Business, Financial & Legal - Page 247

It's a hard market for camera right now, and after both Canon and Nikon both had revisions to their forecasts, Olympus have also followed by cutting their full-year sales and profit forecast.

Olmypus have said that they expect sales to tip at around $7.8 billion, down from their first forecast of $8.09 billion. Profits will drop by 25%, too. When most people think Olympus, they think cameras, but Olympus aren't all just about cameras - they have pushed into the medical equipment and endoscope markets, too.

Last year saw Sony buy a $642 million stake in Olympus which was mainly for the medical imaging side of things. Over the past two years, Olympus' main goals have been to focus on their Pen and OM-D interchangeable lends (ILC) cameras, which has caused people to think the company were slowly dragging themselves out of the traditional SLR market.

The government of Iceland is talking about introducing an Internet filter which would stop Icelandic citizens from downloading or viewing pornography on the Internet. The talk of the filter has transpired through fears of the damages porn can do to children and women.

Iceland's Interior Minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, is currently drafting legislation to stop the access of online porn images and videos through many ways - computers, consoles and smart devices. He says:

We all know Google scrapes countless amounts of data from anyone who uses their services, which, let's face it, is everyone - but, it looks like it goes much deeper than that.

From what Sydney-based app developer Dan Nolan, has found, each time you purchase an app from the Google Play Store your personal details are sent to that developer. This includes your name, address and e-mail address. Nolan spoke with news.com.au, saying that he wasn't comfortable being the receiver of this information, and that there is no reason that a developer needs to have this - very powerful - information given to them without their consent.

Nolan took to his blog, saying:

Both LinkedIn employees and Apple are probably pretty happy with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner right now. The CEO has rewarded employees for a great 2012 by providing them each with their own iPad mini. This means that Weiner spent over $1.2 million on 3,500 iPad minis. Ouch. We hope he worked out a discount!

The good deed was first tweeted about by Darain Faraz: "We wanted to acknowledge the hard work and accomplishments of all of our employees in 2012. During today's biweekly All Hands meeting, we surprised our employees with iPad Minis as a small gesture of the company's gratitude for their contributions."

It's these small things that keep employees happy and working hard for a company. LinkedIn pulled in a record Q4 with earnings topping $303 million.

Tim Cook had some interesting things to say during the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, where the Apple CEO touched on a number of topics, including some rumors of a next-gen iPhone including a larger screen.

Cook talked about the user experience, saying that the experience is more important than what cranks along inside of the phone. When talking about a larger screen size on the iPhone, Cook said:

Japan's mobile market is a new territory for Apple to conquer, but it looks like last year was good to them as the iPhone maker scooped up the top spot in Japan's mobile phone market for a twelve-month period for the first time ever.

Apple took 16% of Japan's mobile market - this includes smartphones and feature phones - in Q4 2012, giving them an overall 15% share of the year as a whole. This pushes Apple just ahead of Japan locals Sharp and Fujitsu who both held 14% share eacj, according to a new report from Counterpoint Research.

Apple have previously taken the top spot in Japan's mobile industry but it has always been short lived and usually happened at the beginning of new product launches, like the iPhone 4S' launch in 2011. Apple reaching the top is a big fact, with Sharp being knocked off their top spot after a six-year run as number one.

On their rampage for world domination, Corsair have just acquired Scotland-based Simple Audio. Simple Audio have been around for five years and is mostly known in Europe for their networked set-top receivers.

These receivers are capable of sharing music from PCs, Macs, TVs, iPods and MP3 players, so we should expect Corsair to expand their audio lineup in the coming months and years. Corsair's acquisition will see Simple Audio's products jump across the pond, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Corsair haven't said anything about the amount of money they paid for Simple Audio, but the American computer component maker have said that they'd been checking out Simple Audio's dance moves for a while now - even since 2010 - and felt that now is the right time to acquire them.

In a new Harris poll that sought the opinions of more than 14,000 people, Amazon has come out on top in two of the six categories. The poll asked respondents to rank companies based upon six criteria: social responsibility; emotional appeal; financial performance; products and services; vision and leadership; and workplace environment.

Amazon pulled out a win in the "emotional appeal" and "products and services" categories. Amazon managed to place in the top five for the other four categories. Overall, Amazon managed to come out with a grade of 82.62, which makes this the fifth year in a row that they placed above 80 out of 100.

"Our results show that Amazon has managed to build an intimate relationship with the public without being perceived as intrusive," Robert Fronk, executive vice president of Reputation Management at Harris Interactive, said in a statement. "And as the company that is so widely known for its personal recommendations, more than 9 in 10 members of the public would recommend Amazon to friends and family."

Numbers from AdDuplex show that Nokia has roughly 75 percent of the Windows Phone market. AdDuplex's numbers are usage numbers from the company's ad network. While the numbers only come from 294 applications, which creates a fairly small and unreliable sample size, general questions, such as the top manufacturer, can be asked fairly reliably.

As you can see, Nokia holds just over 75 percent of the Windows Phone market. HTC comes in second with just over 10 percent. From there, the numbers drop off pretty significantly. It's no surprise that Nokia is leading the market; it's Lumia line of devices are solid and Nokia has worked closely with Microsoft.

We're always on the lookout for data and trends. We'll keep looking to see if we can come up with some interesting trends in the Windows Phone market.

As an Australian myself, it hurts so much to see products so over priced here versus other places in the world. The government here hates it, as they lose out because consumers purchase the goods overseas, bypassing the GST (goods & services tax) that they would normally make.

The Australian government are now stepping in, with the government's IT Pricing Inquiry into something that is known as the "Australia Tax", which is now going after the big boys in Microsoft and Apple. The committee has issued three summonses to appear before the inquiry today to three repeat offenders: Microsoft, Apple and Adobe.

These three companies will appear before the House Committee on March 22 at 9:30am to answer concerns raised by Choice and the ACMA in regards to the "Australia Tax" on goods sold across the country. Federal Member of Chifley, Ed Husic, said: