Business, Financial & Legal - Page 269

Apple, seemingly trying to strike a blow to its favorite legal adversary, has lowered its memory chip order to Samsung for the next iPhone. Samsung has long provided many components for Apple's products, even though Apple and Samsung are constantly involved in legal battles around the world.

Apple has continually been trying to diversify its suppliers and reduce the business it sends towards Samsung, a company Apple continually accuses of copying. "Samsung is still on the list of initial memory chip suppliers (for new iPhones). But Apple orders have been trending down and Samsung is making up for the reduced order from others, notably Samsung's handset business," the Reuters source said.

The reduction in orders is not expected to hurt Samsung by very much. Analysts figure that Apple's purchases of DRAM and NAND chips only make up about 2.5 percent of Samsung's business, so that is the most it could hurt Samsung if they were to completely end their business relationship.

Google has acquired the online virus scanner VirusTotal for an undisclosed amount of money. The deal appears to be a straightforward one, with VirusTotal continuing to operate independently. VirusTotal will gain access to Google's resources and infrastructure, which should help VirusTotal to continue improving their service.

According to the press release, VirusTotal had been one of Google's partners for a long time, so the business relationship with other antivirus companies and security experts should remain mostly unchanged. Google will likely look to integrate VirusTotal's scanning systems into many of their offerings.

The UK government proposed their controversial Communications Data Bill earlier this year, which would see British ISPs made to keep records of every website that their customers visit for 12 months. Of course, you can see where civil rights groups, and others, would have problems with this.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, has stepped up to the debate and joined the opposition to the proposed bill, saying:

The new iPhone looks to be announced next week at Apple's September 12 event, and one analyst estimates the new iPhone could sell as many as 10 million in its first week. The question is, how do Apple amass 10 million (or so) new iPhone's in a short amount of time?

Simple. Force university students to work 12 hours per day, six days per week for around $243 per month on the new iPhone. This is what Foxconn is doing, reports the Shanghai Daily. Foxconn reportedly couldn't get their soul machine to work normally, so they secured more workers from universities, as classes were suspended at the start of the new semester.

Students began working on the new iPhone last Thursday, and are being "compensated" by the $243 per month wage. One student who wished to remain anonymous, claims that the authorities had ordered the schools to round up students to help Foxconn, with the company not informing parents, or signing agreements with students. Another anonymous student said that some universities would go as far as punishing students if they tried to leave the factory.

OCZ lowered their forecast for second quarter earnings due to a shortage of NAND chips that it uses in the production of its solid state drives. This was seen as a good thing on Wall Street and both Micron's and SanDisk's shares jumped. This is because a shortage in NAND chips would stop the sliding price of flash memory that has been dropping lower in recent days due to overproduction.

Micron increased by 5.97 percent to $6.55 and SanDisk managed an 8.0 percent increase to $43.85. "Supply and demand is coming into balance with the cuts and the industry rationalizing its capacity," said Kevin Cassidy, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus. Supply had previously been increased to meet the demand for Apple's iPad and other devices.

Decreased sales had created an overabundance of NAND chips which lead to decreased prices. Toshiba announced back in July that they would be decreasing their output by 30 percent in order to help stabilize prices. Citi analyst Glen Yeung said that the effects have yet to be fully felt across the industry.

During Motorola's event in New York, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took to the stage announcing some stellar numbers for the Mountain View-based company. Schmidt said that there are now 1.3 million Android activations every day, with 70,000 of them tablets.

How many Android devices in total? An amazing 480 million, that's just a shave under half a billion Android devices - insane. Schmidt continued, talking of how much the Android ecosystem had grown in the years gone by, where he quoted Comscore numbers that show Android is ahead at 53% of the market, and Apple's iOS with just 33%.

Schmidt did step back and say that people do question these numbers, as we don't really know how those numbers are gathered. Google's Dennis Woodside took to the stage announcing that "the new Motorola begins today", also stating "Motorola invented the technology that underpins the mobile industry". Of course he'd say that, considering Motorola is now part of the behemoth that is Google.

The judge has smacked Oracle with a $1,130,350 bill payable to Google for its legal expenses incurred during the unsuccessful lawsuit. "Google was the prevailing party in this action. Oracle initially sought six billion dollars in damages and injunctive relief but recovered nothing after nearly two years of litigation and six weeks of trial."

It's not as much as Google would have liked--they asked for over $4,000,000--but a large portion of that was fees for an eDiscovery firm, something found to be not payable. Oracle objected the claim, saying they had brought a matter of great national importance, something that would protect them from the fees:

Finally someone is trolling Apple instead of Apple patent trolling everybody else. In China, a phone clone maker has produced an Android phone that was designed around iPhone 5 leaks. But they didn't stop there. No, they took the design to the patent office in China and received patents for the design.

The better part? They've threatened legal action if Apple tries to release the new iPhone in China as they basically own the patents for the new device, if it looks like all the leaks say it does. This is from GooPhone, a company that already has a cloned Samsung Galaxy S III on sale in China.

This easily could prevent Apple from selling the phone in China, which would be bad for Apple's bottom line. China is the fastest growing mobile market and is expected to soon be the biggest consumer of smartphones, lucrative for a company that makes smartphones. The iPhone 5 is widely expected to be unveiled on September 12 in San Francisco.

Over the weekend, Samsung were caught in a web of their own crap as it was revealed they were trying to turn two Indian tech bloggers into paid shills. Clinton Jeff and a second blogger were allegedly pressured into promoting Samsung products at the IFA event in Berlin.

It was meant to be part of Samsung's Mob!lers marketing programme, but news came out from the bloggers, who have painted quite the picture of Samsung. The original story from The Next Web shows that the two bloggers were independent bloggers, not there for any particular company, but for all the companies, to report on all products. Samsung had offered to fly them over to Berlin from India, and put them up in a hotel, how can you turn down that offer?

It turns out that Samsung had other plans for the bloggers, where once they touched down in Berlin, were asked to sign an NDA at the IFA event. They declined, and were threatened with their flights home being cancelled, and their hotel room stay finished. This would've left them stranded in a foreign country, with no way home, with the only option left to spend their own money, unexpectedly.

If you're a long-term reader of TweakTown, you'll know that I'm quite passionate in the stagnation of the PC hardware scene. I've even touted Valve as the savior to all of this, and it seems I'm being proven right more and more with each day passing.

CVG reports that they've noticed a job listing on Valve's site, where the company is looking for an 'Industrial Designer'. The post says: