Business, Financial & Legal - Page 127

On Friday, HTC released its earnings report for the second quarter of 2013 and things did not look well for the company. The numbers show that profit took a nosedive during the second quarter and fell approximately 83 percent, while revenue declined 22 percent. These are usually numbers that indicate a company is heading for a hard and unfortunate brick wall. Fortunately, HTC recognizes this and has decided to reorganize its entire US operations.

This morning, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that they have obtained an internal memo that unveils how the reorganization will go. President of Global Sales, Jason Mackenzie, will now head up all of US operations and former U.S. Boss Mike Woodward will now lead a new specialized unit dubbed "Emerging Devices" that will focus on innovating new HTC products and global distribution strategies.

"I want to thank these two outstanding leaders for their contributions to the success of the HTC One so far," Mr. Chou wrote about Mr. Mackenzie and Mr. Woodward. "But as you know and would expect, we also need to do more. With the success of the One, we have many new opportunities both to expand current sales as well as to enter new distribution channels with new business models."

This has been going on for a while now, but judgment has finally been served in the Panasonic price fixing case. Panasonic will plead guilty to US government charges that see the Japanese company falling on their sword over price fixing in two huge markets.

The first, is the laptop battery pack market and the second is auto parts. Panasonic have agreed to pay $56.5 million in fines for the two separate conspiracies, with 15 executives at several companies will be facing jail time as part of the deal. Hopefully you're sitting down for this one, but Panasonic's price fixing has been going on for quite some time in the auto parts industry, dating back to 1998.

Panasonic have been working with other companies behind closed doors in order to "fix, stabilize and maintain the prices" of lighting equipment sold to manufacturers such as Honda, Mazda and Nissan. The Japanese company also worked with other corporations where price fixing was applied to switches and sensors for auto steering wheels, doors, wipers, turn signals and other parts of a car's control system that were sold to fellow Japanese company Toyota.

If you own stock in QUALCOMM Incorporated, today is a very good day for you. The company announced this morning that it will be paying a quarterly cash dividend of $0.35 per common share which will be payable on September 25, 2013. This dividend comes after record-breaking quarters for the company as the mobile devices market continues unprecedented growth in all sectors.

During the second quarter of 2013, QUALCOMM amassed $6.12 billion in revenue which is up 24 percent over the same period in 2012. Of that $6.12 billion, $1.87 billion accounted for net income which was actually down 16 percent year-over-year. Operating cash flow came in around $2.2 billion which was up 17 percent year-over-year. Second-quarter operating income was around $1.88 billion which is said to be up 24 percent year-over-year.

"We delivered another strong quarter as the worldwide adoption of smartphones continues," said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm. "Looking forward, we are seeing strong traction with our new Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 and 800 processors, and we continue to expect healthy growth in 3G and 3G/4G multimode devices around the world. We are pleased to be raising our calendar 2013 3G/4G device shipment estimates and our revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2013."

I've made my thoughts on the iPhone (and Apple as a company) many times before here on TweakTown, predicting that sales would drop late last year when the iPhone 5 was launching. Apple aren't releasing anything special, or different - the iPhone 5 being the peak of the 'sameish' iPhone game they've been playing for half a decade, except it was slightly taller.

Well, Fortune have now taken a look at consensus projections for how many iPhones Apple sold over the past three months, with analysts not expecting much for the quarter coming. Apple haven't been able to report any year-over-year sales growth for the iPhone, which is a big problem.

Their consensus analyst estimates that we should expect somewhere between 26.7 million and 27.9 million iPhones sold over the three-month period, which is only a slither more than the 26 million iPhones Apple sold in the same quarter of 2012. Most people think a cheaper iPhone will help them and while it would help their sales numbers, it won't help their bottom line, or for the company over the long term.

Earlier today, the website TorrentFreak noticed that Google had been served with a DMCA takedown notice from HBO that ordered them to remove a torrent link for the popular media player VLC. The link was neatly tucked inside a list with hundreds of links to torrent urls for HBO's popular Game of Thrones series.

It is likely that HBO never even reviewed the list which was generated by an automatic search bot that scans the web for torrents that may infringe on copyright holders' rights. There are literally more of these notices filed every month than there are of downloads of the actual torrents. During the last month alone, Google received 14,855,269 URLs which it was forced to remove from its search results under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The URL in question points to the torrent site Torrent Portal, but as you can see in the screen captured image above, it does not point to any copyrighted material as VLC media player is actually an open source project. While this is most likely a mistake, it raises a massive red flag and makes us wonder what other links were removed from Google search results because of an automated process that generates the so-called "bad URLs".

Chris Sevier, with the help of his attorney, has filed a lawsuit against Apple in the US District Court in Nashville, TN last month. Sevier is angry that Apple sell products that allow men to view porn. Yes. This isn't a joke. This is his introduction:

I know, you can't believe what you're reading right now and don't worry, I'm sure you're not alone. Sevier is seeking damages and injunctive relief against Apple, all because they sell devices that are capable of viewing porn. Sevier would like to see a porn-filtering "safe mode" made default on all devices and products sold by Apple. His complaint notes that "If Apple agrees to sell its devices 'on safe mode' before trial, the Plaintiff will terminate this litigation."

Valve have just announced and launched Pipeline, which is a community website dedicated to helping high school students who are looking into a career in the video game industry.

Pipeline was the creation of a group of high school interns working at Valve, who hope to "establish a connection to the world of teenagers that are asking many questions about getting into the gaming industry." Valve's managing director, Gabe Newell, said in a promotional video for Pipeline: "This website was created entirely be teenagers."

The Pipeline FAQ says that Valve's management are looking to find a way to connect with young, aspiring game-makers:

In the wake of turmoil at Hewlett-Packard, it appears that Lenovo has seized the opportunity to claim the throne as the largest PC manufacturer in the world. This claim comes as the latest numbers from the IDC and Gartner are released to the public. It appears Lenovo has managed a 1.7 percent gain in market share in the global PC market over the last year.

While the margins are small, Lenovo managed to ship a little over 200,000 more units than HP's 12.4 million units shipped during the Q2 time period of 2013. Lenovo is sitting at 16.7 percent of global market share, while HP is floundering at around 16.3 percent. The once king of the world, Dell, is roughly four million units behind both companies with a market share of just 11.8 percent.

Up and comer Acer shipped roughly half the number of units that Lenovo did in Q2 and holds on to about 8.3 percent of the global sales market. Also notable is ASUS who shipped about 4.5 million units during Q2 and held onto a 6 percent market share.

July 5 was the deadline for all bidding proposals to buy the content streaming service Hulu. The date was set by the Board of Directors after bids were received from everyone including Yahoo, AT&T and the Chernin Group in recent weeks. Today, we found out that both DirecTV and Time Warner Cable also submitted their bids before the deadline was up.

DirecTV apparently placed a bid to acquire the company as a whole, while Time Warner Cable reportedly offered up a proposal to become an investor alongside the service's current owners: Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox Inc., and Comcast.

No word on how much each bid was for, but with Yahoo's bid around $1.1 billion, we can assume that similar offers were in the same ballpark. It looks like Hulu will get purchased by someone, and let's all hope that the service actually improves over the current state it is in.

It's no secret that Apple and Microsoft both want to become king of the content delivery world. With Apple pushing Apple TV and Microsoft building its next-gen console, the Xbox One, around the home theatre experience, it is very clear that the next few years will be all about who can capitalize on this new and emerging market.

This morning, it appears that Sony has plans to toss its own hat into the content delivery market with its upcoming Playstation 4. We are learning that Sony has officially re-trademarked a new brand named "Playstation TV." This could mean that the PS4 will have similar functionality to the Xbox One or it could mean that Sony is just scooping up anything related to its IP in the event that it wants to head down that road in the future.

Additionally, this trademark is nothing new as Sony has actually held it since 2006, but let it expire earlier this year. Whether or not the lapse in ownership was intentional is still up in the air, but we are sure that Sony is planning something along the lines of content delivery.

Apple will be working with NV Energy, a Nevada-based utility company, where they'll build a solar array together. The new solar array will be built next to Apple's Reno, Nevada-based data center, and will power the data center once it's complete, as well as the surrounding community. Apple said in a statement:

The new facility will create around 1,000 jobs in and around Washoe Country, as well as "result in, over a 10-year period, a total of $24.1 million in direct and indirect revenues in Nevada" according to a survey by Applied Economics for the State of Nevada. Apple's goal is to eventually have all of their facilities powered by 100% renewable energy, and at this rate, they'll get there in no time.

Intel has a strange age-related by-law, that requires all corporate officers to be aged 65 or under. This has forced Intel's Chief Technology Officer, Justin Rattner, out of his position as he is now 65 years old.

Rattner joined the company in 1973, becoming Intel's first Principal Engineer in 1979, the fourth Intel Fellow in 1988 and one of the first Intel Senior Fellows in 2001. He has participated in more Intel keynotes than any other Intel presenter, and has four important patents with his name stamped to them: a data processing system; a hardware scheduler/dispatcher for said data processing system; an interprocessor communication system, and a programmable I/O sequencer for use in an I/O processor.

Rattner will step down from his position with Intel Labs, and report to Intel's President, Renée James, in the meantime. It has worked out well, as his departure is straight away, with Intel stating that a "pressing family matter" has happened, and he needs to take an unspecified amount of personal leave from Intel. Upon his return, he will be an a non-officer role.

Jumping over to the UK for this piece, where Microsoft have lost a trademark case over their branding for cloud storage service SkyDrive. The ruling, which covers both the UK and EU, stated that Microsoft infringed on British Sky Broadcasting's trademark of the Sky brand with SkyDrive.

The ruling saw that it is possible for consumers to confuse the two brands, somehow. Sky, from BSkyB, offers their satellite broadcasting service, mobile apps and streaming to customers, and previously a cloud storage product but it fell under the name of Sky Store & Share. Microsoft have of course thrown in a counterclaim to invalidate four Sky trademarks "on the grounds of descriptiveness for cloud storage services."

Samsung have done quite well for themselves over the last couple of years, fighting against the near-invincible iPhone. How does it compare to Apple in regards to phone subsidies, something Apple usually have the most control over?

Samsung are actually out and ahead, according to market research firm ABI Research and their latest report. They've said that the average implied carrier subsidy for a Samsung smartphone in the US is around 84%. What this means is that phone carriers cover 84% of the up-front costs of a Samsung phone when a consumer buys one on a contract.

The carrier then makes the money back on the two-year contract you've just signed through various fees and monthly charges. HTC see a subsidy of around 80%, with the iPhone sitting at 74%. ABI analyst, Stuart Carlaw, says: "Samsung continues to squeeze its competitors at every turn. The Samsung [Galaxy S4] is now considered on a par with Apple's iPhone 5. Coupled with better subsidy, the breadth of its device portfolio, increasingly savvy marketing, and its excellence in channel execution, it is little wonder Samsung is dominating the mobile handset market from top to bottom."

My fondest memories as a kid growing up was growing up through the network area of connecting PC's together for some Quake, Duke Nukem, Command & Conquer and good old file sharing - but those days could be ending in Sweden, where there is now a "LAN party tax".

From now on, organizers of LAN parties will have to pay a fee of up to $5,000 so that they can receive a "permit" that will allow them to connect together PC's or gaming consoles. The ruling was made legal by the Gambling Board, who are the supervisory authority for gaming and lottery and in accordance with the liberal government's revised slot machine regulation of last year.

Now video games fall under this umbrella, and LAN gamers and organizers are only going to suffer. General Counsel at the Gaming Board, Johan Rohr, has said that "in the eyes of the law, these are slot machines." Not only will the LAN organizers be slapped with a fee for the "permit", but they could also be up for paying extra for an inspection fee if the Gambling Board decide to check the party out.

BlackBerry reported its earnings and sales figures today. Unfortunately for the company, those numbers were lower than expectations. Because of this underwhelming performance, BlackBerry shares declined by over 27 percent today. The price per share for BlackBerry now sits at around $10.46, or the lowest they have been since November of last year.

Many analysts expected BlackBerry to sell around 3.5 million BB10 devices this quarter. Instead, the company managed to sell just 2.7 million. To put this figure in perspective, Nokia sold nearly double the amount of devices as BlackBerry, which still isn't saying much. BlackBerry sat at an operating loss of $84 million, or 16 cents per share. This is quite a bit better than this quarter last year in which BlackBerry lost of $500 million. Revenue was also up 9 percent to $3.1 billion.

BlackBerry still has quite a bit to do if they want to stick around. Some have called for the company to split its hardware and software business, something that the company says it isn't planning to do. Do you think BlackBerry has a chance at sticking around?

Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, and Skype have been hit with a complaint in the European Union over data protection issues in relation to the recently revealed NSA spying program Prism. THe complaint has been brought by the same group that ran the Europe v Facebook campaign. Through this latest complaint, they hope to gain clarification on the laws regarding foreign data passing to US agencies.

These five companies have been selected specifically because of their corporate structure. Each has a subsidiary in the European Union, which should be required to follow EU data protection rights and policies. The question becomes a bit less straightforward when these companies have US headquarters, possibly making them be required to comply with US laws that are in conflict with EU laws. They have an excellent explanation:

You'll notice that Google and YouTube were not included. This is because they do not feature a subsidiary in the EU. They do, however, have datacenters and Evf believes they can use this to file a similar complaint. We'll be following this complaint closely and let you know as soon as any major breakthroughs happen.

Everyone's favorite self-destructing picture messaging service has finally developed a plan to generate revenue. As of right now, the company doesn't have any source of income other than investors, who recently gave the company $60 million in investment funds. The development, server, and operating costs have all been paid for by investment funds.

In order to become a viable company, Snapchat needs to start making money. CEO Evan Spiegel has detailed Snapchat's plans to start making money. The first part of the plan, and the one likely to be implemented first, makes use of in-app purchases. The Snapchat team has been investigating various customization options that people might be willing to pay for. This could include more photo editing tools, like Instagram's filters, the ability to modify font size, color, etc, and interface customizations. The company notes that they haven't considered allowing people to pay to save snaps.

Eventually Snapchat would like to introduce native advertising. It's worth noting that Snapchat already advertises to its own users on holidays, usually by way of an animated video with the Snapchat Ghost. Snapchat says brands can already do this provided they are friends with other users or know the handle of the users they are trying to reach.

One of the things I don't like about Samsung's Galaxy range of devices, is that they feel 'plasticy' - mainly because, well, they're made from plastic. But, the South Korean's materials arm, Samsung Petrochemical, have just signed up for a joint venture with carbon fiber specialist SGL Group.

The joint venture will see the two aim to "develop new industrial and electronic applications with carbon composite materials for Samsung and the Korean market." The company will operate under the name Samsung SGL Carbon Composite Materials, and be 50% owned by Samsung. According to the companies' recent joint announcement, Samsung SGL Carbon Composite Materials will look to "provide a stable long-term supply of carbon fiber materials for Samsung and promote its use in various Samsung products and applications such as consumer electronics, medical devices and engineering applications."

This will only be a good thing for us consumers, who will receive better-made, and better-quality devices from Samsung.

Only hours ago did we report that Samsung could possibly be leaving the desktop PC business, where they would put full force into their portable devices, but the South Korean company have now issued a statement denying such things:

I'm glad to see Samsung reacting to this so quickly, and so they should. They're one of the stronger companies at the moment and they need to show that the PC market is still something worth doing business in, let's just hope Windows 8.1 can change things around, and quick.