Business, Financial & Legal - Page 84

Broadcom has been going after Qualcomm for months now, which led into US national security concerns and even President Trump standing in and blocking the takeover last week.

The presidential order said there was "clear evidence" of a US national security concern, with Broadcom able to "take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States". Broadcom said in a statement regarding the order that the Singapore-based company "strongly disagrees that its proposed acquisition of Qualcomm raises any national security concerns".

Qualcomm rejected the hostile takeover bid from Broadcom multiple times, while the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) operating under the Treasury Department, investigated the national security threat and determined there were multiple red flags, and now the deal is dead.

President Trump has issued an order that immediately stops Broadcom's attempts at acquiring Qualcomm, with Broadcom now blocked from the takeover and anything "substantially equivalent" to it, as it might "impair the national security" of the United States.

Broadcom has been lusting after Qualcomm for a while now, offering up a huge $130 billion to acquire the Snapdragon creator, and soon, 5G leader. There was a letter from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US that warned of a major national security threat if the Singapore-based company were to acquire Qualcomm.

In the meantime, Broadcom has said it is "reviewing" President Trump's order, and that the company "strongly disagrees" that its acquisition of Qualcomm would affect US national security. Qualcomm has said that once they've got the Order, they will kick off their annual stockholders meeting on March 23.

We all know just how big Amazon is, and with its founder and CEO Jeff Bezos kicking off the New Year as the world's richest man, but did you know he's making around $231,000 per minute this year?

Bezos has a fortune of nearly $100 billion already, and added another $10 billion in the first two weeks of 2019 alone. By the end of January, Bezos racked up another $10 billion bringing his net worth to $120 billion, while the Bloomberg Billionaire Index has Bezos' net worth hitting just over $129 billion, meaning he's made $30.1 billion IN THE LAST THREE MONTHS.

If we consider Bezos added just $35 billion to his fortune in 2017, making $30 billion in under three months of 2018 is astounding. Bezos is now making $10 billion per month, which equates to around $231,000 per minute, seeing Bezos make around 400% more than the average American worker makes in an entire year.

Broadcom has it hard for Qualcomm right now as they see the San Diego-based giant as a massive acquisition target going into the future with the world leading Snapdragon product family, 5G, and a million things in between.

But now, rumor has it Intel wants to acquire Broadcom and this is something that hit on Friday night. Intel shares dropped 1% in after-hours trrading, while Broadcom shares jumped over 6% in the same period. In a world where Broadcom did acquire Qualcomm, it would create a near unstoppable threat for Intel, more so than Qualcomm is on its own.

An Intel spokeswoman reached out to CNBC who said: "That being said, we have made important acquisitions over the past 30 months - including Mobileye and Altera - and our focus is on integrating those acquisitions and making them successful for our customers and shareholders".

Broadcom has the hots for Qualcomm in all the wrong ways, and even with nearly $120 billion on the table, the San Diego-based company behind the Snapdragon family of products has pushed away this acquisition.

The US government stepped in and stopped the deal over major concerns regarding national security, and now Broadcom is sweetening the deal with a $1.5 billion fund that would train new American engineers. Broadcom said in a statement: "With its proven track record of investing in and growing core franchises, Broadcom is committed to making the US the global leader in 5G. Broadcom is in every important respect an American company".

But why the $1.5 billion pledge for American workers? That's what the national security concerns were by the Commitee on Foreign Investment in the US (Cfuis) were over, as they said that Broadcom is trying to inject new directors into Qualcomm through this acquisition that "could pose a risk to the national security of the US".

The big deal going on between tech giants in Broadcom and Qualcomm is reaching new levels, with a US government national security panel seeing potential risks in Broadcom's want to acquire Qualcomm.

In a letter to the two companies, a senior US Treasury official said there were enough national security risks in this deal that it warrants a full investigation. Some of the concerns to the US government over national security involve Broadcom's relationships with foreign entities, but no names were released.

The US government's Committee on Foreign Investment ordered a national security review of Singapore-based Broadcom and their proposed deal, where it said there is an unnamed "actor" that is working through Broadcom to hurt US national security by acquiring Qualcomm. Most of the report is classified, so there's not much to go on, but what there is here is pretty damning.

In its chase towards being the best in everything, Samsung will break ground on its new foundry plant that will be making some of the most advanced chips in the world.

Samsung's new foundry will be built in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, and will have the South Korean giant better fighting Taiwanese foundry giant TSMC. Samsung said that they're going to have a ceremony with around 100 local residents of Hwaseong on Friday to mark the ground breaking of the new plant.

Samsung has said: "The new plant is so far planned to be used largely for foundry production, but it can further be expanded for other productions later".

Exclusive: AMD is making some changes to the way it has been running its Hollywood-connected side of things, with the company rolling AMD Studios into their graphics and workstation businesses.

In the middle of this Corporate Vice President, Media and Entertainment, AMD Studios, Roy Taylor, is leaving the company. AMD has said that they "thank Roy for all of his contributions to AMD, and we wish him all the best in his future endeavors". Taylor has held many positions within AMD over the years, joining the AMD ranks in 2013. There was no reason provided, with Roy just exiting the industry and not joining another company, at least for now.

As for AMD Studios, the company will be rolling these efforts into their graphics and workstation businesses, with expectations that it will create a stronger bond between the product, engineering, and enablement teams in order to get AMD products like Ryzen, Threadripper, EPYC, and the Radeon range of hardware into the media and entertainment industry.

Google has made a big change to their image search today, they have decided to remove the 'view image' button, making all of our lives just that little bit harder.

The 'view image' button was mostly a quality of life feature, giving access to the fulll resolution of the image without having to visit the website of the user that uploaded it. Now that feature has been removed we are forced into loading the website and visiting it.

To be completely fair, the initial removal makes sense as Google would of been harassed by numerous people asking for this feature to be removed. An example of people would be photographers, publishers or anyone that wanted their image strictly on their website and not stolen.

Samsung has lost its software engineer CTO to Google, with Injong Rhee joining Google to become an "Entrepreneur in Residence" at the search giant.

Rhee was with Samsung for seven years, and was integral to the development of not just Samsung Pay, but Samsung's Knox security platform. Rhee was also leading the deployment of Samsung's in-house AI assistant, Bixby.

Now that Rhee is at Google, he has said that he will be leading Internet of Things projects, but wouldn't provide any concrete details. Rhee will be reporting to Diane Greene, the CEO of Google Cloud, and will be pushing for a "concerted" strategy that will separate home and business IoT lineups.

Hawaii has been looking into the regulation of sales of games containing loot boxes to the youth, now the senate is pushing bills that would ban the sales of these games to people under 21.

It has been reported by the Hawaii Tribune Herald that there is four different bills in circulation that are being pushed. The first two which are titled House Bill 2686 and Senate Bill 3024 purpose a regulation on the sales of games containg loot boxes to only people above the age of 21.

The second pair of bills called House Bill 2727 and Senate Bill 3025 purposes a requirement for publishers to accurately label games that contain the loot box mechanic as well as the probability rates for each of the rewards.

A Chinese man has plead guilty to the crimes of selling counterfeit Apple products in the US, the criminal received $1.1 million in payments before being caught.

Jianhua Li, currently living as a student in the US has plead guilty to trafficking in 40,000 counterfeit electronic devices from China between 2009 and 2014.

Li wasn't alone though, there was three others that were in on the deal, Andreina Becerra, Rosario LaMarca and Roberto Volpe which have all also plead guilty. According to Justice Department the group did their best to attempt in covering their trails, when the counterfeit devices were shipped the group made sure the counterfeit labels were shipped separately to avoid suspicion.

Update: Qualcomm acknoledges it has received the massive bid, with a huge reply in a PR statement just now:

Broadcom wants Qualcomm bad, and by bad, we mean really bad. Broadcom is reportedly meeting its advisers over the weekend in order to increase their takeover bid of Qualcomm to $80-82 per share, up from $70 per share previously.

This would land the takeover of Qualcomm in the vicinity of a huge $120 billion, which will see Broadcom getting more power to get the US tech giant to the negotiating table. Broadcom is also reportedly offering Qualcomm a higher-than-usual breakup fee in case regulators stop the deal, according to Reuters' sources.

Nintendo's earnings call has been jam-packed full of new information, one of the biggest subjects that was discussed was the paid online service coming to Nintendo Switch.

Nintendo announced their Nintendo Switch Online service that will debut this September. The service contains a bunch of extra benefits for Switch players, such as online gameplay, lobbies, voice chat and a "Classic Game Selection."

The service is only going to cost $20, and that isn't a monthly payment either, the $20 covers for a entire year of membership. It can be expected that in the coming months Nintendo will release a specific date or more information surrounding their Online Switch service, until then enjoy Nintendos' online services while you can.

We saw the Nintendo Switch back in December sell more than 1.5 million units in a month and now we learn from Nintendo's earnings call that the Nintendo Switch has beaten the lifetime sales margin of the Wii U.

Released 10 months ago back in March, the Nintendo Switch has reached more than 14.86 million unit sales before the end of 2017. This puts the Nintendo Switch ahead of the Wii U which is counted at 13.56 million units sold.

Game sales on the Nintendo Switch shared similar success with a massive 52.57 million games being sold on the hybrid console. Super Mario Odyssey reached took first place as most sold game, coming in with 9.06 million copies sold. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe was second with 7.33 million and finally, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with 6.7 million copies sold.

Atari want to see RollerCoaster Tycoon make its way to the Nintendo Switch this year, to do this they have started a crowdfuning campaign with a stretch goal of $1.07 million.

Atari has teamed up with a crowdfunding platform named StartEngine to bring a new version of the 90's themepark management game RollerCoaster Tycoon to the Nintendo Switch this year.

To hit the stretch goal of bringing the title to the Nintendo Switch this year, Atari have set a goal of reaching $1.07 million. According to the StartEngine website, investors or pledgers can only invest $250 or more as that is the minimum amount that has been set on the site.

EA has confirmed in their earnings call that Anthem will be postponed for release until Q1 2019, while CFO Blake Jorgensen insists there is no delay on development.

Jorgensen has said that "It's not a delay" but instead EA are more so concentrating on the release of their next Battlefield game which is a fair point considering what happened with Titanfall 2 and Battlefield 1 in 2016.

If EA are carefully planning out accurate release dates, that is more than a fair enough reason to postpone the scheduled date until early next year, as this would provide great benefit for Anthem's initial release.

EA recently had their 2018 earnings call with Andrew Wilson, CEO of EA revealing what kind of impact PUBG had on their company and how they are going to tackle the success of the Battle Royale genre.

Most people are wondering if EA are going to be adding a Battle Royale mode to their already existing games, and while Wilson did not rule out that option, he said that his team is working on "new and innovative ways to play" instead of making carbon copies. Wilson continued by saying that this is the primary goal for EA at the moment, as the company is dissecting the different aspects within games that drive player engagement.

"I think what you discover in this industry is that there's a lot of great vectors that drive player engagement, and one of those is just innovation in the core gameplay mechanic. What the team with PUBG have done is really delivered a new level of innovation that changed the way people were playing first-person shooter games. And we're very respectful and complimentary of what they've been able to do. We've seen that continue with Fortnite. It's clearly a mode of play that the global FPS population is interested in." said Wilson.

Not too long ago we found out that the release date for Age of Empires: Definitive Edition, as players would of guessed, it will be released exclusively to the Windows Store.

In a recent interview with GameStar, Microsoft producer Jorg Neumann has claimed that the reason Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a Windows Store exclusive is because of Valve's lack of cross-play.

"There are certain things that are important to us, and in multiplayer games, we want to make sure our fans can play together. Therefore it is not okay if someone buys the game in one store and another in the other, and then - for some strange reason - they cannot play together. We're totally against it, and our only way to make sure of that is Xbox Live."

IGN has sat down with the directors of the upcoming Monster Hunter World and discussed whether or not the title could be in the pipeline for heading to the Nintendo Switch.

Kaname Fujioka and Yuya Tokuda, directors for Monster Hunter World has said that due to the development time of their upcoming title, there is currently no plans for it to arrive on the Nintendo Switch.

The main reasoning for the title to not be released on the hybrid console is due to the fact that the Switch was not even announced when the team started developing the game. The directors elaborate more on this by saying: