Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 215

Opera seems to be making headlines on a weekly basis in 2013, A couple of weeks ago I reported on the companies adoption of Webkit, then a few days later, covered the layoff of over 90 employees. Now Opera is announcing the formation of an entirely new subsidiary.

Over the last few months Opera has made a few strategic acquisitions with the intention of bolstering it's mobile advertising business. The company has spent in excess of $100 million snatching up companies like AdMarvel, 4th Screen Advertising and Mobile Theory and has announced today the formation of Opera Mediaworks.

Opera Mediaworks is a fully-owned subsidiary, which is being touted as the world's largest mobile ad platform. The new arm of Opera includes ad mediation and exchange services AdMarvel and Opera Mediaworks, mobile advertising networks Mobile Theory and 4th Screen Advertising, and the Opera Mobile Store and Opera Payment Exchange to monetize ad solutions.

Apple are looking for someone in Australia for a new position, the position open is for a 'Maps Ground Truth Data Specialist'. This position has been up for a couple of days, and comes just months after Apple's Maps app failing to provide correct mapping data in Australia.

The position will check "changes to map data, provide feedback on unique local map requirements, collect ground truth information, and evaluate competing products." But what is 'Ground Truth'? Well, that is information collected on location versus the data being collected remotely, such as data from satellites.

The full job listing is below:

Last week I reported on CNET being sued by a coalition of artist over its Download.com site offering downloads of BitTorrent clients like uTorrent. CNET argued that it was well within its rights to offer such downloads, and as it turns out, the court agreed.

The coalition claimed, that because CNET had reviewed the software and provided an educational video on how to use said software, that Download.com was encouraging the use of the program. The court disagreed, with the judge saying that "there was no indication of encouragement and that a ban on any distribution of the technology would dampen public discussion of P2P technologies."

The judge did agree with the coalition on the fact that uTorrent and other P2P clients can be used to infringe on copyrights, but said:

NVIDIA has announced that they are working on building a new headquarters right across the street from their current Santa Clara headquarters. The new building's design is being worked on a team at Gensler and is being led by Hao Ko. NVIDIA says the arhitect shares their "values and drive to perfection."

The current renders of the new building are quite awesome and could rival Apple's new headquarters. As you can see in the picture above, NVIDIA's new headquarters will be shaped like two triangles with a connection in the middle.

The design harmonizes smart functionality and a shape that connects with and inspires our employees - a triangle, the fundamental building block of computer graphics. Efficient in every way, the design is thoughtful in its use of space, energy, and environment, and, of course, cost.

It looks like GPU shipments for Q4 2012 didn't do so well according to Jon Peddie Research's latest numbers - where they dropped 8.2% sequentially and 11.5% year-over-year. The drop in GPU shipments is being blamed on the popularity of tablets, as well as the continuing and damaging recession.

This has caused JPR to revise their compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for PC graphics from 2012 to 2016 to 3.2%, with the total shipments of GPUs in 2016 hovering at around 549 million units. Intel's shipments dropped just 2.9%, but AMD dropped by a much larger 13.6% and NVIDIA were worse, dropping by 16.7%. Market share wise, we saw Intel hold onto 63.4%, which was a gain of 3.4%, but this was at the expense of AMD and NVIDIA which dropped 1.2% and 1.73% respectively - down to 19.7% and 16.9%.

There are some breakdowns from JPR's latest report below:

It looks like South Korean electronic giants LG and Samsung are solving their disputes out of court, after a patent battle between the companies started last year with Samsung filing a lawsuit claiming that LG had stolen technology secrets from within their OLED production.

LG fired back, threatening their own injunctions, but it looks like everything has calmed down and a few expensive drinks have been shared between the companies. Samsung Display have come out saying that they've dropped their injunction request, and LG have responded with the same respect - after dropping the request for an injunction seeking to ban the sale of Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 in South Korea, LG have said they're now seeking resolution "through an amicable negotiation".

I'm glad we have companies solving things nicely, and not pushing it all through a court - all in the public eye.

It looks like House of Cards has been a success with Netflix, at least according to data from Cowen and Company. According to their survey of 1,200 people, 28 percent were paying Netflix customers with an additional 18 percent having access to a Netflix account. Their data shows that 10 percent of those users have watched at least one episode of House of Cards during its first week.

On average, six episodes were watched by a user. Most people--80 percent--responded that the series was "good" or "exceptional." Netflix releasing all 13 episodes at once was also received positively, with 90 percent watching more than one episode per sitting.

The data suggests that Arrested Development could be even better for the company, with the largest group of users being aware Netflix is bringing the show back. 19 percent of the 1,200 surveyed were aware of House of Cards. 34 percent were aware of Netflix's original content plans.

It looks like the iPad mini's constrained supply has finally caught up to the high demand. The device is now showing as "In Stock" in most countries around the world, showing that Apple's supply has either increased to meet the high demand, or the high demand has dropped off slightly.

In all reality, it's probably the latter option. People are probably seeing the rumors of a new iPhone 5S and are starting to think that an updated iPad mini could also be just around the corner. There have also been rumors of an iPad mini with Retina display coming soon and this could be contributing to a decrease in demand.

European customers are still seeing 1-3 days as the quoted shipping time, but those should soon change to "In Stock." If you want to pick up a new iPad mini, now is definitely a good time as you shouldn't have to wait for them to ship out.

Facebook have made $1.1 billion in profits since they've gone public, but they won't be paying any federal or state taxes on these profits. Better yet, the largest social network in the world will enjoy a very nice federal tax refund of around $429 million.

Before Facebook went public last year, Citizens for Tax Justice, a research group, said that this would happen, and have just released a breakdown of what the social network's crafty accounting skills have amounted to in their 2012 annual report. It all comes down to the tax deductibility on executive stock options, which Facebook gave plenty out of last year, with the deductible ended up actually being more than Facebook owed in taxes to the state, and federal governments.

This means that instead of Facebook having to pay anything to the government, the roles are reversed and the government will hand money over to Facebook - a refund nearing half a billion dollars. This refund comes from the taxes Facebook paid in 2010 and 2011. The good news doesn't stop for Facebook there, as they'll be carrying "forward another $2.17 billion in additional tax-option tax breaks for use in future years." This means that Facebook will, for as long as they can, continue to do this.

It looks as though we may soon be able to go to our local Google store to check out the company's latest technology offerings. While it will likely be structured a bit like the Microsoft stores in that they feature other companies' hardware, the stores will allow Google the chance to offer hands-on experiences of their own devices, such as the Nexus 4.

The report comes from 9to5Google who cites "an extremely reliable source." They say that Google is planning to have the first of its retail stores open by year's end in major metropolitan areas. These stores will be a bit different than the current Chrome store-within-a-store that Google currently has in Best Buys.

The idea for Google retail stores is said to have come out of plans to take Project Glass to the public. Google felt it would be hard to sell a device that will retail for $500-$1000 without offering a try-before-you-buy opportunity. The retail stores will also give Google a chance to demonstrate other products, such as Chromebooks and driverless cars.