Business, Financial & Legal - Page 159

Were HP lurking eBay looking for a new CEO? It could be a possibility. Former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, is now the CEO and President of Hewlett-Packard. Current non-executive, Ray Lane, will become executive chairman. Whitman is a well-known executive, will replace HP's current Leo Apotheker, who was prodded out of the company just recently. Whitman is an experienced digital executive, has a large task ahead of her.

HP wants to re-direct itself after numerous strategic gaffes, disappointing financial results and probably the biggest issue, stock that has dropped 47-percent in 11 months since Apotheker was head of the ship. The board of HP is hoping Whitman can turn this all around, with ever-increasing pressure from the competition.

Check out the official press release from HP.

Dedicated Android partner, Motorola Mobility, have been acquired by Google today in an announcement that was music to my ears. Google Inc. and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011.

Google CEO, Larry Page has a few things to say about the acquisition:

This is not something that you'd find on the front page of a tech site, but while I'm employed to write news for TweakTown, I'll post in my own image. This story covers hundreds of millions of people and further more, the entire financial system of the Western World and beyond. The current financial crisis is not something that "just happened", it is something that has happened over decades and is something that is not being fixed.

It is not something that they should be surprised of and there needs to be huge, systematic changes in the entire US government, Congress, Banking, Law, and virtually everything in-between before we see a true change. Dylan Ratigan of "The Dylan Ratigan Show" really drives his point home and I found myself getting goosebumps and nearly tearing up at just how... I don't even know how to word it, how, genuine and patriotic he seemed.

He comes off as loving America and seeing the problems within the country from Banks, to the President himself. He really touches on some amazing points and I agree with him 110%. If he were to work together with Ron Paul, I believe we could see a true change in America and something the entire world could be proud of. It would bring America back to something Americans could truly be proud of instead of the war-mongering, police-state, corrupt, BS America that we see today. People just don't want to swallow the truth, but as Dylan says, think of yourself and your children - what world will they grow up in? It's only going to get worse if we don't fix today's problems ASAP. Watch the video above for yourself and if you like it, please do pass on the link to this news. Back to original programming after this!

Another huge tech company has posted record profits and this time it's Microsoft. Microsoft have just announced a record fourth-quarter revenue of $17.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2011 and 8-percent increase from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $6.17 billion, $5.87 billion and $0.69 per share, which represents increase of 4, 30 and 35-percent respectively when compared with the prior year period.

For the fiscal year ended June 30, 2011, Microsoft reported record revenue of $69.94 billion, a 12-percent increase from last year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the year were $27.16 billion, $23.15 billion and $2.69, which represented 13, 23 and 28-percent increases when compared to last year.

Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft sais "Throughout fiscal 2011, we delivered to market a strong lineup of products and services which translated into double-digit revenue growth, and operating margin expansion. Our platform and cloud investments position us for long-term growth."

They seriously can't be doing this for the LOLs, but a 27-year-old blogger "BirdAbroad" has posted on his blog about an Apple Store he found in China. It looks liked an Apple store, the winding staircase with a sitting area upstairs, employees wearing the blue t-shirts with the clunky Apple name tag around their necks. But this Apple store in Kunming is actually a complete rip-off. As BirdAbroad says "China warps your mind into believing anything is possible". He says that it is the best rip off store they've ever seen, but some things were out of place. The stairs were poorly made, walls were not painted properly.

Even the sign itself, Apple never displays "Apple Store" on its signs, it just displays the gloriously delicious looking fruit symbol. The name tags on the staff did not actually list a name, just "staff" and an Apple logo. The funniest thing about this all is the employees actually think they're working directly for Apple. As the blogger took photos, multiple salespeople and security guys (plain clothed) outside came in and told him to stop. It was not allowed. Why wasn't it allowed? Their boss told them so. He did tell them that he was an American Apple employee visiting China checking out the local stores, this was the golden ticket.

PayPal have just announced they have more than 100 million active accounts. PayPal believe that consumers are giving up traditional payment methods in droves, systems such as cash and checks are instead using more modern methods as a form of payment. As more modern ways of payment are becoming the norm, PayPal want to deliver solutions that are better than what is on offer today.

PayPal have acted out on this and have predicted that by 2015 digital currency will be excepted everywhere in the US, from your local store right up to the big chains like Walmart. More specifically, this means PayPal thinks that in just four, short years, that you will no longer need to carry a wallet. PayPal is actually quite confident in this remark, going as far as asking five of its Bay area employees to plunge into the world of a digital lifestyle and use only digital currency to pay for all of their purchases.

PayPal will then learn from their findings and experiences.

And so it continues! Samsung have upped the ante on their legal dispute versus Apple over smartphone patents, filing a trade complaint that seeks to block US imports of the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Samsung claim that Apple are infringing on not just one, but five patents, according to a filing with the US International Trade Commission in Washington yesterday. The ITC has the power to halt the imports of products that are in violation of US patents.

This new case adds to the on-going four cases that Samsung have in four countries, as both Samsung and Apple are fighting for the same mobile market, with both companies using the courts to try and get a sneak peek at the competing companies product. Samsung currently have lawsuits against Apple in Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco and Mannheim, Germany.

The patents in question are related to ways to transmit multiple services over a wireless network; the format of data packets used for high-speed data transmission; integrating Web browsing into a phone; a way to store and play digital audio; and viewing digital documents using a touch-sensitive display, according to the complaint.

Steve Jobs has proposed a giant, ring-shaped office at the old HP location. I'm guessing he'll get it as I see Steve as the kinda guy who when he wants something, he gets it. Jobs approached the Cupertino City Council to sell Apple's plans to transform the old HP site. The new ring-shaped design is built to hold 12,000 employees and actually looks quite amazing.

Senator Ellen Corbett wants to force social network sites such as Facebook to allow parents access to their child's account. Excuse me? I thought I was living in a technology-welcoming, plugged-in liberal utopia here in San Francisco (so liberal in fact, that the public transportation has completely abandoned fascist principles like punctuality and reliability), but evidently I was incorrect.

GPU giant meets Baseband & RF superstar, and $367 Million later an acquisition is born. Everyone at both companies is clearly excited about the deal, but nothing will be set in stone until a conference call held between the two companies Thursday, May 12, at 2:00PM PDT. Anyone at all can listen in to the call to find out more details, just dial 706-679-2572- no password or meeting number required! NVIDIA and Icera will also webcast the call, and you can listen in here and here. More details below in the press release.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, founders of YouTube have acquired Delicious. Wait what? Didn't Yahoo acquire Delicious back in 2005 for like $10 million? The answer is yes, but evidently Yahoo is selling off its acquisitions.

Fraunhofer IPMS announced today a working protoype of the world's first Borg vision. That is, a bidirectional and eye-tracking OLED micro-display. For the layperson, that's transparent screen on which you can see digital content. And it looks like this:

You'd think Oracle would have seen this coming.