Business, Financial & Legal - Page 124

Earlier this week, BlackBerry announced that its CEO, Thorsten Heins, would be stepping down as the company takes itself off the market and looks to rebuild with a $1 billion investment. While Heins departure might be just what the company needs, it is always sad to see the head of a company leave something he poured his life into.

In a letter pinned to employees this week, Heins has expressed is gratitude to "BlackBerry team members," and said that he feels John Chen will make an excellent choice for interim CEO. He went on to conclude the letter by stating that he is "BlackBerry's biggest fan, and would continue cheering on the company from the sidelines. The memo also states that BlackBerry will be hosting a town hall later this week to address employee concerns, and answer any questions they may have. I have copied the letter below in its entirety.

Yesterday it appeared that OCZ's stock was in a downward fall that was unstoppable before leveling off near the closing bell at $0.73. Today the stock fell yet another 38-percent to just $0.39 per share at its lowest, and like yesterday it rebounded slightly and closed at $0.44 per share.

As of this posting, OCZ has yet to release an official statement, and this has further led to investor confidence falling. A quick Google search will turn up dozens of industry analyst questioning just how long the company has left before it is forced to fill bankruptcy, and even more complaints on forums across the internet where customers are complaining about failed Vertex SSD drives.

While I am still mystified about the company's lack of response to this crisis, I have developed a new theory on what may be going on. A few weeks back we reported that Toshiba might be looking to buy OCZ outright, but nothing ever materialized from this. I have a very small suspicion that OCZ may be keeping quiet in order to force their price even lower to draw in someone looking to pick them up at what might be a steal. This would wash the company's leaders hands of things and they would get off with a nice payday.

For two years running, EA has won The Consumerist's "Worst Company in America' award, which has forced the company to look into what it had done to get so many customers angry, and is still working on it to this day according to the freshly-appointed CEO, Andrew Wilson.

Wilson spoke with Polygon, where he said: "Whether you respect the source or not, I think it was a wake up call, and it was absolutely something that we spent a lot of time and energy over, and continue to spend a lot of time and energy over. For us, it was less about, 'How do we not get voted the worst company again?' but more about, 'Okay, are there things that we could do differently or things that we have done that have been misinterpreted that would cause people to feel that way?"

EA's goal, according to Wilson, is to "build great games and services." He added: "What we have been doing over time is really working to either update those things or eliminate those things, and really get back to our focus on games. Because at the end of the day, if we're making great games and services, we won't get voted worst company in America again."

It appears that the long saga of BlackBerry's demise is over and the end result is not a failed company, or a new handset OEM resulting from a buyout. Instead, BlackBerry has taken itself off of the market and has received a $1 billion investment from Fairfax Holdings, the company which failed to raise $4.7 billion to buy BlackBerry earlier this year.

Along with this morning's announcement, BlackBerry said that its CEO, Thorsten Heins, will be stepping down after almost two years at the reigns. Heins will be replaced by Interim CEO, John S. Chen, who previously served as chairman and CEO of Sybase, Inc before it was acquired by another company in 2010. Todays announcements have done little to impress investors though as BlackBerry's stock is trading at $6.55 after a high of $8 last week.

"Today's announcement represents a significant vote of confidence in BlackBerry and its future by this group of preeminent, long-term investors," said Barbara Stymiest, Chair of BlackBerry's Board. "The BlackBerry Board conducted a thorough review of strategic alternatives and pursued the course of action that it concluded is in the best interests of BlackBerry and its constituents, including its shareholders. This financing provides an immediate cash injection on terms favorable to BlackBerry, enhancing our substantial cash position. Some of the most important customers in the world rely on BlackBerry and we are implementing the changes necessary to strengthen the company and ensure we remain a strong and innovative partner for their needs."

If there's one thing Microsoft needs right now, it's the perfect storm of marketing campaigns to push Windows and Surface onto millions of more customers to combat the increased onslaught from rivals Apple, Google and Samsung.

The Redmond-based software giant is looking to spend around $405 million this year on marketing, compared to $241 million last year. Splitting this up, we'll see $131 million or so in offers and incentive-related spending, while $274 million will be spent on marketing and operating expenses. Microsoft wants to see Windows-based slates in stores, and will spend heavily to see its dreams come true.

The company is pushing to have 16 million tablet sales over the holiday season, with the extra marketing push helping to convince customers they want a Windows tablet. It shouldn't be hard, because Microsoft has some great devices out there with its OS on them, but it's not really a fight of devices anymore, but services.

The day has come for Dell, which is now a private company. Starting today, Dell has just two shareholders: Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners. Michael Dell has been attempting to shift his company from being on the share market to a private company for nearly the whole of 2013, with his day of reckoning now here.

After 25 years of being a publicly traded company, it'll be nice to see where Dell goes from here. From here on out, it won't have to worry about impressing shareholders, it can hopefully do some impressive, bold moves to stand out in the industry once again. Michael Dell has already said we can expect a bunch of new tablets from the company.

One of these is the Intel Bay Trail-powered, Windows 8.1-featured Dell Venue 8 Pro, which is priced quite competitively at $299 and is available now for pre-order.

If there's a company capable of making a tremendous return, stomping its foot down firmly into the ground to claim victory, it's AMD. The chipmaker has finally returned to profitability after numerous years of bad results.

AMD posted a Q3 revenue of $1.46 billion, representing a 15% year-over-year increase, and a net income of $48 million - or 4c per share. Moving onto the non-GAAP basis, AMD posted a net income of $31 million, with this figure including $22 million in restructuring charges. If AMD didn't have to take that restructuring charge, it would've enjoyed earnings of 6c per share.

The 'experts' over on Wall Street expected the company to report Q3 earnings of 2c per share on revenue of $1.41 billion. AMD CEO, Rory Read, said that the company's turnaround is part of its strategic transformation it talked about years ago: "We achieved 26 percent sequential revenue growth driven by our semi-custom business and remain committed to generating approximately 50 percent of revenue from high-growth markets over the next two years. Developing industry-leading technology remains at our core, and we are in the middle of a multi-year journey to redefine AMD as a leader across a more diverse set of growth markets."

One of the more interesting things to come from the weekend of news is that Google is building itself a gigantic floating data center, which is being constructed in the San Francisco bay.

It's a four-story tall building, which sits on some shipping containers. CNET donned its detective hat and took a look, snapping the picture above. Why would the search giant be building a data center on the water? Well, what do data centers require the most? Cooling. It needs to keep all of those servers cool, where the body of water around it being the perfect spot.

But, saltwater is a different ballgame, so Google would require a desalination or filtering plant to use the water appropriately - which I'm sure it has planned.

Update: We've had an e-mail from a Qualcomm representative who says that Anand is still with the company, serving as Senior Vice President where he is "exploring certain enterprise-related initiatives."

When Apple launched its iPhone 5S last month with the A7 processor rocking inside, most people rolled their eyes thinking "why?" Well, one of those people was Qualcomm representative Anand Chandrasekher, who called the A7 processor a "gimmick."

Chandrasekher is no longer with Qualcomm, with the company stating in a statement to CNET: "Anand Chandrasekher, is moving to a new role leading our exploration of certain enterprise related initiatives...Anand will continue to report to Steve Mollenkopf, COO and President of Qualcomm. This will be effective immediately."

It looks like Samsung's Galaxy S4 has been super popular for the South Korean giant, with Samsung CEO JK Shin announcing that the flagship Android-powered smartphone from Samsung has sold over 40 million units.

Considering the Galaxy S4 launched just five months ago, this is a mammoth effort. At the two-month mark, there had been over 20 million Galaxy S4's sold, but now we're talking about double that. Considering the Galaxy S III sold 30 million units in its launch last year, this is a great jump. We should expect Samsung to break through the 50 million unit milestone before 2013 is wrapped up.

If a new report is correct, BlackBerry's knight in shining armor could be coming out of the far east. A new report from Digital Trends is suggesting that Lenovo is seriously considering purchasing BlackBerry as a whole. This deal would provide Lenovo a cheap and easy entry point into the US smartphone market, something it has been eyeballing for sometime now.

While Fairfax Financial has experienced issues securing the $4.7 billion it would need to purchase the company, Lenovo would have no such issues and could offer up cash on very short notice. The only thing standing in the way of the deal would be BlackBerry's co-founders Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fredin who are also considering buying the company. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Lenovo has signed a nondisclosure agreement that allows them to look at BlackBerry's books, so this offer could be more serious than originally thought.

Following in Google's footsteps, Apple is looking to gain from BlackBerry's ongoing demise. Unlike Google who opened up an engineering hub just down the road from BlackBerry, Apple is looking to poach employees from the failing company via LinkedIn.

Just days after BlackBerry announced that it would be laying off more than 4500 employees, Apple began sending out invitations via LinkedIn to a recruitment event that was being held just 15-minutes down the road from BlackBerry headquarters. Normally, poaching employees is frowned upon, but with BlackBerry now resuming talks of being split up and sold off, I am sure that these engineers see these acts from Google and Apple as a blessing.

The entire invitation read as follows:

Apple is in some need of many more millions of customers, and what better market to pouch them from than an emerging market like India. According to The Economic Times, Apple execs in India recently hosted execs from some of the top retailers in the country.

During this meeting, the Apple execs spoke of plans to open up store-in-store locations and 100 standalone stores in smaller Indian markets:

This would be a good move for the company, as it is losing millions of customers to Samsung, it could pick these missing customers up, and millions more in emerging markets.

Anyone who has been following the Bitcoin saga, will likely have ran across reports that the virtual currency is fueling the online drug trade. For anyone who doubted this, today's seizure of Silk Road proves just how closely connected the two really were. Reports suggest as much as $1 billion of Bitcoin transactions occurred as a direct result of Silk Road.

Today as news began to spread about Silk Road being shut down by the FBI, the price of Bitcoins dropped from $130 down to just over $85. Analyst are speculating that the selloff was the direct result of Silk Roads seizure, and indicated that many users felt uncertain about the future of the virtual currency. There could potentially be millions of Bitcoins that are frozen in limbo as a result of the seizure, and they will most likely never be claimed by their owners. At the time of this writing, the Bitcoin price had rebounded to about $120.

It looks like another Japanese giant is experiencing trouble, with Toshiba looking to reduce its TV staff by up to 50%. The company will also stop production at two of its three overseas factories before the end of this fiscal year.

Toshiba has said it will also increase outsourced production to 70%, up from 40%, and reduce the amount of its global staff in the TV division by 3,000 with two-thirds of these positions held overseas. Toshiba hasn't penciled in which two factories would be closed, but we should find that out soon enough.

Toshiba has been experiencing losses in its TV division for over two years now, which is blamed on a slowdown in Europe and a drop in domestic demand for its TVs. I'm sure the huge competition from Samsung doesn't help, either.

BlackBerry is quite quickly circling the sink, ready to be sucked into it, but before then it looks like Google is acquiring a bunch of ex-BlackBerry engineers.

Reuters reports that Google's Motorola Mobility division is setting up a new hub in Waterloo, Ontario - BlackBerry's hometown. The company is looking to take in people who have backgrounds in engineering and computer science. Even with BlackBerry starting to fade, Waterloo is a massive hub of talent thanks to the University of Waterloo's top-notch computer science program.

The Engineering Director at Motorola Canada, Derek Phillips, has told Reuters that Motorola is looking to "get just as many people who are interested to come out and hire as many people as we can."

When Microsoft first announced it was acquiring smartphone manufacturer Nokia, I knew there was something fishy about the deal. When ex-Microsoft exec and current Nokia CEO Stephen Elop was announced as the new head of Microsoft's Devices and Services division, things began to make sense.

Fast-forward to the announcement that Elop would receive over $25 million as part of a payout in which Microsoft would cover more than half of the cost to see the wheels really start turning in my head. Today, a new report from Forbes says that Nokia has admitted to providing misleading information regarding Elop's compensation.

The original statement issued by Nokia said that Elop's contract and compensation package was "essentially the same" as the company's previous CEO, but after some digging through SEC filings, it was made clear that the board had made fundamental changes in Elop's contract.

Earlier this year amidst its growing financial troubles, BlackBerry announced its plans to sell off its two Dassault Falcon medium-range private jets. The two smaller jets would be replaced by a a long-range Bombardier Global Express Jet. The Bombardier would cost the company roughly $25 million at a time when the company was already struggling financially.

Fast-forward to the past week when BlackBerry announced that it would be leaving the consumer market space as it planned to lay off 4,500 employees. Today the once king of smartphones announced that it will be selling all three of its private jets, including the two Dassault's that it never managed to get rid of after the Bombardier arrived several months ago. Analysts are suggesting that all three jets could be worth a combined $50-65 million, but that depends on the planes condition, and current market value.

"Several years ago, the company bought two medium-range Dassault aircraft," BlackBerry said in a statement. "Earlier this year the company decided to sell both planes and replace them with one longer-range aircraft. The company considered several options and selected a used Bombardier aircraft, which was eventually delivered in July. In light of the company's current business condition, the company has decided to sell that aircraft along with the two legacy aircraft and will no longer own any planes."

Bloomberg Businessweek enjoyed an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook last week, where Cook reiterated that he believes the tablet market will overpass the PC market within 2 years.

Cook said: "We're 24 months away from that" which isn't too far away at all. Cook also said that most of this growth in the tablet market in coming from PC makers who are making low-cost Android devices as a 'defensive maneuver.' Cook also used the time to talk smack about Android tablets, which is something he has done on more than one occasion.

Cook said: "I think if I bought [an Android tablet] and used it, and I thought that was a tablet experience, I'm not sure I would ever buy another tablet. The responsiveness isn't there. The basic touch is really off. The app experience is a stretched-out smartphone kind of experience. It's not an optimized experience."

We should expect Twitter to go public in the next couple of months, but according to a report on Reuters, the social networking site might push its IPO before Thanksgiving.

One source has told Reuters that Twitter could raise over $1 billion in its IPO, and while it may sound like a lot, it is less than 1% of Facebook's record-breaking IPO which smashed through $105 billion. We don't know what Twitter will do when it goes public, but we should expect the biggest Twitter apps to go under the knife and come out looking just a little different. Let's just hope this doesn't happen to Twitter, like it did Facebook.