CHICAGO (Reuters) - Employers in California and Illinois will be prohibited from demanding access to workers' password-protected social networking accounts and teachers in Oregon will be required to report suspected student bullies thanks to new laws taking effect in 2013.
In all, more than 400 measures were enacted at the state level during 2012 and will become law in the new year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).
Some of the statutes, which deal with everything from consumer protection to gun control and healthcare, take effect at the stroke of midnight. Others will not kick in until later in the year.
The raft of measures includes a new abortion restriction in New Hampshire, public-employee pension reform in California and Alabama, same-sex marriage in Maryland, and a requirement that private insurers in Alaska cover autism in kids and young adults, NCSL said.
In New Hampshire, a rarely used form of late-term abortion will become illegal except to save the life of the mother - and even then only if two doctors from separate hospitals certify the procedure is medically necessary.
John Lynch, the state's outgoing Democratic governor, had vetoed the measure, saying it would threaten the lives of women in rural areas. But the state's Republican-controlled legislature later overrode him.
In California and Illinois, laws that take effect at 12:01 a.m. local time will make it illegal for bosses to request social networking passwords or non-public online account information from their employees or job applicants.
Michigan's Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a similar measure into law earlier this month that took effect immediately. The Michigan law also penalizes educational institutions for dismissing or failing to admit a student who does not provide passwords and other account information used to access private internet and email accounts, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter.
But workers and job seekers in all three states will still need to be careful what they post online: Employers may continue to use publicly available social networking information. So inappropriate pictures, tweets and other social media indiscretions can still come back to haunt them.
Gun violence - in places where it's all too common, such as Chicago, and in places where it's unexpected, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut - was big news in 2012. But only a handful of new state firearms laws are set to take effect in 2013.
In Michigan, the definition of a 'pistol' under the law will now include any firearm less than 26 inches in length. The new definition encompasses some rifles with folding stocks and will make the weapons subject to the same restrictions as pistols.
In Illinois, certain guns currently regulated by state law, including paintball guns, will be excluded from the definition of a firearm and participants in military re-enactments will be exempt from some weapons laws.
Another big story in 2012 was the effort by lawmakers in a number of cash-strapped states to put their public employee pension funds on a sounder financial footing.
In California and Alabama, reforms designed to begin to address the unfunded liabilities of those retirement systems will take effect in 2013.
Among the other new laws on the books in 2013:
* In California, prison workers and peace officers will now be prohibited from having sex with inmates and prisoners in transport.
* In Illinois, sex offenders will be prohibited from distributing candy on Halloween, or playing Santa or the Easter Bunny.
* In Oregon, employers won't be allowed to advertise a job vacancy if they won't consider applicants who are currently out of work.
* In Kentucky, residents will be prohibited from releasing feral or wild hogs back into the wild and Illinois will ban the possession and sale of shark fins.
* And in Florida, the term 'motor vehicle' will no longer apply to the specialized all-terrain vehicles with over-sized tires known as 'swamp buggies' that are popular in some parts of the state.
(Reporting by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Greg McCune and Nick Zieminski)
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Monday, December 31, 2012
Angry Birds, YouTube among top apps of 2012
TORONTO (Reuters) - Angry Birds, Instagram and Facebook continued to be among the most downloaded apps of the year but rising stars also earned coveted spots on smartphones and tablets.
This year consumers spent on average two hours each day using mobile applications, an increase of 35 percent over last year, according to analytics firm Flurry. The number is expected to continue growing in 2013.
'2012 was a transformative tipping point in the way consumers use apps,' said Craig Palli, a vice president at mobile marketing company Fiksu, adding that the biggest shift is in consumers' eagerness to turn to apps for a broad range of day-to-day tasks.
Categories such as social networking, media and entertainment, photo editing, and games, continued to captivate consumer interest, with YouTube and Angry Birds being the top free and paid apps respectively at Apple's App Store.
Meanwhile, several apps released this year quickly joined the ranks of the top downloaded and revenue grossing apps of the year.
The game Draw Something for iPhone and Android quickly gained widespread popularity when it was released in February, and despite dropping off, is still the second most downloaded paid app of the year Android and Apple devices.
'It had a big run and other multi-player puzzle-oriented games like newcomers LetterPress and ScrambleWithFriends proved popular, too,' Palli said. 'But in many respects these titles were inspired by the more revolutionary Words With Friends.'
Songza, a music-discovery app for iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire, saw significant growth in both the United States and Canada, where it is now one of the top free apps on the App Store.
Paper, a sketchbook app for the iPad, is estimated to be one of the top grossing apps released this year according to Distimo, an app analytics company. It was named by Apple as the iPad app of the year.
But the real revolution, according to Palli, is among consumers who are eager to turn to apps for their day-to-day tasks, such as finding a taxi or hotel, following current events or increasingly, making payments.
'It is really consumers who are turning to apps first and traditional methods second,' said Palli.
Uber and Hailo, which allow users to book limos and taxis, and AirBnB and HotelTonight, for finding accommodations, began to move mainstream in 2012, Palli said.
Payment apps such as Square, and Apple's introduction of the Passbook has further positioned the smartphone as a digital wallet.
This year, during major events such as the Olympics, Hurricane Sandy and the U.S. presidential election, the top apps on the App Store reflected those events, said Palli, showing the demand for keeping up with current events through apps.
(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bill Trott)
This news article is brought to you by MUSIC UNITED 1 - where latest news are our top priority.
This year consumers spent on average two hours each day using mobile applications, an increase of 35 percent over last year, according to analytics firm Flurry. The number is expected to continue growing in 2013.
'2012 was a transformative tipping point in the way consumers use apps,' said Craig Palli, a vice president at mobile marketing company Fiksu, adding that the biggest shift is in consumers' eagerness to turn to apps for a broad range of day-to-day tasks.
Categories such as social networking, media and entertainment, photo editing, and games, continued to captivate consumer interest, with YouTube and Angry Birds being the top free and paid apps respectively at Apple's App Store.
Meanwhile, several apps released this year quickly joined the ranks of the top downloaded and revenue grossing apps of the year.
The game Draw Something for iPhone and Android quickly gained widespread popularity when it was released in February, and despite dropping off, is still the second most downloaded paid app of the year Android and Apple devices.
'It had a big run and other multi-player puzzle-oriented games like newcomers LetterPress and ScrambleWithFriends proved popular, too,' Palli said. 'But in many respects these titles were inspired by the more revolutionary Words With Friends.'
Songza, a music-discovery app for iPhone, Android and Kindle Fire, saw significant growth in both the United States and Canada, where it is now one of the top free apps on the App Store.
Paper, a sketchbook app for the iPad, is estimated to be one of the top grossing apps released this year according to Distimo, an app analytics company. It was named by Apple as the iPad app of the year.
But the real revolution, according to Palli, is among consumers who are eager to turn to apps for their day-to-day tasks, such as finding a taxi or hotel, following current events or increasingly, making payments.
'It is really consumers who are turning to apps first and traditional methods second,' said Palli.
Uber and Hailo, which allow users to book limos and taxis, and AirBnB and HotelTonight, for finding accommodations, began to move mainstream in 2012, Palli said.
Payment apps such as Square, and Apple's introduction of the Passbook has further positioned the smartphone as a digital wallet.
This year, during major events such as the Olympics, Hurricane Sandy and the U.S. presidential election, the top apps on the App Store reflected those events, said Palli, showing the demand for keeping up with current events through apps.
(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bill Trott)
This news article is brought to you by MUSIC UNITED 1 - where latest news are our top priority.
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Exclusive: Huawei partner offered embargoed HP gear to Iran
(Reuters) - A major Iranian partner of Huawei Technologies offered to sell at least 1.3 million euros worth of embargoed Hewlett-Packard computer equipment to Iran's largest mobile-phone operator in late 2010, documents show.
China's Huawei, the world's second largest telecommunications equipment maker, says neither it nor its partner, a private company registered in Hong Kong, ultimately provided the HP products to the telecom, Mobile Telecommunication Co of Iran, known as MCI. Nevertheless, the incident provides new evidence of how Chinese companies have been willing to help Iran evade trade sanctions.
The proposed deal also raises new questions about Shenzhen-based Huawei, which recently was criticized by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee for failing to 'provide evidence to support its claims that it complies with all international sanctions or U.S. export laws.'
At least 13 pages of the proposal to MCI, which involved expanding its subscriber billing system, were marked 'Huawei confidential' and carried the company's logo, according to documents seen by Reuters. In a statement to Reuters, Huawei called it a 'bidding document' and said one of its 'major local partners,' Skycom Tech Co Ltd, had submitted it to MCI.
The statement went on to say, 'Huawei's business in Iran is in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations including those of the U.N., U.S. and E.U. This commitment has been carried out and followed strictly by our company. Further, we also require our partners to follow the same commitment and strictly abide by the relevant laws and regulations.'
In October, Reuters reported that another Iranian partner of Huawei last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to Iran's second largest mobile operator, MTN Irancell, in a deal the buyer ultimately rejected. The U.S. antenna manufacturer, CommScope Inc, has an agreement with Huawei in which the Chinese firm can use its products in Huawei systems, according to a CommScope spokesman. He added that his company strives to comply fully with all U.S. laws and sanctions.
Huawei has a similar partnership with HP. In a statement, the Palo Alto, Calif., company said, 'HP has an extensive control system in place to ensure our partners and resellers comply with all legal and regulatory requirements involving system security, global trade and customer privacy and the company's relationship with Huawei is no different.'
The statement added, 'HP's distribution contract terms prohibit the sale of HP products into Iran and require compliance with U.S. and other applicable export laws.'
Washington has banned the export of computer equipment to Iran for years. The sanctions are designed to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons; Iran says its nuclear program is aimed purely at producing domestic energy.
CLOSE LINKS
Huawei and its Iranian partner, Skycom, appear to have very close ties.
An Iranian job recruitment site called Irantalent.com describes Skycom as 'a leading telecom solution provider' and goes on to list details that are identical to the way Huawei describes itself on its U.S. website: employee-owned, selling 'solutions' used by '45 of the world's top 50 telecom operators' and serving 'one-third of the world's population.'
On LinkedIn.com, several telecom workers list having worked at 'Huawei-skycom' on their resumes. A former Skycom employee said the two companies shared the same headquarters in China. And an Iranian telecom manager who has visited Skycom's office in Tehran said, 'Everybody carries Huawei badges.'
A Hong Kong accountant whose firm is listed in Skycom registration records as its corporate secretary said Friday he would check with the company to see if anyone would answer questions. Reuters did not hear back.
The proposal to MCI, dated October 2010, would have doubled the capacity of MCI's billing system for prepaid customers. The proposal noted that MCI was 'growing fast' and that its current system, provided by Huawei, had 'exceeded the system capacity' to handle 20 million prepaid subscribers.
'In order to keep serving (MCI) with high quality, we provide this expansion proposal to support 40M subscribers,' the proposal states on a page marked 'HUAWEI Confidential.'
The proposal makes clear that HP computer servers were an integral part of the 'Hardware Installation Design' of the expansion project. Tables listing equipment for MCI facilities at a new site in Tehran and in the city of Shiraz repeatedly reference HP servers under the heading, 'Minicomputer Model.'
The documents seen by Reuters also include a portion of an equipment price list that carries Huawei's logo and are stamped 'SKYCOM IRAN OFFICE.' The pages list prices for HP servers, disk arrays and switches, including those that already are 'existing' and others that need to be added. The total proposed project price came to 19.9 million euros, including a 'one time special discount.'
The proposed new HP equipment, which totaled 1.3 million euros, included one server, 20 disk arrays, 22 switches and software. The existing HP equipment included 22 servers, 8 disk arrays and 13 switches, with accompanying prices.
Asked who had provided the existing HP equipment to MCI, Vic Guyang, a Huawei spokesman, said it wasn't Huawei. 'We would like to add that the existing hardware equipment belongs to the customer. Huawei does not have information on, or the authority to check the source of the customer's equipment.'
Officials with MCI did not respond to requests for comment.
In a series of stories this year, Reuters has documented how China has become a backdoor for Iran to obtain embargoed U.S. computer equipment. In March and April, Reuters reported that China's ZTE Corp, a Huawei competitor, had sold or agreed to sell millions of dollars worth of U.S. computer gear, including HP equipment, to Telecommunication Co of Iran, the country's largest telecommunications firm, and a unit of the consortium that controls TCI.
The articles sparked investigations by the U.S. Commerce Department, the Justice Department and some of the U.S. tech companies. ZTE says it is cooperating with the federal probes.
TCI is the parent company of MCI.
(Additional reporting by Grace Li and Chyen Yee Lee in Hong Kong and Marcus George in Dubai; Edited by Simon Robinson)
This news article is brought to you by ANIMALS AND PETS - where latest news are our top priority.
China's Huawei, the world's second largest telecommunications equipment maker, says neither it nor its partner, a private company registered in Hong Kong, ultimately provided the HP products to the telecom, Mobile Telecommunication Co of Iran, known as MCI. Nevertheless, the incident provides new evidence of how Chinese companies have been willing to help Iran evade trade sanctions.
The proposed deal also raises new questions about Shenzhen-based Huawei, which recently was criticized by the U.S. House Intelligence Committee for failing to 'provide evidence to support its claims that it complies with all international sanctions or U.S. export laws.'
At least 13 pages of the proposal to MCI, which involved expanding its subscriber billing system, were marked 'Huawei confidential' and carried the company's logo, according to documents seen by Reuters. In a statement to Reuters, Huawei called it a 'bidding document' and said one of its 'major local partners,' Skycom Tech Co Ltd, had submitted it to MCI.
The statement went on to say, 'Huawei's business in Iran is in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations including those of the U.N., U.S. and E.U. This commitment has been carried out and followed strictly by our company. Further, we also require our partners to follow the same commitment and strictly abide by the relevant laws and regulations.'
In October, Reuters reported that another Iranian partner of Huawei last year tried to sell embargoed American antenna equipment to Iran's second largest mobile operator, MTN Irancell, in a deal the buyer ultimately rejected. The U.S. antenna manufacturer, CommScope Inc, has an agreement with Huawei in which the Chinese firm can use its products in Huawei systems, according to a CommScope spokesman. He added that his company strives to comply fully with all U.S. laws and sanctions.
Huawei has a similar partnership with HP. In a statement, the Palo Alto, Calif., company said, 'HP has an extensive control system in place to ensure our partners and resellers comply with all legal and regulatory requirements involving system security, global trade and customer privacy and the company's relationship with Huawei is no different.'
The statement added, 'HP's distribution contract terms prohibit the sale of HP products into Iran and require compliance with U.S. and other applicable export laws.'
Washington has banned the export of computer equipment to Iran for years. The sanctions are designed to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons; Iran says its nuclear program is aimed purely at producing domestic energy.
CLOSE LINKS
Huawei and its Iranian partner, Skycom, appear to have very close ties.
An Iranian job recruitment site called Irantalent.com describes Skycom as 'a leading telecom solution provider' and goes on to list details that are identical to the way Huawei describes itself on its U.S. website: employee-owned, selling 'solutions' used by '45 of the world's top 50 telecom operators' and serving 'one-third of the world's population.'
On LinkedIn.com, several telecom workers list having worked at 'Huawei-skycom' on their resumes. A former Skycom employee said the two companies shared the same headquarters in China. And an Iranian telecom manager who has visited Skycom's office in Tehran said, 'Everybody carries Huawei badges.'
A Hong Kong accountant whose firm is listed in Skycom registration records as its corporate secretary said Friday he would check with the company to see if anyone would answer questions. Reuters did not hear back.
The proposal to MCI, dated October 2010, would have doubled the capacity of MCI's billing system for prepaid customers. The proposal noted that MCI was 'growing fast' and that its current system, provided by Huawei, had 'exceeded the system capacity' to handle 20 million prepaid subscribers.
'In order to keep serving (MCI) with high quality, we provide this expansion proposal to support 40M subscribers,' the proposal states on a page marked 'HUAWEI Confidential.'
The proposal makes clear that HP computer servers were an integral part of the 'Hardware Installation Design' of the expansion project. Tables listing equipment for MCI facilities at a new site in Tehran and in the city of Shiraz repeatedly reference HP servers under the heading, 'Minicomputer Model.'
The documents seen by Reuters also include a portion of an equipment price list that carries Huawei's logo and are stamped 'SKYCOM IRAN OFFICE.' The pages list prices for HP servers, disk arrays and switches, including those that already are 'existing' and others that need to be added. The total proposed project price came to 19.9 million euros, including a 'one time special discount.'
The proposed new HP equipment, which totaled 1.3 million euros, included one server, 20 disk arrays, 22 switches and software. The existing HP equipment included 22 servers, 8 disk arrays and 13 switches, with accompanying prices.
Asked who had provided the existing HP equipment to MCI, Vic Guyang, a Huawei spokesman, said it wasn't Huawei. 'We would like to add that the existing hardware equipment belongs to the customer. Huawei does not have information on, or the authority to check the source of the customer's equipment.'
Officials with MCI did not respond to requests for comment.
In a series of stories this year, Reuters has documented how China has become a backdoor for Iran to obtain embargoed U.S. computer equipment. In March and April, Reuters reported that China's ZTE Corp, a Huawei competitor, had sold or agreed to sell millions of dollars worth of U.S. computer gear, including HP equipment, to Telecommunication Co of Iran, the country's largest telecommunications firm, and a unit of the consortium that controls TCI.
The articles sparked investigations by the U.S. Commerce Department, the Justice Department and some of the U.S. tech companies. ZTE says it is cooperating with the federal probes.
TCI is the parent company of MCI.
(Additional reporting by Grace Li and Chyen Yee Lee in Hong Kong and Marcus George in Dubai; Edited by Simon Robinson)
This news article is brought to you by ANIMALS AND PETS - where latest news are our top priority.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Apple loses another copyright lawsuit in China: Xinhua
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - A Chinese court has fined Apple Inc 1 million yuan ($160,400) for hosting third-party applications on its App Store that were selling pirated electronic books, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Friday.
Apple is to pay compensation to eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating their copyrights, the Beijing No.2 Intermediate People's Court ruled on Thursday, Xinhua said.
Earlier in the year, a group of Chinese authors filed the suit against Apple, saying an unidentified number of apps on its App Store sold unlicensed copies of their books. The group of eight authors was seeking 10 million yuan in damages.
'We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy,' Bei Zhicheng, a spokesman for the group, told Reuters.
Apple said in a statement that it takes copyright infringement complaints 'very seriously'.
'We're always updating our service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights,' Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said.
China has the world's largest Internet and mobile market by number of users, but piracy costs software companies billions of dollars each year.
Apple, whose products enjoy great popularity in China, has faced a string of legal headaches this year. In July, Apple paid 60 million yuan to a Chinese firm, Proview Technology, to settle a long-running lawsuit over the iPad trademark in China.
($1 = 6.2360 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom and Melanie Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Matt Driskill)
This article is brought to you by BUY COMPUTERS.
Apple is to pay compensation to eight Chinese writers and two companies for violating their copyrights, the Beijing No.2 Intermediate People's Court ruled on Thursday, Xinhua said.
Earlier in the year, a group of Chinese authors filed the suit against Apple, saying an unidentified number of apps on its App Store sold unlicensed copies of their books. The group of eight authors was seeking 10 million yuan in damages.
'We are disappointed at the judgment. Some of our best-selling authors only got 7,000 yuan. The judgment is a signal of encouraging piracy,' Bei Zhicheng, a spokesman for the group, told Reuters.
Apple said in a statement that it takes copyright infringement complaints 'very seriously'.
'We're always updating our service to better assist content owners in protecting their rights,' Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu said.
China has the world's largest Internet and mobile market by number of users, but piracy costs software companies billions of dollars each year.
Apple, whose products enjoy great popularity in China, has faced a string of legal headaches this year. In July, Apple paid 60 million yuan to a Chinese firm, Proview Technology, to settle a long-running lawsuit over the iPad trademark in China.
($1 = 6.2360 Chinese yuan)
(Reporting by Shanghai Newsroom and Melanie Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Matt Driskill)
This article is brought to you by BUY COMPUTERS.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Apple CEO's pay takes big hit vs. record '11 package
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook's 2012 compensation package of just over $4 million is a huge cut on paper for the top executive of the most valuable U.S. corporation, after a 2011 package fattened by more than $376 million in long-term stock awards.
Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple's legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, shortly before Jobs' death in October 2011.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, who is in his early 50s, joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011.
Virtually all of Cook's $376 million bonus in 2011 was in stock awards that will vest in two chunks - one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs' longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years.
In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent bonus that other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The 2012 compensation package for Cook also pales in comparison with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when he served as chief operating officer.
But Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group - which counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $2 billion it manages - said Cook's package was 'normal CEO compensation.'
For example, Yahoo Inc's CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $70 million. Despite her lack of a CEO track record, her basic pay is comparable to Cook's, with about $1 million in annual salary and up to $2 million in an annual bonus.
Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid chief executives in the United States - and also the world's sixth-richest man, according to Forbes - received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $96.2 million - almost all of it in stock options.
That compared with $77.6 million for Ellison in the prior year.
Cook's longtime boss, Jobs, famously received $1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $600 million at the time.
Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012, Apple said in Thursday's filing.
The 2012 package includes a salary of $1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million. Cook's base salary actually increased in 2012 from the $900,000 he earned in 2011.
While Apple's shares are roughly 35 percent higher than when Cook became CEO, they have fallen more than 27 percent since they hit a record closing price of $702.10 on September 19. The stock has declined amid investor worries about intensifying competition in the mobile phone market and growth prospects in important markets including China.
Apple shares were down 1.3 percent at $506.35 on the Nasdaq on Thursday afternoon.
(This version of the story has been corrected to fix level and date of Apple's record-high stock close, to $702.10 on September 19, not $700.10 in October, paragraph 14)
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco,; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)
This article is brought to you by BUY CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple's legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, shortly before Jobs' death in October 2011.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, who is in his early 50s, joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011.
Virtually all of Cook's $376 million bonus in 2011 was in stock awards that will vest in two chunks - one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs' longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years.
In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent bonus that other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The 2012 compensation package for Cook also pales in comparison with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when he served as chief operating officer.
But Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group - which counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $2 billion it manages - said Cook's package was 'normal CEO compensation.'
For example, Yahoo Inc's CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $70 million. Despite her lack of a CEO track record, her basic pay is comparable to Cook's, with about $1 million in annual salary and up to $2 million in an annual bonus.
Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid chief executives in the United States - and also the world's sixth-richest man, according to Forbes - received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $96.2 million - almost all of it in stock options.
That compared with $77.6 million for Ellison in the prior year.
Cook's longtime boss, Jobs, famously received $1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $600 million at the time.
Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012, Apple said in Thursday's filing.
The 2012 package includes a salary of $1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million. Cook's base salary actually increased in 2012 from the $900,000 he earned in 2011.
While Apple's shares are roughly 35 percent higher than when Cook became CEO, they have fallen more than 27 percent since they hit a record closing price of $702.10 on September 19. The stock has declined amid investor worries about intensifying competition in the mobile phone market and growth prospects in important markets including China.
Apple shares were down 1.3 percent at $506.35 on the Nasdaq on Thursday afternoon.
(This version of the story has been corrected to fix level and date of Apple's record-high stock close, to $702.10 on September 19, not $700.10 in October, paragraph 14)
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco,; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)
This article is brought to you by BUY CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Apple CEO's pay takes big hit vs. record 2011 package
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc CEO Tim Cook's 2012 compensation package of just over $4 million is a huge cut on paper for the top executive of the most valuable U.S. corporation, after a 2011 package fattened by more than $376 million in long-term stock awards.
Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple's legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, shortly before Jobs' death in October 2011.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, who is in his early 50s, joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011.
Virtually all of Cook's $376 million bonus in 2011 was in stock awards that will vest in two chunks - one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs' longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years.
In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent bonus that other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The 2012 compensation package for Cook also pales in comparison with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when he served as chief operating officer.
But Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group - which counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $2 billion it manages - said Cook's package was 'normal CEO compensation.'
For example, Yahoo Inc's CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $70 million. Despite her lack of a CEO track record, her basic pay is comparable to Cook's, with about $1 million in annual salary and up to $2 million in an annual bonus.
Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid chief executives in the United States - and also the world's sixth-richest man, according to Forbes - received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $96.2 million - almost all of it in stock options.
That compared with $77.6 million for Ellison in the prior year.
Cook's longtime boss, Jobs, famously received $1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $600 million at the time.
Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012, Apple said in Thursday's filing.
The 2012 package includes a salary of $1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million. Cook's base salary actually increased in 2012 from the $900,000 he earned in 2011.
While Apple's shares are roughly 35 percent higher than when Cook became CEO, they have fallen more than 27 percent since October, when they hit a $700.10 high. The stock has declined amid investor worries about intensifying competition in the mobile phone market and growth prospects in important markets including China.
Apple shares were down 1.3 percent at $506.35 on the Nasdaq on Thursday afternoon.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco,; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)
This article is brought to you by COMPUTERS.
Cook received the largest single pay package awarded to a company CEO in about a decade when he replaced Apple's legendary co-founder, Steve Jobs, shortly before Jobs' death in October 2011.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad made the 2012 compensation disclosures in a regulatory filing on Thursday. Cook, who is in his early 50s, joined Apple in 1998 and became CEO in August 2011.
Virtually all of Cook's $376 million bonus in 2011 was in stock awards that will vest in two chunks - one in 2016 and the other in 2021. This structure was intended to keep Jobs' longtime lieutenant at the helm for many years.
In terms of base salary, Cook actually received a 50 percent increase to $1.4 million for 2012, and the same 200 percent bonus that other top Apple executives like CFO Peter Oppenheimer earned, Apple said in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The 2012 compensation package for Cook also pales in comparison with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when he served as chief operating officer.
But Tim Ghriskey, chief investment officer of Solaris Group - which counts Apple stock as the biggest holding among the approximately $2 billion it manages - said Cook's package was 'normal CEO compensation.'
For example, Yahoo Inc's CEO, Marissa Mayer, a former Google Inc high-flyer hired this year to try to turn around the struggling Internet icon, won a pay package worth more than $70 million. Despite her lack of a CEO track record, her basic pay is comparable to Cook's, with about $1 million in annual salary and up to $2 million in an annual bonus.
Oracle Corp's Larry Ellison, one of the most highly paid chief executives in the United States - and also the world's sixth-richest man, according to Forbes - received total compensation for the year ended May 31, 2012, of $96.2 million - almost all of it in stock options.
That compared with $77.6 million for Ellison in the prior year.
Cook's longtime boss, Jobs, famously received $1 a year in salary in the three years before he stepped down, though in 2000 he too received a stock option that analysts say was valued at almost $600 million at the time.
Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012, Apple said in Thursday's filing.
The 2012 package includes a salary of $1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million. Cook's base salary actually increased in 2012 from the $900,000 he earned in 2011.
While Apple's shares are roughly 35 percent higher than when Cook became CEO, they have fallen more than 27 percent since October, when they hit a $700.10 high. The stock has declined amid investor worries about intensifying competition in the mobile phone market and growth prospects in important markets including China.
Apple shares were down 1.3 percent at $506.35 on the Nasdaq on Thursday afternoon.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker in New York, Jim Finkle and Tim McLaughlin in Boston and Edwin Chan in San Francisco,; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)
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Apple CEO's pay package drops 99 percent from 2011
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Tim Cook has finally made it to the top at Apple Inc, but in his first full year as CEO his pay package shrank about 99 percent.
Cook, the successor to the late Steve Jobs, was awarded total compensation of $4.17 million in 2012, down from $378 million in 2011, Apple said in a federal filing on Thursday.
The 2012 compensation package for Cook, who took over as chief executive in August 2011, also seemed a pittance compared with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when the executive served as chief operating officer.
Jobs, the iconic CEO and co-founder, died in October 2011 of pancreatic cancer.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad noted that Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012 after he was given about $376.2 million in stock awards the year before. The stock awards vest over many years.
The 2012 package includes a salary of $1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million, according to the filing. Cook's base salary actually increased compared with the $900,000 he earned in 2011.
While Apple's shares are 35 percent higher than when Cook assumed the CEO role, they have fallen more than 27 percent since October when they hit a $700.10 high.
Apple shares were down 0.6 percent at $509.85 on the Nasdaq late on Thursday morning.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)
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Cook, the successor to the late Steve Jobs, was awarded total compensation of $4.17 million in 2012, down from $378 million in 2011, Apple said in a federal filing on Thursday.
The 2012 compensation package for Cook, who took over as chief executive in August 2011, also seemed a pittance compared with his 2010 pay, which was 14 times higher, when the executive served as chief operating officer.
Jobs, the iconic CEO and co-founder, died in October 2011 of pancreatic cancer.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad noted that Cook will not receive any stock awards for 2012 after he was given about $376.2 million in stock awards the year before. The stock awards vest over many years.
The 2012 package includes a salary of $1.4 million and a nonequity bonus of $2.8 million, according to the filing. Cook's base salary actually increased compared with the $900,000 he earned in 2011.
While Apple's shares are 35 percent higher than when Cook assumed the CEO role, they have fallen more than 27 percent since October when they hit a $700.10 high.
Apple shares were down 0.6 percent at $509.85 on the Nasdaq late on Thursday morning.
(Reporting by Sinead Carew and Liana Baker; editing by Kenneth Barry and Matthew Lewis)
This news article is brought to you by GLAMOROUS FASHION NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Amazon most satisfying website to shop: survey
(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc remained the best website for shopping online while JC Penney Co Inc suffered the largest drop in customer satisfaction of any major online retailer this holiday season, according to a survey released on Thursday.
Flash sale sites Gilt.com and RueLaLa.com were among the worst performers in online shopping satisfaction this season, according to ForeSee's Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index.
'The importance of satisfying them and giving a great consumer experience is going to pay back huge dividends in terms of profitability for these retailers,' said Larry Freed, president and chief executive officer of ForeSee, which measures customer satisfaction for companies, including retailers.
Amazon has held the highest score in each of the eight years of the index, due in part to the wide variety of merchandise it offers and a site that is easy to use.
'They've really done a great job in setting the standard for everybody else,' Freed said of Amazon.
Amazon's score was again 88 out of 100, while Gilt.com and Fingerhut.com shared the lowest score of 72. LLBean.com had the second-highest ranking, 85, up 4 points from a year earlier.
A score of 80 or higher is considered strong, Freed said.
JC Penney's score fell to 78 from 83.
'They've struggled a lot in their stores as they've tried to reinvent themselves a bit and that's carried over a little bit to the website,' Freed said.
Other retailers that saw their ForeSee satisfaction scores drop included Apple Inc - down to 80 from 83 - and Dell Inc, which fell to 77 from 80.
At Apple, as the popular tech company has brought out more products, navigating the site has become more of an issue, said Freed. Improving the functionality of the site would give it the biggest boost, he said.
No. 1 U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which is trying to grow its online sales, scored a 78 for its Walmart.com website, down from 79 in 2011. Rival Target Corp's website scored 79, up from 76 last year, when it had some struggles after taking over control of the site from Amazon.
As for those flash sale sites coming in at the low end of the scores, Freed noted that some are trying to grow beyond the premise of flash sales, which offer a limited amount of marked down merchandise at specific times.
'It works for some kinds of consumers, it's not going to work for every kind of consumer,' said Freed. 'Their models today are going to work and they're going to have a chance to be successful, but at the end of the day it's not the right answer for everybody.'
ForeSee's 2012 report was based on more than 24,000 surveys collected from visitors to websites of the 100 largest online retailers from Thanksgiving to Christmas, up from 40 retail sites in prior years.
(Reporting by Jessica Wohl in Chicago; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
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Flash sale sites Gilt.com and RueLaLa.com were among the worst performers in online shopping satisfaction this season, according to ForeSee's Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index.
'The importance of satisfying them and giving a great consumer experience is going to pay back huge dividends in terms of profitability for these retailers,' said Larry Freed, president and chief executive officer of ForeSee, which measures customer satisfaction for companies, including retailers.
Amazon has held the highest score in each of the eight years of the index, due in part to the wide variety of merchandise it offers and a site that is easy to use.
'They've really done a great job in setting the standard for everybody else,' Freed said of Amazon.
Amazon's score was again 88 out of 100, while Gilt.com and Fingerhut.com shared the lowest score of 72. LLBean.com had the second-highest ranking, 85, up 4 points from a year earlier.
A score of 80 or higher is considered strong, Freed said.
JC Penney's score fell to 78 from 83.
'They've struggled a lot in their stores as they've tried to reinvent themselves a bit and that's carried over a little bit to the website,' Freed said.
Other retailers that saw their ForeSee satisfaction scores drop included Apple Inc - down to 80 from 83 - and Dell Inc, which fell to 77 from 80.
At Apple, as the popular tech company has brought out more products, navigating the site has become more of an issue, said Freed. Improving the functionality of the site would give it the biggest boost, he said.
No. 1 U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc, which is trying to grow its online sales, scored a 78 for its Walmart.com website, down from 79 in 2011. Rival Target Corp's website scored 79, up from 76 last year, when it had some struggles after taking over control of the site from Amazon.
As for those flash sale sites coming in at the low end of the scores, Freed noted that some are trying to grow beyond the premise of flash sales, which offer a limited amount of marked down merchandise at specific times.
'It works for some kinds of consumers, it's not going to work for every kind of consumer,' said Freed. 'Their models today are going to work and they're going to have a chance to be successful, but at the end of the day it's not the right answer for everybody.'
ForeSee's 2012 report was based on more than 24,000 surveys collected from visitors to websites of the 100 largest online retailers from Thanksgiving to Christmas, up from 40 retail sites in prior years.
(Reporting by Jessica Wohl in Chicago; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
This article is brought to you by BUY CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Analysis: Amazon's Christmas faux pas shows risks in the cloud
(Reuters) - A Christmas Eve glitch traced to Amazon.com Inc that shuttered Netflix for users from Canada to South America highlights the risks that companies take when they move their datacenter operations to the cloud.
While the high-profile failure - at least the third this year - may cause some Amazon Web Services customers to consider alternatives, it is unlikely to severely hurt a fast-growing business for the cloud-computing pioneer that got into the sector in 2006 and has historically experienced few outages.
'The benefits still outweigh the risks,' said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
'When it comes to the cloud, Amazon has got it right.'
The latest service failure comes at a critical time for Amazon, which is betting that AWS can become a significant profit generator even if the economy continues to stagnate. Moreover, it is increasingly targeting larger corporate clients that have traditionally shied away from moving critical applications onto AWS.
AWS, which Amazon started more than six years ago, provides data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations that group thousands of servers across areas than can span whole football fields. Their early investment made it a pioneer in what is now known as cloud computing.
Executives said last month at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas they could envision the division, which lists Pinterest, Shazam and Spotify among its fast-growing clients, becoming its biggest business, outpacing even its online retail juggernaut. Evercore analyst Ken Sena expects AWS revenue to jump 45 percent a year, from about $2 billion this year to $20 billion in 2018.
The service has boomed because it is cheap, relatively easy to use, and can be shut off, scaled back or ramped up quickly depending on companies' needs. As the longest-running player in the game, Amazon now boasts the widest array of datacenter products and services, plus a broader stable of clients than rivals like Google Inc, Rackspace Inc and Salesforce.com Inc.
Outages such as the one that took down Netflix and other websites on the eve of one of the biggest U.S. holidays are part and parcel of the nascent business, analysts say. Moreover, outages have been a problem long before the age of cloud computing, with glitches within corporate datacenters and telecommunications hubs triggering myriad service disruptions.
COMING SOON: POST-MORTEM
Amazon's latest service failure comes months after two high-profile outages that hit Netflix and other popular websites such as photo-sharing service Instagram and Pinterest. Industry executives, however, say its downtimes tend to attract more attention because of its outsized market footprint.
Netflix - which CEO Reed Hastings said relies on AWS for 95 percent of its datacenter needs - would not comment on whether they were pondering alternatives. Analysts say the video streaming giant is unlikely to try a large-scale switch, partly because all cloud providers experience outages.
'Despite a steady stream of these service outages, the demand for cloud services offered by AWS, Google, etc. continues to escalate because these services are still reliable enough to satisfy customer expectations,' said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of consultancy ThinkStrategies Inc.
'They offer cost-savings and elasticities that are too attractive for companies to ignore.'
But 'Netflix and other organizations which rely on AWS will have to reexamine how they configure their services and allocate their service requirements across multiple providers to mitigate over-dependency and risks.'
AWS spokeswoman Rena Lunak said the outage was traced to a problem affecting customers at its oldest data center, run out of northern Virginia, which was linked also to the June failure.
The latest glitch involved a service known as Elastic Load Balancing, which automatically allocates incoming Web traffic across multiple servers in order to boost the performance of a website. She declined to provide further details about the outage, saying the company would be publishing a full post-mortem within days.
AWS has traditionally been used by start-up tech companies and smaller businesses that anticipate rapid growth in online traffic but are unwilling or unable to shell out on IT equipment and management upfront.
The company has more recently started winning more and more business from larger corporations. It has also set up a unit that caters to government agencies.
Regardless, Amazon's clientele would do well not to put all their eggs in one basket, analysts say.
'Service outages do occur, but they are not common enough to cause users of these services to abandon today's Cloud service providers at significant rates. In fact, every major Cloud service provider has experienced outages,' Kaplan said.
'Therefore, organizations that rely on these services are putting backup and recovery systems and protocols in place to mitigate the risks of future outages.'
(Additional reporting; editing by Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)
This news article is brought to you by CELEBRITY MUSIC NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
While the high-profile failure - at least the third this year - may cause some Amazon Web Services customers to consider alternatives, it is unlikely to severely hurt a fast-growing business for the cloud-computing pioneer that got into the sector in 2006 and has historically experienced few outages.
'The benefits still outweigh the risks,' said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.
'When it comes to the cloud, Amazon has got it right.'
The latest service failure comes at a critical time for Amazon, which is betting that AWS can become a significant profit generator even if the economy continues to stagnate. Moreover, it is increasingly targeting larger corporate clients that have traditionally shied away from moving critical applications onto AWS.
AWS, which Amazon started more than six years ago, provides data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations that group thousands of servers across areas than can span whole football fields. Their early investment made it a pioneer in what is now known as cloud computing.
Executives said last month at an Amazon conference in Las Vegas they could envision the division, which lists Pinterest, Shazam and Spotify among its fast-growing clients, becoming its biggest business, outpacing even its online retail juggernaut. Evercore analyst Ken Sena expects AWS revenue to jump 45 percent a year, from about $2 billion this year to $20 billion in 2018.
The service has boomed because it is cheap, relatively easy to use, and can be shut off, scaled back or ramped up quickly depending on companies' needs. As the longest-running player in the game, Amazon now boasts the widest array of datacenter products and services, plus a broader stable of clients than rivals like Google Inc, Rackspace Inc and Salesforce.com Inc.
Outages such as the one that took down Netflix and other websites on the eve of one of the biggest U.S. holidays are part and parcel of the nascent business, analysts say. Moreover, outages have been a problem long before the age of cloud computing, with glitches within corporate datacenters and telecommunications hubs triggering myriad service disruptions.
COMING SOON: POST-MORTEM
Amazon's latest service failure comes months after two high-profile outages that hit Netflix and other popular websites such as photo-sharing service Instagram and Pinterest. Industry executives, however, say its downtimes tend to attract more attention because of its outsized market footprint.
Netflix - which CEO Reed Hastings said relies on AWS for 95 percent of its datacenter needs - would not comment on whether they were pondering alternatives. Analysts say the video streaming giant is unlikely to try a large-scale switch, partly because all cloud providers experience outages.
'Despite a steady stream of these service outages, the demand for cloud services offered by AWS, Google, etc. continues to escalate because these services are still reliable enough to satisfy customer expectations,' said Jeff Kaplan, managing director of consultancy ThinkStrategies Inc.
'They offer cost-savings and elasticities that are too attractive for companies to ignore.'
But 'Netflix and other organizations which rely on AWS will have to reexamine how they configure their services and allocate their service requirements across multiple providers to mitigate over-dependency and risks.'
AWS spokeswoman Rena Lunak said the outage was traced to a problem affecting customers at its oldest data center, run out of northern Virginia, which was linked also to the June failure.
The latest glitch involved a service known as Elastic Load Balancing, which automatically allocates incoming Web traffic across multiple servers in order to boost the performance of a website. She declined to provide further details about the outage, saying the company would be publishing a full post-mortem within days.
AWS has traditionally been used by start-up tech companies and smaller businesses that anticipate rapid growth in online traffic but are unwilling or unable to shell out on IT equipment and management upfront.
The company has more recently started winning more and more business from larger corporations. It has also set up a unit that caters to government agencies.
Regardless, Amazon's clientele would do well not to put all their eggs in one basket, analysts say.
'Service outages do occur, but they are not common enough to cause users of these services to abandon today's Cloud service providers at significant rates. In fact, every major Cloud service provider has experienced outages,' Kaplan said.
'Therefore, organizations that rely on these services are putting backup and recovery systems and protocols in place to mitigate the risks of future outages.'
(Additional reporting; editing by Edwin Chan and Richard Chang)
This news article is brought to you by CELEBRITY MUSIC NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Samsung Electronics seeks U.S. sales ban on some Ericsson products
SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it had filed a complaint against Ericsson with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), requesting a U.S. import ban and sales ban on some of the Swedish telecoms equipment maker's products.
The action taken on Friday by the world's top smartphone maker, which accused Ericsson of breaching seven of its patents, came after Ericsson requested an ITC U.S. import ban on Samsung products and sued the South Korean firm for patent infringement.
'We have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith. However, Ericsson has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations by making unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court,' Samsung Electronics said in a statement.
'The accused Ericsson products include telecommunications networking equipment, such as base stations,' Samsung said.
With Ericsson suffering a big drop in sales at its network unit, down 17 percent in the third quarter, it is turning to the courts to maintain its patent income, part of a wider trend where big technology names are fiercely protecting intellectual property as global sales of tablets and smartphones boom.
Ericsson is facing a growing challenge from Samsung Electronics, a smaller player in the network equipment market.
'I'm sure that at this point, no one in the industry would underestimate Samsung's ability to become a significant player, if not the leader, in a new segment of the overall market for telecommunications hardware,' Florian Mueller, a patent expert, said in a blog posting on Monday.
'This certainly adds a more strategic dimension to the Ericsson-Samsung dispute.'
Samsung Electronics and its arch smartphone rival Apple Inc have been also locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The European Commission on Friday charged Samsung Electronics with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
Samsung Electronics shares were trading up 1.3 percent, outperforming the wider market's 0.7 percent gain as of 0037 GMT.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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The action taken on Friday by the world's top smartphone maker, which accused Ericsson of breaching seven of its patents, came after Ericsson requested an ITC U.S. import ban on Samsung products and sued the South Korean firm for patent infringement.
'We have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith. However, Ericsson has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations by making unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court,' Samsung Electronics said in a statement.
'The accused Ericsson products include telecommunications networking equipment, such as base stations,' Samsung said.
With Ericsson suffering a big drop in sales at its network unit, down 17 percent in the third quarter, it is turning to the courts to maintain its patent income, part of a wider trend where big technology names are fiercely protecting intellectual property as global sales of tablets and smartphones boom.
Ericsson is facing a growing challenge from Samsung Electronics, a smaller player in the network equipment market.
'I'm sure that at this point, no one in the industry would underestimate Samsung's ability to become a significant player, if not the leader, in a new segment of the overall market for telecommunications hardware,' Florian Mueller, a patent expert, said in a blog posting on Monday.
'This certainly adds a more strategic dimension to the Ericsson-Samsung dispute.'
Samsung Electronics and its arch smartphone rival Apple Inc have been also locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The European Commission on Friday charged Samsung Electronics with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
Samsung Electronics shares were trading up 1.3 percent, outperforming the wider market's 0.7 percent gain as of 0037 GMT.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Robert Birsel)
This news article is brought to you by TAXES BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Samsung Elec seeks U.S. sales ban on some Ericsson products
SEOUL (Reuters) - Samsung Electronics said on Wednesday it had filed a complaint against Ericsson with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), requesting a U.S. import ban and sales ban on some of the Swedish telecoms equipment maker's products.
The action taken on Friday by the world's top smartphone maker, which accused Ericsson of breaching seven of its patents, came after Ericsson requested an ITC U.S. import ban on Samsung products and sued the South Korean firm for patent infringement.
'We have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith. However, Ericsson has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations by making unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court,' Samsung Electronics said in a statement.
'The accused Ericsson products include telecommunications networking equipment, such as base stations,' Samsung said.
With Ericsson suffering a big drop in sales at its network unit, down 17 percent in the third quarter, it is turning to the courts to maintain its patent income, part of a wider trend where big technology names are fiercely protecting intellectual property as global sales of tablets and smartphones boom.
Ericsson is facing a growing challenge from Samsung Electronics, a smaller player in the network equipment market.
'I'm sure that at this point, no one in the industry would underestimate Samsung's ability to become a significant player, if not the leader, in a new segment of the overall market for telecommunications hardware,' Florian Mueller, a patent expert, said in a blog posting on Monday.
'This certainly adds a more strategic dimension to the Ericsson-Samsung dispute.'
Samsung Electronics and its arch smartphone rival Apple Inc have been also locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The European Commission on Friday charged Samsung Electronics with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
Samsung Electronics shares were trading up 1.3 percent, outperforming the wider market's 0.7 percent gain as of 0037 GMT.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Robert Birsel)
This news article is brought to you by SAVING MONEY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
The action taken on Friday by the world's top smartphone maker, which accused Ericsson of breaching seven of its patents, came after Ericsson requested an ITC U.S. import ban on Samsung products and sued the South Korean firm for patent infringement.
'We have sought to negotiate with Ericsson in good faith. However, Ericsson has proven unwilling to continue such negotiations by making unreasonable claims, which it is now trying to enforce in court,' Samsung Electronics said in a statement.
'The accused Ericsson products include telecommunications networking equipment, such as base stations,' Samsung said.
With Ericsson suffering a big drop in sales at its network unit, down 17 percent in the third quarter, it is turning to the courts to maintain its patent income, part of a wider trend where big technology names are fiercely protecting intellectual property as global sales of tablets and smartphones boom.
Ericsson is facing a growing challenge from Samsung Electronics, a smaller player in the network equipment market.
'I'm sure that at this point, no one in the industry would underestimate Samsung's ability to become a significant player, if not the leader, in a new segment of the overall market for telecommunications hardware,' Florian Mueller, a patent expert, said in a blog posting on Monday.
'This certainly adds a more strategic dimension to the Ericsson-Samsung dispute.'
Samsung Electronics and its arch smartphone rival Apple Inc have been also locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The European Commission on Friday charged Samsung Electronics with abusing its dominant position in seeking to bar rival Apple from using a patent deemed essential to mobile phone use.
Samsung Electronics shares were trading up 1.3 percent, outperforming the wider market's 0.7 percent gain as of 0037 GMT.
(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin; Editing by Robert Birsel)
This news article is brought to you by SAVING MONEY BLOG - where latest news are our top priority.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Netflix suffers Christmas Eve outage, points to Amazon
NEW YORK (Reuters) - An outage at one of Amazon's web service centers hit users of Netflix Inc.'s streaming video service on Christmas Eve and was not fully resolved until Christmas day, a spokesman for the movie rental company said on Tuesday.
The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows from home, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said. Such devices range from gaming consoles such as Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 to Blu-ray players.
Evers said that the issue was the result of an outage at an Amazon Web Services' cloud computing center in Virginia, and started at about 12:30 p.m. PST (2030 GMT) on Monday and was fully restored Tuesday morning, although streaming was available for most users late on Monday.
'We are investigating exactly what happened and how it could have been prevented,' Evers said.
'We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix capable devices can watch TV shows and movies and apologize for any inconvenience caused last night,' he added.
An outage at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, knocked out such sites as Reddit and Foursquare in April of last year.
Amazon Web Services was not immediately available for comment. Evers, the Netflix spokesman, declined to comment on the company's contracts with Amazon.
(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
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The outage impacted Netflix subscribers across Canada, Latin America and the United States, and affected various devices that enable users to stream movies and television shows from home, Netflix spokesman Joris Evers said. Such devices range from gaming consoles such as Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 to Blu-ray players.
Evers said that the issue was the result of an outage at an Amazon Web Services' cloud computing center in Virginia, and started at about 12:30 p.m. PST (2030 GMT) on Monday and was fully restored Tuesday morning, although streaming was available for most users late on Monday.
'We are investigating exactly what happened and how it could have been prevented,' Evers said.
'We are happy that people opening gifts of Netflix or Netflix capable devices can watch TV shows and movies and apologize for any inconvenience caused last night,' he added.
An outage at Amazon Web Services, or AWS, knocked out such sites as Reddit and Foursquare in April of last year.
Amazon Web Services was not immediately available for comment. Evers, the Netflix spokesman, declined to comment on the company's contracts with Amazon.
(Reporting by Sam Forgione; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
This news article is brought to you by INTERNET NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
China may require real name registration for internet access
BEIJING (Reuters) - China may require internet users to register with their real names when signing up to network providers, state media said on Tuesday, extending a policy already in force with microblogs in a bid to curb what officials call rumors and vulgarity.
A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile internet access, state-run newspapers said.
'The law should escort the development of the internet to protect people's interest,' Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in a front page commentary, echoing similar calls carried in state media over the past week.
'Only that way can our internet be healthier, more cultured and safer.'
Many users say the restrictions are clearly aimed at further muzzling the often scathing, raucous - and perhaps most significantly, anonymous - online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open debate.
It could also prevent people from exposing corruption online if they fear retribution from officials, said some users.
It was unclear how the rules would be different from existing regulations as state media has provided only vague details and in practice customers have long had to present identity papers when signing contracts with internet providers.
Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina Corp's wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names.
The government says such a system is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online and that many other countries already have such rules.
'It would also be the biggest step backwards since 1989,' wrote one indignant Weibo user, in apparent reference to the 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the army.
Chinese internet users have long had to cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.
Despite periodic calls for political reform, the ruling Communist Party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Huang Yan; Editing by Michael Perry)
This news article is brought to you by GLOBAL WEATHER NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
A law being discussed this week would mean people would have to present their government-issued identity cards when signing contracts for fixed line and mobile internet access, state-run newspapers said.
'The law should escort the development of the internet to protect people's interest,' Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily said in a front page commentary, echoing similar calls carried in state media over the past week.
'Only that way can our internet be healthier, more cultured and safer.'
Many users say the restrictions are clearly aimed at further muzzling the often scathing, raucous - and perhaps most significantly, anonymous - online chatter in a country where the Internet offers a rare opportunity for open debate.
It could also prevent people from exposing corruption online if they fear retribution from officials, said some users.
It was unclear how the rules would be different from existing regulations as state media has provided only vague details and in practice customers have long had to present identity papers when signing contracts with internet providers.
Earlier this year, the government began forcing users of Sina Corp's wildly successful Weibo microblogging platform to register their real names.
The government says such a system is needed to prevent people making malicious and anonymous accusations online and that many other countries already have such rules.
'It would also be the biggest step backwards since 1989,' wrote one indignant Weibo user, in apparent reference to the 1989 pro-democracy protests bloodily suppressed by the army.
Chinese internet users have long had to cope with extensive censorship, especially over politically sensitive topics like human rights, and popular foreign sites Facebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube are blocked.
Despite periodic calls for political reform, the ruling Communist Party has shown no sign of loosening its grip on power and brooks no dissent to its authority.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Huang Yan; Editing by Michael Perry)
This news article is brought to you by GLOBAL WEATHER NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Instagram furor triggers first class action lawsuit
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook's Instagram photo sharing service has been hit with what appears to be the first civil lawsuit to result from changed service terms that prompted howls of protest last week.
In a proposed class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday, a California Instagram user leveled breach of contract and other claims against the company.
'We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,' Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.
Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $715 million.
In announcing revised terms of service last week, Instagram spurred suspicions that it would sell user photos without compensation. It also announced a mandatory arbitration clause, forcing users to waive their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances.
The current terms of service, in effect through mid-January, contain no such liability shield.
The backlash prompted Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to retreat partially a few days later, deleting language about displaying photos without compensation.
However, Instagram kept language that gave it the ability to place ads in conjunction with user content, and saying 'that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.' It also kept the mandatory arbitration clause.
The lawsuit, filed by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, says customers who do not agree with Instagram's terms can cancel their profile but then forfeit rights to photos they had previously shared on the service.
'In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us,'' the lawsuit says.
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who had criticized Instagram, said he was pleased that the company rolled back some of the advertising terms and agreed to better explain their plans in the future.
However, he said the new terms no longer contain language which had explicitly promised that private photos would remain private. Facebook had engendered criticism in the past, Opsahl said, for changing settings so that the ability to keep some information private was no longer available.
'Hopefully, Instagram will learn from that experience and refrain from removing privacy settings,' Opsahl said.
The civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Lucy Funes, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Instagram Inc., 12-cv-6482.
(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Dan Grebler)
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In a proposed class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court on Friday, a California Instagram user leveled breach of contract and other claims against the company.
'We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,' Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said in an e-mail.
Instagram, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them easily on the Internet, was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for $715 million.
In announcing revised terms of service last week, Instagram spurred suspicions that it would sell user photos without compensation. It also announced a mandatory arbitration clause, forcing users to waive their rights to participate in a class action lawsuit except under very limited circumstances.
The current terms of service, in effect through mid-January, contain no such liability shield.
The backlash prompted Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom to retreat partially a few days later, deleting language about displaying photos without compensation.
However, Instagram kept language that gave it the ability to place ads in conjunction with user content, and saying 'that we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, or commercial communications as such.' It also kept the mandatory arbitration clause.
The lawsuit, filed by San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk, says customers who do not agree with Instagram's terms can cancel their profile but then forfeit rights to photos they had previously shared on the service.
'In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us,'' the lawsuit says.
Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation who had criticized Instagram, said he was pleased that the company rolled back some of the advertising terms and agreed to better explain their plans in the future.
However, he said the new terms no longer contain language which had explicitly promised that private photos would remain private. Facebook had engendered criticism in the past, Opsahl said, for changing settings so that the ability to keep some information private was no longer available.
'Hopefully, Instagram will learn from that experience and refrain from removing privacy settings,' Opsahl said.
The civil lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Lucy Funes, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated vs. Instagram Inc., 12-cv-6482.
(Reporting by Dan Levine; Editing by Dan Grebler)
This news article is brought to you by ADVANCED DATING ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Carlyle takes on KKR in race for Reynolds and Reynolds: sources
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Private equity firms Carlyle Group LP and KKR & Co LP have emerged as the lead contenders to take over Reynolds and Reynolds, a software company hoping to sell itself for $5 billion, three people familiar with the matter said.
Dayton, Ohio-based Reynolds, which provides business management software for auto dealers in North America and Europe, had hired technology-focused investment bank Qatalyst Partners to run a sale, people familiar with the matter told Reuters in October.
The process has progressed and is now in its final stages, though no decision is expected before January, the sources said.
Reynolds may be sold to Carlyle or KKR for between $4 billion and $5 billion, less than the company had hoped, one of the people added.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are confidential. Spokesmen for Reynolds, Carlyle and KKR declined to comment.
Reynolds sells software tools that allow car dealers to run their operations, including providing car dealer websites, digital advertising and marketing services, as well as data archiving.
Reynolds was founded in 1866 by Lucius Reynolds and his brother-in-law as a company that prints standardized business forms. It started to serve automotive retailers as major clients in the 1920s.
In October 2006, the company was acquired by Universal Computer Systems (UCS) for $2.8 billion. The merged company retained the Reynolds name and is currently headed by Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Brockman, who used to run UCS.
Brockman's $2.8 billion buyout was funded primarily by a group of investors that included Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, and Vista Equity Partners.
(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis and Soyoung Kim in New York; editing by John Wallace)
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Dayton, Ohio-based Reynolds, which provides business management software for auto dealers in North America and Europe, had hired technology-focused investment bank Qatalyst Partners to run a sale, people familiar with the matter told Reuters in October.
The process has progressed and is now in its final stages, though no decision is expected before January, the sources said.
Reynolds may be sold to Carlyle or KKR for between $4 billion and $5 billion, less than the company had hoped, one of the people added.
The people spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations are confidential. Spokesmen for Reynolds, Carlyle and KKR declined to comment.
Reynolds sells software tools that allow car dealers to run their operations, including providing car dealer websites, digital advertising and marketing services, as well as data archiving.
Reynolds was founded in 1866 by Lucius Reynolds and his brother-in-law as a company that prints standardized business forms. It started to serve automotive retailers as major clients in the 1920s.
In October 2006, the company was acquired by Universal Computer Systems (UCS) for $2.8 billion. The merged company retained the Reynolds name and is currently headed by Chairman and Chief Executive Bob Brockman, who used to run UCS.
Brockman's $2.8 billion buyout was funded primarily by a group of investors that included Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, the private equity arm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, and Vista Equity Partners.
(Reporting by Greg Roumeliotis and Soyoung Kim in New York; editing by John Wallace)
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Analysis: Amazon, Google on collision course in 2013
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When Amazon.com Inc CEO Jeff Bezos got word of a project at Google Inc to scan and digitize product catalogs a decade ago, the seeds of a burgeoning rivalry were planted.
The news was a 'wake-up' call to Bezos, an early investor in Google. He saw it as a warning that the Web search engine could encroach upon his online retail empire, according to a former Amazon executive.
'He realized that scanning catalogs was interesting for Google, but the real win for Google would be to get all the books scanned and digitized' and then sell electronic editions, the former executive said.
Thus began a rivalry that will escalate in 2013 as the two companies' areas of rivalry grow, spanning online advertising and retail to mobile gadgets and cloud computing.
It could upend the last remaining areas of cooperation between the two companies. For instance, Amazon's decision to use a stripped down version of Google's Android system in its new Kindle Fire tablet, coupled with Google's ambitious plans for its Motorola mobile devices unit, will only add to tensions.
The confrontation marks the latest front in a tech industry war in which many combatants are crowding onto each others' turf. Lurking in the shadows for both Google and Amazon is Facebook with its own search and advertising ambitions.
'Amazon wants to be the one place where you buy everything. Google wants to be the one place where you find everything, of which buying things is a subset,' said Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. 'So when you marry those facts I think you're going to see a natural collision.'
Both companies have a lot at stake. Google's market capitalization of $235 billion is about double Amazon's, largely because Google makes massive net earnings, expected by analysts to be $13.2 billion this year, based on a huge 32 percent net profit margin, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. By contrast, Amazon is seen reporting a small loss this year.
Amazon shareholders have been patient as the company has invested for growth but it will have to start producing strong earnings at some stage - more likely if it grows in higher margin areas such as advertising. Google's share price, on the other hand, is vulnerable to signs of slowing margin growth.
AD CLASH
Not long after Bezos learned of Google's catalog plans, Amazon began scanning books and providing searchable digital excerpts. Its Kindle e-reader, launched a few years later, owes much of its inspiration to the catalog news, the executive said.
Now, Amazon is pushing its online ad efforts, threatening to siphon revenue and users from Google's main search website.
Amazon's fledgling ad business is still a fraction of Google's, with Robert W. Baird & Co. estimating Amazon is on track to generate about $500 million in annual advertising revenue - tiny, given it recorded $48 billion of overall revenue in 2011. By contrast, 96 percent of Google's $38 billion in 2011 sales came from advertising.
But Amazon's newly developed 'DSP' technology, which taps into the company's vast store of consumer purchase history to help marketers target ads at specific groups of people on Amazon.com and on other websites, could change all that.
'From a client's perspective, the data that Amazon owns is actually better than what Google has,' said Mark Grether, the chief operating officer of Xaxis, an audience buying company that works with major advertisers. 'They know what you just bought, and they also know what you are right now trying to buy.'
Amazon is discussing a partnership with Xaxis in which the company would help Amazon sell ads for the service, Grether noted.
Amazon did not respond to an email seeking a comment.
STARTING POINT
Amazon can bring in higher-margin revenue by selling advertising than it can from its retail operations. By showing ads for products that it may not actually sell on its own website, Amazon establishes itself as a starting point for consumers looking to buy something on the Web.
Research firm Forrester reported that 30 percent of U.S. online shoppers in the third quarter began researching their purchase on Amazon.com, compared with 13 percent who started on a search engine such as Google - a reversal from two years earlier when search engines were more popular starting points.
Amazon now sells ads that show up to the side of product search results on its website. There were 6.7 billion display ad impressions on Amazon.com in the third quarter, more than triple the number in the same period of 2011, according to comScore.
That early success is a 'huge concern' for Google, whose business relies heavily on product searches and product search ads, said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter.
Partly in response, Google recently revamped its product search service, Google Shopping, by charging retailers and other online sellers a fee to be listed in results.
Founded four years apart in the late 1990s, Bezos has long worried about Amazon's reliance on Google for traffic, according to people close to the company, while also being dubious about Google's high market valuation.
'He'd say: 'This is the first time in the history of the world where the map maker is worth more than the territory that it's mapping,'' recalled the former Amazon executive of Bezos' comments about Google's popular online mapping service.
TENSIONS BUILD
Google's Android system is thriving but still has not cracked the nut of how to make money from mobile search ads and sales of digital goods like games, apps, music and video.
'If they can figure out mobile ads, that would truly be Google's second act,' said Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
But Amazon launched a broadside against Google in 2011 with the creation of its own version of Android for its Kindle Fire tablets that replaces key Google money-making services, such as a digital music and application storefront, with its own.
Not unlike Apple, 'Amazon wants to control the experience on their devices,' said Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer science professor. 'That doesn't make Google happy.'
The two are also clashing in cloud computing software.
Amazon started its cloud business more than six years ago, providing data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations. Google only launched its cloud computing business this year, but the market is growing so quickly there is still room to grab share, Etzioni said.
'I would not write Google off,' he added. 'Amazon has the early lead but it's very early.'
TRANSACT OR DIE?
Still, mobile gadgets and cloud computing are currently tiny businesses compared with the multibillion-dollar opportunity presented by advertising and online commerce.
Google recently acquired BufferBox, a company with a network of lockers that shoppers can use to receive packages. It is also testing same-day delivery in San Francisco, hinting at growing interest in a larger role in online retail.
It is not talking about its full plans for retail, but some analysts think features such as same-day delivery or 'pick-up' lockers, are valuable features it can use to enhance its existing online ad business. An ad for shoes, for example, might also make the shoes available for pick-up in a locker nearby, said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.
If Google can own the search and the delivery, it will be able to provide the same experience as Amazon, with no inventory - 'a higher margin, more efficient model,' Chien said.
Earlier this year, Google launched a new certification service highlighting merchants that ship quickly and reliably and backing it with up to $1,000 in 'purchase protection.'
Google could create a database of products and send shoppers to a page that has a way to buy quickly through the company's payments service Google Wallet, Forrester's Mulpuru said.
Google could then send that transaction to the retailer who would ship the product to the consumer. That ability is critical, according to Schachter, who said if consumers lack the ability to purchase items through Google it will lag Amazon and eBay Inc.
(Editing by Edwin Chan, Peter Lauria, Martin Howell and Maureen Bavdek)
This news article is brought to you by ANIMALS AND PETS - where latest news are our top priority.
The news was a 'wake-up' call to Bezos, an early investor in Google. He saw it as a warning that the Web search engine could encroach upon his online retail empire, according to a former Amazon executive.
'He realized that scanning catalogs was interesting for Google, but the real win for Google would be to get all the books scanned and digitized' and then sell electronic editions, the former executive said.
Thus began a rivalry that will escalate in 2013 as the two companies' areas of rivalry grow, spanning online advertising and retail to mobile gadgets and cloud computing.
It could upend the last remaining areas of cooperation between the two companies. For instance, Amazon's decision to use a stripped down version of Google's Android system in its new Kindle Fire tablet, coupled with Google's ambitious plans for its Motorola mobile devices unit, will only add to tensions.
The confrontation marks the latest front in a tech industry war in which many combatants are crowding onto each others' turf. Lurking in the shadows for both Google and Amazon is Facebook with its own search and advertising ambitions.
'Amazon wants to be the one place where you buy everything. Google wants to be the one place where you find everything, of which buying things is a subset,' said Chi-Hua Chien, a partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. 'So when you marry those facts I think you're going to see a natural collision.'
Both companies have a lot at stake. Google's market capitalization of $235 billion is about double Amazon's, largely because Google makes massive net earnings, expected by analysts to be $13.2 billion this year, based on a huge 32 percent net profit margin, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. By contrast, Amazon is seen reporting a small loss this year.
Amazon shareholders have been patient as the company has invested for growth but it will have to start producing strong earnings at some stage - more likely if it grows in higher margin areas such as advertising. Google's share price, on the other hand, is vulnerable to signs of slowing margin growth.
AD CLASH
Not long after Bezos learned of Google's catalog plans, Amazon began scanning books and providing searchable digital excerpts. Its Kindle e-reader, launched a few years later, owes much of its inspiration to the catalog news, the executive said.
Now, Amazon is pushing its online ad efforts, threatening to siphon revenue and users from Google's main search website.
Amazon's fledgling ad business is still a fraction of Google's, with Robert W. Baird & Co. estimating Amazon is on track to generate about $500 million in annual advertising revenue - tiny, given it recorded $48 billion of overall revenue in 2011. By contrast, 96 percent of Google's $38 billion in 2011 sales came from advertising.
But Amazon's newly developed 'DSP' technology, which taps into the company's vast store of consumer purchase history to help marketers target ads at specific groups of people on Amazon.com and on other websites, could change all that.
'From a client's perspective, the data that Amazon owns is actually better than what Google has,' said Mark Grether, the chief operating officer of Xaxis, an audience buying company that works with major advertisers. 'They know what you just bought, and they also know what you are right now trying to buy.'
Amazon is discussing a partnership with Xaxis in which the company would help Amazon sell ads for the service, Grether noted.
Amazon did not respond to an email seeking a comment.
STARTING POINT
Amazon can bring in higher-margin revenue by selling advertising than it can from its retail operations. By showing ads for products that it may not actually sell on its own website, Amazon establishes itself as a starting point for consumers looking to buy something on the Web.
Research firm Forrester reported that 30 percent of U.S. online shoppers in the third quarter began researching their purchase on Amazon.com, compared with 13 percent who started on a search engine such as Google - a reversal from two years earlier when search engines were more popular starting points.
Amazon now sells ads that show up to the side of product search results on its website. There were 6.7 billion display ad impressions on Amazon.com in the third quarter, more than triple the number in the same period of 2011, according to comScore.
That early success is a 'huge concern' for Google, whose business relies heavily on product searches and product search ads, said Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter.
Partly in response, Google recently revamped its product search service, Google Shopping, by charging retailers and other online sellers a fee to be listed in results.
Founded four years apart in the late 1990s, Bezos has long worried about Amazon's reliance on Google for traffic, according to people close to the company, while also being dubious about Google's high market valuation.
'He'd say: 'This is the first time in the history of the world where the map maker is worth more than the territory that it's mapping,'' recalled the former Amazon executive of Bezos' comments about Google's popular online mapping service.
TENSIONS BUILD
Google's Android system is thriving but still has not cracked the nut of how to make money from mobile search ads and sales of digital goods like games, apps, music and video.
'If they can figure out mobile ads, that would truly be Google's second act,' said Forrester analyst Sucharita Mulpuru.
But Amazon launched a broadside against Google in 2011 with the creation of its own version of Android for its Kindle Fire tablets that replaces key Google money-making services, such as a digital music and application storefront, with its own.
Not unlike Apple, 'Amazon wants to control the experience on their devices,' said Oren Etzioni, a University of Washington computer science professor. 'That doesn't make Google happy.'
The two are also clashing in cloud computing software.
Amazon started its cloud business more than six years ago, providing data storage, computing power and other technology services from remote locations. Google only launched its cloud computing business this year, but the market is growing so quickly there is still room to grab share, Etzioni said.
'I would not write Google off,' he added. 'Amazon has the early lead but it's very early.'
TRANSACT OR DIE?
Still, mobile gadgets and cloud computing are currently tiny businesses compared with the multibillion-dollar opportunity presented by advertising and online commerce.
Google recently acquired BufferBox, a company with a network of lockers that shoppers can use to receive packages. It is also testing same-day delivery in San Francisco, hinting at growing interest in a larger role in online retail.
It is not talking about its full plans for retail, but some analysts think features such as same-day delivery or 'pick-up' lockers, are valuable features it can use to enhance its existing online ad business. An ad for shoes, for example, might also make the shoes available for pick-up in a locker nearby, said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.
If Google can own the search and the delivery, it will be able to provide the same experience as Amazon, with no inventory - 'a higher margin, more efficient model,' Chien said.
Earlier this year, Google launched a new certification service highlighting merchants that ship quickly and reliably and backing it with up to $1,000 in 'purchase protection.'
Google could create a database of products and send shoppers to a page that has a way to buy quickly through the company's payments service Google Wallet, Forrester's Mulpuru said.
Google could then send that transaction to the retailer who would ship the product to the consumer. That ability is critical, according to Schachter, who said if consumers lack the ability to purchase items through Google it will lag Amazon and eBay Inc.
(Editing by Edwin Chan, Peter Lauria, Martin Howell and Maureen Bavdek)
This news article is brought to you by ANIMALS AND PETS - where latest news are our top priority.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Google working on "X Phone", "X" tablet to take on rivals - WSJ
(Reuters) - Google Inc is working with recently acquired Motorola on a handset codenamed 'X-phone', aimed at grabbing market share from Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.
Google acquired Motorola in May for $12.5 billion to bolster its patent portfolio as its Android mobile operating system competes with rivals such as Apple and Samsung.
The Journal quoted the people saying that Motorola is working on two fronts: devices that will be sold by carrier partner Verizon Wireless, and on the X phone.
Motorola plans to enhance the X Phone with its recent acquisition of Viewdle, an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer. The new handset is due out sometime next year, the business daily said, citing a person familiar with the plans.
Motorola is also expected to work on an 'X' tablet after the phone. Google Chief Executive Larry Page is said to have promised a significant marketing budget for the unit, the newspaper said quoting the persons.
Google was not immediately reachable for comments outside regular U.S. business hours.
(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)
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Google acquired Motorola in May for $12.5 billion to bolster its patent portfolio as its Android mobile operating system competes with rivals such as Apple and Samsung.
The Journal quoted the people saying that Motorola is working on two fronts: devices that will be sold by carrier partner Verizon Wireless, and on the X phone.
Motorola plans to enhance the X Phone with its recent acquisition of Viewdle, an imaging and gesture-recognition software developer. The new handset is due out sometime next year, the business daily said, citing a person familiar with the plans.
Motorola is also expected to work on an 'X' tablet after the phone. Google Chief Executive Larry Page is said to have promised a significant marketing budget for the unit, the newspaper said quoting the persons.
Google was not immediately reachable for comments outside regular U.S. business hours.
(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Chang)
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Friday, December 21, 2012
Analysis: Apple's swoon exposes risk lurking in mutual funds
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The nearly 28 percent decline in shares of Apple Inc since mid-September isn't just painful to individual shareholders. It's also being felt by investors who chased hot mutual funds that loaded up on Apple as the stock raced to a record $705 per share.
Apple makes up 10 percent or more of assets in 117 out of the 1,119 funds that own its shares, according to data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. Those big stakes have contributed positively to each fund's annual performance to date, with Apple still up about 32 percent for the year. It was trading at $527.73 soon after the opening on Friday.
But that year-to-date outcome may not accurately reflect the performance of the funds for individual investors. All told, approximately $4.5 billion has been added to funds with overweight stakes in Apple this year, according to Morningstar data. The majority of these dollars were invested after March and after Apple first exceeded $600 per share - meaning many investors have been riding down with the decline.
The $302 million Matthew 25 fund, for instance, holds 17.4 percent of its assets in Apple, according to Lipper. The fund's 31.9 percent gain through Thursday makes it one of the top performing funds for the year.
Most of its Apple shares were bought years ago at a bargain basement price of about $125 per share. But $158.9 million of the fund's assets - or 53 percent - were invested after the end of March, when Apple was trading near $615 per share, according to Morningstar data.
For those investors that bought after March, all that concentration in Apple hasn't led to a stellar gain but rather a drag on the portfolio. Someone who invested in Matthew 25 in early April has seen the value of the fund's Apple stake fall about 19 percent, while someone who invested at the beginning of September has watched that outsized Apple stake drop 27.2 percent.
In turn, the majority of the fund's investors have reaped a much more modest performance than its year-end numbers suggest. Since the end of March, the fund has gained 6.7 percent, according to Morningstar data, far less than its 31 percent year-to-date gain and about two percentage points more than the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index.
Since, September the fund is down nearly 3 percent through Thursday's close, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in the S&P 500 in that period.
The impact of Apple's falling stock price shows some of the drawbacks of portfolio concentration, experts say. These stakes can leave the funds overexposed to the ups and downs of one company - counter to what most mutual funds are supposed to do for investors.
'Any time you get over 10 percent of the portfolio in one company it's a red flag,' said Michel Herbst, director of active fund research at Morningstar. Many fund managers do have risk management rules that prevent them from devoting more than 5 percent to 6 percent of their portfolio to any one stock, he said.
Then again, some funds purposely invest in just a few stocks. Mark Mulholland, the portfolio manager of the Matthew 25 fund, said that taking concentrated positions in companies is the only way to beat an index over longer periods of time.
'RIGHT-SIZING' PORTFOLIOS
Along with concerns about iPhone sales in China and tax-motivated selling among people who want to avoid potentially higher capital gains taxes in 2013, the wide fund ownership of Apple may be a factor in the size of the stock's recent declines, fund managers said. In addition, with so many funds already heavily invested in the high-priced stock, there may be fewer marginal buyers available to push prices up again when shares begin to dip.
'The stock didn't go from $700 to $520 because people didn't like the new iPad. It's become a favorite short of hedge funds because they know they can get in on this,' said Mark Spellman, a portfolio manager of the $300 million Value Line Income and Growth fund with a small position in Apple.
Short interest in the stock rose to 20.6 million shares at the end of November from 15.1 million shares at the end of September, according to Nasdaq.
'Some of my competitors have 12 percent of their assets in Apple, which I think is ludicrous', said Spellman, who said the company is no longer trading on its fundamentals.
Sandy Villere, who has a 2.5 percent weighting of Apple in his $276 million Villere Balanced fund, said that some mutual fund managers are selling shares because of the over-weighting.
'Right now many people who did take huge overweight positions are right-sizing their portfolios to get it in line with their regular weightings,' he said.
Still, some bullish investors see the stock's recent declines as a buying opportunity.
Mulholland, the Matthew 25 portfolio manager, continues to say that shares should be priced at over $1,000 per share based on his valuation of the company at 10 times enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Apple trades at about 7 times that figure now.
Wall Street analysts' average price target as of Thursday is $742.56, according to Thomson Reuters data. But Mulholland is happy to be more bullish than his peers.
'I'm glad that I'm able to get it at these prices,' he said.
(Reporting By David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Merritt)
This article is brought to you by BUY A NEW COMPUTER.
Apple makes up 10 percent or more of assets in 117 out of the 1,119 funds that own its shares, according to data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. Those big stakes have contributed positively to each fund's annual performance to date, with Apple still up about 32 percent for the year. It was trading at $527.73 soon after the opening on Friday.
But that year-to-date outcome may not accurately reflect the performance of the funds for individual investors. All told, approximately $4.5 billion has been added to funds with overweight stakes in Apple this year, according to Morningstar data. The majority of these dollars were invested after March and after Apple first exceeded $600 per share - meaning many investors have been riding down with the decline.
The $302 million Matthew 25 fund, for instance, holds 17.4 percent of its assets in Apple, according to Lipper. The fund's 31.9 percent gain through Thursday makes it one of the top performing funds for the year.
Most of its Apple shares were bought years ago at a bargain basement price of about $125 per share. But $158.9 million of the fund's assets - or 53 percent - were invested after the end of March, when Apple was trading near $615 per share, according to Morningstar data.
For those investors that bought after March, all that concentration in Apple hasn't led to a stellar gain but rather a drag on the portfolio. Someone who invested in Matthew 25 in early April has seen the value of the fund's Apple stake fall about 19 percent, while someone who invested at the beginning of September has watched that outsized Apple stake drop 27.2 percent.
In turn, the majority of the fund's investors have reaped a much more modest performance than its year-end numbers suggest. Since the end of March, the fund has gained 6.7 percent, according to Morningstar data, far less than its 31 percent year-to-date gain and about two percentage points more than the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index.
Since, September the fund is down nearly 3 percent through Thursday's close, compared with a 1.1 percent decline in the S&P 500 in that period.
The impact of Apple's falling stock price shows some of the drawbacks of portfolio concentration, experts say. These stakes can leave the funds overexposed to the ups and downs of one company - counter to what most mutual funds are supposed to do for investors.
'Any time you get over 10 percent of the portfolio in one company it's a red flag,' said Michel Herbst, director of active fund research at Morningstar. Many fund managers do have risk management rules that prevent them from devoting more than 5 percent to 6 percent of their portfolio to any one stock, he said.
Then again, some funds purposely invest in just a few stocks. Mark Mulholland, the portfolio manager of the Matthew 25 fund, said that taking concentrated positions in companies is the only way to beat an index over longer periods of time.
'RIGHT-SIZING' PORTFOLIOS
Along with concerns about iPhone sales in China and tax-motivated selling among people who want to avoid potentially higher capital gains taxes in 2013, the wide fund ownership of Apple may be a factor in the size of the stock's recent declines, fund managers said. In addition, with so many funds already heavily invested in the high-priced stock, there may be fewer marginal buyers available to push prices up again when shares begin to dip.
'The stock didn't go from $700 to $520 because people didn't like the new iPad. It's become a favorite short of hedge funds because they know they can get in on this,' said Mark Spellman, a portfolio manager of the $300 million Value Line Income and Growth fund with a small position in Apple.
Short interest in the stock rose to 20.6 million shares at the end of November from 15.1 million shares at the end of September, according to Nasdaq.
'Some of my competitors have 12 percent of their assets in Apple, which I think is ludicrous', said Spellman, who said the company is no longer trading on its fundamentals.
Sandy Villere, who has a 2.5 percent weighting of Apple in his $276 million Villere Balanced fund, said that some mutual fund managers are selling shares because of the over-weighting.
'Right now many people who did take huge overweight positions are right-sizing their portfolios to get it in line with their regular weightings,' he said.
Still, some bullish investors see the stock's recent declines as a buying opportunity.
Mulholland, the Matthew 25 portfolio manager, continues to say that shares should be priced at over $1,000 per share based on his valuation of the company at 10 times enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). Apple trades at about 7 times that figure now.
Wall Street analysts' average price target as of Thursday is $742.56, according to Thomson Reuters data. But Mulholland is happy to be more bullish than his peers.
'I'm glad that I'm able to get it at these prices,' he said.
(Reporting By David Randall; Editing by Jennifer Merritt)
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RIM stock drops as services fee changes worry analysts
(Reuters) - Shares of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd fell more than 16 percent on Friday on fears that a new fee structure for its high-margin services segment could put pressure on the business that set it apart from competitors.
The services segment has long been RIM's most profitable and accounts for about a third of total revenue. Some analysts said there was a danger that the Canadian company could become just another handset maker without a successful service ecosystem.
The fee changes, which RIM announced on Thursday, overshadowed stronger-than-expected quarterly results. The company said the new pricing structure would come with the introduction of its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 products, expected on January 30.
RIM said some subscribers would continue to pay for enhanced services like advanced security. But others will account for less service revenue, or even none at all.
Chief Executive Thorsten Heins tried to reassure investors in a television interview with CNBC on Friday, saying RIM's 'service revenue isn't going away.'
He added: 'We're not stopping. We're not halting. We're transitioning.'
Since taking over at RIM in January, Heins has focused on shrinking the company and getting it ready to introduce the new devices, which the company says will help it claw back ground it has lost to competitors such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.
But the news of the new services pricing strategy came as a shock to markets, and some brokerages cut their price targets on RIM stock.
RIM will not be able to sustain profitability by relying on its hardware business alone, said National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson, whom Thomson Reuters StarMine rated the top analyst based on the accuracy of his estimates of the company's earnings.
Thompson downgraded RIM's stock to 'underperform' from 'sector perform' and cut his price target to $10 from $15.
RIM's Nasdaq-listed shares were down 16.7 percent at $11.76 late Friday morning. The stock fell 16.2 percent to C$11.69 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The shares kicked off a rally in early November, as some investors bet that BlackBerry 10 would turn the company around. Even after Friday morning's drop, the stock was still more than 90 percent higher than it was three months ago.
COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH
The success of BlackBerry 10 will be crucial to the future of RIM, which on Thursday posted its first-ever decline in total subscribers.
Heins said on CNBC that the company expected to ship millions of the new devices.
He cautioned that this will require heavy investments, which will reduce RIM's cash position in the fourth and first quarters from $2.9 billion in the third quarter. However, he said it would not go below $2 billion.
Still, doubts remain about whether RIM can pull off its transformation. Needham analyst Charlie Wolf said the BlackBerry 10 would have to look meaningfully superior to its competitors for RIM to stage a comeback.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley said it was highly unlikely that the market would support RIM's new mobile computing ecosystem, and he remained skeptical about the company's ability to survive on its own.
'We believe RIM will eventually need to sell the company,' said Walkley, who cut his price target on RIM shares to $9 from $10.
Baird Equity Research analysts said BlackBerry 10 faced a daunting uphill battle against products from Apple, as well as those using Google Inc's Android operating system and, increasingly, phones with Microsoft Corp's Windows 8 operating system.
Baird maintained its 'underperform' rating on the stock, while Paradigm Capital downgraded the shares to 'hold' from 'buy' on uncertainty around the services revenue model.
'RIM has gone from having one major aspect of uncertainty - BlackBerry 10 adoption - to two, given an uncertain floor on services revenue,' William Blair analyst Anil Doradla said.
RIM will have to discount BlackBerry 10 devices significantly to maintain demand, Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said.
But the BlackBerry still offers security features that helped it build its reputation with big business and government, a selling point with some key customers.
Credit Suisse maintained its 'neutral' rating on the stock, but not because it expected BlackBerry 10 to be a big success.
'Only the potential for an outright sale of the company or a breakup keeps us at a neutral,' Credit Suisse analysts said.
Separately on Friday, ailing Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia said it had settled its patent dispute with RIM in return for payments. Nokia did not disclose detailed terms, but said the deal included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.
(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore and Allison Martell in Toronto. Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Ted Kerr, Dale Hudson, Janet Guttsman and Lisa Von Ahn)
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The services segment has long been RIM's most profitable and accounts for about a third of total revenue. Some analysts said there was a danger that the Canadian company could become just another handset maker without a successful service ecosystem.
The fee changes, which RIM announced on Thursday, overshadowed stronger-than-expected quarterly results. The company said the new pricing structure would come with the introduction of its long-awaited BlackBerry 10 products, expected on January 30.
RIM said some subscribers would continue to pay for enhanced services like advanced security. But others will account for less service revenue, or even none at all.
Chief Executive Thorsten Heins tried to reassure investors in a television interview with CNBC on Friday, saying RIM's 'service revenue isn't going away.'
He added: 'We're not stopping. We're not halting. We're transitioning.'
Since taking over at RIM in January, Heins has focused on shrinking the company and getting it ready to introduce the new devices, which the company says will help it claw back ground it has lost to competitors such as Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics.
But the news of the new services pricing strategy came as a shock to markets, and some brokerages cut their price targets on RIM stock.
RIM will not be able to sustain profitability by relying on its hardware business alone, said National Bank Financial analyst Kris Thompson, whom Thomson Reuters StarMine rated the top analyst based on the accuracy of his estimates of the company's earnings.
Thompson downgraded RIM's stock to 'underperform' from 'sector perform' and cut his price target to $10 from $15.
RIM's Nasdaq-listed shares were down 16.7 percent at $11.76 late Friday morning. The stock fell 16.2 percent to C$11.69 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The shares kicked off a rally in early November, as some investors bet that BlackBerry 10 would turn the company around. Even after Friday morning's drop, the stock was still more than 90 percent higher than it was three months ago.
COUNTDOWN TO LAUNCH
The success of BlackBerry 10 will be crucial to the future of RIM, which on Thursday posted its first-ever decline in total subscribers.
Heins said on CNBC that the company expected to ship millions of the new devices.
He cautioned that this will require heavy investments, which will reduce RIM's cash position in the fourth and first quarters from $2.9 billion in the third quarter. However, he said it would not go below $2 billion.
Still, doubts remain about whether RIM can pull off its transformation. Needham analyst Charlie Wolf said the BlackBerry 10 would have to look meaningfully superior to its competitors for RIM to stage a comeback.
Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley said it was highly unlikely that the market would support RIM's new mobile computing ecosystem, and he remained skeptical about the company's ability to survive on its own.
'We believe RIM will eventually need to sell the company,' said Walkley, who cut his price target on RIM shares to $9 from $10.
Baird Equity Research analysts said BlackBerry 10 faced a daunting uphill battle against products from Apple, as well as those using Google Inc's Android operating system and, increasingly, phones with Microsoft Corp's Windows 8 operating system.
Baird maintained its 'underperform' rating on the stock, while Paradigm Capital downgraded the shares to 'hold' from 'buy' on uncertainty around the services revenue model.
'RIM has gone from having one major aspect of uncertainty - BlackBerry 10 adoption - to two, given an uncertain floor on services revenue,' William Blair analyst Anil Doradla said.
RIM will have to discount BlackBerry 10 devices significantly to maintain demand, Bernstein analyst Pierre Ferragu said.
But the BlackBerry still offers security features that helped it build its reputation with big business and government, a selling point with some key customers.
Credit Suisse maintained its 'neutral' rating on the stock, but not because it expected BlackBerry 10 to be a big success.
'Only the potential for an outright sale of the company or a breakup keeps us at a neutral,' Credit Suisse analysts said.
Separately on Friday, ailing Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia said it had settled its patent dispute with RIM in return for payments. Nokia did not disclose detailed terms, but said the deal included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.
(Reporting by Chandni Doulatramani in Bangalore and Allison Martell in Toronto. Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Ted Kerr, Dale Hudson, Janet Guttsman and Lisa Von Ahn)
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RIM shares fall at the open after earnings
TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd fell in early trading on Friday following the BlackBerry maker's Thursday earnings announcement, when the company outlined plans to change the way it charges for services.
RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that could put the high-margin business under pressure.
Shares fell 16.0 percent to $11.86 in early trading on the Nasdaq. Toronto-listed shares fell 15.8 percent to C$11.74.
(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
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RIM, pushing to revive its fortunes with the launch of its new BlackBerry 10 devices next month, surprised investors when it said it plans to alter its service revenue model, a move that could put the high-margin business under pressure.
Shares fell 16.0 percent to $11.86 in early trading on the Nasdaq. Toronto-listed shares fell 15.8 percent to C$11.74.
(Reporting by Allison Martell; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
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Nokia to get payments in patent deal with RIM
HELSINKI (Reuters) - Struggling Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia has settled its patent dispute with BlackBerry maker Research in Motion in return for payments, as it tries to exploit its trove of technology patents to boost its finances.
Terms of the agreement were confidential, but Nokia said on Friday it included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.
Nokia is one of the industry's top patent holders, having invested 45 billion euros ($60 billion) in mobile research and development over the past two decades.
It has been trying to make use of that legacy to ensure its survival, amid a fall in sales as well as cash. The Finnish firm is battling to recover lost ground in the lucrative smartphone market to the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The agreement with RIM settles all existing patent litigation between the two companies, Nokia said, adding similar disputes with HTC Corp and ViewSonic still stood.
'This agreement demonstrates Nokia's industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market,' said Paul Melin, Nokia's chief intellectual property officer.
Nokia has earned around 500 million euros a year from patent royalties in key areas of mobile telephony.
Some analysts have said it could earn hundreds of millions more if it can negotiate with more companies successfully.
Analysts estimated its June 2011 settlement with Apple was worth hundreds of millions of euros.
($1 = 0.7555 euros)
(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters and Mark Potter)
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Terms of the agreement were confidential, but Nokia said on Friday it included a one-time payment to be booked in the fourth quarter, as well as ongoing fees, all to be paid by RIM.
Nokia is one of the industry's top patent holders, having invested 45 billion euros ($60 billion) in mobile research and development over the past two decades.
It has been trying to make use of that legacy to ensure its survival, amid a fall in sales as well as cash. The Finnish firm is battling to recover lost ground in the lucrative smartphone market to the likes of Apple and Samsung.
The agreement with RIM settles all existing patent litigation between the two companies, Nokia said, adding similar disputes with HTC Corp and ViewSonic still stood.
'This agreement demonstrates Nokia's industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market,' said Paul Melin, Nokia's chief intellectual property officer.
Nokia has earned around 500 million euros a year from patent royalties in key areas of mobile telephony.
Some analysts have said it could earn hundreds of millions more if it can negotiate with more companies successfully.
Analysts estimated its June 2011 settlement with Apple was worth hundreds of millions of euros.
($1 = 0.7555 euros)
(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando; Editing by Hans-Juergen Peters and Mark Potter)
This news article is brought to you by TECHNOLOGY NEWS - where latest news are our top priority.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Apple presses case for Samsung sales ban in appeals filing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tech giant Apple Inc, battling Samsung Electronics Co over patents in several countries, argued on Thursday that a U.S. appeals court should reconsider its decision to overturn a pretrial sales ban on Samsung for infringement.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in October overturned a pretrial sales ban ordered by a lower court in California. The order was to stop sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.
Apple argued that this was inappropriate and asked for an 'en banc review,' which means that a larger panel of judges would reconsider the decision made by the three-judge panel in October.
The fight is over a single patent - one that allows the smartphone to search multiple data storage locations at once. For example, the smartphone could search the device's memory as well as the Internet with a single query.
Apple argued that the sales ban should be reinstated because it uses the patent in question and competes with Samsung. The three-judge panel had said that consumers did not buy Samsung phones primarily because of the patent, and thus, a sales ban was inappropriate.
It has become increasingly difficult for companies to win sales bans related to patent infringement in recent years. Such sales injunctions have been a key for companies trying to increase their leverage in courtroom patent fights.
Apple, in a different patent lawsuit, scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung in August when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.
The Nexus phone was not included in that trial, but is part of a tandem case Apple filed against Samsung earlier this year.
The case in the Federal Circuit is Apple Inc vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 12-1507.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected Apple's request for a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung's newer Galaxy products. Koh cited the Federal Circuit's Nexus ruling as binding legal precedent in her order.
In a separate court filing on Thursday, Apple said it intended to appeal Koh's ruling.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
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The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in October overturned a pretrial sales ban ordered by a lower court in California. The order was to stop sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphone.
Apple argued that this was inappropriate and asked for an 'en banc review,' which means that a larger panel of judges would reconsider the decision made by the three-judge panel in October.
The fight is over a single patent - one that allows the smartphone to search multiple data storage locations at once. For example, the smartphone could search the device's memory as well as the Internet with a single query.
Apple argued that the sales ban should be reinstated because it uses the patent in question and competes with Samsung. The three-judge panel had said that consumers did not buy Samsung phones primarily because of the patent, and thus, a sales ban was inappropriate.
It has become increasingly difficult for companies to win sales bans related to patent infringement in recent years. Such sales injunctions have been a key for companies trying to increase their leverage in courtroom patent fights.
Apple, in a different patent lawsuit, scored a sweeping legal victory over Samsung in August when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.
The Nexus phone was not included in that trial, but is part of a tandem case Apple filed against Samsung earlier this year.
The case in the Federal Circuit is Apple Inc vs. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd et al., 12-1507.
Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected Apple's request for a permanent sales ban against 26 mostly older Samsung phones, though any injunction could potentially have been extended to Samsung's newer Galaxy products. Koh cited the Federal Circuit's Nexus ruling as binding legal precedent in her order.
In a separate court filing on Thursday, Apple said it intended to appeal Koh's ruling.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
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RIM posts smaller than expected loss; subscriber base slips
(Reuters) - Research In Motion reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on Thursday, but recorded the first-ever drop in its subscriber base barely a month before the crucial launch of the new BB10 smartphone line.
Excluding one-time items related to restructuring and other issues, the struggling BlackBerry maker reported a loss of $114 million or 22 cents a share.
Analysts, on average, had forecast a loss of 35 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, which hopes to reinvent itself and revive its fortunes with the launch of the Blackberry 10 line next month, reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $9 million, or 2 cents a share. That compared with a year-ago profit of $265 million, or 51 cents.
The company said its subscriber base in the quarter fell to about 79 million from about 80 million in the period ended September 1.
(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Janet Guttsman)
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Excluding one-time items related to restructuring and other issues, the struggling BlackBerry maker reported a loss of $114 million or 22 cents a share.
Analysts, on average, had forecast a loss of 35 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, which hopes to reinvent itself and revive its fortunes with the launch of the Blackberry 10 line next month, reported fiscal third-quarter net income of $9 million, or 2 cents a share. That compared with a year-ago profit of $265 million, or 51 cents.
The company said its subscriber base in the quarter fell to about 79 million from about 80 million in the period ended September 1.
(Reporting by Euan Rocha; Editing by Janet Guttsman)
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Deutsche Telekom finance chief to replace CEO Obermann
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom chief executive Rene Obermann has unexpectedly announced he will step down at the end of 2013 and be succeeded by finance director Timotheus Hoettges.
Hoettges, 50, said on Thursday he was not planning major changes to strategy and would continue Obermann's drive of investing in the United States and Germany as the firm battles to return to revenue growth against a tough economic backdrop.
'I have worked with Obermann for 12 years, and I don't expect to change a lot in the way that we do things,' he told journalists during a conference call.
He is, however, expected to bring a fresh spark to Germany's former state telecoms monopoly, as he is considered by analysts to have the energy to take on challenges and an ability to absorb knowledge. But he has a big job ahead of him.
The European telecoms industry is struggling with sluggish economic growth, costly investments and cut-throat competition, and on top of that Deutsche Telekom has had its hands full with trying to fix its troubled T-Mobile USA business.
The German government, Deutsche Telekom's biggest shareholder with a 32 percent stake, said it welcomed the choice of Hoettges as new CEO because it promised continuity.
'The chief strategist so far becoming the new captain indicates that the course will be held,' a spokesperson for the finance ministry told Reuters.
Hoettges joined the group in 2000 after playing a central role in the merger of VIAG AG and VEBA AG to form E.ON, now Germany's biggest utility.
In 2009, he was promoted to finance chief at Deutsche Telekom and, among other things, oversaw the move to put its British mobile business in a joint venture with France Telecom,.
'Hoettges is extremely good as a CFO, he's well respected by investors, but it remains to be seen whether he has the vision and political clout to succeed as CEO,' Espirito Santo analyst Will Draper said.
Hoettges said the company had not yet decided on a new finance director to replace him.
THE ENGINE ROOM
Obermann was the youngest-ever chief executive of a German blue-chip firm at the time when he took over in 2006, aged only 43. He gained a reputation for being eager to keep unions and politicians happy and wary of making big strategic decisions.
One of his boldest moves was a deal to sell T-Mobile USA, to AT&T, but it collapsed last year amid concerns from competition regulators, dealing a blow to Obermann's reputation.
T-Mobile USA was a growth engine for Deutsche Telekom in its early days but is a rundown asset now that has been haemorrhaging customers. Deutsche Telekom is now trying to merge the business with smaller rival MetroPCS.
Obermann said he was leaving to work for a smaller company where he was 'closer to the engine room' than he could be at an international corporation, without providing details.
Analysts were split over whether to believe Obermann's assurances that he was leaving of his own volition.
'If the board or the main shareholders were unhappy about the CEO's performance, they probably would have appointed an outsider, not the CFO, who also has been responsible for what has happened at the company over the last few years,' Exane BNP analyst Mathieu Robilliard said.
Espirito Santo's Draper meanwhile said: 'Obermann has had a lot of opportunity to fix the U.S. and yet it still remains Deutsche Telekom's biggest problem.'
Obermann also disappointed investors with a bigger than expected dividend cut announced earlier this month as the company's investment drive eats away cash.
European peers Telefonica, the Netherlands' KPN, Telekom Austria, and France Telecom had already cut their dividends earlier this year, hurt by a weak economy and fierce competition that has driven down prices.
Deutsche Telekom shares closed 0.5 percent higher at 8.63 euros, outperforming a 0.2 percent fall in the STOXX Europe 600 European telecoms index.
(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Rene Wagner; Editing by Mark Potter and Helen Massy-Beresford)
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Hoettges, 50, said on Thursday he was not planning major changes to strategy and would continue Obermann's drive of investing in the United States and Germany as the firm battles to return to revenue growth against a tough economic backdrop.
'I have worked with Obermann for 12 years, and I don't expect to change a lot in the way that we do things,' he told journalists during a conference call.
He is, however, expected to bring a fresh spark to Germany's former state telecoms monopoly, as he is considered by analysts to have the energy to take on challenges and an ability to absorb knowledge. But he has a big job ahead of him.
The European telecoms industry is struggling with sluggish economic growth, costly investments and cut-throat competition, and on top of that Deutsche Telekom has had its hands full with trying to fix its troubled T-Mobile USA business.
The German government, Deutsche Telekom's biggest shareholder with a 32 percent stake, said it welcomed the choice of Hoettges as new CEO because it promised continuity.
'The chief strategist so far becoming the new captain indicates that the course will be held,' a spokesperson for the finance ministry told Reuters.
Hoettges joined the group in 2000 after playing a central role in the merger of VIAG AG and VEBA AG to form E.ON, now Germany's biggest utility.
In 2009, he was promoted to finance chief at Deutsche Telekom and, among other things, oversaw the move to put its British mobile business in a joint venture with France Telecom,.
'Hoettges is extremely good as a CFO, he's well respected by investors, but it remains to be seen whether he has the vision and political clout to succeed as CEO,' Espirito Santo analyst Will Draper said.
Hoettges said the company had not yet decided on a new finance director to replace him.
THE ENGINE ROOM
Obermann was the youngest-ever chief executive of a German blue-chip firm at the time when he took over in 2006, aged only 43. He gained a reputation for being eager to keep unions and politicians happy and wary of making big strategic decisions.
One of his boldest moves was a deal to sell T-Mobile USA, to AT&T, but it collapsed last year amid concerns from competition regulators, dealing a blow to Obermann's reputation.
T-Mobile USA was a growth engine for Deutsche Telekom in its early days but is a rundown asset now that has been haemorrhaging customers. Deutsche Telekom is now trying to merge the business with smaller rival MetroPCS.
Obermann said he was leaving to work for a smaller company where he was 'closer to the engine room' than he could be at an international corporation, without providing details.
Analysts were split over whether to believe Obermann's assurances that he was leaving of his own volition.
'If the board or the main shareholders were unhappy about the CEO's performance, they probably would have appointed an outsider, not the CFO, who also has been responsible for what has happened at the company over the last few years,' Exane BNP analyst Mathieu Robilliard said.
Espirito Santo's Draper meanwhile said: 'Obermann has had a lot of opportunity to fix the U.S. and yet it still remains Deutsche Telekom's biggest problem.'
Obermann also disappointed investors with a bigger than expected dividend cut announced earlier this month as the company's investment drive eats away cash.
European peers Telefonica, the Netherlands' KPN, Telekom Austria, and France Telecom had already cut their dividends earlier this year, hurt by a weak economy and fierce competition that has driven down prices.
Deutsche Telekom shares closed 0.5 percent higher at 8.63 euros, outperforming a 0.2 percent fall in the STOXX Europe 600 European telecoms index.
(Additional reporting by Paul Sandle and Rene Wagner; Editing by Mark Potter and Helen Massy-Beresford)
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Deutsche Telekom finance head to become CEO at end 2013
FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom Chief Executive Rene Obermann will step down at the end of next year and be succeeded at the helm of Germany's former state telecoms monopoly by finance director Timotheus Hoettges.
Hoettges, 50, said on Thursday he was not planning major changes to strategy and would continue Obermann's drive of investing in the United States and Germany as the firm battles to return to revenue growth against a tough economic backdrop.
'I have worked with Obermann for 12 years, and I don't expect to change a lot in the way that we do things,' he told journalists during a conference call.
This month, Deutsche Telekom announced a cut in dividends for the next two years by almost a third as its investment drive eats away cash.
European peers Telefonica, the Netherlands' KPN, Telekom Austria, and France Telecom had already cut their dividends earlier this year as the industry struggles with sluggish economic growth, costly investments and cut-throat competition.
Obermann, with Deutsche Telekom since 1998, became the youngest-ever chief executive of a German blue-chip company at the time when he took over in 2006 at just 43.
His image has been that of a low-key leader, eager to keep unions and politicians happy and wary of taking big strategic decisions.
One of his boldest moves was a deal to sell troubled T-Mobile USA to AT&T, but it collapsed last year amid concerns from competition regulators, dealing a blow to Obermann's reputation.
T-Mobile USA was a strong growth engine for Deutsche Telekom in its early days but is a rundown asset now that has been hemorrhaging customers for a while.
'This is the right time to prepare to pass the baton and ensure a smooth transition,' said Obermann, 49, adding he was not being pushed out, and that he wanted a change.
He is going to work for a smaller company where he can be 'closer to the engine room', he said, without giving details.
Exane BNP analyst Mathieu Robilliard said it looked like a personal decision.
'If the board or the main shareholders were unhappy about the CEO's performance, they probably would have appointed an outsider, not the CFO, who also has been responsible for what has happened at the company over the last few years,' he said.
Hoettges promises to bring a fresh spark to Deutsche Telekom, as he is considered by analysts to have the energy to take on challenges and an ability to absorb knowledge.
Hoettges joined the group in 2000 after playing a central role in the merger of VIAG AG - where he was a member of the extended management board - and VEBA AG to form E.ON, now Germany's biggest utility.
He was promoted to finance chief at Deutsche Telekom in 2009 and, among other things, oversaw the move to put its British mobile business in a joint venture with France Telecom.
Hoettges said the company had not yet decided on a new finance director to replace him.
At 11:05 ET, Deutsche Telekom shares were up 0.6 percent at 8.633 euros, outperforming a 0.2 percent fall in the STOXX Europe 600 European telecoms index.
(Editing by Mark Potter)
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Hoettges, 50, said on Thursday he was not planning major changes to strategy and would continue Obermann's drive of investing in the United States and Germany as the firm battles to return to revenue growth against a tough economic backdrop.
'I have worked with Obermann for 12 years, and I don't expect to change a lot in the way that we do things,' he told journalists during a conference call.
This month, Deutsche Telekom announced a cut in dividends for the next two years by almost a third as its investment drive eats away cash.
European peers Telefonica, the Netherlands' KPN, Telekom Austria, and France Telecom had already cut their dividends earlier this year as the industry struggles with sluggish economic growth, costly investments and cut-throat competition.
Obermann, with Deutsche Telekom since 1998, became the youngest-ever chief executive of a German blue-chip company at the time when he took over in 2006 at just 43.
His image has been that of a low-key leader, eager to keep unions and politicians happy and wary of taking big strategic decisions.
One of his boldest moves was a deal to sell troubled T-Mobile USA to AT&T, but it collapsed last year amid concerns from competition regulators, dealing a blow to Obermann's reputation.
T-Mobile USA was a strong growth engine for Deutsche Telekom in its early days but is a rundown asset now that has been hemorrhaging customers for a while.
'This is the right time to prepare to pass the baton and ensure a smooth transition,' said Obermann, 49, adding he was not being pushed out, and that he wanted a change.
He is going to work for a smaller company where he can be 'closer to the engine room', he said, without giving details.
Exane BNP analyst Mathieu Robilliard said it looked like a personal decision.
'If the board or the main shareholders were unhappy about the CEO's performance, they probably would have appointed an outsider, not the CFO, who also has been responsible for what has happened at the company over the last few years,' he said.
Hoettges promises to bring a fresh spark to Deutsche Telekom, as he is considered by analysts to have the energy to take on challenges and an ability to absorb knowledge.
Hoettges joined the group in 2000 after playing a central role in the merger of VIAG AG - where he was a member of the extended management board - and VEBA AG to form E.ON, now Germany's biggest utility.
He was promoted to finance chief at Deutsche Telekom in 2009 and, among other things, oversaw the move to put its British mobile business in a joint venture with France Telecom.
Hoettges said the company had not yet decided on a new finance director to replace him.
At 11:05 ET, Deutsche Telekom shares were up 0.6 percent at 8.633 euros, outperforming a 0.2 percent fall in the STOXX Europe 600 European telecoms index.
(Editing by Mark Potter)
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Oracle to buy software maker Eloqua for $810 million
(Reuters) - Oracle Corp agreed to buy Eloqua Inc, a maker of marketing automation software that listed on the Nasdaq in August, for about $810 million, underlining Oracle's efforts to drive growth through cloud-computing services.
Eloqua makes software to enable businesses predict and grow revenue by monitoring and measuring marketing and sales initiatives. The company has over 1,000 customers including Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Inc and the Miami Heat and Sacramento Kings teams in the NBA.
The $23.50 per share offer represents a 31 percent premium to Eloqua's close on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.
'Eloqua's leading marketing automation cloud will become the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud,' said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle Development.
Eloqua's board has unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2013.
Oracle said on Tuesday that software sales growth will stay strong into the new year despite fears that there could be big tax hikes and U.S. government spending cuts that could cause a slump in spending by customers.
(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Eloqua makes software to enable businesses predict and grow revenue by monitoring and measuring marketing and sales initiatives. The company has over 1,000 customers including Cisco Systems Inc, Dell Inc and the Miami Heat and Sacramento Kings teams in the NBA.
The $23.50 per share offer represents a 31 percent premium to Eloqua's close on the Nasdaq on Wednesday.
'Eloqua's leading marketing automation cloud will become the centerpiece of the Oracle Marketing Cloud,' said Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle Development.
Eloqua's board has unanimously approved the deal, which is expected to close in the first half of 2013.
Oracle said on Tuesday that software sales growth will stay strong into the new year despite fears that there could be big tax hikes and U.S. government spending cuts that could cause a slump in spending by customers.
(Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Don Sebastian)
This article is brought to you by CHEAP COMPUTERS.
Patent agency rejects Apple "pinch-to-zoom" patent in initial ruling
(Reuters) - U.S. patent authorities rejected Apple Inc's key 'pinch-to-zoom' patent in an initial ruling, the second setback in less than two months for the iPhone maker in its patent battle with Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.
Apple's shares have taken a beating recently, with investors worried about rising competition from Samsung and other mobile device makers using Google Inc's Android platform.
Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over its South Korean competitor in August when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.
Samsung and Apple, the world's top two smartphone makers, are locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday temporarily invalidated the 'pinch-to-zoom' patent, which had been contested at the trial in August. The jury had ruled that Samsung had infringed six of seven Apple patents.
The 'pinch-to-zoom' feature distinguishes between single-touch and multitouch gestures on a mobile device screen and allows the user to zoom in or out by moving two fingers apart or closer together while touching the display.
A U.S. judge denied on Monday Apple's request for a permanent injunction against Samsung's smartphones.
Samsung won a preliminary invalidation of Apple's 'rubber-banding' patent in October that had the 'bounce' feature. The patent allows a user with a touch screen to bounce back to the image on the screen if the user goes beyond the edge.
When the U.S. patent office rules against a patent, the full process involves multiple steps and can take years. It can also often be appealed in court, further tying up the process.
The ruling by the U.S. patent office after Samsung requested an examination of the patent was included in documents filed by Samsung in a federal court in San Jose, California.
Apple's claims were rejected on the grounds that prior patents covered the inventions.
Representatives for Apple and Samsung were not immediately available for comment.
A Dutch court ruled in October that Samsung did not infringe on Apple's patent by using certain multi-touch techniques on some of the Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablet computers.
(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan and Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Don Sebastian)
This news article is brought to you by ADVANCED DATING ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
Apple's shares have taken a beating recently, with investors worried about rising competition from Samsung and other mobile device makers using Google Inc's Android platform.
Apple scored a sweeping legal victory over its South Korean competitor in August when a U.S. jury found Samsung had copied critical features of the hugely popular iPhone and iPad and awarded Apple $1.05 billion in damages.
Samsung and Apple, the world's top two smartphone makers, are locked in patent disputes in at least 10 countries as they vie to dominate the lucrative mobile market and win over customers with their latest gadgets.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Wednesday temporarily invalidated the 'pinch-to-zoom' patent, which had been contested at the trial in August. The jury had ruled that Samsung had infringed six of seven Apple patents.
The 'pinch-to-zoom' feature distinguishes between single-touch and multitouch gestures on a mobile device screen and allows the user to zoom in or out by moving two fingers apart or closer together while touching the display.
A U.S. judge denied on Monday Apple's request for a permanent injunction against Samsung's smartphones.
Samsung won a preliminary invalidation of Apple's 'rubber-banding' patent in October that had the 'bounce' feature. The patent allows a user with a touch screen to bounce back to the image on the screen if the user goes beyond the edge.
When the U.S. patent office rules against a patent, the full process involves multiple steps and can take years. It can also often be appealed in court, further tying up the process.
The ruling by the U.S. patent office after Samsung requested an examination of the patent was included in documents filed by Samsung in a federal court in San Jose, California.
Apple's claims were rejected on the grounds that prior patents covered the inventions.
Representatives for Apple and Samsung were not immediately available for comment.
A Dutch court ruled in October that Samsung did not infringe on Apple's patent by using certain multi-touch techniques on some of the Samsung Galaxy smartphones and tablet computers.
(Reporting by Balaji Sridharan and Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Edwina Gibbs and Don Sebastian)
This news article is brought to you by ADVANCED DATING ADVICE - where latest news are our top priority.
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