Business, Financial & Legal - Page 90

NVIDIA has come out swinging with its quarterly financial report yet again, with the company seeing a huge 48.4% increase in quarterly revenue, thanks to the never ending demand for its GPUs that are used in gaming PCs, cloud computing, AI, the data center world, and more.

NVIDIA's future HQ

NVIDIA's data center revenue saw nearly double the revenue in Q1 2017 up to $409 million, beating analysts' expectations of $318.2 million, according to FactSet. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said: "All of the world's major internet and cloud service providers now use NVIDIA's Tesla-based GPU (graphics processing unit) accelerators".

Apple has jumped to the lead in the wearables market, while former leader Fitbit has fallen to third place.

According to the data obtained by Strategy Analytics, global wearables shipments rose to 22 million units during Q1 2017, which is up 21% compared to the first quarter of 2016.

Steven Waltzer, Industry Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said:

While Samsung and Apple still rule the smartphone market, LG has shown significant growth globally, and they captured a record 20% of the US smartphone market in Q1 2017.

According to Strategy Analytics, the company has sold 7.3 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2017 (up 3-points year over year).

The report contributes this success to the steady sales of LG's lower-price model, K and X series. The company's latest flagship, the LG G6, wasn't included in this report since it only hit the US market in April.

Apple is Making America Great Again by spending $1 billion on a new fund that will promote advanced manufacturing positions in the US, something Apple CEO Tim Cook announced on Mad Money today.

Cook said: "By doing that, we can be the ripple in the pond. Because if we can create many manufacturing jobs around, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them because you have a service industry that builds up around them".

Apple will start announcing the beneficiaries of its $1 billion fund later this month, with the company looking to train developers and help more people coding, with more details on this coming in the summer.

IDC has revealed its latest report on smartphone shipments in the first three months of 2017. According to the analytics firm, phone companies shipped a total of 347.4 million smartphones worldwide in the first quarter of 2017, which is a 4.3% increase compared to the Q1 2016.

The numbers show that Samsung and Apple are still at the top of this list, although their shipment number stagnates. Samsung regained control as the leader in the worldwide smartphone market despite a flat first quarter (0% year-over-year growth). The South Korean giant holds the biggest market share, 22.8%, with 79.2 million smartphones shipped, the same number they shipped in Q1 2016.

Apple remained essentially flat with shipments reaching 51.6 million units in the first quarter, up slightly from the 51.2 million shipped last year. These numbers mean they hold 14.9% of market share, a slight drop from 15.4% in Q1 2016.

Moving from a PC-centric company to a more datacenter driven one, Intel recently announced that IDF 2017 will be cancelled, and that going forward there will be no more Intel Developer Forums.

Instead, Intel has told us that they will focus on a broader range of industry events. Going forward, TweakTown was told to expect more events such as Intel's Technology and Manufacturing Day and Intel's Artificial Intelligence Day. Intel also told us to expect a more pronounced presence at events, where we don't typically see Intel, such as SXSW and even the LA Auto Show.

This pronounced shift in Intel's strategy comes on the heels of Intel's latest restructuring announcements. IDF has been one of the staple events of our industry, but it was clear that in the past few years the event had shifted from mostly PC-focused to 5G/IoT/DataCenter/PC/AI/etc. focused. Last IDF, we saw technologies from almost every corner of the industry, three days almost wasn't enough to see everything.

Nitero has been a company getting its name into headlines by teasing that it was working on phase-array beamforming millimeter wave 60GHz chip for VR headsets, with the fabless semiconductor company based in Austin, Texas - perfect for AMD with its base there.

AMD acquired Nitero without many details, but the deal includes Nitero's wireless virtual reality IP, and all of its employees, with Nitero co-founder and CEO, Pat Kelly, joining AMD as their new Corporate Vice President, Wireless IP. AMD's Chief Technology Officer and Senior Vice President, Mark Papermaster, said in a press release: "Unwieldly headset cables remain a significant barrier to drive widespread adoption of VR. Our newly acquired wireless VR technology is focused on solving this challenge, and is another example of AMD making long-term technology investments to develop high-performance computing and graphics technologies that can create more immersive computing experiences".

The future that AMD buys with the acquisition shows their commitment to the next generation of VR technology, as the high-end 60GHz wireless technology will allow massive amounts of bandwidth to be blasted between the base station and your next-gen wireless VR headset. It will allow high-quality VR at much higher resolutions than we have today, at much higher refresh rates than we have today, in room-scale VR environments without the base station needing to be in line of sight.

A Chinese court has ordered Samsung to pay 80 million yuan (around $11.6 million) to Huawei for patent infringement.

The verdict is the result of a lawsuit filed by Huawei in May in China and the United States. A spokesman for Huawei said that the company welcomes the court's decision.

Huawei sued Samsung for making and selling more than 20 devices (smartphones and tablets) that are said infringed the patent. One of those devices is the Galaxy S7.

Tesla Motors has announced their quarterly results which show that the company's deliveries have jumped by 69% compared to the same quarter last year.

The company delivered a record of 25,000 vehicles - 13,450 Model S and 11,550 Model X. Tesla's production in the first quarter also hit a quarterly record by manufacturing 25,418 vehicles.

Tesla has said it expects to deliver 47,000 to 50,000 Model S and Model X vehicles combined in the first half of 2017.

If there was ever a wild rumor for 2017, it would be that Apple is considering an acquisition of Disney - you know, the company that owns Marvel, LucasFilm, and Pixar - and is a giant on its own.

Apple is just as massive in the consumer electronics business, and with $200 billion in cash laying around, Apple could really stir up the entire world with an acquisition of Disney. With the largest cash reserver for a private company in history, Apple would own the rights to IP like The Avengers, Toy Story, Star Wars, Frozen, and so many more with an acquisition of Disney.

Now imagine all of that content having its parent company Apple, provide them with the rights to use their products like iPhones and Macs in their movies and TV shows - without the why-do-they-bother crappily made custom OS for a shot of a smartphone in a movie, or the fact that they're using an iPhone or Mac and they put tape over the logo. Imagine actual product placement, without it needing to be, and by a company as large as Apple - in movies as big as Iron Man, for example.

Since HMD Global started manufacturing Nokia-branded phones, it has become clear that the company has big plans for the once mega-popular brand.

At MWC in Barcelona, the company launched three Android smartphones and announced the return of the iconic Nokia 3310.

Read also: Did you want a Nokia Android smartphone? Here are three!

Amazon is a leader in next-day and guaranteed 3-day delivery, but now eBay is joining in on the delivery market with their new "Guaranteed Delivery" service - where eBay will guarantee shoppers their products will be delivered within 3 days.

There will be over 20 million products offered under eBay's new Guaranteed Delivery program, and will roll out across the US starting in summer. With over 1.1 billion items on eBay on a good day, 67% of them ship for free while 63% of them are delivered within 3 days or less. The new "Guaranteed Delivery" items will see eBay offering refunds or a coupon if your delivery isn't on time.

eBay will soon let buyers filter their searches with 1-, 2-, and 3-day delivery items - while qualified sellers will enjoy new shipping tools that they can tweak to offer their customers more accurate delivery times. As Engadget points out, we're in a world where Amazon can offer 1-hour - not 1-day, deliveries - eBay needs to catch up, and offer the technological foundation for on-the-spot tracking for deliveries.

TSMC has teased that it will be shifting some of its manufacturing to the United States in the near future, but now the company has decided it won't make a decision on its shift to the US until next year.

TSMC boss Morris Chang said back in January that it was looking to the US as a new place for a manufacturing plant, but TSMC spokesperson Michael Kramer has now come out and said that the company will decide in the "first half of 2018" if it will invest over $16 billion in a new production facility in the United States.

Kramer told Reuters: "We won't make a decision until next year. We would sacrifice some benefits if we move to the States. But we have flexibility in Taiwan. If an earthquake happened for instance (in Taiwan), we could send thousands of people here as support, whereas it's harder in the States". Reuters points out that TSMC receives around 65% of its total revenue from the US, so building a manufacturing plant in the US makes a whole lot of sense.

We reported back in January that AMD was gunning after LG, Vizio, MediaTek, and Sigma Designs - but now the US International Trade Commission has agreed to begin an investigation in alleged GPU patent infringement.

The four companies have allegedly used visual processing in their various products, including smartphones, TVs, and mobile processors - that infringe on AMD's concepts for unified graphics shaders and parallel graphics pipelines. If AMD is victorious in the USITC's investigation, it could see product sales bans on LG devices, and Vizio TVs.

Uber has been experiencing some serious issues in the last few months, but now Recode is reporting that Uber President Jeff Jones is leaving his position, just 6 months after joining the ridesharing giant.

Uber has been fighting law enforcement, sexual harassment allegations, one of its self-driving cars running a red light in San Francisco, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick leaving Trump's newly-formed advisory council, and then Kalanick busted raging down one of his own drivers about rumors of reduced income for Uber drivers. This has all happened in the last few months, and it's now reaching boiling point where executives seem to be jumping ship.

And now... Uber President Jeff Jones leaving has an Uber spokesperson saying: "We want to thank Jeff for his six months at the company and wish him all the best". Jones arrived to Uber after leading Target's new business model, and was a big score for Uber. Right now, Uber is in huge trouble - leaving many wondering what their future now holds.

HTC has announced that the company has sold its phone manufacturing facility in Shanghai to boost their investment into their Vive virtual reality business.

A Chinese company, Xingbao Information Technology bought the factory for $91.17 million.

HTC said the sale of the Shanghai plant will not affect its mobile division. This also removes the liability of owning the factory and the depreciation of its value. HTC does still occasionally manufacture devices for other companies like the Google Pixel, but most of HTC's contract manufacturing days are over.

Qualcomm is redefining what the Snapdragon brand is, with an announcement of a "new naming structure" for Snapdragon. The move will see the entire hardware and software platform on a Snapdragon-powered device being referred to as Snapdragon, and not just the processor.

The company explains: "For decades, the semiconductor industry has used the term "processor" to mean the component that powers the most advanced devices. It's a word that Qualcomm Technologies has embraced over the years with our Snapdragon brand, or as we say-our Qualcomm Snapdragon processor. But the word is an inadequate representation of what the technology actually is, and the solutions that tens of thousands of Qualcomm Technologies innovators have worked on".

Qualcomm continues: "In truth, Snapdragon is more than a single component, a piece of silicon, or what many would misinterpret as the CPU; it's an anthology of technology, comprising hardware, software, and services that are not fully captured in a word like "processor." That is why Qualcomm Technologies is refining our terminology by referring to Snapdragon as a "platform" instead of a processor".

GoPro has found itself in a curious position, with the third reduction in its workforce since the beginning of 2016 - with the action camera giant cutting another 270 jobs from its roster, hoping to save $200 million across 2017.

The new cuts include current staff, and open positions - after posting a $373 million loss in 2016, after production delays on the new Hero 5 cameras - as well as the recall of its Karma drone. GoPro stock took a big hit, hitting an all-time low this week, but went up 10% in after hours trading.

Back in January 2016, the company ditched 7% of its global workforce - but the November cuts were worse, with 15% of its staff being thrown out of a job. GoPro also completely closed its entertainment division, and lost ex-Skype boss and GoPro president Tony Bates. GoPro hasn't stated which areas the new cuts will affect, so I'm sure we'll hear all about that in the coming weeks, and whether it'll have lingering - or potentially disastrous repercussions throughout 2017.

Tesla Motors is looking to raise just over $1 billion, something the electric car maker will do soon as it ramps up towards the launch of its upcoming Model 3 electric vehicle - its new car priced at around $35,000.

The upcoming $1 billion injection will come from $250 million in secondary stock offerings, with another $750 million in convertible senior notes (as The Verge points out, it's "basically a loan"). There'll also be options for the underwriters to secure another 15% for each offering, while Tesla CEO and real life Tony Stark, Elon Musk, will buy $25 million in Tesla common stock as part of the deal.

Tesla will launch its new Model 3 electric car in 2018, starting from $35,000.

Vertu, a manufacturer, and retailer of luxury phones was established back in 1998 by Nokia. However, the company has changed hands a couple of times by now.

First, the company was sold to EQT VI in 2012, and their most recent owner, a Hong Kong-based holding company Godin Holdings, bought the company in 2015.

Now, Vertu once again has a new owner - a Turkish businessman Hakan Uzan, who is currently in exile. Uzan reportedly bought Vertu for $61 million.