06/18, 9:02pm
Move intended to move Nvidia products into more mobile devices
Marking a sea change in the company's plan, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has declared that his company will license new graphics processing technologies to other companies, in addition to manufacturing the chips themselves. The new move is expected to help Nvidia capitalize on the industry shift to smartphones and tablets and achieve wider market penetration of its products.
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06/18, 6:46pm
Nokia chair notes thoughts on merger to press in London
According to reports, the chairman of Huawei's consumer business group has given some thought to a Nokia acquisition. At the launch of the Ascend P6 smartphone in London, Chairman Richard Yu noted that the topic may have been discussed internally, but there were a lot of factors to consider.
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06/17, 5:50pm
Oculus VR parent company to use funds for commercialization of device
Oculus VR, Inc., a virtual-reality headset manufacturer, today announced that it has closed a deal for $16 million in funding. The round was co-led by Spark Capital and Matrix Partners. Santo Politi, Spark founder and general partner; and Antonio Rodriguez, entrepreneur and general partner at Matrix, have joined the company's board of directors. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of virtual reality hardware, software and services, ultimately creating commercially-available virtual reality platforms.
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06/13, 3:32pm
Layoffs part of $1 billion restructuring effort
IBM yesterday commenced layoffs in the US, with a round of 1,300 people now looking for work. The move begins IBM's previously announced global restructuring plan that began in April after bad first quarter financial results. The restructuring is expected to cost the company $1 billion worldwide, including severance expenses and other one-time charges related to the layoffs.
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06/11, 10:29pm
Sprint likely to merge with Japanese carrier SoftBank
Merger talks between Dish Network and Sprint seem to have come to an impasse. According to sources familiar with the matter, a number of disagreements have scuttled the multi-billion dollar deal -- including several reverse-breakup fees payable if the takeover failed to achieve regulatory approval. Sprint claims that Dish failed to generate an "actionable" bid for the company. The inability to make a deal puts the matter back into SoftBank's hands, which had offered $21.6 billion to acquire Sprint, America's fourth-largest cellular network carrier, in October.
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06/06, 10:40pm
250 million global users view YouTube content on mobile apps
Advertising revenue generated specifically by YouTube has tripled on mobile devices, including smartphones and tablets -- giving nearly $350 million to parent company Google's coffers. According to the search engine, about 250 million global users view content on handheld devices, forcing a shift in ad purchases to reach that audience.
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06/03, 8:30pm
Savings on longest-term bonds could add up to billions, say analysts
Whether by coincidence or foresight, Apple could hardly have picked a better day than April 30 to have sold its first bonds since 1996, raising $17 billion to be used towards stock buybacks and increased dividends. Apple has announced that it intends to return $100 billion to stockholders over the next few years, but opted to go into debt to do so rather than "repatriate" some $45 billion in foreign profits -- finding that historically low interest rates would cost the company dramatically less than paying the 35 percent corporate tax on the offshore earnings.
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06/03, 4:44pm
Move to save troubled developer up to $80 million annually
Game developer Zynga today announced that it has commenced laying off 520 employees, and closing offices in Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York, with an estimated completion date of the moves by the end of August. The moves are described as "substantial cost reductions" and "a hard day for Zynga" but "necessary to move forward" according to Zynga CEO Mark Pincus.
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05/31, 10:10am
Working with device OEMs to make Roku software for TVs
Roku has received another injection of investment to develop its streaming set-top box. The $60 million round of funding comes from new investors Fidelity and Hearst Corp, as well as from previous investors such as broadcaster BskyB and News Corp, and brings the total amount of money invested into Roku to $130 million.
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05/31, 1:20am
Apple using payment plans, trade-in programs to make iPhone affordable
According to a report from a Credit Suisse analyst, Apple is now selling nearly 400,000 iPhones per month in India -- a rise of 300 to 400 percent since the start of the year, and enough to garner second place in the smartphone race behind Samsung in the country. The key to the change, analyst Sunil Tirumalai said in a note to investors, was changing the iPhone's image in the country to seem more affordable -- mainly by introducing discounts, trade-in programs and equal monthly payment (EMI) plans that have spurred sales on both the older and latest iPhone models.
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05/29, 11:30pm
Taiwan-based supplier has long history with Apple, rising star status
Apple may be turning to another of its partners and away from Foxconn as the primary supplier of some future Apple products, if a report from the Wall Street Journal is correct. The paper reports that Taiwan-based Pegatron, which has a history with Apple that goes back to the original iBooks, has won the contract to be the primary supplier of a future "low-cost" iPhone model that has been rumored for months. The company already produces most of the iPad minis, and recently announced it was hiring an additional 40,000 workers for an unnamed project.
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05/28, 5:46pm
Samsung debuts Espoo, Finland research center
Samsung has revealed it will be soon opening an expansive research facility in Espoo, Finland. The Samsung Electronics Research Institute is scheduled to open on June 13, and is likely related to Samsung's partnership with Finland's VTT Technical Research Center for development of new energy efficient technology.
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05/28, 12:13pm
Lowest point hit immediately ahead of Q2 results
Deep plunges in Apple's stock price during the month of April can be blamed on short-sellers, notes Fortune. Between the 15th and the 30th, short interest in Apple doubled to a record 41.6 million shares. That caused pricing to fall substantially; just before the company's Q2 results were announced, Apple stock sat barely over $385, a level unseen since 2011. Shares rebounded substantially later in the month, and currently sit closer to $445.
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05/24, 4:20am
DirecTV, Time Warner Cable interested in streaming TV service
Four parties have allegedly placed bids to purchase streaming service Hulu, with the first round of bidding apparently due to end this week. Guggenheim Digital Media, DirecTV, and Time Warner Cable are said to be interested in the company, following a bid from former News Corp president Peter Chernin for a reported $500 million.
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05/23, 11:57am
Income rises 38 percent, China shipments up 74 percent
Lenovo has managed to reach new records in annual sales and annual pre-tax income over the last year, according to its latest quarterly financial update. The computer producer reports annual sales of $34 billion for the entire year, an increase of 15 percent compared to last year, and a 38-percent increase on taxable income to $801 million.
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05/22, 5:55pm
No major stock movement in after-hours trading expected
HP today announced financial results for its second fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2013. Second quarter diluted earnings per share was $0.55, down from $0.80 in the prior-year period and above its previously provided outlook of $0.38 to $0.40 per share. For the second quarter, net revenue of $27.6 billion was down 10% year over year.
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05/22, 5:13pm
Testy exchanges between ministers show polarity of issue
Following Apple's testimony before the US Senate, Ireland's finance minister Michael Noonan declared that neither he nor his country would be the "whipping boy" for US tax loopholes. The US-led investigation demonstrated that Apple had paid two percent of $74 billion in international income, assisted by Irish tax law -- in particular, one holding company including Apple's retail effort throughout Europe had paid zero tax in five years.
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05/22, 11:31am
Large tech companies hide funds in Cayman Islands, Switzerland
Large tech firms are coming under scrutiny over their tax avoidance measures, following the testimony of Apple executives to a US Senate Permanent Subcommittee. Google, Yahoo, Cisco, and other multinational corporations have been found to be using an assortment of tax loopholes and off-shoring in order to avoid paying governments in the US and Europe at least $100 billion.
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05/22, 6:45am
Samsung becomes third-largest stakeholder in manufacturer
Samsung has bought a 10 percent stake in South Korea-based mobile producer Pantech. The purchase of shares in the country's third-largest smartphone manufacturer, reported to be worth 53 billion won ($47.6 million), will make Samsung the third-largest stake holder, just behind Qualcomm and the state-owned Korea Development Bank.
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05/21, 6:12pm
Documents Apple's defense against accusations of tax dodging
Apple has posted the opening statements two of its executives -- CEO Tim Cook (PDF) -- and CFO Peter Oppenheimer (PDF) -- made during their testimony in front of the US Senate earlier today. The documents don't reveal anything new, but do constitute a record of Apple's stance during the Senate hearing. "We pay all of the taxes we owe -- every single dollar. We not only comply with the laws, but we comply with the spirit of the laws," Cook's statement reads.
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05/20, 7:11pm
Apple to be used as example of corporate tax avoidance in US
In the wake of Apple's published testimony, US Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ) have released their own joint statement on the work of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. "Apple Inc. has used a complex web of offshore entities -- including three foreign subsidiaries the company claims are not tax resident in any nation -- to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes," Levin's office writes.
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05/20, 3:55pm
Pushes agenda friendly to repatriating foreign cash
A day ahead of CEO Tim Cook's planned appearance in front of the US Senate, Apple has published its official testimony (PDF) for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. In the document, the company lobbies for corporate tax reform, specifically arguing that the government should be "revenue neutral, eliminate all corporate tax expenditures, lower corporate income tax rates; and implement a reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows free movement of capital back to the US." Apple has roughly $100 billion in overseas cash, which it has refused to repatriate unless it can pay less than the standard 35 percent tax rate.
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05/20, 11:23am
Number of blog transfers to Wordpress spikes after Board approval
Yahoo has confirmed it has bought Tumblr, in a deal noted yesterday to be in the region of $1.1 billion. The search company has already moved its company blog over to the blogging platform, and despite CEO Marissa Mayer saying "We promise not to screw it up," there is reportedly a large jump in the number of users moving from Tumblr to Wordpress.
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05/17, 7:52pm
Suspected topics Tumblr acquisition, Flickr update
Yahoo is holding a "product-related" event on May 20. The New York City event will see CEO Marissa Mayer speaking on an undisclosed topic for about an hour at 5PM EST, which the company calls in an mass email "something special."
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05/17, 6:12am
Offer for blogging platform claimed could top $1 billion
Yahoo is in discussions to acquire or work with blogging service Tumblr, according to reports. The talks between the two companies are, depending on the report, concerning a possible strategic alliance between the two or an outright purchase of Tumblr, with the search engine said to be offering as much as $1 billion.
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05/16, 7:43pm
Trial centers on failure of Yellow Pages service
The Superior Court of Mexico has overturned a lower court ruling that found Yahoo liable for $2.75 billion in damages. Plaintiffs Ideas Interactivas and holding company Worldwide Directories sued Yahoo over breach of contract and lost profits on a yellow pages service.
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05/16, 5:32pm
Services, software driving company, hardware and consumer show heavy losses
Dell today announced fiscal 2014 first quarter results, with revenue of $14.1 billion, as the company grew revenue from Enterprise Solutions, Services and Software 12 percent year over year to $5.5 billion, or 8 percent growth, excluding the recent acquisition of Quest Software. The company earned $0.21 per share, not quite meeting Wall Street estimates.
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05/16, 5:10pm
'Apple does not funnel its domestic profits overseas'
Ahead of the Apple CEO's US Senate testimony, Tim Cook has replied to questions about politics and Apple's offshore tax practices in a new Politico interview. "We don't have a large presence in Washington, as you probably know, but we care deeply about public policy and believe creative policy can be a huge catalyst for a better society and a stronger economy," he says.
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05/16, 4:15pm
Begins more aggressive dividend plan
Apple is today paying out its latest dividend to shareholders. The amount is rated at $3.05 per share, translating into a total of about $2.867 billion for all of the company's 940 million outstanding shares. To be eligible for the dividend, a person must have been a shareholder by May 13th; because qualifying purchases must be settled though, realistically, any stock must have been bought no later than the 8th.
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05/15, 6:35pm
Apple, other companies accused of trying to avoid tax share
Apple will be the focus of a US Senate hearing next Tuesday, Politico says it has learned. The company's CEO, Tim Cook, is expected to testify in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigation regarding offshore tax practices. Other witnesses are also expected to speak, such as representatives from the Treasury Department and the IRS.
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05/15, 4:43pm
Google I/O sways market in Google's favor
Apple and Google both passed important financial milestones during Wednesday trading, notes The Next Web. While Apple's market value has fallen under $400 billion, Google's value has climbed over $300 billion. The surge in the latter company's worth is being linked to today's Google I/O keynote, where the company showcased several new products, services, and features, such as unified messaging and a Galaxy S4 with stock Android.
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05/14, 9:38am
Manufacturer aims for small annual net profit following massive loss
Troubled electronics manufacturer Sharp has reportedly had its largest yearly net loss in its century-long history. The losses of 545 billion yen ($5.3 billion), which is higher than any other result in its last 100 years of doing business, with management at the company also seeing a reshuffle in another attempt to rectify its finances.
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05/13, 7:58pm
HP, SAP claim quote by SAP CEO misinterpreted by paper
A pair of contradictory reports have surfaced today, regarding the potential sale of HP's troubled acquisition Autonomy to German software powerhouse SAP. Initially, the Times of London reported that HP had tried to sell the company to SAP, but a follow-up report from HP refutes all reports, with backup by SAP saying that an executive had a quote given in an interview misinterpreted by the UK paper.
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05/10, 5:31pm
Counter-offer allows shareholders to keep shares, pays significant dividend
Investor Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management have proposed a new offer to Dell shareholders, who are considering a proposal by founder Michael Dell's group of investors, including Microsoft, to purchase existing shares at $13.65 each in order to take the company private. In a letter to Dell's board of directors, Icahn and Southeastern are counter-proposing a deal to give all Dell shareholders the option to retain shares in the company, plus take an additional $12 a share in cash or stock.
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05/09, 6:53pm
Chip manufacturer expects to return to growth by end of fiscal year
Graphic card producer Nvidia today reported revenue for the first quarter of the company's fiscal 2014, which ended April 28. The company report income of $954.7 million, down 13.7 percent from $1.11 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2013. The company posted a $77.9 million profit, with earnings per share of $0.13, down 53.6 percent from $0.28 in the prior quarter. The results beat Wall Street expectations for the quarter, and the company expects to return to growth later in the year, on the strength of the margins on the Kepler GPU chipset and the release of the Tegra 4 system-on-a-chip.
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05/09, 5:40pm
53 channels launch program, more to come 'in the coming weeks'
YouTube has announced that is is opening a program for a "small group" of providers who will offer a subscription service of video content starting at $1 per month, but averaging overall just over $3 per channel. Starting today, partners such as Sesame Street, UFC, National Geographic, Jim Henson and the rest of the test channels will offer paid content with a 14-day free trial.
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05/09, 12:44pm
Crowdsourced navigation app may become part of Facebook mobile
Crowdsourced traffic and navigation app service Waze may be acquired by Facebook, according to a report. The discussions between Waze and Facebook come months after a possible acquisition offer from Apple and appears to be reaching the same financial levels as the billion-dollar Instagram deal in April last year.
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05/09, 7:05am
Nvidia, Occam Partners, Shasta Ventures provide Ouya funding
The makers of Ouya, the Android-based game console, has received extra funding from investors ahead of its launch. The additional outside investment has now allowed Ouya to set the date of the official public launch as June 25, allowing more time for it to manufacture consoles before shipping units to retailers.
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05/08, 10:43pm
Microsoft offer lower than current company value
Reports have surfaced that Microsoft is allegedly offering $1 billion to buy the digital assets of Nook Media, Barnes & Noble's venture into e-book publishing. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft would redeem preferred units in Nook Media, which would give control of the operation to Microsoft.
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05/08, 10:49am
Company shells out to retain key executives
Apple's Peter Oppenheimer was the highest-paid chief financial officer during 2012, according to Bloomberg. The executive received compensation worth a theoretical $68.6 million, roughly 16 times what Apple CEO Tim Cook received for the year. By comparison, Oppenheimer's closest competition -- Oracle CFO Safra Catz -- was given $51.7 million, while Google CFO Patrick Pichette was granted $38.7 million.
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05/08, 5:27am
Carrier manages to sell 500,000 iPhones since April 12th launch on network
T-Mobile USA's first quarterly results of the year appears to show its Uncarrier campaign is working in attracting prepaid customers, though still lost high-earning postpaid accounts. Despite adding more customers overall, revenues for the quarter hit $4.68 billion, a drop of seven percent compared to $5.03 billion received for the same quarter last year.
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05/07, 6:18pm
CEO filed suit against apple in February for 'iPref' stock
In Greenlight Capital Investor's quarterly earnings conference call, Chairman David Einhorn revealed that he has grown his stake in the company. The move was made in reaction to Apple's announcement of the $100 billion share repurchase, and record-breaking dividend program which he called "a major step forward" for the Cupertino manufacturer.
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05/07, 4:21pm
Facebook, Square, Dwolla, AirBnb, Mt Gox, hundreds of others named
Frequent litigant Aaron Greenspan, one-time claimant to Facebook co-foundership has filed a lawsuit against the vast majority of Silicon Valley's largest investors, and many Internet companies offering "money services businesses" with cash transfers as a primary product. The list of corporate defendants include frequent Greenspan target Facebook, Airbnb, Dwolla, and Square, troubled BitCoin exchange Mt. Gox, and many others. Individuals named in the suit inlude Paypal founder Max Levchin, Airbnb creator Brian Chesky, billionaire Yuri Milner, and Reddit CEO Yishan Wong.
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05/07, 4:10pm
Analyst increases Yahoo gross revenue estimate by $60M
Microsoft has extended its revenue guarantee with Yahoo, according to an SEC filing. The revenue-per-search guarantee, part of the ten-year deal the two companies struck in 2009, will be extended by one additional year, allowing Yahoo to earn more revenue than it otherwise would have if the guarantee fully elapsed.
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05/07, 7:14am
Knowledge of TD-LTE spectrum to help Sprint in rollout
SoftBank's CEO is continuing to talk-up his company's $20.1 billion offer to buy out Sprint, by claiming SoftBank's experience with 4G will help the US carrier. Network enhancements, such as SoftBank's single frequency network technology for reducing interference, will help Sprint in the long run alongside other benefits, according to CEO Masayoshi Son.
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05/06, 6:30pm
Giants take 100 percent of all smartphone profits between them
Samsung is steadily improving its profitability in the smartphone area, but Apple continues to be the dominant player when it comes to making money on smartphones sales according to the latest report from Canaccord Genuity. Apple's lower profit margin on smartphones in the first calendar quarter of the year led to a significant drop in its share of smartphone profits but was enough to allow the iPhone maker to claim 57 percent of the entire industry's profits, with Samsung taking the remaining 43 percent.
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05/06, 9:52am
Earnings rise for seventh time in a row, eighth unlikely
Asus managed to sell 3 million tablets in the first quarter, offsetting a drop in sales of notebooks and computer parts, according to the company's latest quarterly results. Overall, the company managed to earn $3.5 billion in revenues for the quarter, with its $202 million quarterly profit an improvement compared to both year-on-year and the previous quarter by 5.8-percent.
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05/03, 10:17am
Apple dodges taxes it would owe on repatriating cash
Apple's $17 billion bond sale -- meant to help finance a $55 billion stock buyback, part of a plan to return $100 billion to shareholders by 2015 -- is saving the company about $9.2 billion in taxes, according to an estimate from Moody’s Investment Services. Had Apple decided to use repatriated foreign cash, it would have paid a 35 percent tax rate, and hence owed the US about $9.2 billion.
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05/02, 1:19pm
Shareholders to vote on June 12th, deal could close July 1st
The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the proposal from SoftBank to buy out Sprint. While shareholders in the US carrier are expected to discuss and vote on the deal at a meeting next month, the chairman of Dish Network has made comments against the proposal, citing the need for Sprint's network to be upgraded by US teams.
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05/02, 10:13am
Krzanich joined by new Intel president James in executive office
The current chief operating officer of Intel will become the chief executive officer of Intel on May 16th, according to an announcement from the board of directors. Brian Krzanich will take over from the outgoing Paul Otellini, and will become the sixth CEO in the company's history, while Renée James has been elected to be the president of Intel on the same date.
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