Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 270

Three Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) workers, Young Keun Park, Sang Hun Kim and Sik "Daniel" Hur will face jail time after pleading guilty to fixing optical disk drive prices, according to the US Department of Justice. Throughout 2005 to 2009, the three employees suppressed competition by rigging bids for optical disk drives sold to both Dell and HP, in addition to fixing prices for devices sold to Microsoft.

Under the plea agreement, Park and Kim will serve eight months in prison, while Hur will experience seven months in jail. All there will have to pay a $25,000 fine. The three executives will also be charged with multiple violations of the Sherman Act, which covers antitrust and anticompetitive activities. Each count of the Sherman Act comes with a statutory fine of up to $1 million, (and more if the damages are large enough), and up to 10-years behind bars.

This is the first ruling against individual workers, but is the second round of charges against the join Hitachi-LG venture. Last month, HLDS itself pleaded guilty to 14 counts of violating federal antitrust laws between the June 2004 and September 2009. Hitachi-LG were sentenced to pay a $21.1 million fine and is said to be helping the DoJ with its investigation.

Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, Inc. announced today that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 passed the $1 billion mark in sales in just 16 days since its November 8 launch. This beats the record set in 2009 from James Cameron's "Avatar" which hit $1 billion in 17 days.

The Call of Duty community now consists of more than 30 million gamers, which is more than the combined populations of the cities of New York, London, Tokyo, Paris and Madrid. Some crazy, crazy numbers. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard has said:

Engagement of our Call of Duty audience continues to rise around the world. Call of Duty as an entertainment franchise has made an indelible mark on popular culture and its broad and continued success is further validation that audiences increasingly value interactive experiences over passive experiences.

Motorola would be running around saying HELLO MOTO to each other today in excitement, as a German court ruled against Apple in an ongoing battle over patents. Motorola's complaing was that Apple failed to license on of their wireless intellectual properties. Apple use this technology in their 3G-packing iPads and iPhones.

Motorola could now force Apple to remove the feature from their products, or even have the ability to slap a sales ban in Germany. Apple have said that they intend to appeal the ruling, while Motorola claim the ruling validated its "efforts to enforce its patents against Apple's infringement."

Apple have replied, by saying:

comScore have just released their U.S. online holiday spending numbers for the season to-date, where it has been revealed that consumers continued to spend online in record amounts. In just 39 days of the November to December 2011 holiday season, $24.6 billion was spent online, which is a 15-percent increase compared to the same time last year.

The week ending December 9 reached $5.9 billion in spending, up 15-percent with 3 days surpassing $1 billion in spending. For this holiday season, six individual days have surpassed $1 billion in spending, which for an economy in tatters, is quite the achievement. Cyber Monday leads this with $1.25 billion in sales, as well as Monday, December 5, which now ranks as the second heaviest spending day in history at $1.18 billion.

One of the driving forces behind this new found love for online retail shopping is the use of coupons and deals as well as the increased amount of free shipping offers from retailers. Smartphones and tablets have also helped, with more and more people using price comparison apps, both making purchases from the comfort of their own homes, or inside retail stores. E-commerce companies have noticed this trend and are now offering strong incentives to use and buy through mobile apps.

You may think theres some form of trickery to my title there, but there is not. Quite simply put, Amazing are offering consumers up to $5 off on purchases if they are to compare prices using Amazon's mobile phone application in-store.

The promotion is for one day only, this Saturday, and is a sneaky way of Amazon to increase the usage of its bar-code-scanning application, while also collecting intel on prices in the stores. Mobile commerce is a booming market right now, with more and more customers more than happy to use applications on their smartphones to either shop, or compare prices not just at home, but at work, in the shop itself, or while in the toilet.

Thanksgiving and Black Friday sales were enormous, and I'm sure Amazon want a repeat of that success when Santa comes visiting in a few weeks. Amazon's Price Check app is available on both the Apple App Store and the Android Market, the app allows shoppers to scan a bar code, take a picture of an item or conduct a text search to find the lowest prices.

Apple and Samsung have butted heads once again, but this time, on U.S. soil. More precisely, a San Jose, Ca. court at the end of last week. In April of this year, Apple sued Samsung for "copying the look and feel" of its iPhone and iPad in its Galaxy range of phones and tablets.

Apple then expanded the suit to include another 13 models, such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Nexus S and Droid Charge. The full trial is set to go ahead on July 30, 2012, but Apple were pushing for a temporary sales injunction on the contested Samsung devices in the U.S. as that date arrived. It seems Apple are scared of Samsung, and so they should be.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh refused Apple's request, stating it was an "extraordinary remedy." She was unconvinced that Apple would suffer irreparable harm should Samsung continue to sell their devices pending the court case, where she continued:

It looks like Apple retail stores are in for some competition from the fun-sounding creation from Google and Telstra: Androidland. Androidland was unveiled at Telstra's retail outlet in Bourke St, Melbourne, where its based in the 154 square metre space which brings together interactive technology, games and on-site experts to explain the features of Google's Android OS.

Executive Director of Telstra Mobile, Warwick Bray, said that its the first time a mobile carrier had teamed up with Google to create an Android-dedicated retail presence. He added:

Over the past 12 months we've seen a huge growth in the number of customers coming in-store and asking us about Android phones and tablets. With Androidland we wanted to create a retail environment like no other that helps us to answer customer questions in a fun, interactive way. The result is a world-first collaboration that goes beyond conventional product displays by allowing visitors to get hands on with a range of popular mobile services and apps found on Android devices.

Google is reportedly shopping around with multiple retailers and shipping couriers in an effort to create a service that would compete with Amazon's Prime one-day shipping option. Google could even offer same-day delivery on certain items, which would actually be better than Amazon's offering.

The way it differs to Amazon, is Google's service would not have them selling items directly to the customer, but rather allow them to handle the delivery process through deals and companies such as UPS and local couriers. When a customer is checking out at a particular retailer, Google's system would kick in and offer expedited delivery services.

Google, according to sources, have pitched the idea to Macy's, Gap and OfficeMax, but none of the aforementioned companies would comment on the story. Amazon Prime launched in the US in 2005, with a flat fee of $79 per year, subscribers could opt for free two-day shipping for $3.99 overnight shipping on millions of items sold on their site.

Super Mario 3D Land hit the Nintendo 3DS and store shelves on November 11, and has since become the fastest-selling Mario game in Nintendo's history by selling more than 500,000 copies since launch.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword which was released on the Nintendo Wii on November 20 has sold 535,000 copies, which makes it the fastest-selling Zelda game ever. Black Friday is filled with wonderful things, even with the way the world's economies are right now.

The two releases also spiked Nintendo 3DS and Wii systems, with the 3DS sales tripled (by 325-percent) compared with sales the week of November 6th, the week before Super Mario 3D Land launched out of its green pipe. The week of its debut, however, sales rose 49-percent from the previous week.

Well, this certainly is something to be careful of! Thailand has warned Facebook users that they could face some serious jail time for charges of lese-majeste, or insults to the kind, queen, heir or regent.

Thailand's Information and Communication Technology Minster, Anudith Nakornthap, says that even though Facebook clicks of 'like' or 'share' are only done to show support for messages, they could actually violate laws that carry sentences of between 3 and 15 years for each charge.

Wow.