Business, Financial & Legal - Page 135

The US government allows its citizens to petition the White House via an easy online form. Since responding to the Death Star petition, the government has increased the number of signatures required before a response must be issued to 100,000, which is still a pretty easy number to reach on anything worthwhile these days due to the power of the internet.

A while back, the Library of Congress decided that jailbreaking smartphones was legal, but jailbreaking tablets and unlocking wireless devices without the carrier's consent was illegal. A new petition has popped up on the White House petition site looking to force the Librarian of Congress to change his decision about the unlocking of smartphones.

"As of January 26, consumers will no longer be able unlock their phones for use on a different network without carrier permission, even after their contract has expired," reads the petition. "Consumers will be forced to pay exorbitant roaming fees to make calls while traveling abroad. It reduces consumer choice, and decreases the resale value of devices that consumers have paid for in full."

Samsung enjoyed a stellar Q4 2012, where the South Korean company saw $52.04 billion in revenue for the three-month period, posting profits of $8.27 billion. This is nearly double what the company reported in the same period last year.

Samsung reported "strong" sales of their smart devices, where both the Galaxy S III and Note II have been mentioned specifically. Last we heard, the Galaxy S III had smashed through 30 million sales, and the Note II was enjoying 5 million sold. Samsung expects demand for replacements of those devices to be strong with the push of LTE connectivity, but the sales drop in Q1 will soon happen.

In the TV department, demand was flat from last year, but the push to LED models has provided Samsung with higher profits. The South Korean company sees the 60-inch and higher market growing this year, but Q1 sales - as we said before - are going to be slow before any new models are introduced. Weak demand for PC RAM was also discussed, but growth was seen in the server and mobile markets.

During an Interview with RT, Kim Dotcom talks of his problems over the past year or so, where the US government accuse the MegaUpload founder of being a 'mafia organization' and set up their Internet business, to be an organized crime network.

The US government had to say this, as it was the only way to try and extradite Dotcom to the US, as there are different extradition laws in New Zealand. These charges had to be thrown on top, or else the US government wouldn't have a leg to stand on. The goal was to take MegaUpload down, with Dotcom saying "it was their mission".

Dotcom talks about Aaron Swartz, the co-founder of Reddit, with RT asking what it's going to take for people to stand up and take action. Dotcom says the US government was exposed in this case, as they went in with all guns blazing, spying on citizens, illegal search warrants, and more. Dotcom says it was an urgent mission, they just wanted to take him down.

Intel are set to build a new processor fabrication plant in Ireland, after they received permission from the Irish planning agency An Bord Pleanala. The Ireland fab plant will cost the chipmaker $4 billion, but the plant will be pumping out 14nm processors.

The only roadblock now is Intel management's final decision before construction plans begin. The Ireland fab plant will be a redevelopment of an existing facility in Country Kildare, and has been in the planning stages from as early as 2011. When construction is finished, which will take two years, it will give Intel 245,000 square meters to play with their next-generation 14nm-based processors.

The construction will employ close to 3,500 construction workers, and once the plant is complete, the plant itself will employ 800 full-time staff for chip production.

AMD aren't doing so well right now, especially when compared to Intel or Apple's latest financial results, but according to reports, CEO Rory Read has outlined the company's three-phase restructuring goal.

Those restructuring goal will see AMD return to profitability by the second half of this year. Read has said that the return to profitability will take more than one quarter, and will involve a total restructuring of how the company runs its business. The chipmaker will also deliver a new set of powerful products this year, as well as begin the transitioning of the company in order to take advantage of high-growth opportunities in other markets where their IP could provide others will a competitive advantage.

These markets include things like servers, custom silicon, the embedded space and ultra-low-power products such as gaming consoles. Considering AMD have reportedly won contracts to have their products in every single next-gen gaming console, this is a huge, huge uptick for AMD. AMD hopes to collect 20% of their revenue from these 'alternative' markets by the end of the year.

Google's semi-annual Transparency Report has been updated today and the new data shows that requests for data from the search giant continue to increase. The US government leads the way in requesting data from Google. In fact, the amount of data requests as increased by more than 70 percent since 2009.

For the period from July to December, Google received 21,389 requests for information about 33,634 users. The United States government led the charge with over 8,000 requests for information that encompassed almost 15,000 user accounts. 88 percent of these requests had at least some data produced.

India was the next highest on the list, but only requested about 25 percent of what the US did. They made 2,400 requests about roughly 4,000 users. France, Germany, UK, and Brazil round out the list of governments who put in more than 1,000 user data requests.

Some bad news, at least for the companies involved, has come out thanks to a court case brought against Apple and Google by five workers. The case alleges that they are due lost wages as the companies involved tried keeping wages down by agreeing to not poach employees from each other.

Apparently, this non-poaching agreement extends beyond Google and Apple to the likes of Intel, Adobe, Pixar, and others. Judge Koh, made famous by the on-going Apple vs Samsung battle, is overseeing this court battle. This could end up being very bad for the companies involved, with the plaintiffs arguing that the damages could reach hundreds of millions of dollars.

For instance, an e-mail sent to Eric Schmidt by Steve Jobs: "Eric, I am told that Googles new cell phone software group is relentlessly recruiting in our iPod group. If this is indeed true, can you put a stop to it? Thanks, Steve." Another e-mail, this one sent by Paul Otellini of Intel, reads, "we have nothing signed. We have a handshake 'no-recruit' between eric and myself. I would not like this broadly known."

Gaming studio THQ announced in open court today that the company is being broken apart and its major gaming titles will be getting sold off to other studios. While the bankruptcy hearing hasn't officially been accepted by the judge, the ruling seems like it should be accepted, if the judge's comments are anything to go off of.

"I wasn't sure it was going to work, but I'm glad it did" Judge Marry F. Walrath said. The proposed sales are as follows:

Not all of THQ's assets have been sold yet, but THQ is continuing to look for buyers. If approved, the sales should close this week. Farrell and Rubin expect that most employees will be employed by the new owners, but wouldn't go as far as to promise anything. The full letter sent out to employees by Brian Farrell, Chief Executive Officer of THQ, and Jason Rubin, President of THQ, can be read below:

Well, this was a little unexpected, but could also turn out quite amazing for Microsoft. The latest talk is that the Redmond-based software giant is in discussions with Silver Lake Partners and Dell's CEO to invest between $1 billion and $3 billion in a leveraged buyout of Dell.

The news comes from "sources close to the matter" talking with CNBC. The rumor does make sense as Microsoft is slowly transitioning toward a hardware company after being a full-on software company for all these years. This move could see Microsoft directly compete with Apple in both hardware and software, without having to build it from the ground up, they'd have a huge start acquiring Dell.

Talks between Silver Lake Partners and the special committee for Dell's shareholders are set to continue, and we should hear of a deal being reached by the end of the week.

Q4 is usually good for most companies, as the holidays are an extremely busy time of the year for most businesses. Verizon have had a stellar Q4, where they've announced they activated 9.8 million smartphones during the quarter.

Better yet, out of those 9.8 million, 7.3 million of them were LTE-capable. Breaking the numbers down once more, we find that 6.2 million activations were iPhone's and around half of them were LTE-capable meaning they were the latest iPhone 5.

In the same three-month period, Verizon added 2.2 million more subscribers, 144,000 new FiOS Internet subscribers and 134,000 FiOS video subscribers. Revenues were hitting $30 billion for the quarter, which is up 5.7% from twelve months ago and $115.8 billion for the entire fiscal year. Verizon were able to achieve a total return of 13.2% to shareholders last year.

Atari, a pioneer in the video game industry, has filed bankruptcy in the US. Unfortunately, it seems that the parent company, Atari SA, is debt-laden and this move is a way to free the company from the parent. By doing this, Atari is looking to continue as a company, just on its own.

Atari is selling off assets in the next three to four months, including its iconic logo. The company that emerges from the other side of bankruptcy is slated to be a company focused on the digital and mobile platforms. Atari has already been gearing up towards Android and iOS development since 2010.

Atari has reportedly received a debtor-in-possession investment of $5.25 million so that the company is capable of continuing to operate during the bankruptcy process. The plan is to seek a private buyer after the bankruptcy process, though that could be hard if they have sold off their iconic franchises and logo.

As much as the RIAA and MPAA would like to convince lawmakers and citizens that pirates and people who illegally download movies and music are harming the industry, study after study suggest quite the opposite. Take, for example, a study commissioned by Google, which shows that US P2P users buy 30 percent more music.

Google commissioned Columbia University's American Assembly research center to survey Americans on file sharing and copyright enforcement. In the survey, data suggests that Americans are generally against the use of bandwidth throttling and disconnection as punishment for illegal downloading.

The most important piece of information to come from the study is the finding that US P2P users tend to buy 30 percent more music than their non-sharing brethren. More studies are needed, however, but this study can join the pile of others that show file-sharing doesn't harm sales.

I knew Sony were in trouble, but is this a sign of serious problems for the Japanese electronics giant? Sony have now announced they're selling their New York headquarters to a consortium led by The Chetrit Group.

After Sony settle their debts on the building, the $1.1 billion sale will see Sony cash in around $685 million in operating income. This will help their Q3 earnings, but it won't help the company in the long run. Rumor has it that Sony are looking to repeat the sell off in Japan, which will see another $1.14 billion enter their accounts.

Do you see this as a sign of confidence for Sony? Or as a sign of things to come? I personally think that if the PlayStation 4 isn't super successful, and by that I mean a total homerun, it'll be lights out for Sony. Maybe not right away, but in the coming 1-2 years, that's my prediction. They need something big and they need it now.

Diablo III's Game Director, Jay Wilson, has announced through the Blizzard forums that he is leaving his post. Wilson has been in this position for seven years now, and is looking to move on as he has "reached a point creatively where I'm looking forward to working on something new".

Wilson will now move from the Diablo III project and onto something else within the company, so this definitely isn't hit resignation from the company. Wilson cites that he wasn't the only person working on the project and there are still many committed employees of Blizzard tweaking and working on Diablo III to continue to impress fans.

Wilson finishes his post by telling the world that patch version 1.0.7 is on its way, and that there are "many other great things brewing for Diablo in 2013". He finishes his post with something personal, and witty:

Google would be popping the Moet right now, as Fortune have released their annual list of the top 100 companies to work for, with Google taking out the top dog, number one position on the list.

This is not the first time the Mountain View-based company has taken the top spot, but their fourth time riding high on the Fortune 100 list. The explanation as to why Google is the best company to work for, is:

The funny thing? Apple isn't even listed in the top 100, at all. Qualcomm takes out number 11, Intel with number 68 and Microsoft at 75. Apple? Nowhere, not in sight, at all. This. Changes. Everything. Again.

Google's Project Glass is quite an interesting project. With every new project, new challenges arise. For instance, developers will have to cope with figuring out how to enter data into the glasses without a keyboard. This is where a new patent by Google could come in handy. Pardon the pun.

Google's patent uses a laser to project a keyboard onto the user's hand, which can then be articulated by gestures. Patent 20130016070, "Methods and Systems for a Virtual Input Device," is the patent in question. Of course, as we warn with all patents, just because they have applied for it, it doesn't mean it will make its way into a product.

The hand can either be used as a touchscreen or the camera can recognize hand gestures, allowing input by two different methods. It would help solve the problem of input into a device that doesn't feature a physical keyboard. It would also be pretty sweet since it uses laser. We still have a good amount of time before Glass releases to the public, so it's definitely possible it will show up in the final product.

Larry Page, during a recent interview with Wired, brought up Steve Job's comment about waging thermonuclear war on Android. His response was a simple, yet effective one: "How well is that working?" If you use stock price to judge how well its working, then the answer is also simple: not well.

The interview then transitioned towards self-driving cars and Google X, known for projects such as the Google Self-Driving car and Project Glass:

It seems as though Google isn't too worried about the future.

The all-electric vehicles made by Tesla are awesome pieces of technology. Not only should they help advance battery technology, they look great and, apparently, drive great. Tesla is planning to open 25 more stores during 2013, which is almost double that of the 13 stores it opened in 2012.

Half of those locations will be in the United States and the other half will be in foreign countries, including Tesla's first location in China. The new location in China is set to open this Spring.

Tesla has also redoubled its commitment to rolling out Supercharger charging stations across the United States. Currently only eight are in operation, most of which are on the west coast. Tesla plans to cover both coasts and then connect them in the middle so that someone can travel from Boston to LA without using any gas.

Apple's stock dipped below $500 a share this morning after media outlets reported that Apple ($APPL) was decreasing iPhone 5 component purchases due to lowering demand. That is over a $20 drop from Friday's closing price.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that demand for the iPhone 5 has been lower than expected and cited "people familiar with the situation" as saying that Apple has cut its order for iPhone 5 screens in half for the March quarter. The Japanese daily publication Nikkei said that Apple has halved its initial order of 65,000 LCD screens from suppliers.

As if on cue, this news rattled investors, sending the stock into a downtrend. The stock started recovering shortly after falling below $500 and at the time of this writing, was hovering around $505 a share.

In this world of iOS and Android dominance, the voice of Windows Phone isn't heard too much. Well, now we have something to go on. Forbes' latest report is talking about Qualcomm's CES keynote, in which Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ran onto the stage and spilled some numbers.

During his speech in the Qualcomm CES keynote, he said that the latest Windows Phone was selling "five times more devices than the same period last year". There are no exact numbers here, but if we go back to Q4 2011, we're looking at around 2.5 million units. Ewan Spence, who wrote the article for Forbes, he made:

Windows Phone is slowly getting better, but can it compete with the likes of the current-gen Android-based phones? We're already close to a new Galaxy smartphone from Samsung, and a slew of new devices from many other manufacturers in the coming weeks, especially building up to Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.