Business, Financial & Legal - Page 104

After reports that Apple Music members are jumping ship, Apple has issued a statement saying just 21 percent of users have stopped using the streaming music service.

The MusicWatch survey indicated around 48 percent of people testing the service are jumping ship. In its survey of 5,000 users, 28 percent are Spotify Premium members, 11 percent use Spotify free users, and six percent listen to ad-supported Pandora.

In late July, it was reported Apple Music had 10 million users - and Apple reported 11 million users in early August - are currently enjoying a free three-month trial of the new streaming service. Spotify has 20 million paid subscribers and about 55 million free users.

It looks like the High Bandwidth Memory game is about to receive a very big new player in the form of Samsung, with the South Korean electronics giant announcing at IDF 2015 that it will begin mass production of HBM early next year.

Right now HBM1 is limited to just 4GB and 512GB/sec, but HBM2 will be capable of driving far past 8GB and sitting at around 1TB/sec memory bandwidth. We should expect new video cards to feature up to 48GB of HBM2, with consumer cards most likely sitting at around 8-12GB of HBM2. With NVIDIA dominating the GPU market share with no signs of slowing down, next year is going to be one of the biggest for GPUs.

HBM2 is going to usher in more changes in the next 12-18 months than I think most people can even predict, especially when we begin seeing professional video cards (think video professionals, servers and the like) with GPUs packing 48GB of HBM2 with up to 1.5TB/sec of memory bandwidth. Even the fastest GeForce cards right now only feature 334GB/sec of memory bandwidth, while the HBM1-powered Fury X from AMD packing 512GB/sec bandwidth.

Riding back on the news that AMD has lost a considerable chunk of the discrete GPU market this quarter, this news of AMD spending less and less on research and development is not good to hear.

AMD shares dropped 13% last Monday without any new information or reasoning behind the huge dip in share prices, but it could be a result of NVIDIA's better than expected financials, or it could be the fact that AMD has lost more market share to NVIDIA, even after the release of its first next-gen GPU in nearly two years.

Furthermore, AMD has been scaling back R&D spending over the last five years, with Pacific Crest analyst Mike McConnell chiming in, with the following: "When I talk to investors about AMD, there's some concern - I mean, we've seen a decline by close to 40% versus levels we were at in the beginning of the decade". AMD CTO Mark Papermaster has said that the PC market is shrinking, and that AMD is putting less R&D effort into that part of the business.

In the next 24 hours, we're going to find out if Apple and Google will be forced to declare how much tax they pay in Australia annually, with the Australian Senate committee pushing in new recommendations.

These recommendations are lengthy, with 18 of them in total, including that all companies should annually disclose how much money they've made in Australia. Not only that, but how much tax they paid, tax deductions, and other government write-offs. One of the bigger points of these 18 recommendations, is naming and shaming companies that dodge tax.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari said that one of the key issues was transparency, adding that every dollar avoided "is a dollar that's not going to a hospital, a school or an institution of welfare that's needed in this country. Right now, the laws as they currently stand mean that Australia's worst tax offenders are able to hide behind privacy provisions. It's time we named them, and we shamed them and it's time that we actually gave the Australian public an opportunity to know who these companies are, to know the practices they're engaging in, to not allow them to hide behind what currently exists as privacy provisions".

The time has come: TSMC has announced that its "16nm [chips] smoothly entered volume production as expected". The Taiwanese chipmaker told investors that it had started 16nm volume production after a report said that Apple was reducing the amount of orders it was sending TSMC's way.

Instead of Apple going to TSMC, the iPhone giant would instead send the orders to its largest rival; Samsung, as well as GlobalFoundries. The first production runs of the 16nm node will be for Apple's SoCs according to the latest rumors, while other companies are waiting in line. This includes NVIDIA, LG, Freescale Semiconductor, Avago, LG, and MediaTek. AMD is reportedly not on the list, but this could be wrong, with the company reportedly preparing its Zen CPU architecture, as well as its Arctic Islands GPU architecture that will be made on the 16nm process.

TSMC has also teased that it will soon begin ramping up "an enhanced version of 16nm chips, or 16 FinFET+ chips, in the third quarter and that production would reach a high volume in the same quarter". This is what NVIDIA is waiting for, especially for its gigantic and surely super-powered next-gen Pascal-based GP100 GPU. NVIDIA's GP100 chip is absolutely mammoth, with a rumored 17 billion transistors and up to 32GB of HBM2.

It's not a secret that HTC is struggling right now, but the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer has just announced that it will be culling 15% of its workforce after continued struggles with sales.

The company just released its Q2 results, with a forecast for Q3 that is even worse than the previous three months. Cher Wang, CEO of HTC, said: "Now, as we diversify beyond smartphones, we need a flexible and dynamic organization to ensure we can take advantage of all of the exciting opportunities in the connected lifestyle space".

Personally, I think HTC has a future in VR headsets if it can successfully launch and sell considerable units of its upcoming Vive headset, something it collaborated with Valve on. But, it's a risk, as anything is, and HTC isn't in the position for more continued losses.

A new report from PageFair says that there has been a 41% spike in the use of ad blockers over the last 12 months, something that will cost the industry around $21.8 billion in lost advertising revenue in 2015 alone.

The report warns that ad-blocking software is a large threat to the future of free content on the web, with PageFair's 'The cost of ad blocking' study saying that close to 200 million monthly Internet users are now using ad-blocking browser extensions. The report continued, saying that sites targeting "young, technically savvy, or more male audiences" are the ones that are most effected when it comes to ad blockers.

In the United States, around 45 million monthly active users use ad-blocking software, but that pales in comparison to Europe's 77 million users. Greece tops them all with 36.7% of the Internet population using ad-blocking software of some sort. Co-founder and Chief Executive of PageFair, Sean Blanchfield said: "It is tragic that ad block users are inadvertently inflicting multi-billion dollar losses on the very websites they most enjoy. With ad blocking going mobile, there's an eminent threat that the business model that has supported the open web for two decades is going to collapse".

Google has filed paperwork with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) in its plan to rebrand the public holding company as Alphabet Inc. The decision was made as Google looks to create a new operating structure, but that doesn't mean Google's businesses will suddenly disappear.

Services such as its search, maps, apps, YouTube, ads and Android will be listed as "Google business" under Alphabet. However, the company has branched out into a number of other business ventures, which will be better organized under Alphabet.

Expect the changes to be rolled out over the next few months, as current Google investors should be able to receive a detailed outlook how each business is operating.

It looks as though things have gone from bad to worse with Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC, with investors effectively saying HTC's "brand, factories and buildings were worthless", reports Bloomberg.

HTC's market price fell to $1.5 billion on Monday, below the $1.5 billion it had in cash at the end of June. Calvin Huang at Sinopac Financial Holdings Co. in Taipei told Bloomberg: "HTC's cash is the only asset of value to shareholders. Most of the other assets shouldn't be considered in their valuation because there's more write-offs to come and the brand has no value".

Q3 2015 isn't shaping up to be too good for HTC either, with the Taiwanese company forecasting 48% below analysts' estimations, after a 35% cut to projected revenues in the preceding period. There's one massive looming question I have: what about Vive? HTC's VR headset that it collaborated on with Valve, which could be the most exciting product HTC has ever made.

NVIDIA has just posted its Q2 2015 financial results, beating analysts' expectations by a considerable amount. Analysts pegged NVIDIA to have revenues decline by 8%, but NVIDIA had an increase of 4.5% in revenues instead.

The increased revenues were thanks to strong GeForce sales, surely led by the super-impressive GeForce GTX 900 series of video cards. The company is expecting sales to drop in Q3, while NVIDIA's gaming revenue increased 59% thanks to big GeForce numbers. Wedbush Securities analyst Betsy Van Hees said: "The near term story continues to be PC gaming. That is the key driver for them and they continue to dominate in that area".

Another area where NVIDIA is working hard is in the automotive sector, where the company has said that there are 8 million cars on the road using their technology and that they're working with over 50 companies for its DRIVE chip, allowing self-driving cars.

Taylor Swift initially didn't want her music available on Apple Music, and once Apple caved regarding payments to artists, decided to allow her music to be streamed.

All of this happened before Apple Music even launched, and revealed how powerful the 25-year-old is in the music industry. Swift recently praised Apple while criticizing Spotify:

"Apple treated me like I was a voice of a creative community that they actually cared about," Swift said in the September issue of Vanity Fair. "And I found it really ironic that the multi-billion-dollar company reacted to criticism with humility, and the start-up with no cash flow reacted to criticism like a corporate machine."

HTC is in hot water over its Sense Home application on some of its smartphones, with the Taiwanese giant using the push notifications to throw ads for the new Fantastic Four movie onto some users' devices.

A thread on Reddit has 'impersonaljesus' reporting that even though they were using a custom launcher, "this ad was pushed to my phone". You can disable notifications from the Sense Home app by going into the app settings and disabling the ability of push notifications, but you shouldn't need to be putting up with forced advertisement from HTC like this, no matter what setting is enabled or disabled.

With $1m AU set to be spread between three programs to assist disadvantaged and marginalized Aussies in gaining access to ICT services, the aim here is to promote these students to begin their own careers in IT.

Sent to not-for-profit organizations, this donation will ensure hands-on training can be supplied to approximately 10,000 students in total. One of the organizations involved and highlighted is Engineers Without Borders Australia and its 'Regioneering Roadshow' program, set to train regionally-located school age students, focusing on promotion of women in IT.

The Engineers Without Borders Australia director, Jane Hadjion, told iTnews about the wide variety of children that will benefit from this service, stating: "We're putting on 65 workshops in 38 locations over 12 months. We're reaching 6500 students, 470 teachers and 1400 parents."

EA has posted its latest revenue numbers, where the company is seeing a huge 77% of its revenue in Q1 2015 arriving from online video game services and add-ons, some of which is thanks to DLC.

Now that EA is making big business from digital distribution, the company can invest the money it used to put into manufacturing and shipping physical retail copies of games into other things. With its Q1 2015 revenue hitting $693 million, 77% of that is a massive chunk of money courtesy of digital goods. EA also noted a 32% rise in profits over the previous year, securing itself $442 million.

EA has some big games in its wings waiting for release, with Star Wars Battlefront to be released in November, with analysts expecting over 10 million sales.

Apple Music has successfully generated a lot of interest, but it's easy to find vocal critics willing to share some of the horror stories they've endured so far.

One longtime Apple "watcher" explained how he lost more than 4,000 songs after the app on his phone gave him complicated and confusing settings. After some tinkering, he was reportedly able to get most of the songs back. Tech analyst Ben Thompson believes Apple Music is something the company released to the public because executives may have thought it was necessary - with other users reporting it is underwhelming.

Of course, some of you responded that you've had no problems while testing the streaming music service. So, the jury is clearly still out as to whether or not Apple Music will be a major success, or end up being nothing more than a dud.

Uber has just raised another $1 billion, which has the ride sharing giant being worth $50 billion, reaching the milestone two years quicker than Facebook did.

The company has attracted all sorts of different investors in its latest funding round, with one of them being Microsoft. According to sources of Bloomberg, Microsoft reportedly backed Uber by around $100 million. There's no information on what Microsoft's interest is in Uber, but abck in June, Uber secured itself a slice of Bing's mapping technology, as well as around 100 employees from Microsoft.

Microsoft isn't the first company to invest into Uber, with Chinese internet giant Baidu throwing some money into the ring, with an investment that is said to be around $600 million. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has also invested into the company, all the way back in 2011, as well as Google Ventures pledging $258 million in 2013.

Sharp's Aquos line of TVs might be popular amongst enthusiasts, but the company has been forced to pull out of the LCD TV business in the United States after various financial problems had Sharp's hands tied behind its back.

The company sold its Mexican factory for $23.7 million, along with the rights to its Sharp brand in both North and South America to Chinese TV maker Hisense. Over the last quarter, Sharp lost $274 million, while over the last four years the Japanese giant has lost $13.4 billion. Sharp recently secured itself a $1.8 billion bailout, but company president Kozo Takahashi said: "we have to consider all options, including a spinoff of the LCD business. The LCD market is changing very rapidly".

Hisense has said: "The acquisition (of Sharp's brand) will help Hisense gain an upper hand in both North and South America". From here on out, Sharp's Aquos TV line up will continue to be sold in the US, but Hisense will be enjoying any profits made.

In a recently issued press release, LG Electronics announced a net profit of 206.38 million (226.4 billion KRW) over second-quarter 2015, in what it claims to be "an extremely challenging environment."

With the TV market being described as weak, revenue in this section amounted to 3.59 billion, with LG's mobile arena gathering 3.33 billion, marking a 1 percent increase from the same time last year. Home appliances and air solutions saw a larger 10 percent increase, reporting total sales amounting to 4.09 billion at an operating profit of 266 million.

LG claims that the current "sluggish global TV market" is particularly harsh in CIS, Latin America and Europe. This means that LG has posted a slight decline in operating profits in this area, seeing a drop of 222.52 million.

Apple Music launched on June 30 and has quickly amassed more than 10 million subscribers, according to a report published by Hitsdailydouble.com.

The website spoke with anonymous sources inside a few major record labels, as Apple doesn't release those types of figures publicly. Each new member can enjoy a three-month free trial of the service, so it will be interesting to see how many subscribers stick around following the trial period.

The entry-level plan costs $9.99 per month, and a $14.99 per month family plan allows for up to six users to enjoy the streaming music service.

The PC market has been all over the place in recent years, with vendors struggling to sell PCs and devices pre-loaded with Microsoft Windows 8. Chinese manufacturer Lenovo is the No. 1 largest PC manufacturer with around 20 percent of global market share, according to the IDC research group.

However, Lenovo is aware that the PC market faces problems - with the company noting a Q2 7.5 percent year-over-year drop, while the PC market dropped almost 12 percent.

"We are starting to see a big consolidation in the market... we think that probably within the next 24 months, maybe four to five players will leave," said Gianfranco Lanci, COO at Lenovo, in a statement to CNBC.