Business, Financial & Legal - Page 99

Airbnb has become a central source of professionals and everyday people getting accommodation, jumping out of the usual hotel bookings. With Mobile World Congress taking place last week, Airbnb was a popular choice for attendees with around 1/3 of MWC attendees using Airbnb accommodation.

Mike Curtis, VP of Engineering with Airbnb, said that around 30,000 people at Mobile World Congress used Airbnb to stay in and around Barcelona, Spain. With 100,000 people attending MWC, the 30,000 that used Airbnb represents 1/3 of the total MWC attendance - a number that simply can't be ignored.

Curtis said: "Airbnb is becoming a much more mainstream thing now. A couple of years ago, I would attend a conference like this, and everybody would ask what 'Air Boom' was". Curtis added that most MWC attendees that used Airbnb booked their accommodation at the last minute, and over their mobile devices. Curtis added: "It's just an expectation now that you're going to be able to reach in your pocket and book something on Airbnb more often than not, instantly".

Apple and Samsung have been battling it out over mobile technology patents for years now, with Apple winning more often than not. Today marks a victory for Samsung, who recently appealed a ruling that would've seen it pay $120 million for infringing on Apple's quick links (the functionality that allows one to make phone calls from numbers seen on screen, among other things), slide-to-unlock, and auto-correct patents.

The court ruled the quick links patent was not infringed upon, and that the latter two patents were invalid. More, Apple was found to infringe on a Samsung patent, although it's not clear which.

The decision was unanimous among three judges of the Federal Circuit, the country's top court specializing in patent cases. Nearly $99 million of the damages related to the quick links infringement.

It looks like AMD is about to hit an even rougher patch, with rumors from DigiTimes that "AMD is likely to suffer from a record low share of both markets in the first quarter of 2016", according to their industry sources.

DigiTimes reports: "Demand for standalone video cards has already been sluggish given a weak PC market, and the market for standalone gra[p]hics cards continues to decline. In the already-shrinking market, AMD's rival NVIDIA has eaten away at its market share, the sources indicated". The latter part is true, with NVIDIA having 82% of the discrete GPU market - something we reported on in November 2015.

But AMD has reportedly been hurting on the CPU side of things thanks to an onslaught from Intel - and nothing really worthy of consumers and gamers moving away from their Intel-powered systems. We have AMD's exciting new Zen architecture around the corner, with DigiTimes' sources stating that it's still unknown if Zen is enough to save the company from more troubles. I agree there, but I think if Zen is as good as it looks on paper - and AMD has enough support from their partners, which I think are going to be an issue thanks to Intel's stronger relationships with the likes of ASUS and GIGABYTE - then we can expect some big changes from AMD in the near future.

Taiwan's technology giant Foxconn was set to purchase struggling Japanese electronics maker Sharp for nearly $6 billion this morning until it discovered some concerning information released by the latter company yesterday. Now Foxconn is taking time to look over the details, but says it hopes to resolve the situation quickly and then complete the deal.

Its concern is understandable: Sharp released a list of approximately 100 contingent liabilities that would see Foxconn inherit a potential $3.1 billion worth of risk should it take the company over, sources close to the matter say.

This latest disturbance is just one of many in the long-running on and off negotiations which date back to at least 2012.

Continuing its acquisition spree, Microsoft is set to snap up Xamarin, a company considered to possess the best mobile developer tools and resources anywhere. In combination with Visual Studio (which already made use of Xamarin) and the recently acquired Azure, this deal puts Microsoft in an excellent position from a mobile development standpoint. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Xamarin's platform supports iOS, Android, and Windows, so users of all kinds will benefit from this deal. The company boasts over 15,000 customers in 120 countries, including over 100 Fortune 500 companies. Yeah, they're kind of a big deal.

Plans relating to the acquisition will be revealed in a few weeks at the Microsoft //Build conference in late March/early April as well as at Xamarin Evolve in late April.

'Bleepin' Janitor' from the self-stated free technology community 'Bleeping Computer' purchased a SpyHunter License and unleashed a review to all readers on the forum. Enigma (SpyHunter creators) isn't happy with the negative review and has threatened legal action.

Tech Power Up reported that Bleeping Computer says Enigma has been "bullying" this community into altering the scathing review, with a threat that non-censorship will result in a lawsuit.

While Bleeping Computer has publicly stated that the lawsuit is a waste of time it is still crowdfunding for an official defense, as seen in the pop-up advertisement above - something that appears when you first open the website. Enigma Software claims that this review is slanderous towards its software, while Bleeping Computer states that it is exercising its right to free speech by reviewing and reporting on a product as they see fit.

Despite being invented in Australia, it's somewhat ironic that Australia has been incredibly slow to embrace in-flight wi-fi, with travellers expected to pick up a good book. But the national airline Qantas has today announced that the last bastion of internet free environments is coming to an end.

According to News.com.au, Qantas has today announced plans to add in-flight wi-fi to the airlines fleet of A330s and B737s early next year. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said that "bringing high-speed wi-fi to the domestic aviation market has been an ambition of ours for a long time and we now have access to the right technology to make it happen" and will "give Qantas customers download speeds in the air similar to what they're used to on the ground".

The wi-fi plan will be rolled out via a partnership with ViaSat, which will utilise National Broadband Network fibre backhaul.

Bloomberg and ZDNet are telling us that Yahoo will start its look for bidders as soon as Monday, approaching companies and private equity firms alike.

This announcement as a whole isn't too surprising given that Yahoo has already publicly announced a committee to deal with this task, with a slew of companies already pinpointed for a possible buyout. Bloomberg thinks that some large names are keen on this purchase, including the likes of Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, Bain Capital Partners, KKR & Co and TPG.

Bids are expected to kick off later on in March this year, coming amidst Yahoo's plans to restructure and focus its operations.

Theatrical ticket provider Fandango has just acquired Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster, which were both owned by Warner Bros. Entertainment, for an undisclosed sum of money.

Warner Bros. has secured itself a minority ownership in Fandango, and will continue to serve as an ongoing strategic partner. Warner Bros. said that both Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes receive around 20 million unique hits per month, but with Fandango's magic and combined audience, it projects these numbers to grow to over 63 million per month. Fandango and Flixster's mobile apps have been downloaded over 100 million times, according to Warner Bros.

Fandango President Paul Yanover said that Rotten Tomatoes and Flixster were invaluable resources for movie fans, and they look forward to seeing their new acquisitions grow. The company wants to increase theatrical ticketing and super-serving consumers with all of their movie needs, with both sites continuing as consumer-facing brands. Fandango will however add its ticketing capabilities to the Flixster app in the coming months.

NVIDIA has posted its earnings report for Q4 2015, smashing its previous records pulling in a huge $1.4 billion - 7% higher than the previous quarter of $1.3 billion. Full-year numbers were also impressive, with a record $5.01 billion - up 7% as well, from the previous year of $4.68 billion.

The company experienced growth in all market sectors, with Gaming, Professional Visualization, Datacenter and Automotive sectors all growing well. If we look back at 2015, it was a massive year for NVIDIA. The company launched its Maxwell-powered parts in late 2014, riding that wave throughout 2015. The company commanded 76% of the discrete GPU market in early 2015, and later in the year NVIDIA secured a huge 82% of the dGPU market.

Jen-Hsun Huang, co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA said: "We had another record quarter, capping a record year. Our strategy is to create specialized accelerated computing platforms for large growth markets that demand the 10x boost in performance we offer. Each platform leverages our focused investment in building the world's most advanced GPU technology".

The devastating 6.4-magnitude earthquake that struck Taiwan on February 6 is still having on-going affects to both the citizens of the country, and businesses - like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

TSMC said earlier this month that the earthquake would have an effect of less than 1% on their wafer shipments for Q1 2016, adding that 95% of its foundry machines would be restored to normal conditions within 2-3 days. Machines at Fab 6 and Fab 14B have been 100% restored, according to the company.

TSMC added that even though the earthquake has affected them, they are confident of reaching target consolidated revenues of $5.9 to $6 billion for Q1 2016. Let's hope that TSMC gets back to 100% operational capacity in the very near future.

Backed by the statement that "Women disproportionately make contributions that projects need more urgently," a study conducted by Cal Poly and the North Carolina State University concluded that women make better coders than men, as seen on Gizmodo.

This paper is reportedly still waiting for its peer review process so all statement may be taken with a grain of salt. However, the findings are still quite interesting. Utilizing the data taken from 4 million GitHub users, the researchers then narrowed it down to 1.4 million users (the ones they were able to figure out the gender of) and discovered that code by women is more likely to be utilised compared to male coding - showing a 78.6 percent pull request rating compared to the male figure of 74.6 percent.

Using this newfound data and further research which is linked below, the paper concluded that "Women have a higher acceptance rate of pull requests overall, but when they're outsiders and their gender is identifiable, they have a lower acceptance rate than men," further stating "Our results suggest that although women on Github may be more competent overall, bias against them exists nonetheless."

Recently, iPhone users have been encountering error code 53, an issue prevents users from installing updates or just flat out bricks the device. It triggers when the TouchID buttons are damaged or replaced.

Consequently, a Seattle law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit in California against Apple, arguing the behaviour is "abusive" and that Apple failed to warn buyers of what could happen should the sensor be damaged or replaced. It goes on to claim over 62 million units have been affected. For now, class-action status hasn't yet been granted by a judge.

The iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6S, and 6S Plus are confirmed affected; it's not known whether the 5S is or not.

Following yesterdays restructuring news, Mad Catz has decided to layoff 37% of their workforce after seeing less than ideal profits.

That is, they had the second-highest quarterly sales for the year, with a 114% increase in profit year-over-year. That, however, was not enough to sustain operations given their primary focus in the peripheral market. Net income, likely due to the investment in Rockband 4 and in the creation of Star Citizen peripherals, which costs considerable R&D capital, was down by 10%. "Rock Band sell-through was lower than originally forecast resulting in higher inventory balances as well as lower margins due to increased promotional activity with retailers," Mad Catz said in their official statement.

The restructuring and layoffs are expected to save them around $5 million by the start of FY 2017. That should significantly increase their profitability, despite the negative impact on the surrounding job market.

Uber is getting feisty in Foggy London Town, with plenty of London taxi drivers looking at Uber and seeing them as a threat to both their profession, and reputations. Well, Uber has been smartly sidestepping multiple roadblocks in the UK, and wants to work with taxi drivers and the taxi industry as a whole.

The company launched an UberTAXI option, something that helped taxi drivers find new passengers - and today, the company is now waiving the fee that it would take for each Uber-sourced passenger. This fee is 5%, and it will be dropped for the next 12 months.

Uber's Regional General Manager for the UK, Jo Bertram, said: "For Londoners it means they can order a traditional black cab at the push of a button and pay electronically through their phone, rather than worrying about cash. For taxi drivers it's a chance to get a fare when there are no passengers on the street or they're waiting in a long queue at a rank".

The best-paid CEO in the United States is Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, which comes as a surprise.

Pichai received the equivalent of $199 million in stock earlier this month, which increased his stake in Alphabet to $650 million. Pichai won't be able to cash in all of his Alphabet chips in for a while, with his shares vesting in quarterly phases through to 2019.

If we compare Apple CEO Tim Cook to Pichai, Cook pulled in $376.2 million when he sat int the CEO throne at Apple. While a $650 million stake in Alphabet would seem like lifetimes of money to mere mortals like you and I, it pales in comparison to the founders of Google. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are worth $34 billion, while ex-CEO Eric Schmidt has around $3 billion in stock. Guys, can I have a loan? I need to buy lots of cans of alphabet soup.

Maybe it's a first world problem, but when you pay through the neck for mobile internet and calls here in Australia - you expect a level of service. Today, the country's biggest network Telstra, which services 16 million customers has dropped the ball in a pretty big way by announcing huge network outages.

According to News.com.au, huge swathes of Telstra's network in capital cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane went down just after midday, with many customers reporting they're still unable to make phone calls over two hours later.

The company has not issued an ETA on a network fix (which the company call an 'interruption'), but stay tuned to their site here.

There's one app that I absolutely must have on my Android smartphone, and that's SwiftKey. SwiftKey is a predictive keyboard maker, that Microsoft has just acquired for $250 million.

Microsoft paying $250 million for the company will see SwiftKey founders Jon Reynolds and Ben Medlock receive $30 million or more each, which is pretty damn good for eight years of work being pumped into SwiftKey. SwiftKey itself has been installed on over 300 million devices, whether that's the free or paid versions on either iOS or Android.

What is Microsoft's interest in SwiftKey? Well, the artificial intelligence behind its super-accurate predictive text suggestions, which we should see baked into future iterations of Microsoft's mobile OS.

It's only been a few months since Amazon launched its first physical store in the United States, but according to retail sources, they're set to massively expand their presence in the coming months and years.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that General Growth Properties, Inc. CEO Sandeep Mathrani, whose company owns 120 regional shopping malls in forty states, has told investors that Amazon's "goal is to open, as I understand, 300 to 400 bookstores."

The house that Bezos built has yet to comment on the reports, but the billionarie founder had previously promised that "we hope this is not our only [storefront]. But we'll see". Looks like we will indeed.

Yahoo has just announced its new "aggressive strategic plan", where it has announced a slew of new products and a new way to tackle Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Wait, no they didn't - their strategic plan involves culling 15% of its workforce (1700 people) and closing down 5 offices around the world.

The company will be closing its offices in Dubai, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Milan, with the layoffs leaving the company with 9000 staff by the end of the year. Yahoo's goal is to reduce operating costs by $400 million as we go into 2017. During its recent quarter, Yahoo pulled in $1.27 billion in revenue, but had a massive write-down of $4.5 billion. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said in a statement: "today, we're announcing a strategic plan that we strongly believe will enable us to accelerate Yahoo's transformation. This is a strong plan calling for bold shifts in products and in resources".

When Mayer took over at Yahoo, she said the company was full of legacy businesses and a declining revenue stream that had to be stopped. Its Mavens (mobile, video, native and social) side had a revenue source that had an "incredibly fast growth line of business". Mayer also noted that Yahoo needs to engage its users, and double down on its top businesses: Search, Mail and Tumblr.