Business, Financial & Legal - Page 82

The world thinks Facebook is invincible, with over 1 billion daily active users, billions of images and videos uploaded every month... it is ingrained in our very social fabric. Facebook is the largest social media company in the world, with Twitter the second-largest behind what Mark Zuckerberg created.

Well even with all of its control, power, and data it has on everyone the social networking giant saw its shares dip 19% in a single day which saw $120 billion eradicated from its market value, with Facebook now holding the record for the largest one-day drop in the history of the US stock market. Facebook shares dropped as much as 23% in after-hours trading, which is when Facebook reported its second quarter earnings.

Facebook saw slower daily active user growth that grew by only 22 million, which is pretty bad considering the last time Facebook saw these numbers was all the way back in 2011. More so, Facebook CFO said that revenue growth would "decline by single-digit percentages" for the rest of 2018. Doom and gloom for Facebook, it seems. But where have these problems come from?

In a story that is beyond sad, PayPal issued a letter to a woman who had died of cancer to tell her that her death was a breach of their rules, and that the company would look at legal action against her.

PayPal has since said that the letter was "insensitive", apologised to her husband, and is now working out how it was sent. Lindsay Durdle died on May 31 at just 37 years old, after an 18-month battle with breast cancer that had eventually spread to her lungs and brain.

After receiving the heartless letter, her husband contacted the BBC about the story. PayPal was informed of Lindsay's death three weeks ago now, sending the company copies of her death certificate, her will, and his ID. PayPal then sent him a letter in return that was headlined with "Important: You should read this notice carefully".

Epic Games is taking legal action against one of their former Fortnite testers, after inside information regarding the title was leaked out onto a Subreddit forum.

Thomas Hannah, a former Fortnite tester has been accused of leaking information of the in-game Fortnite event for the fourth season. Hannah provided this information to an unnamed third party, it was then posted to a subreddit which has now been taken down. Epic Games filed the lawsuit against Hannah on May 7th, since then Hannah has also filled a defense asking for Epic Games' claims to be dismissed by the court. He says that the information that was shared was throughout a private conversation without knowledge of the other persons motives, here is what he had to say "[I was] pumped with a series of questions and guesses regarding where the meteor would hit."

Hannah has said that he is aware that he has broken the non disclosure agreement that was signed with Epic Games, and also that the information that was given was without consent from the company. Epic is demanding damages and legal fees under the state and federal trade secrets laws, as the company has said that Epic "has suffered and is continuing to suffer irreparable injury."

Foxconn is doubling down on its US plans with the company extending past its Wisconsin-based display factory plant, with news of a US-based headquarters in Milwaukee, just 30 miles away from its upcoming factory.

The company plans to buy a 77-storey building from Northwestern Mutual where up to 500 people wi-ll work there. Foxconn's new HQ will also feature an innovation hub that will work with startups to create apps for their new display tech.

Wisconsin has been at the center of some major tech movement lately, with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee starting up a new co-op program that sees engineering students flying over to Taiwan to study at the Chung Yuan Christian University.

THQ Nordic, the developers behind Biomutant, Darksiders and many more titles have released their 2018 quarterly earnings report. It appears that the company has almost made more sales in just the 3 months of 2018 than they did in the entire of 2017.

THQ Nordic recently decided to acquire Koch Media, the parent company of developer Deep Silver who made Saints Row and Dead Island. This acquisition has payed off quite well for THQ Nordic, as the company recently released its 2018 quarterly earnings and it appears that the company has $25.9 million USD in profits from revenues of $78.9 million.

This massive increase measures to a 439% increase in profits and a 673% increase more revenue when compared to the exact same quarter of last year. Back in 2017, from January through to December 31st THQ Nordic only made $31.3 million USD from $58.3 million in revenue. This means that THQ Nordic has almost made all of their 2017 earnings in just the first quarter of this year.

Red Barrel, the developers behind the critically acclaimed horror series Outlast have spoken out about the titles sales as well as the companys revenue from the series.

The first Outlast came to Steam at a price point of just $19.99, while the title only cost the developers $1.4 million CAD to build and distribute. The second Outlast was a bit more pricey, costing $7 million CAD to build and was set a price point of $29.99.

According to an interview with Red Barrel CEO, Philippe Morin combining both of these titles unit sales has brought the total of the series to a massive 15 million units sold. This has resulted in the developer making $45 million CAD after expenses have been taken out. Here is what Morin had to say about the developer moving onto new IP's "We're prototyping, and the way I want to approach this is to get a prototype that we're really happy about, and then figure out the best way to get it done. Are we going to need the same kind of budget? Can it be lower? Right now, I don't know."

Cliff Bleszinski, the creator behind the very popular Gears of War series has taken to Twitter to announce that his studio Boss Key Production is now officially closed, effective immediately.

Boss Key Productions was the developers behind the failure of a title LawBreakers, CliffyB addresses that "LawBreakers was a great game that unfortunately failed to gain traction" as the title was squashed throughout the raw popularity of the Battle Royale genre. In hopes of stringing something together CliffyB says that him and his team "scrambled to do our take on the huge battle royale genre with Radical Heights, which was well received. However, it was too little, too late."

Its good to see a developer coming out and admitting that one of their titles was a desperate attempt to keep their studio afloat, here is what CliffyB finished up on saying. "To those of you who have supported myself and the studio these last four years, thank you from the bottom of my heart. Please note, that the servers for Radical Heights will remain up for the near future."

The newest Marvel movie taking to the big screens is Avengers: Infinity War and the title has now been projected to set a new box office record.

According to the newest weekend forecasts from box office pro, Avengers: Infinity War has already surpassed the highest first-weekend release record. Star Wars: The Force Awakens made $248 million and has been bumped down to second place, Avengers: Infinity War is now taking the top place with an expected total of $250 million by the end of Sunday in US and Canada time.

On a global scale, Avengers: Infinity War is also taking the lead, as the title has already made an estimated $380 million, bringing in a total of $630 million. Universal's The Fate of the Furious previously held the global first place weekend with $541.9 million and that was including the world second largest market for movies, the Chinese market. Avengers: Infinity War is yet to open in the Chinese market so it will be very interesting to see how these numbers increase when it does.

The Kickstarter project Hellboy: The Board Game has been taken by storm, raising a massive $1.3 million in just one day of the project being released.

The board game is centered around the Hellboy comic book and is designed for 1 - 4 players that want to explore "gothic locations, hunt down clues, discover artifacts, fight horrific creatures and face off against terrifying bosses."

The game originally only had target goal of $184,099 goal and has already reached at the time of writing this $1,341,914. The project still has 28 days left, so it will be very interesting to see how far this already $1m+ figure can really go. If you are interested in the upcoming Hellboy Board Game check out the official Kickstarter page for the project here.

It has been revealed that Microsoft's Xbox division has earned a massive $2.251 billion in revenue just last quarter, which started at the beginning of the year and ended on March 31.

According to the announcement from Microsoft, Xbox monthly gamers have also increased 13-percent. Originally, over a year-over-year basis Xbox monthly gamers have gone from 52 million to 59 million, showing that huge 13-percent increase.

Microsoft has said in their press release "Gaming revenue increased 18 percent driven by Xbox software and services revenue growth of 24 percent mainly from third party title strength." These third-party titles would most likely be the massively popular Fortnite, or even Microsoft's partnered Rare title Sea of Thieves.

The on-going lawsuit between Valve and the ACCC is about to come an end, Valve has appealed the fine of $3 million and the Australian High Court has tossed the appeal out. Newell is going to have to pay-up.

According to an announcement from the ACCC, Valve has breached consumer law in Australia causing the company to be slapped with a fine of $3 million. Justice Edelman, fined Valve back in 2016 for not allowing Australian gamers the right of refunding products between the years of 2011 and 2014, Valve appealed this notion but the High Court has dismissed their proposal.

Here is what the ACCC said: "As a result of the High Court's refusal of special leave, the Full Federal Court's decision that Valve is bound by the ACL in its dealings with Australian customers, despite being based overseas, is the final decision on this issue"

We have all experienced those pesky 'warranty void if removed' stickers on our devices, but it looks like those stickers don't really matter... with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) saying they're worthless.

Motherboard reports from an FTC press release, that the Commission has sent letters to six companies that said that their stickers are in violation of a long standing law. The press release said: "The letters warn that FTC staff has concerns about the companies' statements that consumers must use specified parts or service providers to keep their warranties intact".

It continued: "Unless warrantors provide the parts or services for free or receive a waiver from the FTC, such statements generally are prohibited by the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, a law that governs consumer product warranties. Similarly, such statements may be deceptive under the FTC Act".

Samsung has had a massive first three months of 2018, with a huge 58% increase in profit and demand for its memory chips through the roof, more than enough to offset Apple's reduced requirement of displays for iPhone X.

Bloomberg is reporting that Samsung's operating income reached $14.7 billion in Q1 2018, compared to $13.5 billion that analysts expected Samsung to report. Samsung sold through a huge $56.4 billion in Q1 2018, with these sales including the new Galaxy S9 and the near unlimited want for memory across the world with ASIC miners and graphics cards.

Samsung became the world's largest chipmaker by sales late last year, besting Intel, but memory is where Samsung is making its strides lately. Lee Jay-yun, an analyst with Yuanta Securities Co. explains: "Memory chips are the loyal son of Samsung. Still, momentum may slow toward the end of this year with price rises likely to be less steep than last year".

Broadcom has been going after Qualcomm for months now, which led into US national security concerns and even President Trump standing in and blocking the takeover last week.

The presidential order said there was "clear evidence" of a US national security concern, with Broadcom able to "take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States". Broadcom said in a statement regarding the order that the Singapore-based company "strongly disagrees that its proposed acquisition of Qualcomm raises any national security concerns".

Qualcomm rejected the hostile takeover bid from Broadcom multiple times, while the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) operating under the Treasury Department, investigated the national security threat and determined there were multiple red flags, and now the deal is dead.

President Trump has issued an order that immediately stops Broadcom's attempts at acquiring Qualcomm, with Broadcom now blocked from the takeover and anything "substantially equivalent" to it, as it might "impair the national security" of the United States.

Broadcom has been lusting after Qualcomm for a while now, offering up a huge $130 billion to acquire the Snapdragon creator, and soon, 5G leader. There was a letter from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US that warned of a major national security threat if the Singapore-based company were to acquire Qualcomm.

In the meantime, Broadcom has said it is "reviewing" President Trump's order, and that the company "strongly disagrees" that its acquisition of Qualcomm would affect US national security. Qualcomm has said that once they've got the Order, they will kick off their annual stockholders meeting on March 23.

We all know just how big Amazon is, and with its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos kicking off the New Year as the world's richest man, but did you know he's making around $231,000 per minute this year?

Bezos has a fortune of nearly $100 billion already, and added another $10 billion in the first two weeks of 2019 alone. By the end of January, Bezos racked up another $10 billion bringing his net worth to $120 billion, while the Bloomberg Billionaire Index has Bezos' net worth hitting just over $129 billion, meaning he's made $30.1 billion IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS.

If we consider Bezos added just $35 billion to his fortune in 2017, making $30 billion in under three months of 2018 is astounding. Bezos is now making $10 billion per month, which equates to around $231,000 per minute, seeing Bezos make around 400% more than the average American worker makes in an entire year.

Broadcom has it hard for Qualcomm right now as they see the San Diego-based giant as a massive acquisition target going into the future with the world leading Snapdragon product family, 5G, and a million things in between.

But now, rumor has it Intel wants to acquire Broadcom and this is something that hit on Friday night. Intel shares dropped 1% in after-hours trrading, while Broadcom shares jumped over 6% in the same period. In a world where Broadcom did acquire Qualcomm, it would create a near unstoppable threat for Intel, more so than Qualcomm is on its own.

An Intel spokeswoman reached out to CNBC who said: "That being said, we have made important acquisitions over the past 30 months - including Mobileye and Altera - and our focus is on integrating those acquisitions and making them successful for our customers and shareholders".

Broadcom has the hots for Qualcomm in all the wrong ways, and even with nearly $120 billion on the table, the San Diego-based company behind the Snapdragon family of products has pushed away this acquisition.

The US government stepped in and stopped the deal over major concerns regarding national security, and now Broadcom is sweetening the deal with a $1.5 billion fund that would train new American engineers. Broadcom said in a statement: "With its proven track record of investing in and growing core franchises, Broadcom is committed to making the US the global leader in 5G. Broadcom is in every important respect an American company".

But why the $1.5 billion pledge for American workers? That's what the national security concerns were by the Commitee on Foreign Investment in the US (Cfuis) were over, as they said that Broadcom is trying to inject new directors into Qualcomm through this acquisition that "could pose a risk to the national security of the US".

The big deal going on between tech giants in Broadcom and Qualcomm is reaching new levels, with a US government national security panel seeing potential risks in Broadcom's want to acquire Qualcomm.

In a letter to the two companies, a senior US Treasury official said there were enough national security risks in this deal that it warrants a full investigation. Some of the concerns to the US government over national security involve Broadcom's relationships with foreign entities, but no names were released.

The US government's Committee on Foreign Investment ordered a national security review of Singapore-based Broadcom and their proposed deal, where it said there is an unnamed "actor" that is working through Broadcom to hurt US national security by acquiring Qualcomm. Most of the report is classified, so there's not much to go on, but what there is here is pretty damning.

In its chase towards being the best in everything, Samsung will break ground on its new foundry plant that will be making some of the most advanced chips in the world.

Samsung's new foundry will be built in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, and will have the South Korean giant better fighting Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC. Samsung said that they're going to have a ceremony with around 100 local residents of Hwaseong on Friday to mark the ground breaking of the new plant.

Samsung has said: "The new plant is so far planned to be used largely for foundry production, but it can further be expanded for other productions later".