Business, Financial & Legal - Page 123

You would think that if you walked into the Google HQ, that you'd see Chromebooks sprawled everywhere, but that is not the case. Google's OS of choice, is Apple's Mac OS X platform, with the company imposing Mac use to all its employees.

The company supports most operating systems, including Windows, Linux and its own Chrome OS. Google System Engineer, Clay Caviness, says: "There was a time when Macs were a small part of the Google fleet, but as of now if you start at Google and want to use a platform other than Mac you have to make a business case."

I can see where Google is coming from, Macs are great, and overall, more 'stable' than Windows. I think this is in part to Macs being more secure, and its user base is nowhere near the size of Windows' user base. But, everyone has their preferences. Google's Chairman, Eric Schmidt, had some interesting things to say about the 'superiority' of Macs versus PCs, where he compared Android devices with Macs.

Bitcoins are massive business right now, with the value of the digital currency passing $1000 for the first time ever. This is a gigantic milestone for the digital currency, and represents a 4000% year-over-year increase in value.

People who have sold their Bitcoins early would be feeling quite ill right now, with an early Bitcoin owner purchasing 10,000 Bitcoins for just $50. He ended up giving his Bitcoins away, but if he had held onto those 10,000 Bitcoins, it would be worth a very swift $10 million today. The Winklevoss twins purchased $11 million worth if Bitcoins back in April, which cost them $120 a piece - an investment that has turned into $90 million or so right now.

I was so close to getting into Bitcoin when it first launched, but backed off - even a small investment back then would be worth magnitudes more now, which makes me a sad man.

We all know how harsh the US government is on piracy and illegal activities, and while we have Vice President Joe Biden saying things like "piracy is theft, clean and simple", the same government he works for was doing just that: stealing.

The US government has been in a multi-million dispute with Apptricity, a software company that makes enterprise software that manages the US Army's troops and supply movements. The deal struck between Apptricity and the US government was signed in 2004, and allowed the US government to use Apptricity's software on five servers and 150 standalone devices.

The company explains: "The Army has used Apptricity's integrated transportation logistics and asset management software across the Middle East and other theaters of operation. The Army has also used the software to coordinate emergency management initiatives, including efforts following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti."

Back on October 14th TweakTown first heard a rumor that OCZ was entertaining an offer from Toshiba acquire the company. This was a big deal as OCZ's CEO had recently announced that his company had been having issues acquiring NAND flash modules to build its SSDs. The company had also just posted some very bad losses for Q3 2013, and everything looked ripe for Toshiba to pick up the company for a song.

Soon after, the rumors died down and we mostly thought that they had been just that, Rumors. Fast forward a few weeks and on November 4th, I broke a developing story about Toshiba's stock falling by more than 22-percent in just hours after the market opened. I reached out to OCZ to which a reply never came. By the end of the day, the stock had fallen by more than 30-percent to just $0.65 per share, a 52-week low. Upon opening the next day, OCZ saw its stock fall another 30-percent to $0.44 per share.

By November 9th, OCZ's stock was back up to $0.85 per share which was widely attributed to the release of the new SSD that was seeing great reviews across the web including TweakTown. Ten days later on November 19th, TweakTown received word that OCZ had laid off 15-percent of its workforce in an effort to ease its massive $2 million per month cash burn. It appeared as if the SSD manufacturer was attempting to dig itself out of the deep hole it had fallen into. At this point the company's stock had leveled off at around $0.70 per share.

Earlier I reported that trading had been suspended on OCZ's stock, and it appears that there may be more to the story than just having its stock trading halted. Unnamed sources have told TweakTown that Toshiba has quietly completed its acquisition of OCZ's assets as the company prepares to file for bankruptcy and that the companies closed escrow on most of OCZ's assets yesterday.

In a call just weeks ago OCZ's CEO, Ralph Schmitt, stated that in-house manufacturing was halted and a third-party had picked up manufacturing. Weeks later TweakTown reported from the rumor mill that OCZ and Toshiba were talking. Last week Storage Review displayed a picture of an OCZ Indilinx Barefoot 3 controller in a Panasonic SSD. Panasonic is another company based in Japan and has close ties to Toshiba. Panasonic wouldn't release a new SSD with a controller from a company headed for bankruptcy without some inside knowledge.

Now the events over the last 30 days make perfect sense. When a major investor pulled out due to OCZ's cash burn issues, Toshiba swooped in and made the company an offer it could not refuse. This explains the lack of statements made to investors when things started turning south.

Today it appears that the ongoing saga of OCZ's roller coaster ride on the stock market has finally came to an end. Earlier this morning, weeks of ups and downs in the company's share price as well as rumors of massive financial troubles finally came to a head when trading was halted on the SSD manufactures stock.

Trading was suspended after shares failed to rebound above $1 over the last 30 days, and solidifies rumors that the company is quickly approaching its end of life. I have reached out to several industry analyst, and the general conscious appears to be that the company will either file bankruptcy very soon, or someone like Toshiba will swoop in and buy OCZ for pennies on the dollar. Personally I am expecting them to be bought out, as that makes the most sense at this point.

A few weeks back, our own Chris Ramseyer all but predicted today's outcome in his review of OCZ Vector 150 120GB SSD. Chris poised a question, asking if OCZ would be around six months from now, and I guess the answer has arrived. Below is an excerpt from that review.

We thought it had happened last week, but now Apple has confirmed it has acquired PrimeSense. The company works on motion control devices, so this should be an interesting next few years for the iPhone maker.

Apple confirmed the acquisition with AllThingsD, where it said that it does buy smaller companies "from time to time". The company reportedly handed over around $360 million for the deal, which should cement Apple's future in the motion control space. I did think that Apple would use the tech for its Mac range of devices, which I think we'll begin to see teased in the first half of 2014.

Update: It seems that there wasn't 'someone' or a company that purchased these Bitcoins, but rather a transfer of Bitcoins. It could be that Bitstamp possibly moved its own funds around, which made this look (to a Bitcoin novice like myself) a massive transfer worth $150 million, and thus, major news - but it looks like it was not. Apologies.

Bitcoins have been going up and down in price, where we saw it rise past $600 in value just a few days ago, but now the price is beginning to stabilize. Bitcoin has been making the mainstream headlines quite a lot, but this latest transaction should see much more attention paid to the digital currency.

Someone in Germany must have quite a lot of cash on-hand, as they just acquired over 194,000 Bitcoins... which has a value of approximately $150 million. Yes, $150,000,000 in Bitcoins. Even the richest people around don't just have $150 million in cash to just spend, so are we looking at a central bank or government scooping up all these Bitcoins?

A federal judge has awarded Apple with $290 million in patent damages from Samsung, which gives Apple a total of over $900 million that will be sucked out of Samsung's bank accounts.

The patent case saw a six-woman, two-man jury hearing the case last week, where Apple claimed Samsung copied its technologies from the iPad and iPhone. Apple argued that Samsung owed them nearly $380 million in damages from lost profits, and from profits Samsung enjoyed while selling the devices that were infringing on Apple's patents, as well as royalties.

Samsung didn't stand there defenseless, so it bit back, claiming that Apple inflated the value of their patents. The South Korean giant also reiterated the important of consumer choice, concluding that damages should not exceed $52 million. The jury ended up deciding that Samsung was indeed guilty of patent infringement on 13 smartphones and tablets, including features like pinch-to-zoom, and bounce back.

Over the past few months Acer has been in a bit of a downward slide and in recent weeks we have seen both the company CEO and Chairman of the Board, J.T. Wang, and its President, Jim Wong resign their positions. This is the direct result of the $20 million operational loss and 20-percent slump in sales the company reported for Q3 2013.

Now it appears that the company's founder will be returning to its helm after more than eight years of retirement. Stan Shih retired from Acer in 2004 just as it was beginning to grow into a netbook monster with its line of eeePC line. Shih will take on the role of chairman and acting corporate president based on a press released issued by Acer today.

"Due to the situation that now faces Acer and my personal social responsibilities, I must stand up and take the rein without salary," Shih said in a statement. "I will honor and complete all the public affairs and event engagements that I have committed to, but I will also fully support Acer's ICT device business and carry out the company transformation. In addition, George Huang who is one of my co-founding partners of Acer will join with me and the management team to lead our company at this time."

Just two weeks ago we were reporting on OCZ's stock taking a nosedive to below $0.18 per share before rebounding back to the $0.70 level. The stock seemed to level off there, and some of us thought that the company may be able to pull itself out of the hole it fell into months ago. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case.

A new rumor has just came across my news desk unveiling that OCZ laid off 15-percent of its workforce last week. The rumor was not clear as to which divisions were the hardest hit, or if any high-salary employees were caught up in the layoffs. OCZ's stock is down more than $0.10 today since Friday when it closed at about $0.70 per share. Unlike the last nosedive, there are not rebounding spikes and if the pattern continues, OCZ could be back in the sub $0.20 per share range by Friday.

At some point in our lives, almost every American has owned a Nokia branded phone, and it was not that long ago that Nokia was considered king of the handset. Today that long standing legacy has finally come to an end as 99.7-percent of Nokia's shareholders voted to approve Microsoft acquiring Nokia's Devices and Services business for $7.2 billion.

Not all shareholders were so eager to sell, with reports of some being quite upset that an American company would be allowed to purchase a Finnish brand with such a long history. None-the-less, Microsoft is the new owner of Nokia's Devices and services division and we have most likely seen the last Nokia-branded mobile devices to be released. Todays conformation also gives Stephen Elop yet more momentum in his drive to replace Steve Ballmer as Microsoft's next CEO.

Personally I am still sticking to my theory that Ballmer, Elop and Gates all planned this entire chain of events out back in 2009 or 2010. I think that everyone knew Ballmer wanted to retire, and that Microsoft needed its own handset to compete with Apple. A plan was hatched that would see Elop being ushered in as CEO of Nokia, who would then closely collaborate with Microsoft to develop the next-generation of Nokia Windows Phones. At the same time, Elop would help Nokia's stock tank and earn himself a big bonus for selling Nokia to Microsoft when things looked really bad. The buyout would be confirmed and Elop would be given Ballmer's seat at the helm as a thank you for his efforts. Call me crazy, but much more shady plots have been hatched in the big business world.

In the past 9 days or so Bitcoin prices have soared to levels no one expected to see after the shutdown of Silk Road. The surge is most likely the result of senate hearings that begin today in which several US agencies will testify to the legitimacy of Bitcoin, and the impact it is having on the global economy.

Today the value of a single Bitcoin soard past $650 and while it has since declined a little, the fact still stands that the digital currency was sitting at a value of just $85 a few months ago. The increase in value can also be attributed to the fact that Ben Bernake, Chairman of the Federal Reserve said that his agency has no intentions of attempting to regulate Bitcoin anytime soon.

"The FBI's approach to virtual currencies is guided by a recognition that online payment systems, both centralized and decentralized, offer legitimate financial services," said Peter Kadzik, principal deputy assistant attorney general, in a letter ahead of the Senate hearing. "Like any financial service, virtual currency system[s] of either type can be exploited by malicious actors, but centralized and decentralized online payment systems can vary significantly in the types and degrees of illicit financial risk they pose."

Well, the small number of PS4s that are experiencing issues could be the result of interns at the Foxconn manufacturing plant in Yantai, China, sabotaging it. Yes, sabotage!

The news broke on the IGN forums, but the forum was eventually locked. This particular manufacturing plant has hit the news headlines before, from the mistreatment of staff, and more. The intern notes that because Foxconn didn't treat them well, they sabotage the manufacturing of the PS4. The intern said: "The ps4 console we assemble can be turned on at best."

This would explain some of the issues some owners are experiencing, but if this is true, those interns are going to be in quite a lot of trouble with Foxconn.

Google is a gigantic company, a company that pretty much just prints its own money from advertising. Well, according to Business Insider's Henry Blodget, Google's yearly ad revenue has soared - and has overtaken both the magazine and newspaper industries.

If you look at the graph above, you can see that Google wasn't making that much money from ads in 2004... but each year sees a massive increase in profits made, and each year that Google makes more and more profits, the magazine and newspaper industries take an even bigger hit. Sure, back in 2004, the US newspaper industry was doing great business, but that has been knocked down, considerably.

If Google can keep at this pace, it will demolish the newspaper and magazine industries' profits in just a few years time.

For years Microsoft has used a employee ranking system. Which former employees at Microsoft say the ranking system was competitive. CEO Steve Ballmer is trying to make Microsoft a more team like environment ahead of his retirement. This new system is going to be a big change for employees at Microsoft.

Microsoft HR chief Lisa Brummel mentions in the memo-"This is a fundamentally new approach to performance and development designed to promote new levels of teamwork and agility for breakthrough business impact" Here is the full memo from The Verge-

If I was to look around my desks where I'm typing this news, I have a Nexus 5, LG G2, and both Nexus 7 tablets - last years model, and this years - I'm a tech addict like most of you out there. But just how many smartphones are out in the wild right now? Around 1.9 billion, which is expected to blow out to a huge 5.6 billion devices in 2019.

5.6 billion smartphones is a mammoth number, with the estimation coming from communications technology company, Ericsson. According to Ericsson's latest quarterly report, 55% of all handsets sold worldwide were smartphones, even though smartphones represent just 25-30% of all active mobile phone subscriptions.

But, over the next 6 years, we should see smartphone adoption hitting 60% of all mobile phone subscriptions. This means that of the 9.3 billion phones in use by 2019, 5.6 billion (or over half) of them will be smartphones. The biggest reason for this is going to be the emerging markets like China and India, and I personally think another big push is going to be Android 4.4 KitKat, which has much lower minimum requirements - which will push smartphone technology into cheaper smartphones, and help drive sales in emerging markets, in droves.

After a first day of trading that can only be called a smashing success, Twitters stock price has saw a slight dip in trading on Friday. Yesterday the stock opened at $45.10 per share with an initial transaction for more than 11 million shares, but the market has been less kind to Twitter today with the stock hovering around $42 per share all day.

While a five percent drop in price on the second day of trading may seem like a big deal, this was actually expected by many market analyst, and is not an uncommon event for newly listed companies. The real tell tell signs will come next Thursday and if the stock has managed to stay in the $40-45 or higher range.

While we are on the subject of the financial markets, you might remember that earlier this week, OCZ, saw its stock take a nosedive towards the bottom. With the release of a new SSD that has been met with good reviews, it appears that some investors have renewed confidence in the SSD manufacturer. Today the stock is up around $0.85 per share which represents a rebound of over 90-percent since Tuesday.

Lenovo has posted up its results for its second fiscal quarter, which ended on September 30. Revenue for the three-month period sat at $9.8 billion, which is a 13% increase year-over-year. Lenovo also saw its second quarter profit grow very quickly, with pre-tax income growing up 30% year-over-year to $265 million.

Earnings also increased, a nice 36% year-over-year to around $220 million. The biggest news here is just how many devices Lenovo sold in the quarter, which was a hefty 29 million devices, which equates to around 4 devices sold, every single second. This has helped Lenovo keep its 'world's largest PC vendor' statement for the second quarter running, with the highest-ever quarterly market share of 17.7%, which is up 2% year-over-year.

This morning Twitter launched its long awaited and highly anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange. Carrying the stock symbol, TWTR, the company went public at the opening bell which was rang by Sir Patrick Stewart himself. Twitter set its opening price to $26 per share, but that did not last very long.

Just seconds after opening, Twitter saw the opening transaction trade with 11 million of its offered 70 million shares sell for over $45 each. This effectively valued Twitter to be worth approximately $25.4 billion, which makes the total IPO to be roughly 1/10th of what the company is valued at. When the day is over and all 70 million shares are gone, Twitter will have raised more than $1.82 billion. While that number is far lower than the $16 billion Facebook raised, I suspect that Twitter will have far less fallout from its IPO than Facebook did.

At the time of this writing, Twitter is trading at $45.30 per share which is up almost 74-percent since the opening bell. How high the stock will rise is anyone's guess. I will update this post with a follow-up when the markets close today at 4pm, so bookmark this page and check back around 5pm for the latest update on how Twitter's IPO went.