Business, Financial & Legal News - Page 218

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.