Followinga complaint from a notable Apple investorthat the company needs to share more of its cash pile with investors, the iPhone and Mac maker says it's"evaluating" its possibilities.Ina statementtoday, Apple said it's aware its cash has grown beyond what it needed to run day-to-day business -- hence its dividend and stock buyback plan -- but that it is still talking about possible options down the line."Apple's management team and Board of Directors have been in active discussions about returningadditional cash to shareholders," the company said this afternoon, just before the close of trading on Wall Street. "As part of our review, we will thoroughly evaluate Greenlight Capital's current proposal to issue some form of preferred stock. We welcome Greenlight's views and the views of all of our shareholders."The company added that it had found itself "in the fortunate position of continuing to generate large amounts of cash, including $23 billion in cash flow from operations in the last quarter alone."We find ourselves in the fortunate position of continuing to generate large amounts of cash... --AppleEarlier today Apple was sued by Greenlight Capital, a hedge fund run by David Einhorn. In the group's complaint, Einhorn said that the company needed to distribute preferred stock to current shareholders, and that Apple had balked at the idea when it was first discussed.Einhorn earlier said he understands that Apple wants a large cash hoard to be strategic, make acquisitions, and be secure,but he believes issuing high-yielding preferred shares to existing shareholders would allowApple to share the value on the balance sheet but still hold a large amount of cash.
Friday, 8 February 2013
BlackBerry 10 smartphones won't be sold in Japan
As BlackBerry rolls deeper into the smartphone world with thelaunch of BlackBerry 10, it looks like some countries will be left off of the map.The device maker confirmed today that it has no plans to launch any BlackBerry 10 smartphones in Japan."We are in the process of launching BlackBerry 10 globally in key markets and we are seeingpositive demand for the BlackBerry Z10 in countries where it has already launched," a BlackBerry spokesperson told CNET in an e-mail. "Japan is not a major market for BlackBerry, andwe have no plans to launch BlackBerry 10 smartphones thereat this time."Although Japan is a major consumer of smartphones, BlackBerry devices are not among the country's favorites.According to research firm ComScore, Android took 64 percent of Japan's smartphone market share and Apple's iOS grabbed a 32 percent share in August. That left Microsoft's Windows Phone in third place with 3 percent, and BlackBerry OS and Nokia's Symbian combined eked out less than half a percentage point.It's unclear if BlackBerry will forgo selling its smartphones in other countries also. Despite the company's decision not to launch BlackBerry 10 in Japan, its spokesperson did say, "we will continue to support BlackBerry customers in Japan."
LinkedIn eyes future as professional publishing hub
LinkedIn spent much of 2012 transforming itself into a place where workers could stay and play a while -- a strategy thatpaidoff handsomely. But the year ahead will be all about making the site the preferred destinationfor professional content, a transition that could make Wall Street's darling even more bewitching.The professional network today reported earnings that blew the Street's socks off, so to speak. LinkedIn's stock is trading up close to 10 percent on the after-hours market because the companyflooredeveryone with fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 35 cents, revenue of$303.6 million, and net income of $11.5 million.Then in a call with investors and analysts, CEO Jeff Weiner upped the company's long-term sex appeal with this statement: "One of the things that we're increasingly focused on in 2013 isgoing to be the opportunity to support content marketing."Wait, what? What's sexy about content marketing, you ask? Money -- and potentially lots of it.Here's what happening: LinkedIn is ready to put on its big boy suit and become more than a second-tier social network where you go to add and maintain connections. Instead, LinkedIn wants to take its best assets -- you, your 200 million peers, and the 2.4 millioncompanies using the service -- and connect them through one big knowledge exchange.You've seen this deliberate strategy partially play out with products such asLinkedIn Today, the professional e-zine that aggregates and features top newsitems for you, andLinkedIn Influencers, or anointed experts like Richard Branson who contribute exclusive content to LinkedIn. Weiner said the servicehas appointed 200 professional celebs to influencer status, and he talked about their contributions as being crucial to LinkedIn hitting 9.8 billion page-views, excluding mobile, in Q4.Expect even more content in 2013 because, as Weiner put it, LinkedIn sees its future as a professional publishing platform."One of the areas where we're making strong traction in is LinkedIn as a professional publishing platform. You see withthe momentum we're generatingnow in Influencers, LinkedIn Groups, Slideshare, people are increasingly turning to LinkedIn to publish professionally relevantcontent," Weiner said. "We think that's going to create a very strong platform and very valuable context for large enterprises, for small-medium businesses who want to target [and] engage with professionals."That's a lot of buzzword bingo for this: LinkedIn plans to hook you with business content you can't get elsewhere -- whitepapers, news articles, educated discussion threads, and so forth. When you come back more often and stick around longer -- LinkedIn likes to use the term"engagement" to describe your attention -- the professional social network can get clients to list more jobs and spend more on ads.The strategy gets extra interesting when you consider that some of the professional content Weiner speaks of will be included inside a new type of LinkedIn ad unit called"sponsored content." With sponsored content, companies can pay to promote their whitepapers and best-practice documents to a select group of the brand's followers. The ad unit, still in early testing, is like a professional twist on Facebook's Sponsored Stories."Just this last month, we began a test working with some very large-scale enterprises...folks likeGE and Xerox, The Economist, BlackBerry," he said. "They're taking repositories of content that they've built over time...and they're now able to serve that content as a status update and target specific followers."The professional social network doesn't have a timetable for when it plans to release the unitsmore widely, but Weiner did indicate that sponsored content will be what LinkedIn serves up to smartphone users in lieu of showing them display ads. Currently, 27 percent of LinkedIn's unique visitors are coming through mobile, which means this group's attention has giant revenue potential.In essence, content is quickly becoming the new connection on LinkedIn.
Facebook Connect issue wreaks havoc on the Web
Facebook had a temporary glitch this afternoon that pulled people from different Web sites to a Facebook error message when they tried to access an account that was linked to the social-networking site.TNW's Alex Wilhelm firsttweetedabout this at 4:15 p.m. after trying to read an article from a news site: "Reading article. Dragged from two diff sites to Facebook, which displays what appears to be a permissions error. Wa?"The issue, which was related to Facebook Connect, was resolved around 4:40 p.m.Facebook issued this statement shortly after, saying it was a bug, but the company did not elaborate further:For a short period oftime, there was a bug that redirected people logging in with Facebook from third-party sites to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved, and Login with Facebook is nowworking as usual.This means if you logged in to other sites using your Facebook account -- a feature Facebook likes to highlight constantly -- then you would get rerouted to Facebook's site and an error message that read "An error occurred. Please try again later."The only way to stop it was to log out of Facebook. This shows how widespread Facebook Connect is and how easily one site can causethe Internet to come screeching to a halt.
The 128GB iPad hits the AppleStore, starting at $799
Apple's128GB iPadis now for sale.The storage-stuffed iPad Apple was announced just last week. It is identical to the fourth-generation iPad that Apple launched last year, except that it doubles the then-highest storage option of 64GB. And with the extra 64GB comes a bump in price. Apple's 128GB iPadstarts at $799 for the Wi-Fi-only model, and those who want cellular connectivity will need to pay$929.As of this writing, the Wi-Fi-only model is available to ship in one to three business days. Interestingly, the version capableof connecting to AT&T's network is also listed as available in one to three business days. The Sprintand Verizon versions, however, will require customers to wait three to five business days.Much has been made about the 128GB iPad's price, which is just shy of a full-blown Mac notebook.For Apple, however, the additional storage provides a nicely profitable scenario. Last week, IHS analyst Andrew Rassweiler told CNET in an e-mailed statement thatApple pays about 55 cents per gigabyteof additional storage in its iPads. So, to add an extra 64GB to the iPad costs the company about$35.20. However, the 128GB option costs $100 more than the 64GB version.
Dueling disks: Apple's 128GB response to Surface Pro
With the 128GB iPad, Apple is obviously trying to steal thunder from Microsoft's Saturday roll outof the Surface Pro. But that doesn't mean you can equate the iPad's disk performance with the Surface Pro's.Apple's carefully-timedrelease ofthe 128GB iPadostensibly puts the iPad's storage on par with Microsoft's 128GB Surface Pro, which willgo on sale Saturday.Well, not quite.Apple is using a flash drive optimized for power efficiency, while Microsoft's solid-state drivefavors speed -- the same kind of drive used in ultrabooks. (And Apple's MacBooks, for that matter.)"Apple is using something that's more optimized for cost/power/form factor while Microsoft is using the type of SSD you'd stick in a high-end Ultrabook or other PC," Anand Shimpi of Anandtech, told CNET.For the Surface Pro, Microsoft went with an SSD based on the mSATAinterface, according to Michael Yang, a memory and storage analyst at IHS iSuppli. And Microsoft confirmed the mSATA interface today with CNET.
Microsoft Surface Pro shows off its inner ultrabook
Is the Surface Pro a tablet or a laptop? Well, let's put it this way: benchmarks put it squarely in thelaptop category, leaving Apple and Android tablets in the dust.Chip review site Anandtechran benchmarkson the solid-state drive in Microsoft's new Surface Pro tablet, underscoring the performance gap with the flash drive in Apple's iPad 4."You...get a full blown...SSD," wrote Anand Shimpi of Anandtech, referring to Micron Technology's C400 solid-state drive in the Surface that Anandtech tested.The Micron SSD posted speeds of 400 megabytes-per-second when reading data and just under 200MB/s in writes."The fastest sequential transfer rates I've managed on the 4th generation iPad are typically on the 20-30MB/s range," he wrote, adding that the flash drives in most tablets are, by comparison,"horribly slow."Other benchmarks such as Mozilla Kraken (above) show just how fast Pro is compared with tablets and high-end smartphones.There is a downside to blistering data transfer speeds and a fast processor, however.Microsoft took to Reddit on Wednesdayto address concerns with battery life.