Business, Financial & Legal - Page 132

It truly has been the year for shuffles at the top of big companies, with today bringing news that Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch is stepping down. Lynch is taking a job over at Apple, where he'll be titled as the VP of Technology.

Lynch will step down on March 22, with his CTO position not being filled by a successor. Adobe's official statement, below:

Kogan Mobile is in the headlines again, this time for booting a customer off their network for abusing their mobile phone plan. The telco offers an unlimited calls and text pre-paid plan that includes 6GB of data for $29, something they launched in December last year.

Brisbane customer, retail store manager Joel Campbell, was kicked off of the network, with Kogan claiming he was not using his service for "personal use", giving him 90 days to find a new provider. Within section 1.1 of Kogan Mobile's terms of service, they state that their network must be used for "personal use only" - the big problem is that in this seven-page ToS document, it does not state that heavy users would be kicked off of their service.

Campbell said "I have no reason to need a business phone," admitting he was a heavy user, saying that he accessed the Internet on his phone a lot during the day, but didn't think the cancellation of his service to Kogan was "warranted." He adds: "I'm paying for it. At the end of the day if I want more, I'll pay for more. It's not a loss to them."

Bringing you doom and gloom seems to be my job today. Nintendo's Wii U appears to be selling in underwhelming amounts. According to a Macquarie Capital analyst, Nintendo only managed to move 66,000 Wii U consoles in February, though 70 percent of those were the more expensive Deluxe Set.

According to NPD Group, Wii U sales actually went up in February by roughly 40 percent. However, this doesn't account for that many extra units as January's sales numbers were also low. The Wii U's price is likely to blame as it costs as much as, or more than, competing consoles that have extensive game libraries.

It's important to note that the Wii U's February sales numbers are lower than the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360's numbers from any month within the last seven years. Nintendo needs to repeat the success it saw with the 3DS after they dropped the price by dropping the price of the Wii U to a more competitive level.

It's looking as though Microsoft's expedition into the tablet market might not be paying off as much as the company expected. According to people knowledgeable about Microsoft's sales, the company has reportedly only sold around 1.5 million Surface devices, meaning Surface RT and Surface Pro sales combined.

Bloomberg reports that only about 400,000 Surface Pro units and just over one million Surface RT tablets have been sold. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft's expectations which had the company moving two million Surface RT tablets in December alone. The company ordered around three million, so there is quite a bit of stock left.

Part of the problem is the high cost of the Surface device. Another issue is Windows RT. There has yet to be a compelling argument for the operating system. Intel continues to push x86 as a viable tablet chip and it's capable of so much more. Microsoft's Surface advertising certainly hasn't helped, either.

The courts haven't been very nice to companies accused of infringing other people's patents. While this award isn't nearly as bad as the Apple v Samsung case, $30.2 million isn't something companies like to hand out. A jury has awarded $30.2 million to a former Sony employee who claimed Nintendo infringed upon his patent for glasses-less 3D technology.

Seijiro Tomita didn't get quite as much money as he felt he should. By his calculations, he should have received roughly $10 per console sold, which equates to just under $300 million. His actual award came in at just 10 percent of that, which still works out to be a lot of money.

"We are thankful to the jurors for their diligence and hard work," Tomita's lawyer said in a statement. "It has been a honor to represent Mr. Tomita and to protect his invention."

Samsung's Galaxy S IV is being launched in 24 hours, so it is about time Apple's marketing chief, Paul Schiller, came out on damage control. Because, you know, they make the devices that everyone else copies.

Well, the Apple marketing chief has had some interesting things to say about the Android user experience, and how it is not a pleasant experience. Schiller yet again attacked Android's continued fragmentation problems, describing it as "plain and simple". He took a big jab at Android, saying: "Android is often given as a free replacement for a feature phone and the experience isn't as good as an iPhone."

That wasn't all, Schiller also attacked Android for a lack of integrated software solutions - something I personally laughed out loud over - where he said:

Western Digital has invested in Skyera, a start-up focusing on all-SSD products for the enterprise market. The investment comes as part of Skyera's Series B round of financing, in which Skyera raised $51 million.

Radoslav Danilak, CEO of Skyera:

Steve Milligan, president and CEO, Western Digital:

Andy Rubin has resigned from head of Android development. In his place, Google has appointed Sundar Pichai. Pichai has previously been the senior vice president for Chrome and Apps and is a nine-year veteran of Google. This could indicate that Chrome OS and Android will start to get cozy with each other, something that has previously been predicted.

It would be interesting if Google were able to allow Android apps to run on Chrome OS. It shouldn't be that hard of a task, but Pichai has said that it is much too early to discuss whether this is in the cards.

Research firm IDC have their latest report out, which expects to see a tip toward Android being dominant this year in the tablet market, taking the throne from Apple's iPad. IDC have increased their 2013 forecast for worldwide tablet shipments to 190.9 million, up from 172.4 million units.

Interestingly, Jitesh Ubrani, Research Analysts for IDC's Tablet Tracker, has said: "One in every two tablets shipped this quarter was below 8 inches in screen size. And in terms of shipments, we expect smaller tablets to continue growing in 2013 and beyond." Getting into the Android dominance, the IDC report that moving into 2013, Google will continue to expand their share of the tablet market.

Android's share of the tablet market is expected to reach 48.8%, a huge surge compared to the IDC's previous forecast of just 41.5%. Android's increased dominance comes at the expense of Apple's iOS, which is expected to drop from 51% market share to 46% in 2013. How about Microsoft's Windows 8 platform?

It was only a matter of time, but Seagate have reached the milestone first by shipping two billion hard disk drives. It took the storage giant 29 years to reach this goal, and more impressively they shipped one billion drives by 2009, and have shipped one billion since.

The one billion drives shipped in the last four years is thanks to the explosion of demand for storage in mobile applications, cloud infrastructures, social media, business applications and the ever increasing consumer market. Steve Luczo, president, CEO and chairman of Seagate, has said: "This is truly an impressive accomplishment and I am proud to lead this company as we celebrate this success."

John Rydning, IDC's research vice president, for hard drives and semiconductors said:

Chris Hurley, co-founder of YouTube, is looking at getting back into the video website business after selling his video streaming site to Google for a nice $1.65 billion. Hurley has now begun teasing his new venture, where he said during a Q&A session with Digg founder and Google Ventures partner Kevin Rose: "I wish [South by Southwest] was a month later because I could unveil the new product."

He didn't go into much detail, but added that the new product is "primarily video-based...and gives flexibility for people to work together and create content." It looks like we should expect a next-generation YouTube, and that's not a bad thing at all. Digg founder Kevin Rose asked him if that was his intention, where he responded with: "We're not setting up to [kill YouTube]-now. There's always going to be a place for YouTube." His intention, instead, is to create a platform better suited for collaboration."

Facebook is used for a million and one things these days, but child trafficking - you'd think not. Misty VanHorn, a mother of two in Oklahoma has tried to sell her two children on Facebook. She was arrested on the weekend for alleged trafficking of minors on Facebook, trying to sell her 10-month-old and 2-year-old for $4000.

VanHorn reportedly offered the kids up for sale more than once, offering her innocent 10-month-old girl for $1000. Alternatively, you could buy a package deal which included both kids for $4000, where she actually had someone interested. VanHorn was dealing with a woman in Fort Smith, Ark., according to The Oklahoman. Because she was dealing across the state line from her home in Sallisaw, she might be charged with a federal crime.

Her Facebook message to the Fort Smith-based woman said: Just come to Sallisaw, it's only 30 minutes away and I'll give you all of her stuff and let y'all have her forever for $1,000. Why was VanHorn trying to sell her children? She wanted the $1000 to bail her boyfriend out of jail, where ironically she's being held on a $40,000 bail. Her kids are now in the custody of the state's department of human services, who alerted the police in the first place.

Cooler Master is waking up this morning to a fresh lawsuit involving its Seidon closed loop liquid CPU coolers. Asetek, the company who licenses similar coolers to companies like NZXT, Corsair and PNY is claiming that Cooler Master is infringing on two of its patents.

US Patents 8245764 and 8240362 are the two in dispute here, both of which provide a very vague overview of a sealed "cooling system for a computer system". Both reference a maintenance free liquid cooling system that is connected to a pump and radiator and "different embodiments of the heat exchanging system as well as means for establishing and controlling a flow of cooling liquid".

These patents (2010 filing) are updated versions of the ones Asetek used against CoolIT in a similar suit which were filed in 2005 which means that they are valid for any product created since 2005. Neither company has released a statement about the suit and both have refused to comment on the matter.

As a huge fan of SimCity, who pumped countless hours into as a kid, I haven't purchased it yet personally and I'm sure you know it's for good reason - the huge amounts of issues. We've posted many times about it, not just once, or twice, but even three, four, and now five times. There is now a petition against DRM, with a strong title of 'Institute an industry-wide return policy for video games that rely on remote servers and DRM to function properly.'

The petition states, in full:

I'm glad to see that the debacle EA has put themselves in with Maxis has led to this point, a strong petition that will actually move somewhere. What are your thoughts on the launch of SimCity? Have you even been able to play the game properly?

The White House and FCC aren't the only groups that are advocating for the legal unlocking of smartphones. AT&T has authored a post on their blog explaining that they are perfectly happy to unlock your device as long as the customer is paying his or her bills and they have fulfilled their service agreement commitment.

If you're an AT&T customer who meets the requirements above and have tried unlocking your device to no avail, let us know! We'd love to hear your story in the comments. If you'd like to read AT&T's full blog post detailing their unlocking policy, you can head over to AT&T's website.

The latest news surrounding the numerous problems plaguing the SimCity launch is that EA has changed its mind about refunds. A post authored March 5 by EA Global community manager Marcel Hatam said, "If you regrettably feel that we let you down, you can - of course - request a refund for your order at https://help.origin.com/contact-us."

Numerous Redditors have said that they were receiving refunds as late as yesterday afternoon. Currently users are reporting that Origin CSRs are saying that they cannot provide a refund. The original post, seen above, has been amended to point users to the return policy. Origin's Twitter account also tweeted the following:

The return policy states: "As a general policy, EA does not offer refunds on any products downloaded through Origin."

Five-year-old Danny Kitchen asked his parents for the password to their iPad so that he could download a free game, which turned into a nightmare for the Kitchen's, as Danny racked up a $2500 bill in add-on purchases to his mother's credit card.

The culprit? Zombies vs. Ninjas, which is definitely a free game, but Danny ordered extra "darts" and "bombs" to battle those nasty zombies, where weapons range right up to $99.99. Danny's mother had no idea what was happening until she noticed 19 e-mails from iTunes in the morning, receipts of her son's purchases.

Sharon didn't think anything of the emails, putting it down to multiple invoices of the one receipt. She ignored it until her credit card company called her regarding the suspicious activity. Sharon told Mashable:

You might remember Infinity Ward, the creators of Call of Duty - but that can be rolled into two men - Jason West and Vince Zampella. The two of them left IW on fiery terms and started up Respawn Entertainment.

West has now left the studio, citing family issues which have been on-going since May 2012, according to a source who didn't want to be named. West's partner, Vince, confirmed the news, saying:

The White House has thrown its support behind legalizing cell phone unlocking after a We The People petition achieved the 100,000 signature requirement. The practice of unlocking cellular devices was banned earlier this year after the Library of Congress ruled that it violates the DMCA.

White House Senior Advisor R. David Edelman:

Sina Khanifar, the person who kicked off the petition:

Anonymous are constantly getting into the news, with their latest efforts trying to show the world that Bank of America are spying on their customers. With the Bank of America being a, well, bank, this is alarming news. But in the world we live in now, not so much.

The hacking collective reportedly took 14GB of information that belongs to Bank of America, Thomas Reuters, ClearForest, Bloomberg, and TEKSystems. The information taken reportedly has the spying habits of the BoA and other corporations, with spools of data on hundreds of thousands of employees and executives. Anonymous are trying to come out as the good guy here, saying that the information collected is interesting for numerous reasons.

Anonymous push the fact that the data was easy to obtain, with the hackers not requiring any brute force as the server they hacked into was easy to access. The data was reportedly sitting on a ClearForest server in Tel Aviv, with the server being so badly misconfigured that the hackers said it was like an open door, where anyone could've entered. Anonymous also state the most of the information was badly researched and that large parts of it might be incorrect.