HP gathers legal Lynch Mob

Posted on April 1, 2015 by - News

The lynch-mob-21war of words between HP and the former owner of Autonomy, Michael Lynch has ended up in a court battle in the UK.

The maker of expensive printer ink has lodged a claim in London against Lynch and a former colleague for damages of about $5.1 billion over their management of Autonomy, the company it bought in 2011.

Lynch will counter sue, seeking $149 million for loss and damage caused by HP’s accusations.
Autonomy was supposed to be the $11.1 billion centrepiece of a move to becoming a more SAP style software organisation. But a year later HP wrote off three-quarters of the British company’s value, accusing Lynch and his colleagues of financial mismanagement.

HP filed a claim against Lynch, the co-founder of Autonomy, and Autonomy’s former finance director Sushovan Hussain in the Chancery Division of London’s High Court on Monday, alleging they engaged in fraudulent activities while executives at Autonomy.

“The lawsuit seeks damages from them of approximately $5.1 billion,” the spokeswoman added.
Lynch, speaking on behalf of Autonomy’s former management, has consistently denied any impropriety, saying the loss in value of the company was down to HP’s mismanagement.

HP’s case might have been weakened by the fact that Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) said there was not enough evidence to secure a conviction of Autonomy’s former executives.

Samsung and LG call off war of the washing machines

Posted on March 31, 2015 by - News

washing machine warSamsung and LG have called off a daft and expensive legal war which was sparked by a set of damaged washing machines.

The two companies said in a joint statement they would withdraw all complaints against each other and ask legal authorities to refrain from meting out harsh punishments in cases going on.

LG appliances chief Jo Seong-jin was indicted by Seoul prosecutors on a charge of deliberately damaging Samsung washing machines at a retail store in Germany last September. Samsung asked for a criminal punishment. Prosecutors have not declared what penalty they would seek against Jo.

The pair were creating much merriment as they argued over how many washers were damaged by Jo and other employees. LG published surveillance video footage to YouTube in an attempt to prove Jo’s innocence, and Samsung sent in its forensic teams to prove the video was heavily doctored.

“Both sides have agreed to avoid legal action and resolve any future conflicts or disputes through dialogue and mutual agreement,” the companies said.

It is not clear if this is the legal equivalent of agreeing to step outside or to have a dual between executives. We just hope that if there are duals that they are televised when Game of Thrones is finished.

The agreement extends to Samsung Display and LG Display. Samsung Display employees were indicted in February on charges of stealing organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display panel technology from LG Display. Samsung Display has said the technology was widely known in the industry and that the indictment was excessive.

The Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ office declined to comment on the case against the LG Electronics appliances chief, and the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office declined to comment regarding its case against the Samsung Display employees

If it did it would probably be something like “big multinational companies will be big multinational companies.”

Huawei ignores US to clean up

Posted on March 31, 2015 by - News

cia-cleanerDespite being on a US spying list, China’s Huawei technologies continues to clean up.

Huawei does not have to tell us much, because it is a private company, but the world’s No.2 telecommunications equipment maker, reported a 33 percent rise in profit for 2014.

This matches company guidance, as the global adoption of fourth-generation (4G) mobile technology boosted sales.

Net profit for 2014 rose to $45.7 billion US dollars, the Shenzhen-based company told media in an earnings briefing today.

In a breakdown, its revenue from telecom operator business rose 16.4 percent year on year, to $31 billion dollars; its revenue from enterprise business reached $3.1 billion dollars, up 27.3 percent year on year; and its revenue from consumer business reached $12.1 billion dollars, up 32.6 percent year on year.

Meanwhile, the company invested $66 billion dollars in research and development, rising 29.4 percent year on year and representing 14.2 percent of its annual sales revenue.

In the past ten years, Huawei’s investment in research and development accumulated to $307 billion dollars.

Either way, despite the US’s most ironic embargo, Huawei is doing rather well.

 

German tech industry dragged into the 21st century

Posted on March 31, 2015 by - News

Hartmann_Maschinenhalle_1868_(01)Germany, whose industry has been relying on things to run the same way as they did before those World Wars, has suddenly woken up in the digital age and is a little worried about it.

According to Reuters big German companies have started teaming up with start-ups to shake up their conservative business culture and keep pace with a world increasingly dominated by nimble tech giants.

Most of the German blue-chips run along 19th century lines with only the youngest — SAP, founded less than 43 years ago.

In other Western countries the top 30 companies on the Nasdaq were set up in the 1980s or later and the fourth-biggest firm, Facebook, was established about a decade ago.

German government officials and company executives fear they could fall far behind if they cannot swiftly identify and adopt innovations in web and smartphone technology that have driven the success of Google, Apple and Amazon.

Metro, Bayer, Evonik, Merck KGaA and Deutsche Telekom are now investing in start-ups – seeking to gain digital expertise, as well as to embrace newcomers whose innovations could represent threats to their own businesses.

They have a long way to go, Investment in German start-ups more than doubled to $1.74 billion last year, this was less than the amount raised by Uber. US-based start-ups drew $49.39 billion.

Fewer than half of Germany’s top 500 companies have a comprehensive digital strategy, according to a study by Accenture.Only 11 percent use social media and only six percent cloud computing, the European Commission’s Digital Economy Index published at the end of February showed.

Healthcare firms Bayer, Merck and Boehringer Ingelheim, Deutsche Telekom and chemicals group Evonik, meanwhile, have all set up multi-million euro in-house venture funds. Deutsche Telekom has pledged to invest $542 million in Germany’s start-up scene over the next five years.

The German government has announced plans to try to promote startups. They include a pre-market web platform to connect young companies with investors.

However most say that there needs to be more venture capital investment in Germany and the scene needs to be more attractive in terms of taxation.

The other problem is that the Germans do not like investing in something which might go tits up.

 

Amazon sets up service side

Posted on March 31, 2015 by - News

2580297818_3c864043e6Online book seller Amazon is creating a service side to its business based on the very sound idea that customers might want to buy flat-pack furniture, but have not got a clue how to assemble it.

Peter Faricy, vice president for Amazon Marketplace said that there were more than 85 million Amazon customers who have shopped for products this past year that often require a service afterwards.

Amazon’s answer is a new section in the US, Home Services, where customers can shop for professional help. It’s launching with 700 different services, from the ordinary to the esoteric, everything from installing a garbage disposal to renting you a goat herd.

So far it is all being tested, but it could be rolled out to the EU, where it will solve one of the biggest problems that people have – finding a service person who is not a cowboy, now that all the Polish people have gone home.

Faricy said it is tough to quickly find someone who is qualified. It has only accepted an average of three out of every 100 service professionals in each metro area. It makes sure each business is licensed, insured, and passes a five-point background check, with a further six-point background check for each technician.

Amazon said that it takes 60 seconds to buy a service, regardless of whether that is deck repair, house cleaning, or hedge trimming and you will how much it’s going to cost you, up front, no surprises.”

AMD relies on partners for R&D gap

Posted on March 31, 2015 by - News

mind the gapChipmaker AMD is relying more on its partners to come up with the latest R&D ideas, just like it did in the 1990s.

Decrypted tech claims that over the past few years AMD has been slowly cutting back on the money it puts towards R&D.

Instead it has tried to narrow the focus of the money they spend on new technology where it thinks it will get the most return.   So in the last quarter AMD spent less than $238 Million on R&D and his been building R&D partnerships to overcome budget challenges.

AMD started rebuilding its R&D partnerships in late 2010 and this allowed it to cut back on the amount they need to bring to the table to create new technologies. This is a repeat of what it did in the 1990s when the outfit used Samsung, IBM, Motorola, and Texas Instruments helping them to change the way they built CPUs.

This was how it could build the Athlon CPU with only a small R&D budget and engineering team.

This time AMD is betting big on HBM and also on integrating ARM processors inside their APU/CPUs and apparently it is letting its R&D partners do a lot of the heavy lifting money-wise while they provide many of the engineering minds.

If it pays off, AMD gets its technology on the cheap.  However in the worst case it could hack off some big names in the in the industry like Hynix, Samsung, Toshiba etc. and walk away with new technology to sell to others.

The plan is high risk as it could leave AMD with nothing it can sell, while its partners have some natty tech that AMD helped them build.

 

 

Hon Hai profits soar

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

foxconn-tvHon Hai – a Taiwanese firm also known as Foxconn, said that its fourth quarter profits rose to $1.8 billion on the back of the success of Apple’s iPhone.

Hon Hai makes most of Apple’s iPhones and has been criticised in the past for harsh employment practices.

But Bloomberg estimates, based on yearly results filed on Taiex – the Taiwanese bourse today – is far higher than financial analysts originally estimated.

Bloomberg claims the profits have been generated by iPhone 6 phones, which saw a surge in sales since their launch in Autumn last year. It believes half of Foxconn’s revenues are generated by Apple business, although there’s no hard and fast evidence for that.

But while Hon Hai may have turned in a rather healthy profit, its operating margin was only about 4.2 percent. Generally speaking, Taiwanese manufacturers of electronic devices have very slim margins indeed – not anything like the kind of margins Apple itself generates.

Although Foxconn’s Terry Gou had forecast growth of 10 percent in its full financial year, the actual growth was only 6.6 percent, Bloomberg reports.

 

Smart buildings to generate fortunes

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

asus-buildingA report from IDC estimates that there’s so much interest in so-called smart buildings that spends will grow to $17.4 billion worldwide by 2019.

IDC said that although the market had been expected to blossom before now, it’s flowering pretty vigorously and will soon bear fruit.

Growth will be concentrated at first in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific, with people becoming a bit smarter themselves and realising that investing in the technology can save money.

Commercial buildings in particular are expected to grow more than domestic buildings and companies realise that such construction can save energy as well as create operational efficiencies, the report said.

In Europe, legislation driven by EU regulations is helping the market to burgeon.

Spending in 2014 was only $6.3 billion but that’s expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.6 percent, reaching $17.4 billion by 2019.

That figure, however, is only a small percentage of the whole construction market.

Notebook makers tire of Europe

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

notebooksManufacturers of notebooks and tablets are looking to new markets to bolster their businesses because Europe can no longer be relied upon for healthy sales.

Last week we reported PC demand, particularly in Eastern Europe, was well done.

Now, Taiwanese wire Digitimes said that the manufacturers are looking to other market such as South East Asia and and Central and South America to make up the shortfall.

It’s not just lack of demand that is the problem because the margins the mostly Taiwanese companies are also taing a hit because of the parlous state of the Euro.

The notebook manufacturers can’t see light at the end of the tunnel in Europe until at least the end of the second quarter, the report adds.

The research wing of Digitimes believes that 221.4 million tablets will be shipped this year, and that’s a fal of 11.9 percent compared to 2014.

 

Frequent flyers hit by hackers

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

ukflagBritish Airway’s air miles scheme appears to have been hit by Russian hackers.

The BBC reported that a number of people appear to have their air miles accounts cleared out, or even used to book items using air miles.

But BA said only a small number of people appear to have hit – and it has written to all its users to notify them of the problem.

The report points to Flyertalk.com, which has several people complaining that the BA points – called Avios and two rooms in Spain were booked under the name of the person who owns the account.

Some people, apparently, had their own mobile phone number substituted for a Russian number.

BA said that its customers could be re-assured that their personal credit card details hadn’t been hacked, and it has taken steps to prevent the hack from happening again.

Chinese CEO calls Apple Nazis

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

donald-duck-funny-german-germany-hitler-nazi-Favim.com-91188Chinese CEO and billionaire Jia Yueting, has created a storm by comparing Apple to the Nazi Party.

For those who are not in the know, Jia Yueting is the chairman of Leshi Television, one of the China’s most popular online video sites. Jia’s private Leshi Holding (Beijing) invests in film and TV show production.

In a weibo post, Yueting compares the attributes of the Android and iOS ecosystems as “Crowdsourced, freedom vs arrogance, tyranny”, painting Apple as the villain.

He goes on to say, “Under the arrogant regime of iOS domination that developers around the world love yet hate, we are always carefully asking, ‘is this kind of innovation okay?'”

It might be that he is wanting a reasonable debate between closed and open source, he does not seem to want to make many friends by starting the debate by invoking Godwin.

The Tame Apple Press of course is spitting blood about the comments claiming that it must be some promotional move by LeTV to enter the smartphone industry. After all the only reason people need to criticise something as perfect as Apple is for click bait or marketing,

LeTV has already announced it will be creating an electric and autonomous vehicle as well, so to the Tame Apple Press that means that Yueting wants to be Apple.

“It is rather ironic that LeTV would use the Nazi Party as a symbolism of closed source systems, when modern day China is perhaps a more usable source, with Mainland China banned from seeing anything outside the “Great Firewall” and US companies regularly attacked by Chinese regulators,” hissed David Curry on Betanews .

He then attacks Xiaomi for copying Apple’s store layouts and TV designs, perhaps forgetting that Xiaomi is not LeTV.

Former HP boss “90 percent sure” of presidential bid

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

carlyfiorinaFormer HP boss the winsome (and lose some) Carly Fiorina said the chances she would run for the US presidency in 2016 were “higher than 90 percent” and that she would announce her plans in late April to early May.

Fiorina said she could not yet announce the bid because she was working to establish her team and put together what she described as “the right support” and financial resources.

Fiorina was seen as a divisive figure at HP. Her wielding of the corporate axe made staff scared of losing their jobs. It is also not clear if HP ever did that well from her massive buy out of Compaq which left HP as the world’s largest hardware maker just in time for the economic rut which gutted PC sales.

In 2005, Fiorina was forced to resign as chief executive officer and chair of HP following “differences with the board of directors about how to execute HP’s strategy.”She has frequently been ranked as one of the worst tech CEOs of all time, although we would suspect that at least one of those who followed her into the HP chair were a lot more apocalyptic [surely Apothelkayptic. Ed].

Potential Republican presidential candidates including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz became the first major figure from either political party to formally announce his 2016 presidential bid.

Among Democrats, Hillary Clinton is expected to be the front-runner for the nomination, although she has yet to formally announce her plans.

 

Salesforce guns for SAP’s European crown

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

Salesforce logoSalesforce.com wants to overtake SAP in terms of sales on the German company’s home market in the coming years.

The outfit which has been making a killing on the cloud wants to get into SAP’s form of expensive esoteric business software line.

Salesforce’s Europe chief Joachim Schreiner told the German magazine Wirtschafts Woche that Salesforce wanted to become the biggest software company in Germany by sales.

He did not set a date for his conquest of Germany, but instead made it clear that Salesforce needed Lebensraum in the Fatherland.

Salesforce was growing at a rate of more than 30 percent per year in Europe, adding Germany was one of its strongest markets on the continent.

SAP last year generated sales of $19.2 billion, of which close to 2.6 billion were in Germany. Salesforce had revenues of $5.4 billion, of which close to $1 billion were in Europe. It does not break out figures for the German market.

 

Interoute taps private equity for expansion

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

Pic Mike MageeBritain’s Interoute, a high-capacity data network and corporate cloud services provider, is knocking on the doors of private equity investors to fund acquisitions across Europe and the United States.

Aleph Capital Partners, a UK investment firm headed by former Goldman Sachs European private equity investment chief Hugues Lepic, and Crestview Partners, a U.S. private equity firm founded by ex-Goldman colleagues, have agreed to buy a 30 percent stake in London-based Interoute.

Aleph is allowed to make investments that range from 100 million to 400 million euro so it could be anywhere in that price range. The deal is expected to close in April, it said.

The deal is Aleph’s first since it was set up two years ago, is a share purchase deal to buy out shareholder Emirates International Telecommunications (EIT), part of a conglomerate owned by the ruler of Dubai, which has been looking to pare debt.

Privately held Interoute is majority-owned by Switzerland’s Sandoz Family Foundation.
Interoute wants the cash to build out its network of datacentres and cloud computing services linking around 124 cities across Europe, as it seeks to more than double revenue to 1 billion euros in five years.

Interoute Chief Executive Gareth Williams told Reuters that the change in the shareholder structure means that “instead of being considered potential prey, we can now turn to being one of the predators”.

The pan-European network operator hopes to stick its foot in the door where there are highly fragmented markets. Currently s quarter of European data traffic flow over its networks and datacentres in 24 countries. It also has datacentres in key Asian and US locations.

The London-based company said it had 425 million in revenue in 2014, up two percent from the year earlier. Core earnings rose slightly to 93 million euros, while free cash flow grew to $25 million, reversing a shortfall of 20 million euros in 2013.

Sixty percent of revenue comes from providing computing, voice and video communications services over its networks to corporate customers such as the European football association and Coca-Cola.
The other 40 percent comes from its older business wholesaling raw network capacity to interconnect European telecom network operators and Internet services such as Google and Facebook.

Startups target for hacks

Posted on March 30, 2015 by - News

wargames-hackerHacking attacks are becoming a rite of passage for startups.

Slack, the communications start-up and witch, the hugely popular video streaming service both said that they had been hacked within days of each other.

But they are the latest in a long line of start-ups to get hacked. Apparently the moment a start-up starts to get momentum with users they are being hit by hackers.

Most of the time the hackers are hackers looking to steal, and monetize, the vast personal information they store on users, like email addresses and passwords. The idea is that the start-ups don’t have the security that bigger outfits have.

Slack and Twitch have the user base and the cash to beef up their security. Once Slack had surpassed 200 million messages a month, it attracted $180 million in venture funding. Once Twitch surpassed 55 million users, Amazon scooped it up for nearly $1 billion.

Both companies said they had put measures in place to keep hackers from easily exploiting their users’ information.

At Slack, the company said hackers were able to access a database containing usernames, email addresses, phone numbers, Skype IDs and passwords. The company noted that those passwords were encrypted using a process known as hashing and salting, which makes it much harder, though not impossible, for hackers to crack them. Last month, Slack had half a million daily users.

Twitch also said it encrypted passwords, but warned that hackers might have been able to capture passwords in the clear as users were logging on.