Business, Financial & Legal - Page 151

Spotify says "G'day" to Australia. In other words, Spotify is now available for use in Australia. This should make a good number of Australians happy, including our very own Anthony Garreffa. Spotify is launching three versions including Spotify Free, Spotify Unlimited, and Spotify Premium.

"Spotify is a game changer," says Kate Vale, Spotify's Managing Director Australia and New Zealand. "This is a revolutionary new music service that's free, simple, and provides lightning-fast access to one of the world's biggest music libraries. We hope Australian music fans will love Spotify as much as they do across Europe and the US."

Spotify Free is, as the name suggests free, and is ad supported. Spotify Unlimited costs $6.99 a month and gives users ad free access to Spotify a user's PC. Spotify Premium is $11.99 a month and provides the same features as the two prior and also allows users to listen to Spotify on the go on a smartphone, tablet, or other mobile device.

Discovery's CEO is not one bit happy with Dish Network's new ad skipping technology in the Hopper DVR. Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav has let Dish Network know that skipping ads could damage the industry as content creators lose one of their revenue streams. As a result, subscription fees would likely skyrocket.

"Charlie Ergen and Dish are a distributor of content," he said. "They need us to reach homes with our content. And if there is not going to be advertising fees, then there needs to be a lot higher subscriber fees." With increasingly expensive shows and production costs, quality content needs to money offered by advertisers to keep subscription costs low.

As of right now, the Hopper DVR's technology only works on broadcast TV, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be used on premium channels such as Discovery. Time Warner Cable CEO Glenn Britt agrees that the technology could easily destroy TV. "The dual stream of advertising and subscription revenue has been great for content creators," he said. "We have more TV than we could have ever imagined. I don't think we want to destroy one of those revenue streams."

Microsoft's Windows Phone stepped through the doors of China just two months ago, and in that time the Redmond-based company has already secured 7-percent of the smartphone market share.

Apple's iPhone has just 6-percent of the market share in China, which means in two months time, Microsoft are doing quite well for themselves overseas. Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer for the Greater China Region (wouldn't that look good on your resume?), Michel van der Bel, sees the market ghrowing further, saying "we've only just begun".

He notes that the combination of smartphones and Windows PC tablets will boost Microsoft's traction among both Chinese individuals, and businesses. Microsoft do face continued competition from Android, who has an astonishing 69-percent market share in China. Microsoft currently employs 2,500 or so people in its R&D department in China, but Bel says that Microsoft needs to, and will have to invest much more into the country.

There's been a lot of news today about Facebook and its IPO and here is another. Facebook has just completed its first acquisition after becoming a publicly traded company. The mobile commerce startup Karma has been acquired by Facebook. Karma specializes in apps for gifting friends and family. The acquisition sees 16 employees joining Facebook.

The terms of the deal are undisclosed as of now. The acquisition should help Facebook monetize its app and mobile offerings, something its admittedly weak in. Facebook said in a statement: "We've been really impressed with the Karma team and all they accomplished in such a short time. This acquisition combines Karma's passion and innovative mobile app with Facebook's platform to help people connect and share in new and meaningful ways."

Karma also posted on its own blog:

BitTorrent may not be all bad for the music industry which is contrary to how they would like to portray it. It seems that piracy could aid album sales, if a new study is to be believed. North Carolina State University assistant professor Robert Hammond examined prerelease albums being BitTorrented and the album sales of said albums.

The investigation netted some interesting results. What he found was that there was a correlation between the two, although it was pretty small. Keep in mind that correlation does not equate to causation. Since this is an observational study rather than an experiment, it's impossible to say with certainty that BitTorrent aids album sales.

It is, however, possible to indicate that they seem to. After watching 1095 albums, Hammond noted "The findings suggest that file sharing of an album benefits its sales. I don't find any evidence of a negative effect in any specification using any instrument." The average increase in sales was around 59.6 albums, so its not a landslide increase.

It looks as though Facebook may have to sell just a bit more stock to pay for a lawsuit that has been filed in San Jose, California Federal Court. While things may be looking great Wall Street, the courtroom picture is a bit more bleak. Stewarts Law US has combined 21 individual lawsuits into one amended class action suit seeking $15 billion.

The previous lawsuits date back to 2011 and allege that Facebook violated user privacy by tracking web usage. The new class action lawsuit alleges that Facebook violated the US Wiretap Act, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the Stored Communications Act, along with others. The US Wiretap Act grants up to $100 a day per violation up to $10,000.

Specifically, the lawsuit makes claims that Facebook tracks users even once they are no longer logged in. "This is not just a damages action, but a groundbreaking digital-privacy rights case that could have wide and significant legal and business implications," David Straite, a Stewarts Law partner told Bloomberg via e-mail.

If you missed out on Microsoft's deal last year, don't fret as they have brought it back again this year. Requirements are similar, though it seems as though Canadian's are getting a slightly better deal than Americans. The promotion? Buy a new PC worth at least some amount at a participating retailer and get a free Xbox360!

Here are the requirements as Microsoft says, so that I won't be held to anything:

Canadians only have to purchase a computer worth $599 whereas Americans have to spend $699. Computers at those price points are pretty nice all-in-all and will net you a free Xbox360 if you can prove you are a student. Sure, most people like either gaming on Xbox OR PC and not really both, but it is still a good deal.

A report coming from The Korea Times is claiming that Samsung was forced to move ahead with releasing its new mobile memory chips ahead of schedule. They had to release them to calm shareholder fears that Samsung had lost a major contract to supply DRAM chips to Apple for use in Apple's products.

The Korea Times is claiming that several Samsung executives are saying that the new 4GB DRAM chips are ultra-thin and are going to be used in Apple's devices. This is contrary to the claims that Apple had moved part of its supply chain over to Japanese company Elpida. Even though Apple and Samsung are involved in lawsuits around the world, Apple needs the reliability and scale that Samsung can provide.

Claims from Digitimes that Apple had placed orders for 50% of Elpida's output from the Hiroshima factory pushed Samsung stock down 2%, or by about $10 billion market cap. These rumors are what supposedly forced Samsung's hand and made them release the announcement today, instead of Monday as originally planned.

US Customs have stepped in and stopped some of the shipments of HTC's One X and EVO 4G LTE smartphones as a result of an earlier ITC order won by Apple. The ordeal is over a patent lawsuit for "data tapping" (context-sensitive text-based actions) in the browser and messaging apps on some HTC phones.

HTC have said that these features have been removed from the One X and EVO 4G LTE, where HTC are "confident" that it is in compliance with the ruling:

The ITC order was quite broad meaning it allowed US Customs to seize any HTC handset imported into the United States purely on the suspicion it might violate Apple's asserted intellectual property rights. Let's hope it's all sorted out soon enough.

Another research firm has confirmed that Samsung is the top cell phone maker in the world. With 86.6 million handsets sold in the first quarter of 2012, Samsung has reclaimed the title from Apple. That 86.6 million sold is 25.9 percent higher than last year's first quarter and helped give Samsung a 20.7% share of the market.

Of the 86.6 million handsets sold last quarter, 38 million of them were smartphones. Samsung's 38 million smartphones account for more than 40% of Android phones in the world. That number is huge considering not a single other handset maker has captured more than 10% of the Android smartphone market.

Nokia was thrown out of the way as Samsung flew past. Nokia, now in second place, sold 83.2 million handsets, a decrease of 22.7% from last year's quarter. "Smartphone sales are becoming of paramount importance at a worldwide level," Gartner principal research analyst Anshul Gupta said in a statement. "For example, smartphone volumes contributed to approximately 43.9 per cent of overall sales for Samsung as opposed to 16 per cent for Nokia."

AllThingsD is reporting that with sources close to the situation, investors are being told that the IPO price range for Facebook is between $34 and $38 per share. This results in the highest valuation being over $100 billion, fully diluted.

Last month, the predictions per share were at around $31, in filings related to its pending acquisition of photo-sharing start-up, Instagram. Recent ranges have put the social networking site at between $28 and $34.

Other reports have put the price between $35 and $40, so $34-$38 per share doesn't seem out of the question. The higher price is an indication that some of the reports from last week saying there was weak investor interest... but they were obviously wrong. The official pricing for the IPO for Facebook will arrive on Thursday, with a public offering on Friday under the "FB" ticker symbol on the Nasdaq market.

Kodak, in recent times, has not been doing very well, but apparently they have managed to keep a secret for over 30 years. Back in 1974, Kodak acquired a small nuclear reactor and has been maintaining the device in an underground bunker for over 30 years. The nuclear reactor was filled with 3.5 pounds of weapons-grade enriched uranium and was kept in a bunker with 2-foot thick concrete walls.

Incredibly, it seems as though very few people knew of the reactors existence. The reactor is one of only two ever made and known as a Californium Neutron Flex multiplier. The bunker in which is was located is in Rochester, New York and seemingly never caused any sort of problem through radiation leaks or other ways.

Apparently, Kodak used the device to conduct years of research. It was also used to check materials for impurities and to perform neutron radiography testing. Kodak continues to claim the device is safe and couldn't explode since it wasn't a power plant. The device had been mentioned in some research papers, but was never publicly announced.

The lawsuit between Apple against Motorola & HTC has been moved back, with the judge consolidating the disparate trials, which are made up from patent infringement claims by Apple against both Motorola and HTC, with both companies counter-claiming against Apple.

The new combined trial has been pushed back until April of 2014. Federal Judge Robert N. Scola of the Southern District of Florida approved Apple's consolidation request, in spite of the objections from both Motorola and HTC. Now that the case has been rescheduled to 2014, Motorola have lost their chance to enforce any patent suits against Apple in the short term.

Within the lawsuit, Motorola are being accused of violating 14 Apple patents, and at the moment, they have a six patent counter-complaint. Motorola gains the ability to add six other patents that it had filed a separate lawsuit for against Apple in regards to the iPhone 4S and iCloud, which potentially brings their counter-claim total to 12, from 6. HTC on the other hand benefits from the rescheduled lawsuit, as the trial is later than Apple's proposed date of December 2013, and long after Motorola's date of March 2013.

Best Buy has announced that its founder Richard Schulze will step down as chairman of the company, following the company's annual shareholder meeting to be held on June 21. Schulze is set to be replaced by Hatim Tyabji, the current chair of the audit committee and chairmand and CEO of Bytemobile.

A statement released today, Tyabji said that the story of Best Buy is a remarkable American success story and that Schulze's leadership and vision helped to change the landscape of American retail. But, Schulze's reputation could be hit, following an investigation of former CEO Brian Dunn. A story from CNET, says that Best Buy hired law firm WilmerHale to investigate the conduct of Dunn.

The investigation found that Dunn had an "extremely close" relationship with a female employee that negatively affected the work environment. This relationship between Dunn and the employee demonstrated poor judgment and a lack of professionalism but the report concluded that he didn't misuse any company resources. Dunn resigned as CEO only last month. The problem here is that Schulze found out about the incident back in December of last year, but failed to inform the board members.

The world's largest daily deals company, if you didn't already know, is Groupon. The company has proudly posted their first quarterly profit, where they reined in marketing spending while signing up more customers and merchants, with these effects driving up stock 12.5-percent higher.

Groupon now sports more than 36.9 million active customers, and has passed 100,000 merchants served in the first quarter. Groupon's after-hours rally to roughly $13.21 followed a big gain of more than 18-percent in regular trading on Nasdaq, the company's largest single-day gain since they went public in November.

Analysts have said short-sellers scrambled to cover their positions, anticipating better-than-expected results after the bell. But, the good news does come at a price. Groupon has lost more than half its market value this year, with concerns of waning demand for its daily deals, as well as the company's accounting troubles. Revenue sits at $559.3 million, compared to $295.5 million in the first quarter of 2011. So we can see year-over-year revenue is up considerably.

NVIDIA's first quarter of fiscal year 2013 is now over and the results are slightly lackluster. Don't get me wrong, NVIDIA still made money, but they made quite a bit less than last quarter. Revenue fell a few percentage points and overall net profit fell by nearly 50% to settle in at only $60.4 million.

I would blame this lackluster performance on the fact that they didn't get a Kepler GPU out until the middle to end of the quarter. As such, their products couldn't really compete with AMD's, so it's unlikely that as many people were purchasing them. NVIDIA still sounds positive, however, as this is what Jen-Hsun Huang, , president and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, said:

The company expects to rebound in the second quarter, and I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation given the wide accolade that Kepler has earned. They expect revenue to fall somewhere between $990 million and $1.05 billion with operating expenses increasing slightly. Overall an increase over this quarter, but not really and increase year-over-year.

In another move that threatens the open and free internet, Dutch courts have ruled that the countries ISPs must block access to The Pirate Bay or face fines of 10,000 euros per day. That massive of a fine will likely prevent any dissenters of the ruling, however, there are always ways around the blockade as shown in the UK.

Court rulings demanding ISPs block access to The Pirate Bay are stacking up in countries and one has to ask themselves what are the effects of the blocks? In this case these blocks aren't really going to do anything as they can be bypassed pretty easily. However, the idea that the government can order censorship is the scarier prospect.

These rulings are the first attacks on the site. The Pirate Bay is no stranger to trouble with the law as many companies have sued them for copyright infringement along with governments seizing the servers. It has persevered, but it will probably get tougher to do so as more court rulings come in. I know one thing, if the US government tries to make this ruling, I will be in the masses that protest.

It's a tough economy out there still, and it's hitting some companies harder than others. Nintendo, for the first time ever, posted a loss. Now Sony has reported its fiscal year 2012 results and the picture is bleak. Sony lost a record $5.55 billion as revenue fell 9.6% to $79.2 billion. This earns fiscal year 2012 the title of being Sony's worst year ever.

Sony is doing its best to remain strong through these tough times saying that the losses are mostly due to unforeseen circumstances. These unforeseen events would include a strong yen, an earthquake in Japan, and floods in Thailand. Not every sector of Sony lost money, but a few were hit extremely hard.

The company's Consumer Products & Services division is one of those that was hit hard. In 2011, they division posted a small profit, but this year sales were down 18.5% to $38.3 billion. This created a massive $2.8 billion loss for the company. None of this surprises shareholders, however, as Sony has posted difficult quarters during the year.

BlackBerry maker, Research in Motion (RIM) yesterday hired two new senior executives, with one of them taking the post of marketing chief as RIM hopes to regain market share that they lost to Apple's iPhone, and the various handsets that rock Google's Android OS.

RIM only recently announces losses mounting $125 million, as they battle declining smartphone sales. Compared to Q4 2011 where the company made a hefty $934 million profit, a drop to $125 million in losses is a stark change. At that time, RIM had just announced a management shakeup where we saw 20-year veteran Jim Baisillie step down from the board, as well as the CTO and COO for global operations leaving.

Who's the new chief marketing officer? Frank Boulben, who CEO Thorsten Heins describes as a critically important decision. Boulben leaves his previous position at LightSquared, where he was the executive vice president for strategy and marketing, with that company also struggling since Sprint left their partnership with the company after US regulators killed off plans it had for a nationwide broadband network.

One can see the similarities between HP's metal unibody-based Envy Spectre XT ultrathin, to Apple's MacBook Air. Firstly, HP's Spectre XT is the new flagship model of HP's just-announced Envy ultrathin lineup, which was born from VoodooPC's Envy laptops, which launched in June of 2008.

The VoodooPC Envy was one of the first non-Apple ultrathins to arrive on the market mere months after the launch of the MacBook Air from Apple. While the Voodoo Envy didn't look that much like the MacBook Air, HP's line-up of ultrathin's have slowly been sliding into the MacBook Air's skin since release.

The latest release was enough for HP's vice president of industrial design, Stacy Wolff, to go on the defensive. He told Engadget: