Showing posts with label billion. Show all posts

Google Now Has $50 Billion in Cash for Acquisitions and Investments

Next time you wonder how Google can afford to buy dozens of startups every year, consider just how much money it has on hand.

The search giant's cash pile grew to just more than $50 billion in the March quarter, up from $48.1 billion at the end of 2012, the company revealed in its first quarter earnings report on Thursday. That's still less than half as much cash as Apple has, but it will likely serve as a powerful resource for Google to continue buying up technology and top talent from companies, as well as investing in so-called "moonshot" projects.

As Google's chairman Eric Schmidt pointed out during a Q&A session at AllThingsD's Dive Into Mobile conference earlier this week, he is not a fan of companies holding onto an excess amount of cash. "What I really think about tech companies and cash is that there is a point where you have enough cash that you need to either start investing that stuff or lowering your prices," he said. Simply letting the cash pile grow, he says, would be a "missed opportunity for investment."

Google has never been shy about using its money to invest in infrastructure and acquisitions. In 2011, the company spent $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility and its portfolio of patents. Earlier this year, Google's CFO suggested that the cash pile gives the company the "strategic ability to pounce" and, in the case of Motorola, "move on a dime" to make the acquisition.

While Google may have significantly less cash than Apple, its willingness to bet some of it on potentially risky companies and projects may be what sets it apart from Apple going forward. While Apple's stock price has collapsed below $400, Google's has climbed above $750 driven in part by the perception that it, unlike Apple, has more breakthrough products in the pipeline.

Even apart from the cash pile, Google's profits and revenue continue to grow as well. Google reported a profit of $11.58 per share in the first quarter on revenue of $13.97 billion, beating Wall Street's earnings estimates of $10.69, though falling short of revenue estimates of $14.04 billion.

The company still has some problems to fix in the short-term, most notably the decline in cost-per-clicks, which declined 4% in the first quarter from the year before, but the rate of decline has slowed, suggesting that it is stabilizing.

Report by : Seth Fiegerman

Trader admits fraud in $1 billion Apple stock scheme

A former Rochdale Securities trader whose unauthorized purchase of about $1 billion of Apple Inc stock caused the demise of the financial services company pleaded guilty on Monday to wire fraud and conspiracy.

David Miller, 40, entered his guilty plea before U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Martinez in Hartford, Connecticut.

Miller faces a maximum 25 years in prison when he is sentenced on July 8, but under a plea agreement he could receive a term of five to eight years. The Rockville Centre, New York resident is free on bond.

"What happened here was out of character for a kind and generous family man who has lived an otherwise law-abiding and good life," Miller's lawyer Kenneth Murphy said. "He deeply regrets what he has done and the harm it has caused to other people, including the former principals and employees at Rochdale."

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed a related civil fraud lawsuit against Miller on Monday.

Prosecutors said Miller bought 1.625 million Apple shares on October 25, 2012, the day the maker of iPads, iPods and iPhones planned to report third-quarter results, hoping to profit if the company's share price rose.

Miller bought 1.625 million Apple shares in October

But they said Miller falsely told Rochdale that the trade was for a customer that had in fact ordered just 1,625 shares.

When the bet backfired, Rochdale was on the hook for $5.3 million of losses on the extra 1,623,375 shares, leaving the Stamford, Connecticut-based company undercapitalized, the SEC said in court papers.

According to prosecutors, Miller also defrauded another brokerage by inducing it to sell 500,000 Apple shares, hoping to partially hedge against the purchase he had made at Rochdale. Court papers did not identify the second brokerage.

The SEC said as a result of Miller's bets, Rochdale ceased operations and its staff left or was fired in November 2012. On February 25, Rochdale asked Connecticut, the SEC and other regulators to withdraw its registrations.

Rochdale is not a defendant in either case and was not accused of wrongdoing. Daniel Crowley, who had been Rochdale's president, could not be reached on Monday for comment.

At the time of the loss, Rochdale was the home of prominent banking analyst Richard Bove. He later joined Rafferty Capital Markets LLC.

The cases are U.S. v. Miller, U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut, No. 12-mj-00288; and SEC v. Miller in the same court, No. 13-00522.

Report by : Reuters

Apple sees sales surge in India; revenues expected to cross $1 billion in 2013

Looks like Apple’s marketing onslaught in India has had some effect on the company’s bottom line. The company has posted 223 percent growth in revenues in 2012 as compared to the previous year.

Apple India's revenues rose nearly three-fold to Rs 2,003.9 crore for the year ended March 2012 and now analysts are expecting an even bigger surge in sales for Apple devices in the country. The expectations put company's revenue at over $1 billion (approx Rs 5,400 crore) for the current fiscal year.

Apple does not disclose financial results for the Indian unit, but according to latest filings with the Registrar of Companies, Apple India's revenues rose 223% from Rs 620 crore in FY11. Between 2011 and 2012, the company’s India unit’s net profit also shot up nearly five times to Rs 311.5 crore, from Rs 58.6 crore.

Apple's iPhone 5

Having said that, Samsung still has the larger chunk of the market in India, with nearly 40 percent of the pie when it comes to smartphones. Apple is in the runners-up spot in the race with Nokia, BlackBerry, Sony and the likes of Micromax and Karbonn making up the rest.

These figures are from way before Apple started aggressively marketing its iPhone since late last year, and experts say that the campaign could deliver even greater sales figures for the Cupertino company in India. "The huge jump in revenues has made the company realise India's potential. Apple is now chasing volumes and looking at the numbers game," said Manasi Yadav, an analyst at IDC was quoted as saying by The Economic Times.

Singapore-based market research firm Canalys believes the growth will continue in 2013 giving Apple a solid platform to fight against Samsung’s and Android’s dominance. Apple is expected to clock in $1 billion in revenues in this financial year. "Apple's iPhone shipments to India will range 6-7 lakh units during 2012-13, compared with some 4 lakh units during 2011-12," Canalys' analyst Jessica Kwee told the daily.

Between October 2012 and September 2013, Apple's financial year, the company is expected to ship more than a million iPhones to India, which could mean $1-billion in sales during the period. "Apple India should generate $1 billion sales between April 2013 and March 2014 as well," Kwee added.

Over the past six months, Apple has been in the middle of a rethink on its India strategy. In September last year, Apple tied up with two retail distributors in India, where the company has no standalone Apple Stores. It also began an advertising campaign that has gone on till date, including an EMI scheme for buying smartphones in instalments.

Report by : Nikhil Subramaniam

Google to acquire WhatsApp for $1billion?

After last years’ talk of Facebook wanting to acquire WhatsApp, a new report states that Google is interested in buying the popular messenger service.

According to DigitalTrends, which is quoting inside sources, WhatsApp is in the negotiating phase over prices with Google. The report states that the deal started four or five weeks ago and adds that WhatsApp is “playing hardball” and jockeying for a higher acquisition price, which currently is “close to” $1 billion right now.

Previously TechCrunch had reported that Facebook wanted to buy Whatsapp. The report had quoted sources close to the matter.

However, in a statement to VentureBeat, WhatsApp had denied any such deal taking placed and the company’s business head Neeraj Arora said, “The TechCrunch article is a rumor and not factually accurate. We have no further information to share at the moment.”

Whatsapp has been one of the biggest success stories as far as messaging apps are concerned. At the end of October 2011, the messaging service had announced that they now saw over 1 billion messages being sent in a single day.

Whatsapp blogpost sees nearly That is 41,666,667 messages an hour, 694,444 messages a minute, and 11,574 messages a second.. These are pretty big numbers as far as Google concerned.

In its current form, WhatsApp has no advertising. According to WhatApp’s blogpost, the reason that there is no advertising is,

At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world. That’s our product and that’s our passion. Your data isn’t even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it.

If Google does acquire the product however, WhatsApp could kiss goodbye to the no-advertising system.

Report by : FP Staff

YouTube hits the magic billion mark

YouTube has announced that one billion people are now regular users of the Google-owned, video-sharing website.

'If YouTube were a country, we'd be the third largest in the world'

YouTube said that the number of monthly unique users had passed one billion in a post on its official blog.

“If YouTube were a country, we’d be the third largest in the world after China and India,” the triumphant post said.

The announcement comes six months after Facebook reached a billion users.

YouTube launched in February 2005, a year after Facebook, and in its early years was run from a small office above a fast-food restaurant in California.

By 2006, YouTube and its 67 staff had already attracted an audience estimated at 50 million worldwide users a month.

That is when Google bought the site for $1.65bn, an amount widely thought at the time to be overvaluing a website that was struggling to make money.

In 2012 it is estimated that YouTube generated $1.3bn in video advertising. Many hundreds of millions more are thought to be generated from search and banner advertising on the site, according to the Financial Times.

YouTube claims that one in every two internet users is a regular visitor to the site.

At the end of last year it celebrated the world’s first billion-view video with Psy’s Gangnam Style. The South Korean singer’s dance craze video is now well on the way to 1.5bn views.

YouTube now gets more search queries than any other website apart from Google’s own search engine.

YouTube is also looking to capitalise on the emerging market of straight-to-web subscription television being pioneered by companies such as Netflix and Amazon.

Report by : Richard Holt

iTunes U Hits 1 Billion Downloads

The popularity of Apple's online educational catalog, iTunes U, has tripled over the past two-and-a-half years — if the number of downloads is any indication.

Apple announced Thursday that more than 1 billion items have been downloaded from the catalog, up from 300,000 in August 2010. The service was launched in mid-2007 and got a dedicated app at the beginning of last year.

iTunes U allows verified teachers to upload and distribute educational content — in the form of videos, audio and PDF files — privately to their own students, or the Internet at large, for free. They can create courses on their desktops or on their iPads. As with podcasts, users can download materials and subscribe to courses to be notified of future updates.

According to Apple, approximately 1,200 universities — including elite institutions like Yale, MIT and Oxford — and 1,200 K-12 schools host more than 2,500 public courses between them. International growth has been greatest: iTunes U is available in 30 countries, and 60% of iTunes U downloads take place outside the U.S, says Apple.

Report by : Lauren Indvik

Sony sells Tokyo office building for $1.2 billion in a bid to raise funds

Sony said Thursday it has sold one of its main buildings in Tokyo for $1.2 billion as the embattled Japanese electronics giant offloads assets to help repair its tattered balance sheet.

The news comes after the company in January announced the sale of its US headquarters in Manhattan for more than $1.0 billion while this month it also sold part of its online medical services unit.

Sony said its had sold the 25-storey central Tokyo building, which houses its television unit, to Nippon Building Fund and an unnamed Japanese institutional investor for 111 billion yen ($1.2 billion) and would earn it a profit of 41 billion yen.

"Sony is transforming its business portfolio and reorganising its assets in an effort to strengthen its corporate structure," the company said in a statement. "This sale was conducted as a part of this reorganisation."

Sony said it would remain in the central Tokyo building for five years under a leasing agreement.

Earlier this month, the firm said it would book a $1.2 billion gain from selling part of an online medical services unit, as it eyes a full-year profit after four years in the red.

Sony has announced a massive corporate overhaul that includes thousands of job cuts, the sale of a chemical division and an investment in Olympus to tap the camera and medical equipment maker's strong foothold in the global market for endoscopes.

The maker of Bravia televisions and PlayStation games consoles lost 456.66 billion yen in the last fiscal year, but says it is on track for a 20 billion yen net profit in the year to March.

Last week, Sony announced it would launch its PlayStation 4 system as it faces increasing competition from cheap or sometimes free downloadable video games for smartphones and tablets.

The company's hard times saw its stock value tumble below 1,000 yen a share last year, for the first time since the era of the Walkman.

The stock has since come back, with Sony shares up 3.56 percent at 1,338 yen on Thursday in Tokyo.

Japan's electronics sector has suffered myriad problems including a strong yen, slowing demand in key export markets, fierce competition especially in the struggling TV division and strategic mistakes.

The industry has been awash in huge losses and credit rating downgrades, with rival Sharp saying last year it would put up real estate as collateral for bank loans including its Osaka headquarters to stay afloat.

Report by : Agence France-Presse

Microsoft noncommittal on '$2.5 billion a year' Office for iOS opportunity

A top Microsoft Corp executive side-stepped questions on Tuesday about any plans the software maker may have to bring its Office suite of applications to Apple Inc's iPad.

Talk has circulated for more than a year that Microsoft wants to bring native versions of its most profitable product to the hot-selling iPad, which one analyst estimates could generate $2.5 billion in extra revenue for Microsoft per year, but would remove an incentive to buying Windows-based tablets.

"We don't take it from the point of view, 'Do we need to have the PC software that's running on every single device?', we look very much at 'What is the experience that we are looking to have on those devices'," said Kurt DelBene, head of Microsoft's Office unit, asked about Office on the iPad at the Morgan Stanley technology investor conference in San Francisco, which was Webcast.

DelBene, who took over leadership of Office from Stephen Elop who left to lead phone maker Nokia in 2010, did not directly address putting native versions of Office applications on the iPad, a subject Microsoft has steered clear of in public.

Asked specifically about the availability of Office on Apple's iOS mobile system - which powers iPads and iPhones - DelBene instead stressed online versions of Office apps, which can be accessed via a browser but do not offer the full richness of installed software or an app.

"We've actually done a lot of work on iOS devices this time around," said DelBene. "We have enhanced the web applications pretty substantially, in partnership with Apple."

Microsoft does offer native iOS versions of some Office applications, including its OneNote note-sharing software, Lync communication suite and SharePoint collaboration site, as well as its SkyDrive online storage service.

But the more than 100 million iPad owners, many of whom want to bring their devices to work, have to use the limited online versions of desktop staples Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt estimated earlier this month that Microsoft could generate $2.5 billion in extra annual revenue from Office on iPad by next year, less the commission Apple would take on sales of Office through its App Store.

But the risk for Microsoft is that putting Office on the iPad takes away one of the key advantages of its own Surface and other Windows tablets, that already run Office natively.

Removing incentives to buy Windows tablets would be a blow to Microsoft's flagship Windows unit, which although less profitable than Office, is still key to the company's overall strategy.

Asked by one investor at the conference when he would be able to use Excel on his iPad, DelBene instead pointed the questioner toward Microsoft's own Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets and urged him to use Web-based versions of Office apps.

"I think we've done a great job on both the consumer side, particularly with the Web apps that we are building, and on the enterprise side as well," said DelBene.

Report by : Reuters

Research firm pegs 2012 global phone shipments at 1.6 billion

Research firm Strategy Analytics has published its global phone shipments for 2012, and the results showing a total of 1.6 billion units shipped. Samsung dominated the list, followed closely by Nokia, with Apple coming in third with a fairly steep drop below its competition despite experiencing a record year. Chinese manufacturer ZTE came in fourth despite suffering a drop in sales.

According to the report, Samsung shipped 396.5 million phones last year, with Nokia coming in a tad lower at 335.6 million. Apple is third in the list, with total shipments coming in at 135.8 million, followed by ZTE at nearly half that with 71.7 million. Total shipments from other vendors totaled 635.4, for a grand total of 1.6 billion phones shipped globally in 2012.

This represents a slow but steady increase in mobile phone sales annually, with 2012 growing over 2011 by about 2-percent. Samsung nabbed 25-percent of the market share and experienced fairly substantial shipment increases, with 2011 coming in at 327.4 million units. Nokia, meanwhile, suffered a large drop in shipments, with 2011 coming in at 417.1 million units and 2012 falling to 335.6. ZTE also experienced a relatively large drop over 2011 from 78.1 to 71.7.

Nokia is said to have experienced its drop due to competition from Samsung, which dominated the mobile market, and Apple, which interfered with sales in several locations. Speaking of Apple, 2012 proved to be a record year for it, with the company experiencing 46-percent in growth, largely due to increased demand in Asia and the US/Canada.

Report by : Brittany Hillen

Microsoft Posts Record Revenue of $21.5 Billion in December Quarter

It looks like Microsoft had a decent end to 2012.

Microsoft reported earnings-per-share of $0.76 on revenue of $21.46 billion in the December quarter, beating EPS estimates by a penny but coming in just shy of Wall Street's consensus estimate for revenue of $21.6 billion. Nonetheless, Microsoft's revenue for the quarter set a new high.

The Windows division of the company had a particularly strong quarter, generating $5.88 billion in revenue, a 24% increase from the same period a year before. Even when you factor in deferred revenue from Windows upgrade offers, Windows revenue was still up 11% year-over-year.

"Our big, bold ambition to reimagine Windows as well as launch Surface and Windows Phone 8 has sparked growing enthusiasm with our customers and unprecedented opportunity and creativity with our partners and developers," Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer said in a statement. "With new Windows devices, including Surface Pro, and the new Office on the horizon, we’ll continue to drive excitement for the Windows ecosystem and deliver our software through devices and services people love and businesses need."

Microsoft did not break out sales figures for its new Windows 8 products, other than to restate that it has sold more than 60 million Windows 8 licenses to date.

Microsoft's stock was up down by about 1% in after hours trading following the earnings report.

Image courtesy of Microsoft

Report by : Seth Fiegerman

Google Tops $50 Billion For 2012

Google reported Tuesday that it earned $14.42 billion in Q4 2012, beating expectations and sending the stock up 4% in after-hours trading.

Google shares closed down 1.64 points for the day, but reversed the decline after the market closed, rising more than 34 points in the hours following Google's financial filing.

The company's non-GAAP earnings-per-share came to $10.65. Analysts had been expecting $12.36 billion in revenue for the quarter, according to Thomson Reuters, and $10.52 per share.

In a statement, Google CEO Larry Page said that revenue rose 36% compared to 2011 and 8% compared to the same quarter a year ago. "And we hit $50 billion in revenues for the first time last year," he said.

The company appears to have succeeded in its effort to mitigate potential disappointment by reminding Wall Street analysts to update their estimates to account for Google's agreement to sell its Motorola Home set-top box business to Arris Group for $2.35 billion.

In a note posted to Google's investor website last week, VP Brent Callinicos, treasurer and chief accountant for the company, wrote, "as of this writing, a majority of Wall Street analysts who cover Google have not reflected the Home business as discontinued operations in their estimates."

[ The smartphone wars rage on. See the latest: iPhone Beats Android In U.S. Market. ]

Google appears to have been concerned that investors might be confused about what the company would be including in its revenue numbers. But the company's strong performance made such worries moot.

On Google's conference call for investors, Page's voice sounded raspy and strained, sufficiently so that several reporters listening in on the call noted via Twitter how unusual he sounded. Page did not participate in Google's Q2 2102 earnings conference as a result of an undisclosed ailment that affected his voice. When he did speak during the Q3 2012 call, his voice was hoarse.

Report by : Thomas Claburn

One bn people in the world don't have mobile phones

About one billion people across the world still do not own a mobile phone, and a third of the world's population is unable to access the internet, a study has found.

The report by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) showed that six billion people -- six out of seven of the world's population -- had a subscription to a mobile phone by the end of 2011, the Daily Mail reported. However, even with the rapid advancement of the communications industry, one billion others still do not have a phone.

One billion people around the world still don't own a mobile phone

About a third of the world's population - around 2.3 billion - does not have access to the internet, the report said. The report said the number of people acquiring mobile phone subscriptions has risen sharply in recent years, with developing countries seeing a double-digit growth in 2011.

The daily said the use of mobile broadband grew by 78 percent in developing countries and 40 percent across the world. However, huge disparities were revealed in the cost of services from country-to-country, the ITU report said, with poorer nations paying the most.

Macau, Norway and Singapore were at the top of the list of 161 countries in terms of internet affordability, while Madagascar came last, just behind Togo and Niger, the Daily Mail said.

Report by: IANS

1 billion Android phone shipments by 2013: IHS iSuppli

Almost three and half years after Google's confectionery shop started dishing out Cupcake (Android v1.5), and four years after the first commercial version of the smartphone operating system was released, IHS iSuppli forecasts that 1.1 billion global shipments of Android smartphones will have accrued over the years in 2013.

Globally, annual shipments of Android phones are projected to rise to 451 million in 2013, a leap from the 357 million figure of 2012, as per the IHS iSuppli Wireless Communications Smartphone Report. Apple's iOS, at the second position, is predicted to reach the one billion mark in 2015. What’s more, Android is expected to grow exponentially in the future, with cumulative shipments reaching almost 3 billion in 2016.

Cumulative Android phone shipments projected to reach the 1.1 billion mark in 2013

Apple and Google put together encompass 76 percent of the market share knocking out the rest of the competition: Microsoft's Windows Phone, Nokia’s Symbian, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, Samsung's Bada, Linux and other platforms, all of which comprise the remaining 24 percent. The IHS isuppli report attributes the skew in favour of Apple and Google to their “strong emphasis on a meaningful user experience coupled with new software business models”. The figure is a pointer to how two contradictory approaches – open source software and proprietary software – co-exist and flourish because of the onus on ‘providing a compelling user experience’. “While Google has taken the advertising-revenue-supported model, Apple makes its money by controlling both the hardware and software portions of the design. By integrating the design of both the hardware and software components of the iPhone, Apple delivered a tightly optimized smartphone with a superior customer experience and tremendous innovation. Apple's model built on the prior example of RIM's BlackBerry but differentiated by the level of innovation”, states an official release on the report by IHS isuppli.

The past few years have seen the astounding and speedy growth and acceptance of software that is ‘free’, ‘libre’, ‘open source’ or ‘open access’. Android’s forecast lead indicates the success of open source software that has now come to be widely embraced and popular. While there are many willing to give an arm and a leg to own Apple products, the parallel evolution of Android contravenes the idea that only proprietary software can meet with market success. “The Androids are taking over the world of smartphones,” said Daniel Gleeson, mobile analyst for IHS. “We expect the Android operating system to become the first to reach the milestone of 1 billion shipments during its lifetime. For Google, this accomplishment highlights the success of its growth strategy for Android, which is based on providing the operating system as an open-source platform to third-party smartphone brands free of charge. Google hopes to make significant revenues from mobile advertisements and other services. Such an open-source model means that Google offers handset makers the ability to customize Android easily, and by also eliminating licensing fees, is greatly encouraging adoption among smartphone handset manufacturers.”

The report highlights that competition in smartphone-making now is not centred at the hardware design cycle alone. Both Apple and Google have taken operating systems to the next league by introducing app stores, turning OSes into ecosystems, and transforming phones into comprehensive lifestyle-centric products. These ecosystems have set the stage for the future of smartphones and defined the direction of competition within handset manufacturers. Android's trump card may well be its 'openness' -- its ability to include all and sundry who wish to tweak Android's offerings with their own innovation and spin. The result is a snowballing effect in which everyone in the community uses and builds upon Android. The report concludes, “Ultimately the most important lesson of the past few years in smartphone innovation is that handset manufacturers must continue to innovate, differentiate and provide a unique branded smartphone to the marketplace. In this new ecosystem-based smartphone marketplace, the most effective lever for market success is to create a recognizable user-experience franchise, pairing innovative hardware with a compelling environment of applications able to continually captivate the user base”. The secret of the deliciousness of Android’s dessert line-up may well be the appeal of its inclusive community participation.