debates and attacks at home and abroad including, the global hacker attack of its online network, Samsung has gone from strength to strength in setting the electronics agenda with its cutting edge TVs, phones and tablets.
A lot of Samsung’s success could be put down to be its focus on the basics: making great mass market products and not getting distracted with creating or distributing content. By contrast, Sony not only owns the world’s second largest music company and a major Hollywood studio but also a video games business.
The problem is that Sony has never been able to figure out how to make all those things work in conjunction with its position as one of the world’s largest device makers. Most recently it has launched new online music and video services that it no doubt hopes will help sell more devices. It’s very early to tell if that will strategy will work.
Samsung is now going to try its hand at developing a media platform for content on its devices with the appointment of David Eun as executive vice president. Eun left AOL recently after one of its many restructurings. While there, he was president of AOL Media and Studios. Before that he was the guy charged with doing content deals at Google’s YouTube and before that he was at Time Warner and NBC.
As Samsung says:
He will play a key role in developing a global media strategy and driving new business opportunities to take advantage of Samsung`s growing number of digital televisions and displays, mobile phones, tablets and other connected devices.
Tech wrap: “DingleBerry” rings RIM’s security bell
Three hackers said they had exploited a vulnerability in Research In Motion’s PlayBook tablet to gain root access to the device, a claim that could damage the BlackBerry maker’s hard-won reputation for security. The hackers plan to release their data within a week as a tool called DingleBerry. In a response to queries, RIM said it is investigating the claim, and if a jailbreak is confirmed will release a patch to plug the hole. The PlayBook runs on a different operating system than RIM’s current BlackBerry smartphones. However, the QNX system will be incorporated into its smartphones starting next year. The PlayBook in July became the first tablet device to win a security certification approving it for U.S. government use.
Samsung is set to resume selling its Galaxy tablet computer in Australia as early as Friday, after it won a rare legal victory in a long-running global patent war with Apple. An Australian federal court unanimously decided to lift a preliminary injunction, imposed by a lower court, on sales of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 — but granted Apple a stay on lifting the sales ban until Friday afternoon.
Groupon’s shares rose after CEO Andrew Mason emerged from the company’s post-IPO quiet period to share holiday sales numbers. Groupon sold more than 650,000 holiday deals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, an increase of 500 percent compared with last year, Mason said in a blog post. Groupon closed the trading day up 9.3 percent $17.50.
Japanese authorities may take weeks to make any arrests over the accounting scandal at Olympus, though initial findings by an investigative panel of experts are due to be released in days, lawyers said. Even if criminal complaints are filed against former executives or others involved in the scam, which dates back two decades, arrests might not take place by end-year. This is partly to allow both suspects and prosecutors to spend the new year’s holidays at home, since the turn of the new year is Japan’s biggest traditional holiday, akin to Christmas in the West. Suspects can be held for a total of 22 days before either being indicted or released.
Toshiba said it would close three of its six discrete chip-making facilities in Japan and also trim output of certain types of chips over the year-end as demand for PCs and TVs slides in the U.S. and Europe. Discrete chips are relatively simple semiconductors used in a wide range of electronic products from audio-visual equipment to cars and mobile phones. The three plants are scheduled to be closed in the first half of the fiscal year starting in April 2012, in a bid to slash costs, with Japanese makers at a disadvantage because of strength in the yen.
Tech wrap: Is intellectual property being used to restrict competition?
EU regulators investigating Apple and Samsung over their patents dispute are worried intellectual property rights may be unfairly used by some firms against their rivals, the EU antitrust chief said. “We need to look at this because IP rights can be used as a distortion of competition but we will need to look at the answers,” EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia told reporters. “Apple and Samsung is only one case where IP rights can be used as an instrument to restrict competition,” he said.
Netflix’s shares dropped as much as 7 percent after it warned of a loss for 2012, a move that prompted several Wall Street analysts to cut their price targets for the online video and DVD rental company. Netlfix said that it had recently lost a “significant” number of customers, who objected to Netflix’s decisions to raise its prices and split up its streaming and DVD business — an idea it later dropped. “If we do not reverse the negative consumer sentiment toward our brand, and if we continue to experience significant customer cancellations and a decline in subscriber additions, our results of operations including our cash flow will be adversely impacted,” Netflix said. Netflix shares ended the day down 5.4 percent at $70.45.
Groupon stock slumped on concern about increased competition, leaving shares of the largest daily deal company close to their $20 initial public offering price. LivingSocial, Groupon’s closest rival, announced plans on Monday to offer 20 deals with national merchants on the crucial Black Friday shopping period. Groupon shares ended the trading day down nearly 15 percent.
Samsung Electronics, the world’s top TV maker, is in last-stage talks with Google to roll out its Google TVs, the head of Samsung’s TV division told reporters. Samsung in January displayed a new Google TV-enabled Blu-ray player and companion box at the Consumer Electronics Show, but did not commercialize the offerings. The company said it plans to unveil its Google TV at an event next year without elaborating on the schedule.
Samsung is calling fine artists
Samsung is going bodly where few major electronics companies have gone before — the fine art market. The Korean electronics giant is developing a new high resolution LCD screen for displaying artwork electronically in homes and offices. These “new digital canvases”, as Samsung puts it, will help the company tap into the $60 billion annual art market, one third of which is based in the United States. “It’s very significant market opportunity,” Scott Birnbaum, vice president of new business development for Samsung Semiconductor, said in an interview. The concept of electronic art has been tried before but has not really taken off, mostly because of the poor appearance and lack of availability of digital paintings. Samsung said its screens would have more real-life colors and would support brushstroke-like texture. A major supplier of Apple for everything from flash memories to processors, Samsung is working with digital signage company Planar Systems, which will be distributing the framed LCD art screens. Planar plans to launch the product next year. Another set of conversations is also taking place between Samsung and budding artists to encourage them to try the digital realm. Samsung wants to build a cloud-based art collection and needs the artists to license their work for it. Maybe artists will now start thinking in terms of pixels rather than just brush strokes.
Tech wrap: Groupon goes public, super nova
Shares of daily deals site Groupon rose more than 50 percent in their stock market debut, but at least some of the early trading exuberance may have come from limiting the fraction of the company that was sold. The shares rose as high as $31.14, or 55.7 percent above the IPO price, in early trading on the Nasdaq, at one point pushing the market value of the company up to $19.9 billion. The shares later eased back, closing at $26.11. Despite the early success, there are still lingering questions about Groupon’s business model and about competition from better-funded rivals such as Amazon.com and Google.
Yahoo has signed confidentiality agreements with several parties interested in buying all or part of the company, according to people familiar with the matter. The Internet pioneer said potential buyers had to sign an agreement by Friday to be allowed a close look at Yahoo’s finances. But the Friday deadline could be extended into next week to provide more time for other firms to sign on, the sources said. Some private equity firms have balked at signing Yahoo’s nondisclosure agreement because of restrictions that would prevent them from forming consortiums, sources told Reuters last week.
EU regulators are investigating whether Samsung and Apple may have breached EU antitrust laws with patent infringement claims in their global legal battle over the lucrative smartphone and tablet market. “The (European) Commission has indeed sent requests for information to Apple and Samsung concerning the enforcement of ‘standards-essential’ patents in the mobile telephony sector,” the European Commission said in a statement. Standards-essential patents means they have been incorporated in internationally accepted technology standards, which in the case of Samsung and Apple, means 3G and UMTS technology.
China dismissed a U.S. report on online spying as “irresponsible,” rejecting the charge that China uses cyber espionage to steal lucrative U.S. trade and technology secrets. “Online attacks are notable for spanning national borders and being anonymous. Identifying the attackers without carrying out a comprehensive investigation and making inferences about the attackers is both unprofessional and irresponsible,” Hong told a daily news briefing in answer to a question about the report.
Japan’s Olympus replaced its auditor in 2009 after a disagreement over how to account for several acquisitions, but it decided not to reveal the dispute to investors, an internal document shows. In May 2009, Tsuyoshi Kikukawa, the then president of the camera-maker and medical equipment firm, announced that the contract for its then auditor, KPMG, had ended and that another global accounting firm, Ernst & Young, would take over. Kikukawa made no mention of any row with KPMG, although Japanese disclosure rules require companies to notify investors of “any matters concerning the opinions” of an outgoing auditor.
Tech wrap: Samsung, Google scream for Ice Cream Sandwich
Samsung and Google unveiled the first smartphone running on Google’s latest version of the Android operating system, dubbed “Ice Cream Sandwich”, which combines software used in tablets and smartphones, as they step up competition against Apple. The high-end model Galaxy Nexus was unveiled at an event in Hong Kong, after being delayed last week as a tribute to the late Steve Jobs. “This will be our strategic product for year-end holiday season, as (Apple’s) iPhone 4S just came into the market,” Samsung’s JK Shin said.
The Galaxy Nexus features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, super AMOLED HD 4.65-inch display, face recognition to unlock its screen,the ability to share content by tapping another phones equipped with a Near Field Communication chip, a camera boasting no shutter lag, and even a barometer. The global launch kicks off in November.
Twitter is looking for a director to bolster its board’s business credentials and diversity, and candidates include a former Google executive, a person familiar with the matter said. The search is in its early stages. But some names that have come up include Mariam Naficy, chief executive officer of paper goods company Minted.com, and Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, chief executive officer at fashion retail site Joyus and the former president of Google’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American operations, the person told Reuters.
EBay reported quarterly revenue that rose 32 percent and profit that matched analysts’ expectations. The operator of the largest online marketplace reported third-quarter net income of $490.5 million, or 37 cents a share, compared to $432 million, or 33 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding stock-based compensation expenses and other items, profit was $628.2 million, or 48 cents a share, in the latest period, the company said. Revenue climbed to $2.97 billion.
The Kindle Fire tablet may be the hottest selling gadget this holiday, pressuring Amazon.com’s profit margins but giving the world’s largest Internet retailer potentially millions of new high-spending customers. Since Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos unveiled the tablet at a lower-than-expected price of $199 on September 28, some analysts have increased their sales estimates for the device. John Paczkowski at AllThingsD reported on October 6 that Amazon is selling over 25,000 Fires a day, citing unidentified sources close to the company.
The U.S. is pressing China to explain why its “national firewall” blocks so many U.S. companies from providing their services, according to a letter obtained Wednesday that is another sign of growing trade tension between the world’s two largest economies.”Having a presence on the Internet that is visible in China is increasingly a critical element for service suppliers aiming to reach Chinese consumers and business,” Ambassador to the World Trade Organization Michael Punke said in a letter on Monday to his Chinese counterpart.
Multi-national companies are no longer good citizens of their communities because they are now stateless. It used to be that a company was a member of the community and you could identify a company as an American company or a German company, etc but now they are looking for the cheapest labor, the least restrictive environmental regulations, no unions, or whatever local situation they can exploit.
The problem is that we don’t want the kind of America it takes to compete on that stage. The only way to beat that system is with innovation and a great education system but American universities are giving that away too. We need to protect our innovations and the industries they produce or our best export will be the misery we inflict on workers in China and the rest of the developing world. Read more at http://www.china-threat.com