Business, Financial & Legal - Page 245

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.