Business, Financial & Legal - Page 255

All the latest Business, Financial & Legal news as it relates to tech, gaming, and science - Page 255.

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RumorTT: AMD to get rid of 30% of their workforce, could spell trouble

Anthony Garreffa | Oct 12, 2012 9:37 PM CDT

AMD didn't report strong earnings in the last quarter, and now sources are telling AllThingsD that the CPU and GPU maker could reduce their workforce by as much as 30%. AllThingsD cite sources familiar with the company's plans that AMD will announce next week that they would slice between 20-30% of their employees, which could see up to 3,300 jobs disappear.

The sources have said that the cuts would affect employees in the engineering and sales departments, which have until now, been unaffected by previous rounds of cuts. The AllThingsD's sources also state something a little frightening for the company, that these cuts in the engineering and sales departments could be bad enough that it would force AMD to scale back some of their product offerings.

AMD are set to announce their quarterly earnings on October 18, but the announcement of the employee cuts could be announced a week later on October 25. AMD CEO Rory Read is rumored to have bought in a team of business consultants from McKinsey & Company and BCG to advice the struggling chipmaker. AllThingsD's sources claims that the mood over at team red is not great right now, with employees having feared cuts for a while now, with the source saying "there are a lot of nervous people, and not a lot of getting done right now".

Continue reading: RumorTT: AMD to get rid of 30% of their workforce, could spell trouble (full post)

Gaming industry had a rough September, sales down 24 percent year-over-year

Trace Hagan | Oct 12, 2012 5:31 PM CDT

The numbers were not nice to the gaming industry for the month of September. Research firm NPD Group released numbers that showed the industry slumped as a whole by 24 percent, when compared to the same period last year. Total sales for September, including game discs, consoles, and accessories, amounted to $848.3 million, a far cry from the $1.1 billion during the same period last year.

Looking component by component, the hardware sector suffered the biggest decline compared to last year. Sales of consoles declined roughly 39 percent to $210.9 million. Software, which makes up the largest component of gaming industry sales, declined 18 percent to $497.4 million, down from $609.7 million year-over-year.

Accessories were the least affected, declining only 11 percent. They totaled $139.9 million for the month of September. Microsoft wouldn't let this new bring them down, however, as they announced that the Xbox 360 is still the top selling console for the 21st month in a row.

Continue reading: Gaming industry had a rough September, sales down 24 percent year-over-year (full post)

OCZ stock falling faster than Felix Baumgartner, down to $1.46

Trace Hagan | Oct 12, 2012 2:48 PM CDT

It's not exactly a pretty scene over at OCZ Technology Group Inc right now as their stock continues to plunge towards being worthless. On Wednesday morning, the stock plunged a massive 42 percent to $1.88, down from a close of $3.15 the day prior. Today, the stock has taken another dive, though not quite as large.

At the beginning of today's trading, OCZ's stock was valued at $1.84. It has now dived nearly 22 percent to $1.46, at the time of writing. But why is OCZ's stock in the toilet all of a sudden? Well, it stems from OCZ delaying the filing of its financial results for the second quarter for fiscal year 2013.

In the press release detailing the delay, OCZ warned investors that the second quarter revenue would be "materially lower" than the guidance released on September 5, 2012. This decrease is blamed upon "the impact of customer incentive programs." The company now expects to report a "significant net loss."

Continue reading: OCZ stock falling faster than Felix Baumgartner, down to $1.46 (full post)

Another Samsung sales ban is overturned by the courts, Galaxy Nexus can now be sold again

Trace Hagan | Oct 11, 2012 5:39 PM CDT

Apple has s suffered another loss of sorts as one of the post-trial sales bans instituted by Judge Koh has been overturned by an appeals court. The federal appeals court ruled that Apple would not suffer significant harm by the infringement that was found during the trial, and as such removed the sales ban.

The Next Web put it beautifully when they described Samsung's arguments: "Samsung argued, somewhat humiliatingly, that the sales of the Galaxy Nexus were so poor that they didn't pose a threat to Apple's iPhone and that the unified search feature was not essential to the success of its device. The appeals court apparently agrees."

An excerpt of the official order:

Continue reading: Another Samsung sales ban is overturned by the courts, Galaxy Nexus can now be sold again (full post)

OCZ picks up a new CEO from the Board of Directors, welcome to Ralph Schmitt

Trace Hagan | Oct 11, 2012 11:23 AM CDT

OCZ, a maker of popular solid state drives, lost their CEO recently, but not to fear as the Board of Directors has picked a new replacement from its Board of Directors. Enter Ralph Schmitt, the former CEO of PLX Technologies up until Monday. Tuesday morning, the new OCZ CEO held a conference call and laid out his plans.

"Our actions will be based on innovation, quality, and profitability. Our focus will be to further penetrate OEMs and the enterprise market," he said on the conference call. "OCZ is committed to supporting our customers. We have already made great strides in discontinuing value products and non-core products. Focusing strategy on enterprise. We have lost credibility but we will win it back. We will focus on predictable, sustainable, & profitable results, but this will not happen overnight."

OCZ is planning to trim away at its value offerings as a company of its size just can't have as many as they do. Along with this, OCZ had offered customer incentives that were also too big. The CEO is looking to make the company profitable and work on its image:

Continue reading: OCZ picks up a new CEO from the Board of Directors, welcome to Ralph Schmitt (full post)

PC shipments down, their first fall since 2001

Anthony Garreffa | Oct 11, 2012 1:30 AM CDT

In a world completely dominated by smart devices like smartphones and tablets, less and less people are buying traditional PCs. The "post-PC" era has been touted for quite sometime, but the market has been doing well, until now.

ISH iSuppli's numbers for annual PC sales have dropped for the first time in over ten years, since 2001. iSuppli's numbers aren't devastating, representing a drop of only 1.2% from this time last year, but it's the first decline since 2001. Last year saw a 2.2% growth, so a 1.2% drop is actually something to talk about.

Expectations of growth were pushed and relied on the economy recovering somewhat, Intel's huge push of Ultrabooks and more. Manufacturers shipped 348 million PCs so far, down from 352 million of 2011's numbers. iSuppli does ask some questions:

Continue reading: PC shipments down, their first fall since 2001 (full post)

Microsoft CEO prepares us for a 'fundamental shift' in Microsoft

Anthony Garreffa | Oct 10, 2012 1:29 AM CDT

If you haven't noticed by now, Microsoft are going through a period of change. This is something I truly applaud the Redmond-based company of doing, as it really is required as the competition has changed, and is constantly changing at every turn.

We've now had Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer putting pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, on a new letter to shareholders explaining that Microsoft now sees its own devies as crucial to the company as anything else. He adds that there's a "fundamental shift" in how the company's employees works and he says that investors should expect Microsoft to periodically make "specific devices for specific purposes", like Surface, or Xbox.

This new shift in strategy doesn't mean Microsoft are ditching Windows, it is actually looking like it's quite the opposite - they're listening to their customers, and shifting toward a new era of energy that looks to help all areas of Microsoft's business. This includes Windows, Office, tablets, gaming, phones and more. Microsoft are looking to deliver premium hardware experiences on all devices. Ballmer says "it truly is a new era at Microsoft. We see an unprecedented amount of opportunity for both this year and the long term...I couldn't be more excited and optimistic."

Continue reading: Microsoft CEO prepares us for a 'fundamental shift' in Microsoft (full post)

Megaupload's winning streak ends, judge denies Megaupload's request for dismissal

Trace Hagan | Oct 9, 2012 12:02 PM CDT

It's time for another update in the ongoing legal battle between Kim Dotcom, founder of MegaUpload, and the US Government. Kim Dotcom and his lawyers requested that the case against him and his company be dismissed upon the grounds that he does not have a United States-based address at which he could be served.

Of course, the courts didn't exactly let him off this easy. In fact, they went as far to say that the absence of a U.S. address under criminal law "does not require a result so extreme as dismissal" of an indictment. It looks like, for now, Kim Dotcom and his lawyers will have to continue fighting the charges brought by the US Government.

Those charges, for the uninitiated, include criminal copyright charges that claim Kim Dotcom encouraged users to upload pirated content to the service so that he could make money from the advertising and premium subscription fees. Megaupload argues that they fall within the safe harbor provision of the DMCA.

Continue reading: Megaupload's winning streak ends, judge denies Megaupload's request for dismissal (full post)

Microsoft makes a boo boo, asks Google to block CNN, Wikipedia and US government sites

Anthony Garreffa | Oct 9, 2012 3:35 AM CDT

From time to time, software giant Microsoft ask Google to remove links from their search engine for webpages that display or distribute copyrighted material. Most of these copyright holders use automated systems to identify and inform Google and other sites of infringements.

As with most things, these automated tools aren't perfect, and Microsoft's latest filings show this. Back in July of this year Microsoft were trying to stem the distribution of its leaked Windows 8 beta listed 65 "infringing" websites, reports Torrent Freak.

Over half of these sites had nothing to do with the beta release of their OS, with Microsoft's automated software accidentally reporting that CNN, Wikipedia, Buzzfeed, BBC, The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, The Washington Post, Real Clear Politics, Rotten Tomatoes, AMC Theaters and various websites belonging to the United States government were infringing on Microsoft's copyrights - look at that list!

Continue reading: Microsoft makes a boo boo, asks Google to block CNN, Wikipedia and US government sites (full post)

NYT: Patent litigation is hurting innovation

Anthony Garreffa | Oct 8, 2012 9:25 PM CDT

In case you didn't already realize that all of these patent wars between various companies was hurting not just consumers, and businesses, but it's also hurting innovation. This innovation stops you from getting better, thinner, more exotic products, and now The New York Times has chimed in with a piece on the subject.

The Times' piece covers the fact that big companies usually strong arm small start-ups with an extensive patent portfolio that usually ends up with an acquisition, and if the smaller company isn't acquired they're sued.

The Times' piece also reveals that the smartphone industry spent a whopping $20 billion (or so) on patent litigation in the past two years. Companies such as Apple and Google have spent more money on legal battles than research and development in the past twelve months. Splitting this up, we find Apple spending around $3 billion on R&D last year, with another $4 billion to be spend this year. Those numbers may seem large, but they are far less than most other technology companies.

Continue reading: NYT: Patent litigation is hurting innovation (full post)

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