Business, Financial & Legal - Page 107

Exclusive: We've just had a source of ours reach out to us to inform us that Razer has reportedly given out a 14-inch Blade gaming laptop to each and every single person who works at Razer.

The source said that "everyone in the company" was given the new 14-inch Blade gaming laptop, and it's "not a 'work use' machine, but something to just game on and personal use". This is part of Razer's company motto that Razer is "For Games. By Gamers" with company CEO Min-Liang Tan wanting to make sure that everyone in the company could game for as long as they wanted.

Considering the 14-inch Blade starts at $2399 on Amazon, that's quite the early Christmas present.

We reported back in August last year that Sony was being sued for falsely advertising its PlayStation 4 exclusive Killzone: Shadow Fall at 1080p, but Judge Edward M. Chen of the US District Court for the Northern District of California, while in agreement with both parties, dismissed the lawsuit "with prejudice".

This means that the plaintiff cannot file another legal action on this matter at anytime in the future. The terms of the dismissal were filed under seal, with each side of the argument needing to settle their own legal fees. Last year, Douglas Ladore from California filed a lawsuit against Sony for Killzone: Shadow Fall. Ladore was suing over the marketing that Sony deployed for the PS4 launch title, as it said the game would be running at 1080p, and it did not.

Killzone: Shadow Fall's multiplayer had "a technological shortcut that was supposed to provide 'subjectively similar' results" to the native resolution of 1920x1080, said Ladore. Guerilla Games had used a "temporal reprojection" technique for the multiplayer side of Shadow Fall, which according to the studio, produces an image that is indistinguishable from a 1080p version "most of the time".

It looks like Apple could be in some trouble, with the Department of Justice looking into their business practices as the launch of Apple's upcoming music streaming service.

Apple's music streaming service is said to cost $7.99 per month, but with Spotify enjoying a large chunk of the music streaming user base with its 60 million plus users. Out of these 60 million users, only 15 million of them subscribe for the ad-free version of Spotify. So while Apple is trying to get its new music service off the ground, the company has reportedly been approaching the music industry to make labels "force streaming services like Spotify to abandon their free tiers".

This is Apple's tactic: attacking their competition from behind the scenes, in a move drastic enough to involve the Department of Justice. This means Apple is very scared of Spotify, and so it should be. The Verge reports: "Getting the music labels to kill the freemium tiers from Spotify and others could put Apple in prime position to grab a large swath of new users when it launches its own streaming service, which is widely expected to feature a considerable amount of exclusive content. "All the way up to Tim Cook, these guys are cutthroat," one music industry source said".

The bitcoin cryptocurrency remains an extremely volatile currency, with values sliding from $1,100 down to $200, as the demise of several bitcoin exchanges generate huge headlines. By midday Sunday, a single bitcoin was valued at $240, still showing a significant amount of volatility.

There are a growing number of bitcoin-related startups focused on helping foster a strong bitcoin community - with Goldman Sachs and IDG Capital Partners investing $50 million to help look at possible bitcoin investments.

Financial institutions, initially showing hesitancy to embrace bitcoins, are quietly trying to learn about the bitcoin ecosystem. Some European banks have opened up their checkbooks to support bitcoins, providing much-needed financial support to startups.

With Furious 7 being in cinemas across the world for around a month now, it has grossed over $1.3 billion making it one of the most successful movies of all time. It was only 12 days ago that we reported it had crossed the $1 billion mark, too.

Furious 7 has become the fourth most successful movie of all time, pushing Frozen and Iron Man 3 out of its way, as well as the last Harry Potter film to get its place in history. Entertainment Weekly's Jonathan Dornbush reports: "These totals are, of course, unadjusted for inflation. When that's taken into account, Deathly Hallows: Part 2 would still sit above Furious 7 for the time being-but the global ticket sales for the action film represents the incredible forward momentum Furious 7 has carried in the month since its release". He continued: "Furious 7 became the biggest film at China's box office, and will likely rank among the highest earners in the U.S. for 2015 when the year comes to a close".

One of the more interesting facts on Furious 7 and its $1.3 billion haul, is that most of it has come from international ticket sales. Furious 7 has only made $323 million in the US, compared to The Avengers which pulled in $623 million domestically, Furious 7 is a much bigger hit outside of the US.

Apple has reported its post-holiday quarter results, where we have seen the company pull in $58 billion in revenue, with a net profit of $13.6 billion. These numbers beat Wall Street expectations, with analysts begging Apple to report somewhere in between $52 billion and $55 billion in revenue.

During the same quarter of 2014, Apple made $45.6 billion in revenue with $10.2 billion in profits. So we can see a decent improvement year-over-year, with nearly an extra $13 billion in revenue and 30% increase in profits.

We know that Apple sold a huge 61.2 million iPhones during the quarter, which is the second highest number of iPhones sold in a single quarter to date. But, while iPhone sales continue to grow, iPad sales are dwindling. Apple sold just 12.6 million iPads during the three-month period, down from 16.4 million in the same quarter of 2014. Mac sales were also strong, with 4.6 million units being sold, up from the 4.1 million in the same quarter of last year.

Last week, Comcast dropped its effort to take over Time Warner Cable, as antitrust regulators and business watchdog groups showed their displeasure with the takeover attempt.

"Today, we move on," said Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of Comcast, following news of Comcast's decision to leave behind TWC. "Of course, we would have liked to bring our great products to new cities, but we structured this deal so that if the government didn't agree, we could walk away."

However, it looks like Charter Communications, the No. 4 largest cable company in the United States, is considering another effort to acquire TWC. Prior to Comcast's effort to purchase TWC last year for almost $159 per share, Charter offered $130 and $132 per share for TWC - which the company rejected.

Warner Bros. has some seriously large tentpole movies coming out in the next five years, with movies like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice next year, followed by Suicide Squad, Godzilla 2 and many more.

The company has announced a new multi-picture agreement with IMAX Corporation that will see 30 films from Warner Bros. upcoming line up through 2020, as a continuation of the companies' continued partnership. Under this new agreement, "IMAX will be part of a number of high-profile tentpoles from Warner Bros. Pictures, including The Man from U.N.C.L.E., In the Heart of the Sea, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Tarzan movie, the King Arthur movie, Suicide Squad, Geostorm, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Jungle Book: Origins, and Godzilla 2. The deal also encompasses a number of upcoming DC tentpoles, as well as future LEGO movies, including The LEGO Movie Sequel", reports Cosmic Book News.

IMAX CEO Richard L. Gelfond has said: "We've had an incredible partnership with Warner Bros. for more than 10 years, which has helped IMAX filmgoers enjoy Warner movies around the world. We're excited and grateful to extend that partnership".

During its Q1 2015 earnings conference, TSMC has said that it will be enter 10nm production next year, following with 7nm production in 2017. The Taiwanese giant has said that its 16nm production is behind, but still promises 10nm for 2016.

With its recent troubles with the 16nm FinFET manufacturing process, with three major setbacks that have resulted in nine months of delay to 16nm-based products. TSMC had troubles with its 16nm node, forcing Qualcomm to ask Samsung to produce its shrunken technology, and there's even rumors that NVIDIA could rely on Samsung for its next-gen node.

TSMC has stated that its issues are behind them now, with 10nm and 7nm on track for 2016 and 2017, respectively. TSMC has already displayed working 10nm silicon, with the process expected to be nailed down later this year and 10nm products into consumers hands by late 2016, after which expanded volume production in early 2017 will take place. This will have a roll on effect with the sales of 10nm hitting TSMC's hands, that will push into the second batch of 10nm, and into 7nm, too.

One of the most exciting projects right now is Tesla Motors' gigafactory, which is being built in the middle of the Nevada desert. Construction has been underway since last July reports Mashable, which is also reporting some new satellite imagery of the secretive facility.

Mashable got its hands on the satellite imagery, which shows how far construction has come since July last year. Back in 2013, Tesla Motors founder and real life Tony Stark told Forbes: "This will be a giant facility. We are talking about something that is comparable to all of the lithium-ion battery production in the world - in one factory".

With the gigafactory being a gigantic battery producing beast, it needs some serious power - with Tesla looking to use many forms of renewable energy. The company will be using sources like solar panels, wind turbines and hydroelectric plants in order to power 500,000 electric vehicles by 2020. Once the facility is finalized, it will take up around 5 million square feet of space, with a final cost of around $5 billion.

Samsung released their Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 edge handsets a little over a week ago now, with Qualcomm feeling the loss of getting its Snapdragon processors into the new handsets.

With the previous Galaxy S smartphones, Samsung has usually had its Exynos processor in certain models, while Qualcomm's Snapdragon processor makes it into another. Not this time around, and rightly so since Qualcomm reportedly asks for 2.5 to 5% of the selling price of every handset that is powered by its Snapdragon processor. This is a big chunk of sales, especially when handsets are spilling over the $1000 mark.

Samsung has thus saved itself many millions of dollars by opting for its own Exynos processor in the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, and after giving Qualcomm $9.2 billion in royalties over four years, this has come to an end. Qualcomm continues to expand its pile of cash, which is hovering at around the $30 billion mark right now. Most of this $30 billion has been made from the patent and licensing royalties, and not just from its processors - a smart move by Qualcomm.

Would you be surprised to know that 92 percent of staff love meetings? According to a Verizon study, they really do! Meetings are seen as a chance to participate and contribute, and have face to face time with other participants. It's when meetings disrupt the workflow of individual staffers and departments that things can get dicey. As much as people love meetings, they can be stressful, too, with work backing up and schedules upended because anyone who needs a soapbox feels the need to call a meeting.

Making your meetings a part of the workflow instead of a big rock thrown into the middle of it can also help to decrease a trend toward staff disengagement. A Gallup poll reported that some of the most experienced and highly educated workers feel "not engaged" or even actively disengaged from their workplace and co-workers. These workers tend to be age 30 to 64 and have high levels of education, and often years of experience and know-how. Re-engaging these workers is a soft cost that savvy business owners and managers will reckon against the cost of finding and hiring a new candidate and filling the position anew, or letting the situation sit and fester with a resentful, disengaged worker playing Candy Crush on their iPad during meetings.

Making meetings work in the real-world takes some thought and ingenuity, and there are times when a conference call is all it takes to put things right. However, to pull out an old cliché, there are times when you need to think outside the box on how to engage with everyone, face to face in the best and most effective way. Using modern technology such as the cloud-based Blue Jeans Network for video conferencing can help bring back that engagement gained from a stimulating face to face meeting without the stress, expense, and work disruptions caused by calling meetings in a single location.

The South Korean government has said that the country will begin producing and selling products using graphene by as early as 2017, making it one of the first countries in the world to commercialize the exciting new advanced material.

Graphene, is as thin as an atom and when spread out onto a sheet of carbon, can transmit electric currents up to 1 million times faster than current conductors like copper. Additionally, it has twice the strength of diamonds. Graphene-based products will include flexible display panels and touchscreen panels. South Korea has been at the forefront of graphene research, with the company hoping to become one of the world's first nations to commercialize graphene production, with research starting 10 years ago. The "government named six consortia made up of 45 private firms and research institutes in 2013 to develop related technologies", reports The Korea Times.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said in a press release: "The country believes it can create a new global market for graphene under its leadership as the country has developed leading technologies through over 10 years of research while it also has enough demand for the material in the mobile phone, display and secondary cell battery sectors".

With over 150 suppliers shipping 34 million displays over Q4 2014, Dell has maintained its position as the number one PC monitor supplier in the world, according to the latest report from the IDC.

With 34 million displays shipped in Q4 2014 seeing a 4.4% year-over-year decline, but a 1.3% increase on their forecast, the top five monitor manufacturers control a huge 60% of the market. Dell has secured itself 15.2% of the market, while Samsung has 12.7%. HP and Lenovo fall into third and fourth place with 11.8% and 10.9%, respectively. LG is in fifth place with 9.2%, leaving the rest of the market with the remaining 40%.

Dell shipped over 5.1 million displays in Q4 2014 while its closest competitor in Samsung shipped just under 4.3 million units, leaving HP to ship 4 million units, while Lenovo and LG shipped 3.6 million and 3.1 million units, respectively.

The motherboard wars are firing up again right before Computex, with GIGABYTE overtaking ASUS to become the world's largest motherboard vendor, according to the latest preliminary shipment figures, reports Digitimes.

GIGABYTE shipped around 4.8 million motherboards in Q1, while ASUS shipped around 4.5 million. Between the two Taiwanese giants, they make up around 80% of China's motherboard market. MSI and ASRock come in third and fourth place, with both of them churning out around 3 million motherboards each. Both companies are looking to hit around 6.5 million units each for the entire of 2015.

With a slowing demand on motherboards and with GIGABYTE and ASUS securing most of the consumers, MSI has moved its focus over to the gaming notebook market, while ASRock is slowly shifting over to making products for the IPC server market.

NVIDIA has announced that it has acquired Valve for an undisclosed sum of money, securing the rights behind the digital distribution platform Steam, as well as original IP like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Dota 2, and Left 4 Dead.

NVIDIA has announced that Half-life 3 will be released on the 3rd of March 2016, or 3/3/16. It will be released onto the Steam VR-powered HTC Vive headset, as well as the Oculus Rift. It'll be released onto Windows and Steam OS, with full support for DirectX 12. We are going to see full PhysX built into it with a next-generation physics engine within the Source 2 engine.

Of course, this is only an April Fools Day fun post, but if I could make Half-Life 3 be announced, I would. I'm swimming in my own tears here.

Intel is preparing one of its largest acquisitions to date, with Altera. Altera is a well-known manufacturer of SoC and FPGAs, and could seriously bolster Intel's already strong position in the market.

The rumored acquisition would give Intel even more control of the server market, of which it already dominates with 98% market share. Datacenters are moving toward FPGA-based products, as they are reprogrammable chips that can run specific tasks faster than Intel's own chips on their own. Microsoft and Baidu are already shifting into Altera's FPGA chips, alongside Intel's own chips with good results.

Considering Intel manufacturers Altera's FPGAs, Intel acquiring the company could see them integrating FPGA onto their chips for additional performance. One of the big reasons for Intel to splash out $10 billion on Altera is that companies like Microsoft and Baidu could integrate FPGA with ARM-based solutions, which is Intel's biggest threat right now. Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy said: "If Intel owns Altera, the chance of that happening is zero percent".

The Siberia Times is reporting that Russian Railways' President, Vladimir Yakunin, has proposed a plan to build a gigantic trans-Siberian highway that would stretch from London, to New York.

The project has been called the Trans-Eurasian Belt Development, or TEPR, which would see a major highway constructed alongside the existing Trans-Siberian Railway, right next to a new train network, and oil and gas pipelines. Siberian Times quoted Yakunin as saying: "This is an inter-state, inter-civilization, project. The project should be turned into a world 'future zone,' and it must be based on leading, not catching, technologies".

Yakunin has said that the proposed TEPR would run across the entirety of Russia, linking up to the existing road systems found in Western Europe and Asia. Yakunin also added that it would connect Russia directly with North America through its own far eastern Chukotka region, and then across the Bering Strait, through to Alaska's Seward Peninsula.

A super hot report has arrived today, where it's being alleged that Samsung will acquire AMD. The deal would see the South Korean giant acquire the chipmaker, merging AMD with one of its subsidiaries to better fight Qualcomm and Intel.

The report states that Samsung wants AMD's CPU and GPU properties, where it would use AMD's IP to expand its growth and to battle against the likes of Intel and Qualcomm. The report also hints that Samsung thought of acquiring AMD back in 2007, where in 2007, Samsung's Head of Telecommunications said: "it is necessary to consider the AMD acquisition in order to secure a new growth engine".

If Samsung were to acquire AMD, we could see some great things come from it. We could see the Radeon IP used in Samsung's mobile offerings, giving them a big injection of performance. Samsung's fabrication could get right into things, shifting AMD's technology into smaller processes much quicker than TSMC offers AMD at the moment. We could see some big changes in the GPU department and its competitiveness against NVIDIA, too.

We all know about the huge controversy over Jeremy Clarkson, the BBC and Top Gear, but it looks like the infamous presenter could return to the series, as the BBC has reportedly laid out its specific terms for Clarkson's return to Top Gear.

It has him needing to agree to their conditions, which Clarkson is reportedly not happy with. The Daily Mail is reporting that an executive will be placed as Clarkson's "minder", as they want to have someone looking after him at all times in order to ensure we don't see an incident that had him removed from the series in the first place.

The Daily Mail quotes the BBC as saying: "I think that people do see a way to resolve this, and that is by putting someone strong in to manage the show and manage Clarkson. He is a brilliant broadcaster, everyone can see that". With his co-hosts in James May and Richard Hammond reportedly refusing to film the show without him, the BBC has its hands tied behind its back right now.