Business, Financial & Legal - Page 308

Anyone with half a brain knew when Apple purchased online music service Lala that its days were numbered. Apple was either looking to axe some competition or was out to integrate Lala into its own online subscription music offering (or both).

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I know I am hoping for the second option and according to TechCruch sources are telling it that is exactly what will happen and perhaps as early as June. Lala will be available for existing subscribers until May 31. No new subscribers are being accepted.

Apparently, anyone with money left in Lala will have the funds transferred over to iTunes. I know many folks who may be sad to lose Lala, but will be hopeful that Apple finally offers that subscription service.

It's been known for quite a while Palm has been struggling to keep its head above water and the marketplace tells the story pretty quickly they've been failing to compete at a required level to survive in the ever growing, fast paced smartphone world.

At this rate, the end of the road for the company is not all that far away unless something drastic takes place. And that's exactly what's just happened. HP has just announced it's swallowing them up for 1.2 Billion, working out to about $5.70 per share of Palm common stock.

It's no secret that Apple has been using Intel processors for several years now. However, a story over at AppleInsider hints that perhaps Apple's relationship with Intel isn't as strong as it seems.

Rumour has it the company is considering jumping ship to AMD and has even been testing AMD based chipsets in their labs. But there's no form of substantial evidence to support this as yet.

Not even a week after we tell you that Apple is attempting to ban all third party compilers and porting tools we hear rumors of the law suit to be filed by Adobe. Of course we wanted to know if this was the case and so far have been told that is no grounds for the rumor. Adobe's last comment was that they were looking into the wording of the new SDK agreement, but nothing about any type of legal action.

However all of that might have changed when a statement by Steve Jobs (made in response to Greg Slepak, Co-Founder of To Effects) Jobs is trying to claim, again (Apple tried this with the Mac OS), that by allowing third party tools it will hold back the OS. However, most know that this is not the case and that regardless of the tools used some apps will still come out crappy (just look at a few in the App Store now). Slepak also commented that many apps that are popular on desktop are made by cross-compilers.

Overall I feel this is very ant-competitive and anti-consumer, this feels more like a move to ensure that developers cannot code for multiple platforms with a single set of tools.

Such a shame - boutique PC maker Hypersonic-PC has closed down. According to a message left on its website, "At this time Hypersonic-PC is not accepting any orders. We are honoring all warranties and will continue to support existing customers. All customers that currently own a Hypersonic branded PC or Notebook can contact the following numbers for direct product support."

Maybe it's just me, but If you swipe something from an Apple Store without the employees knowing it you might not want to post the item on eBay for sale stating that you liberated it from the store. An eBay auction has turned up for a stair from the Apple Store on 5th Ave in NYC.

A few years ago at a CES party I met a trio of MPAA lawyers hanging out with us tech media folk. Who would have ever thought I would get a chance to chat these guys and gals up when they were off guard and drinking up others party favors? I have to admit that they didn't appear to be the sleaze balls I pictured, they were young and had the kind of charm that you would find when taking a trip to Kansas. Seeing my opportunity I had to ask about their own music / movie downloading habits. To my surprise all three admitted to downloading both music and moves from the internet but wouldn't suggest others do it because "now days people are watching."


One group that is currently under the microscope is Newzbin Ltd. What makes Newzbin different than the Torrent trackers is that it catalogs some of the internet's oldest files that sit on Usenet. Newzbin does not have their own Usenet servers but simply catalogs and organizes. The MPAA feeling like they own the Internet has chose Newzbin as their latest victim of legal harassment and court proceedings are already underway.


Newzbin has taken to updating the court proceedings on their home page that serves as a news page. It seems that things are not looking too good for the company at this point but Lady Justice has yet to sing. You can read about the updates by clicking on the News Source link below.

The following news story was submitted by Jim Handy of Objective Analysis.


Late Tuesday Micron announced that the company had signed a definitive agreement to acquire Numonyx in an all-stock transaction. Micron will issue 140 million shares of the company's common stock, worth approximately $1.27 billion, to Numonyx shareholders Intel, STMicroelectronics, and Francisco Partners.


Micron Re-Enters NOR

The NOR flash market has been a difficult one for nearly all participants. Leaders Numonyx and Spansion have suffered losses for several years, with Spansion recently turning a profit through a strategy largely focused upon markets for low-density parts used by markets outside of cell handsets, the largest consumer of NOR flash. Micron itself participated in NOR starting in the late 1990s, but abandoned this effort in 2006.
By acquiring Numonyx, Micron is buying the current leader in the market, a position Numonyx is believed to have held for the past two quarters. Numonyx should add roughly $1.5 billion to Micron's revenue stream at today's run rate, increasing the company's share of the semiconductor memory market. Objective Analysis projects for the memory market to explode in 2010, and this is likely to amplify the impact of this acquisition.


What Does Micron Get?

Numonyx is first and foremost a manufacturer of high-density NOR flash. NOR flash has been a large market, but not a profitable one. High-density NOR competes against NAND for camera phone designs, and NAND prices have been depressed for the last three years, dragging NOR prices down with them.
The company has strong technology, a good IP portfolio (which may have strings tied back to parents Intel and ST), one production 200mm fab, and a shell built for a 300mm fab in Sicily.

One key difference between Numonyx and both Spansion and Samsung, the other two competitors in the high-density NOR market, is that Numonyx has been ardently pursuing the phase-change memory (PCM) market, which is expected to take off once NOR flash hits its scaling limit. Interestingly, Numonyx' PCM is licensed from Ovonyx, a company founded by former Micron executive Tyler Lowrey. With the acquisition Micron will gain significant experience in this technology, for which Numonyx had first revenue shipments in late 2008.


What About Hynix?

It is unclear what this means to the Hynix/Numonyx relationship. Numonyx was using Hynix as a NAND and DRAM foundry under a deal in which Numonyx provided flash technology to Hynix. Numonyx also has a 21% stake in a Hynix wafer fab in Wuxi, China. We will be watching this to see what develops.


Executing a Typical Strategy

Micron has a penchant for acquiring companies at a low point in the market using depressed Micron stock to fund the transaction. Perhaps the most notable example is the company's acquisition of Texas Instruments' DRAM business in 1998. Although Intel, STmicroelectronics, and Francisco Partners today will receive $1.27 billion worth of Micron stock at today's prices, this stock is quite likely to increase in value by the end of next year, leading to gains for the parent companies, while allowing Micron to perform the purchase at a relative bargain. This projection is based on Objective Analysis' projection that DRAM prices will behave in their typical manner, remaining roughly level through the end of 2011, when the next overcapacity should begin.

All in all Objective Analysis anticipates that this will be a good deal for both buyer and sellers. This is the kind of deal we expected to see more of during the current downturn, a kind of hallmark for Micron.

Jim Handy
OBJECTIVE ANALYSIS
PO Box 440
Los Gatos, CA 95031-0440
USA
www.Objective-Analysis.com

This past week rumors have been circulating around the good ole Internet that DFI is quitting the enthuaist and retail motherboard business.

We have heard plenty of rumors on the story that both claim that DFI is quitting and ones saying that DFI isn't quitting the business. I'll put it out in the open that we had it from a reliable source last night over an IM chat that DFI is indeed quitting from January 2010, but is trying to kills the rumors as it still wants to sell the rest of its stock and use the parts its ordered from the likes of Intel and Foxconn.

eBook readers are huge right now with an unprecedented demand for them this holiday season meaning that many of the new devices are unavailable. As eBook adoption grows, the demand for more content is growing as well.

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Borders has announced that it is investing in Kobo, an eBook store, and will be investing in a new eReader. The eBook service will be built into the Borders.com website starting in 2010.

So far, Kobo plans to offer about 1.8 million books from the Internet that are available free. It will also have 200,000 other books starting at $9.99 each. What the eReader itself will look like is unknown, but Borders said that it hopes to reach the reader who only buys a few books each year. The device would have to be cheap to do that.