Business, Financial & Legal - Page 141

Here we are again, three months later and we have Apple's Q4 financial results to share with you. Not long after the Cupertino-based company unveiled their new iPad mini, fourth-generation iPad and refreshed Macs, their Q4 financial results are surprising in more ways than one.

Apple posted a revenue of $35.97 billion with a net income of $8.2 billion, up from $28.27 billion and $6.62 billion this time last year. Apple's earnings fell short of analysts' expectations of $8.75 per share, reaching just $8.67 per share. Apple reportedly lowered their forecast for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 from diluted earnings per share of $15.49 on revenue of $55 billion to $11.75 on revenue of $52 billion.

Analysts are pegging this on continuing supply problems, but I have a different idea. During the quarter, Apple sold just 26.9 million iPhones, 14 million iPads, 5.3 million iPods and 4.9 million Macs. iPhone shipments beat analysts' expectations by over 500,000 units, but fell short of analysts' expectations on iPad shipments by around 1 million units.

Accidental clicks are a big problem for advertisers as they have to pay for a click that yields them nothing. It's a problem that people have been dealing with since the introduction of mobile advertising. The general thought is the smaller the screen, the more likely you are to accidentally click that tantalizing banner ad.

But is that the only factor? Probably not. How often are you surfing Facebook while driving? You might accidentally click on an ad then, not due to the small screen, but due to you being distracted with driving. GoldSpot is a mobile ad network that has taken a look into the problem of accidental clicks and they have a bit of insight to offer.

They figure that roughly four in 10 clicks on conventional banner ads are accidental. For rich media ads, the number drops to 13 percent, probably due to them being more noticeable as an ad. GoldSpot also believes accidental clicks are more likely to happen in the morning or evening, as you can see in the chart above.

Zynga aren't having the best year, with their Q3 2012 numbers rolling in and seeing large revenues of $316 million, beating analysts' low expectations of $300 million or so, but the company have lost $160 million in the first nine months of this year.

The the last three months, Zynga have lost $52 million, even with their better-than-expected Q3 2012 revenue. The company recently announced a $200 million stock buyback and a new partnership with UK-based real-money online gambling site, bwin.party. This saw Zynga's stock driving upward in after-hours trading, rising 13.67%.

But, they look to be short-term gains, with the company struggling in the last few months. Zynga are losing millions of gamers, are in lawsuits, had a write-down of OMGPOP, and have also seen corporate talent walking out the door. CEO and founder of Zynga, Mark Pincus, has said in a statement:

Nintendo recently found itself in some hot water over accusations that underage workers were employed by Foxconn and working at factories where Nintendo has the Wii U manufactured. This is against the policy that Nintendo requires its partners to agree and abide by, so they were quick to launch an investigation.

Today, they have released a statement regarding the results of that investigation. They found that Foxconn had employed under-aged interns to manufacture the Wii U. Foxconn has accepted complete responsibility for the incident and has "moved quickly to ensure that all affected individuals no longer work at Foxconn."

It's not just Apple who are being affected by the working conditions at Foxconn. Nintendo has been brought into the fray, but has acted quickly to rectify the issue. The full statement from Nintendo is below:

Amazon have reportedly wiped a single customers account, including all of her paid-for books, all without an explanation. The customer is a Norweigian woman who is identified by "Linn" on media commentator Martin Bekkelund's blog.

Linn approached Amazon who she discovered her Kindle had been wiped, where she informed by an Amazon customer relations executive that her account had been closed, all open orders had been cancelled and her content had been removed - and even up until today - she doesn't know why.

This mistake highlights the fact that DRM can be a dangerous thing, where manufacturers and publishers use it to limit the use of digital content once the consumer has purchased it. In this case, if Linn hadn't finished reading her ebooks - well, they're now gone. Amazon has told Linn:

Not only have we seen the usually invincible Apple, but Google, Microsoft and more have been posting losses not just in the last 24 hours, but over the last month or so. Tech doesn't seem to be doing too well in the market lately, and AMD is yet another victim.

We reported that there would be 10-15% layoffs in the near future, with the chipmaker confirming this after their Q3 financial results. AMD recorded a net loss of $157 million on a revenue of $1.27 billion. These numbers are worse than they were in the previous quarter, as well as Q3 2011. Revenue decline was cited for both its Computing Solutions and Graphics divisions.

AMD's gross margins were 31% which is a big drop from the 45% they were enjoying last quarter, and Q3 2011. A $100 million inventory write-down was noted, which mainly consisted of Llano-based A-Series APUs, but cited lowering demand for its CPUs as a problem. Looking into the future AMD are likely to axe 15% of their workforce in hopes of lowering costs. AMD projects the cuts will lead to a savings of $20 million for Q4 and $190 million for the entire of 2013.

Just before the Windows 8 bell rings next week, it looks like big Australian retailers in Dick Smiths and JB Hi-Fi are having mammoth sales. These two sales will be two of the best we'll see this year for electronics, as they pave the way for new hardware in the coming weeks.

Dick Smith's XXXL Sale, and JB Hi-Fi's Stocktake Sale details are below.

Dick Smith's XXXL Sale:

With The Pirate Bay floating into the clouds to evade the incoming lawsuits and attacks, it looks like MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom is now touting the same thing. Dotcom and his business partner Mathias Ortmann revealed plans for MegaUpload's success, dubbed 'Mega' to Wired magazine a day before the news of TPB moving into the clouds broke out.

Mega will see users encrypt data using an AES algoritm before it gets uploaded to the site, Mega will then provide the user a unique decryption key that will be required to upload the data. Encryption will hopefully keep users' data safe, with Mega being completely oblivious to what the user is uploading to their servers making them much safer to legal action than previously.

Mega also plans to operate servers in several different countries, mirroring the data from other locations - meaning that in the event that a bunch of servers go offline due to legal intervention, files will still be available to users from another location. Mega aren't expecting legal issues, but it looks like they're just trying to plan this from all angles, keeping the users data the most important thing at all times - which is how it should be.

Today has been a busy day for financial reporting. Microsoft adds to our boring financial news day with their own earnings report, which is also less than spectacular. The third quarter (Microsoft's Q1 2014) has not been nice to companies, with many missing expectations due to slumping sales and other issues.

For Microsoft's Q1 2014, the company posted revenues of $16.01 billion and earnings per share of $0.53. Revenue is down from last quarter's $18.06 billion, but earnings are up from last quarters loss per share of $0.06. It's important to remember that Microsoft took a $6.19 billion writedown last quarter because of the failed aQuantive acquisition.

"The launch of Windows 8 is the beginning of a new era at Microsoft," said Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer at Microsoft, in a canned statement today. "Investments we've made over a number of years are now coming together to create a future of exceptional devices and services, with tremendous opportunity for our customers, developers, and partners."

It's that time of year. No, not Christmas. Companies are reporting their third quarter results, some with positive results, and some with negative. Unfortunately, Nokia falls into the latter category. For the third quarter, Nokia posted a massive $754 million loss, which is actually an improvement from previous quarters.

This loss marks the six consecutive quarter than Nokia has lost money. That's not a good thing for a company to be doing quarter after quarter, however, Nokia doesn't have much choice in the matter. Stephen Elop took over as CEO in early 2011 and has seemingly been doing a good job turning the company around as this loss is less than previous.

In Q4 2011, Nokia lost $1.3 billion, which is a massive amount of money. However, that was easily eclipsed in Q1 2012 when Nokia reported losses of $1.6 billion. Q2 2012 saw losses of just $1.1 billion, and Q3, in other words, this quarter, saw losses of just $754 million, a marked improvement.

What could ultimately turn into the best form of punishment for losers of lawsuits, Apple is forced to run ads in the UK stating that Samsung did not copy the iPad design. This comes after they lost the original court battle and a subsequent appeal. At the time, the judge ruled that they weren't as "cool" as the iPad.

The judge in the original court battle made the original ruling that a notice would have to be placed upon Apple's website for one month, along with adverts in the Daily Mail, Financial Times, T3 Magazine and other publications to "correct the damaging impression" that Samsung was a copycat.

The appeals court decided not to overturn this part of the original ruling. "The acknowledgment must come from the horse's mouth," they said. "Nothing short of that will be sure to do the job completely." Of course, Samsung has to be happy with the ruling. Not only were they found to be not infringing, Apple has to publicly humiliate themselves.

When it comes to engineer salaries, it looks as though Google are the leaders in yet another category. With increased competition such as Facebook, the Mountain View-based company want to continue being one of the best places to work, offering above-average salaries for engineers according to a new study from job listings and information site, Glassdoor, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The study shows that Google's software engineers earn an average base salary of $128,336 compared to Facebook's $123,626, Apple's $114,413 and eBay and Zynga with $108,809 and $105,568, respectively. Facebook and Zynga have noticed the value of employee equity stakes drop following their IPO launches, where base salary makes a more important stance in terms of overall compensation.

Google on the other hand make the base salary a key selling point, where across-the-board last year the search giant gave all employees a 10% pay rise. Glassdoor found that the national average for a software engineer's base salary was around $92,648.

It looks like the News Corp. owned IGN Entertainment is to be sold off, after News Corp. failed to sell the company, according to people involved with both sides of negotiations, reports The Wall Street Journal. The media company is now launching the formal sales process of IGN.

News Corp. originally purchased IGN in 2005 for $650 million which includes websites such as IGN.com, GameSpy.com and TeamXbox.com with a few of those sites already sold. IGN is expected to receive around $100 million in the sales process, a huge loss compared to the $650 million purchase price in 2005. IGN have looked for help with investment bank Allen & Co. after multiple attempts at finding a partner failed.

Things aren't looking good for News Corp. who purchased MySpace six years ago for $580 million, selling it off last year for a pittance at just $35 million. The media company have been focusing more on digitizing their journalism properties, after some of their biggest digital acquisitions were overtaken by faster-moving rivals. IGN's chief executive Roy Bahat resigned from the company in August, saying in an email to his staff:

Back in August we reported on a story where the China Labor Watch were looking into Foxconn for employing children under the age of 16 at their factories, which is of course very illegal. China's legal working age is 16, and now the investigation has found that Foxconn did employee children under the age of 16.

Because Foxconn are a serious partner of Apple with production of most iDevices being made in the factories of Foxconn, Apple too have been taking flack for the underage issues. To this day the Cupertino-based company continue to be mixed into the issues of Foxconn's poor working conditions, riots, protests and even suicides.

The workers at Foxconn found from the investigation were as young as just 14, not only breaking Chinese labor laws, but Foxconn's own internal policies as well. Foxconn has said that they've now corrected the issue, and will take measures so that this type of misemployment never happens again. The China Labor Watch blamed the iDevice maker for turning a blind eye and not sufficiently vetting its workers, but it could be that Foxconn isn't entirely at fault here.

AMD didn't report strong earnings in the last quarter, and now sources are telling AllThingsD that the CPU and GPU maker could reduce their workforce by as much as 30%. AllThingsD cite sources familiar with the company's plans that AMD will announce next week that they would slice between 20-30% of their employees, which could see up to 3,300 jobs disappear.

The sources have said that the cuts would affect employees in the engineering and sales departments, which have until now, been unaffected by previous rounds of cuts. The AllThingsD's sources also state something a little frightening for the company, that these cuts in the engineering and sales departments could be bad enough that it would force AMD to scale back some of their product offerings.

AMD are set to announce their quarterly earnings on October 18, but the announcement of the employee cuts could be announced a week later on October 25. AMD CEO Rory Read is rumored to have bought in a team of business consultants from McKinsey & Company and BCG to advice the struggling chipmaker. AllThingsD's sources claims that the mood over at team red is not great right now, with employees having feared cuts for a while now, with the source saying "there are a lot of nervous people, and not a lot of getting done right now".

The numbers were not nice to the gaming industry for the month of September. Research firm NPD Group released numbers that showed the industry slumped as a whole by 24 percent, when compared to the same period last year. Total sales for September, including game discs, consoles, and accessories, amounted to $848.3 million, a far cry from the $1.1 billion during the same period last year.

Looking component by component, the hardware sector suffered the biggest decline compared to last year. Sales of consoles declined roughly 39 percent to $210.9 million. Software, which makes up the largest component of gaming industry sales, declined 18 percent to $497.4 million, down from $609.7 million year-over-year.

Accessories were the least affected, declining only 11 percent. They totaled $139.9 million for the month of September. Microsoft wouldn't let this new bring them down, however, as they announced that the Xbox 360 is still the top selling console for the 21st month in a row.

It's not exactly a pretty scene over at OCZ Technology Group Inc right now as their stock continues to plunge towards being worthless. On Wednesday morning, the stock plunged a massive 42 percent to $1.88, down from a close of $3.15 the day prior. Today, the stock has taken another dive, though not quite as large.

At the beginning of today's trading, OCZ's stock was valued at $1.84. It has now dived nearly 22 percent to $1.46, at the time of writing. But why is OCZ's stock in the toilet all of a sudden? Well, it stems from OCZ delaying the filing of its financial results for the second quarter for fiscal year 2013.

In the press release detailing the delay, OCZ warned investors that the second quarter revenue would be "materially lower" than the guidance released on September 5, 2012. This decrease is blamed upon "the impact of customer incentive programs." The company now expects to report a "significant net loss."

Apple has s suffered another loss of sorts as one of the post-trial sales bans instituted by Judge Koh has been overturned by an appeals court. The federal appeals court ruled that Apple would not suffer significant harm by the infringement that was found during the trial, and as such removed the sales ban.

The Next Web put it beautifully when they described Samsung's arguments: "Samsung argued, somewhat humiliatingly, that the sales of the Galaxy Nexus were so poor that they didn't pose a threat to Apple's iPhone and that the unified search feature was not essential to the success of its device. The appeals court apparently agrees."

An excerpt of the official order:

OCZ, a maker of popular solid state drives, lost their CEO recently, but not to fear as the Board of Directors has picked a new replacement from its Board of Directors. Enter Ralph Schmitt, the former CEO of PLX Technologies up until Monday. Tuesday morning, the new OCZ CEO held a conference call and laid out his plans.

"Our actions will be based on innovation, quality, and profitability. Our focus will be to further penetrate OEMs and the enterprise market," he said on the conference call. "OCZ is committed to supporting our customers. We have already made great strides in discontinuing value products and non-core products. Focusing strategy on enterprise. We have lost credibility but we will win it back. We will focus on predictable, sustainable, & profitable results, but this will not happen overnight."

OCZ is planning to trim away at its value offerings as a company of its size just can't have as many as they do. Along with this, OCZ had offered customer incentives that were also too big. The CEO is looking to make the company profitable and work on its image:

In a world completely dominated by smart devices like smartphones and tablets, less and less people are buying traditional PCs. The "post-PC" era has been touted for quite sometime, but the market has been doing well, until now.

ISH iSuppli's numbers for annual PC sales have dropped for the first time in over ten years, since 2001. iSuppli's numbers aren't devastating, representing a drop of only 1.2% from this time last year, but it's the first decline since 2001. Last year saw a 2.2% growth, so a 1.2% drop is actually something to talk about.

Expectations of growth were pushed and relied on the economy recovering somewhat, Intel's huge push of Ultrabooks and more. Manufacturers shipped 348 million PCs so far, down from 352 million of 2011's numbers. iSuppli does ask some questions: