Business, Financial & Legal - Page 300

The average annual salary of a Silicon Valley technology worker has surpassed the $100,000 mark this year. Tech-jobs website operator Dice Holdings Inc. has said that salaries for software and other engineering professionals in California's Silicon Valley rose 5.2-percent to an average of $104,195 last year.

This beat the average 2-percent increase to $81,327 in tech-workers' salaries nationwide. It was also the first time since Dice began the salary survey in 2001 that the numbers broke the $100,000 mark, said Tom Silver, a Dice senior vice president. It comes at a time where companies such as Facebook Inc., Zynga Inc., and Twitter Inc., that have reignited the web boom.

Some companies have gone public, too, with LinkedIn Corp. and Zynga hitting IPOs and Facebook is eyeing an IPO soon, too. Their success has made a domino effect on new start-ups, which has then ignited a hiring war for software engineers and others.

With my beautiful 10-month-old daughter getting multiple teeth at once, it felt right comparing the issues between 28nm and teething. Onto the news! We all know transitioning from an older fabrication to something newer, better, and more exciting can be, well, hard. It's being reported that both TSMC and GlobalFoundaries are both experiencing serious yield issues with their 28nm process nodes, according to Mike Bryant, technology analyst at Future Horizons.

This is reportedly causing a rash of non-working wafers, to the point of having nothing working with some chip designs submitted for production. The problem seems to stem from pressure of bringing these new products to the market, rather than a problem with the technology itself. It takes time, something they don't have, and without said time, they can't iron out all of the issues and they're getting stuck.

Bryant says:

Intel have today reported a full-year revenue of an astounding $54 billion, with an operating income of $17.5 billion, net income of $12.9 billion, and EPS of $2.39. The thing associated with all of those huge numbers? They're all records. Intel had an amazing year in 2011.

Intel generated approximately $21 billion in cash from operations, paid dividends of $4.1 billion and used $14.1 billion to repurchase 642 million shares of stock. Q4 2011 saw Intel post a revenue of $13.9 billion, operating revenue of $4.6 billion, net income of $3.4 billion and EPS of 64 cents. Q1 2012 has been good so far, with their business outlook mentioning revenue sitting at $12.8 billion, plus or minus $500 billion.

Full-year 2012 details are interesting, with stand-outs like Research & Development (R&D) expected to hit $10.1 billion. With Intel heading into the smartphone market, that $10.1 billion could go a very long way. With their lead bulldozing the CPU competition, Intel don't really even need to release something that much faster to stay on top. But, if they slow down, it might give AMD enough time to catch up.

Eastman Kodak, the 133-year-old iconic American company that invented the handheld camera, have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. After years of losing profits, and responding slowly to the ever-changing market, bankruptcy seems to be their only way out.

The move follows a long-term restructuring plan by chairman and CEO Antonio Perez, where since 2003, Kodak have closed 13 manufacturing plans, cut its worth force from 145,000 down to 17,000. 15 years ago, Kodak were valued at around $31 billion, its current value? Just $150 million.

Perez has said:

Amazon lose money on each Kindle Fire sold, as hardware and manufacturing costs of the Kindle Fire exceed its retail pricing, but somehow, Amazon aren't losing money on it. How does Amazon conduct this sorcery? Well, with every Kindle sold is another annuity revenue stream for the company, further strengthening its core retail business.

According to RBC, each Kindle Fire generates more than $100 in additional income, which makes up for the $2-$3 that Amazon make per device. RBC Capital analyst, Ross Sandler, said in research notes to clients:

Google have released some financial results that might interest some, with Q4 011 and fiscal year ending December 31, 2011 being released. CEO of Google, Larry Page, says:

$10 billion revenue for Q4 is very impressive, up 29-percent. Google reported revenues of $10.58 billion for the quarter ending December 31, 2011, an increase of 25-percent when compared to the same quarter in 2010. Google-owned sites generated revenues of $7.29 billion, or 69-percent of total revenues. This is an increase of 15-percent year-over-year. Google's partner sites generated revenues of $2.88 billion, or 27-percent of revenues. This too is a 15-percent increase year-over-year.

Bit of a mix-up for the news today. The SOPA protests are on today, and have been for quite a few hours now, with Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and other sites all either showing a protest, or completely going dark for 24 hours.

The protest is of course in regards to SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act which Congress were debating. On top of this, there is PIPA, the Protect IP Act. Today marks a big day for not only the Internet, but you, me, and everyone in between. If SOPA is to get in, it is more or less the end of the Internet as we know it. It would still exist, but it would be heavily modified. Think of it like, if the Internet servers were in two places, North Korea and China, with a huge firewall, and if the dummies in Congress were the managers, and the MPAA gave out some requirements.

Yes, that's a little over-exaggeration, but it's pretty close. This news is just a "we here at TweakTown oppose SOPA/PIPA and any other stupid bill Congress want to push upon the people", and a bit of a tip in case anyone has missed previous news posts in regards to SOPA and PIPA on our site.

Symantec has acquired archiving company LifeOffice, in a deal worth $115 million. Symantec increases its cloud-computing power to fight the battle and be more of an on-premise and software as a service (SaaS) company. Most traditional enterprise-software companies are scooping up cloud-based companies, with SAP purchasing SuccessFactors, and Oracle taking RightNow.

Symantec said in a statement that it will use LiveOffice to bolster its information-governance unit, as LiveOffice provides a cloud-based archiving system. LiveOffice and Symantec were partners before the deal, which it has now fused into one. Symantec said in a blog post:

Research in Motion, which I'm sure you are aware are popular for their BlackBerry devices, have been going through some rough times lately. I'm sure virtually everyone working at RIM hate Apple and Google for coming in and creating something which took off quickly, and continues to grow at unprecedented rates. I'm talking of iOS and Android-powered devices.

RIM have slowly been sinking and it's been reported that they are eyeing off every single option they can think of, "in an effort to reverse a negative trend that is approaching a boiling point for investors," says BGR. RIM have reportedly favored an all-out purchase of one or more divisions, or even the entire company. RIM want Samsung to do it, but just after the story went to air, Samsung denied it.

Samsung didn't just slap RIM and walk away, as they are considering licensing RIM's software, or purchasing a portion of RIM's assets. This is better than nothing for RIM.

SOPA may have been stalled, but the fight is not over, yet. Wikipedia have announced that they are joining in on the Black Out protest which is scheduled for January 18, just mere hours away.

Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales, made the announcement through Twitter today, saying that Wikipedia will be unavailable for 24 hours beginning midnight EST of January 18 (4pm AEDT). Instead of Wiki entries, users will get to the site, and get redirected to a page with a banner saying "The Internet Must Remain Free".

Wikipedia is just one of a number of sites that will suspend operations on January 18, these sites include Minecraft, Reddit, Major League Gaming and the entire Cheezburger network. These black outs and protests are to raise awareness for SOPA and PIPE bills. Hopefully this begins to catapult SOPA and PIPA into the mainstream, and the House drops it. Let's hope they don't rename it, add some spice and throw it in with another bill without anyone knowing. It's not like they would be capable of doing that, again.