Business, Financial & Legal - Page 258

In 2006, mega giant media company Disney acquired Pixar, the makers of huge hits like Toy Story and Up, and have just now announced that they've acquired Lucasfilm. You might know Lucasfilm, they're quite well known for, well, Star Wars among others.

Lucasfilm are also responsible for the Indiana Jones series, and the deal includes other Lucasfilm properties such as Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. This news isn't the finish yet, as the press release for the announcement also includes news that there will be yet another Star Wars movie.

Disney is aiming for a 2015 release for Star Wars: Episode 7 and that its "long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years". I guess I should get around to watching the Star Wars movies then, huh?

Bulgarian blogger and digital rights activist, Bogomil Shopova, recently purchased 1.1 million Facebook users' data, including names, IDs and e-mail accounts. Shopova has said that he has no intentions of spamming or hacking those on the list, but is using the acquisition of data to highlight just how easy it was to gather personal information from Facebook.

Where would you buy the data to 1.1 million Facebook accounts in the first place? Well, I thought that too, but Shopova reportedly found the data for sale on the social market website Gigbucks. The seller went by the username "mertem", claimed that the data had been collected through third-party Facebook applications, consisting mostly of active accounts in the US, Canada, Europe and the UK.

The advertisement for the data stated it had "great potential" if you were offering a Facebook, Twitter of other social media-related product or service. Forbes has been told by a Facebook spokesperson that they were looking into the security breach. The representative said that the social network had dedicated security engineers that take aggressive action on reports such as this.

TSMC have something to be happy about right now, posting a record third quarter profit. The company posted a net profit of 49.3 billion New Taiwan dollars ($1.69 billion), which is a 62% jump year-over-year, and beating over 24 analysts' expectations.

TSMC-powered smartphones and tablet demand continue to expand, even in an economy which isn't doing so well. TSMC's flagship 28nm technology has given them an advantage over the competition, and the company has said that is directly responsible for doubling chip shipments in Q3. TSMC have said that chips built on the 28nm process accounted for 13% of total wafer revenue.

Morris Chang, TMSC Chairman, says that the future will be a little dull, expecting revenue to fall in the final three months of 2012. Chipmakers like Intel are scaling their productions back in the fourth quarter, citing reduced demand. Even with Q4 not looking so good, TSMC are optimistic about 2013 and the future, where Chang believes that TSMC will continue to outgrow the semiconductor industry in the coming years, as they has positioned themselves well in the smart device markets.

Here we are again, three months later and we have Apple's Q4 financial results to share with you. Not long after the Cupertino-based company unveiled their new iPad mini, fourth-generation iPad and refreshed Macs, their Q4 financial results are surprising in more ways than one.

Apple posted a revenue of $35.97 billion with a net income of $8.2 billion, up from $28.27 billion and $6.62 billion this time last year. Apple's earnings fell short of analysts' expectations of $8.75 per share, reaching just $8.67 per share. Apple reportedly lowered their forecast for the first quarter of fiscal 2013 from diluted earnings per share of $15.49 on revenue of $55 billion to $11.75 on revenue of $52 billion.

Analysts are pegging this on continuing supply problems, but I have a different idea. During the quarter, Apple sold just 26.9 million iPhones, 14 million iPads, 5.3 million iPods and 4.9 million Macs. iPhone shipments beat analysts' expectations by over 500,000 units, but fell short of analysts' expectations on iPad shipments by around 1 million units.

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: