Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 130

TSMC has teased that it will be shifting some of its manufacturing to the United States in the near future, but now the company has decided it won't make a decision on its shift to the US until next year.

TSMC boss Morris Chang said back in January that it was looking to the US as a new place for a manufacturing plant, but TSMC spokesperson Michael Kramer has now come out and said that the company will decide in the "first half of 2018" if it will invest over $16 billion in a new production facility in the United States.

Kramer told Reuters: "We won't make a decision until next year. We would sacrifice some benefits if we move to the States. But we have flexibility in Taiwan. If an earthquake happened for instance (in Taiwan), we could send thousands of people here as support, whereas it's harder in the States". Reuters points out that TSMC receives around 65% of its total revenue from the US, so building a manufacturing plant in the US makes a whole lot of sense.

We reported back in January that AMD was gunning after LG, Vizio, MediaTek, and Sigma Designs - but now the US International Trade Commission has agreed to begin an investigation in alleged GPU patent infringement.

The four companies have allegedly used visual processing in their various products, including smartphones, TVs, and mobile processors - that infringe on AMD's concepts for unified graphics shaders and parallel graphics pipelines. If AMD is victorious in the USITC's investigation, it could see product sales bans on LG devices, and Vizio TVs.

Uber has been experiencing some serious issues in the last few months, but now Recode is reporting that Uber President Jeff Jones is leaving his position, just 6 months after joining the ridesharing giant.

Uber has been fighting law enforcement, sexual harassment allegations, one of its self-driving cars running a red light in San Francisco, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick leaving Trump's newly-formed advisory council, and then Kalanick busted raging down one of his own drivers about rumors of reduced income for Uber drivers. This has all happened in the last few months, and it's now reaching boiling point where executives seem to be jumping ship.

And now... Uber President Jeff Jones leaving has an Uber spokesperson saying: "We want to thank Jeff for his six months at the company and wish him all the best". Jones arrived to Uber after leading Target's new business model, and was a big score for Uber. Right now, Uber is in huge trouble - leaving many wondering what their future now holds.

HTC has announced that the company has sold its phone manufacturing facility in Shanghai to boost their investment into their Vive virtual reality business.

A Chinese company, Xingbao Information Technology bought the factory for $91.17 million.

HTC said the sale of the Shanghai plant will not affect its mobile division. This also removes the liability of owning the factory and the depreciation of its value. HTC does still occasionally manufacture devices for other companies like the Google Pixel, but most of HTC's contract manufacturing days are over.

Qualcomm is redefining what the Snapdragon brand is, with an announcement of a "new naming structure" for Snapdragon. The move will see the entire hardware and software platform on a Snapdragon-powered device being referred to as Snapdragon, and not just the processor.

The company explains: "For decades, the semiconductor industry has used the term "processor" to mean the component that powers the most advanced devices. It's a word that Qualcomm Technologies has embraced over the years with our Snapdragon brand, or as we say-our Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. But the word is an inadequate representation of what the technology actually is, and the solutions that tens of thousands of Qualcomm Technologies innovators have worked on".

Qualcomm continues: "In truth, Snapdragon is more than a single component, a piece of silicon, or what many would misinterpret as the CPU; it's an anthology of technology, comprising hardware, software, and services that are not fully captured in a word like "processor." That is why Qualcomm Technologies is refining our terminology by referring to Snapdragon as a "platform" instead of a processor".

GoPro has found itself in a curious position, with the third reduction in its workforce since the beginning of 2016 - with the action camera giant cutting another 270 jobs from its roster, hoping to save $200 million across 2017.

The new cuts include current staff, and open positions - after posting a $373 million loss in 2016, after production delays on the new Hero 5 cameras - as well as the recall of its Karma drone. GoPro stock took a big hit, hitting an all-time low this week, but went up 10% in after hours trading.

Back in January 2016, the company ditched 7% of its global workforce - but the November cuts were worse, with 15% of its staff being thrown out of a job. GoPro also completely closed its entertainment division, and lost ex-Skype boss and GoPro president Tony Bates. GoPro hasn't stated which areas the new cuts will affect, so I'm sure we'll hear all about that in the coming weeks, and whether it'll have lingering - or potentially disastrous repercussions throughout 2017.

Tesla Motors is looking to raise just over $1 billion, something the electric car maker will do soon as it ramps up towards the launch of its upcoming Model 3 electric vehicle - its new car priced at around $35,000.

The upcoming $1 billion injection will come from $250 million in secondary stock offerings, with another $750 million in convertible senior notes (as The Verge points out, it's "basically a loan"). There'll also be options for the underwriters to secure another 15% for each offering, while Tesla CEO and real life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, will buy $25 million in Tesla common stock as part of the deal.

Tesla will launch its new Model 3 electric car in 2018, starting from $35,000.

Vertu, a manufacturer, and retailer of luxury phones was established back in 1998 by Nokia. However, the company has changed hands a couple of times by now.

First, the company was sold to EQT VI in 2012, and their most recent owner, a Hong Kong-based holding company Godin Holdings, bought the company in 2015.

Now, Vertu once again has a new owner - a Turkish businessman Hakan Uzan, who is currently in exile. Uzan reportedly bought Vertu for $61 million.

Toshiba has had a great year in the storage world throughout 2016, with the company becoming the fastest growing vendor in the world with $25 billion in HDD sales, and $17 billion in SSD sales.

In two IDC reports, they state: "Toshiba's broad HDD and SSD portfolio enabled them to participate in nearly all market segments for storage devices, a key factor that helped to underpin Toshiba's strong year-over-year revenue growth in CY2016. With successful launches of new HDD and SSD products over the next few quarters to address demand from cloud service providers and the traditional IT market, Toshiba should be well positioned to sustain further HDD and SSD revenue growth in 2017".

Toshiba's hard work in the HDD market saw 9% increase in unit market share in Q4 2016, with Toshiba now taking a large 24% stake in the market - a 60% increase over Q2 2015, where they had just 15%. Interestingly, Toshiba was the only HDD maker that saw total revenue increase in 2016, and increase in revenue share in every product segment: mobile, desktop, performance-optimized enterprise, and capacity-optimized enterprise for the year.

Apple has announced the name of their new spaceship-looking headquarters - Apple Park. The 175-acre campus will be ready for employees to begin occupying in April.

Over the next six months until the official opening, more than 12,000 people will move into the futuristic structure.

To honor the memory of Steve Jobs, Apple decided to name the theater at Apple Park 'Steve Jobs Theater.'