China Mobile Posts Largest Profit Drop Since 1999 as Costs Rise

China Mobile Posts Largest Profit Drop Since 1999 as Costs Rise

China Mobile Ltd. (941), the world’s largest phone company by users, posted an 8.8 percent profit decline that was the most since 1999 as costs to build its new fourth-generation network increased. Net income fell to 28.4 billion yuan ($4.7 billion) in the third quarter, from 31.1 billion yuan a year earlier, according to figures derived from nine-month results released by the Beijing-based company today. The profit missed the 31.1 billion yuan average of five analysts’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Read more of this post

Netflix Poised to Pass HBO in Paid U.S. Subscribers; “We have more content, much more viewing per member, a broader brand proposition, are on-demand, on all devices, and are less expensive”

Netflix Poised to Pass HBO in Paid U.S. Subscribers

By Cliff Edwards – Oct 21, 2013

Netflix Inc. (NFLX) is poised to pass HBO in paid U.S. subscribers, showing Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings is making progress toward a goal of transforming the streaming service to a Web-based television network. Netflix, based in Los Gatos, California, reports third-quarter results today after markets close. Already the world’s largest subscription-video service, the company probably reached 30 million paying U.S. customers as of Sept. 30, according to Needham & Co. HBO, Time Warner Inc. (TWX)’s premium cable-TV network, has about 28.7 million, according to researcher SNL Kagan. Read more of this post

India’s IT Firms Face Midlife Crisis

India’s IT Firms Face Midlife Crisis

ABHEEK BHATTACHARYA

Updated Oct. 21, 2013 9:34 a.m. ET

A good year for India’s information-technology companies doesn’t change the fact that they are battling a midlife crisis. A combination of factors has pushed IT stocks up 50% this year, even as India’s benchmark Sensex index is up only 8%. These outsourcing firms’ biggest markets in the U.S. and Europe are rebounding, which has boosted sales in the September quarter. Plus the Indian rupee has weakened 10% against the dollar this year, helping margins in the short term. Yet these companies are still suffering from a lack of strategic direction, which shows up in their growing cash hoards. Read more of this post

Wearable Gadgets Transform How Companies Do Business; Companies are decking employees out with devices that help them do their jobs better

Wearable Gadgets Transform How Companies Do Business

Companies are decking employees out with devices that help them do their jobs better

H. JAMES WILSON

Updated Oct. 20, 2013 7:52 p.m. ET

The Hitachi Business Microscope tracks employees’ interactions with colleagues, to encourage effective oollaboration. Data collected by Hitachi Business Microscopes shows interactions among two groups of employees. Smart glasses from Vuzix provide voice and visual information to help warehouse employees work more efficiently and safely. Disney is testing a wristband for visitors to its parks to use as a ticket, hotel-room key, charge card and more.

Data from Catapult Sports motion sensors embedded in players’ undershirts help the Buffalo Bills avoid fatigue that can lead to injury. Data from the motion sensors can be displayed to allow comparisons among players on a team. 

Big companies are putting wearables to work. We’ve all seen gadgets that can measure our heart rates, how many calories we’re burning or how many steps we take. Then there are devices that go even further, like Google Glass, which displays text messages and news feeds right up near our eyeballs. Read more of this post

Tech Wealth and Ideas Are Heading Into News; The technology industry and its various power brokers are suddenly investing significant sums of money in preserving news capacity and quality

October 20, 2013

Tech Wealth and Ideas Are Heading Into News

By DAVID CARR

Producing serious news is an expensive enterprise with a beleaguered business model, one that remains tied to the tracks as a locomotive of splintered audiences and declining advertising hurtles toward it. But just when it looked as if all were lost, an unlikely cavalry has come roaring over the hill with serious money, fresh ideas and no small amount of enthusiasm. Silicon Valley and its various power brokers — some who had roles in putting the news business in harm’s way to begin with — are suddenly investing significant sums of money in preserving news capacity and quality. Read more of this post

Twitter is “strongly considering” shuttering #Music App, after its download and usage numbers have dropped precipitously following a respectable launch

Twitter’s #Music App Could Be On The Way Out, Says New Report

Posted 19 hours ago by Darrell Etherington

Twitter’s #Music app, which offered social music discovery culled from activity on the 140-character sharing service, is reportedly nearing the end of its brief life, according to a newreport from AllThingsD. Twitter is “strongly considering” shuttering the mobile app, after its download and usage numbers have dropped precipitously following a respectable launch. Read more of this post

Tools to Help Employees Work Together; Web-based apps focus on teams instead of organizations

Tools to Help Employees Work Together

Web-based apps focus on teams instead of organizations

TERRI GRIFFITH

Oct. 20, 2013 4:59 p.m. ET

For years, organizations have installed powerful software designed to get employees to collaborate. But at most companies, the software has just sat there, unused. The problem: Too often, the software proved a poor fit with how people actually work. Now, several Web-based applications are taking a different, more focused approach. They aim to make it easy for an individual team member to recruit co-workers and other potential partners to solve specific work problems, whether or not the rest of the organization comes along for the ride. Here are three tools that can help overcome the inertia that has blocked use of other applications. Each highlights the power a single person can have in getting co-workers to work together. Read more of this post

The Risks of Big Data for Companies; Yes, all that information is great. But are companies prepared for it?

The Risks of Big Data for Companies

Yes, all that information is great. But are companies prepared for it?

JOHN JORDAN

Updated Oct. 20, 2013 6:47 p.m. ET

Big data. It’s the latest IT buzzword, and it isn’t hard to see why. The ability to parse more information, faster and deeper, is allowing companies, governments, researchers and others to understand the world in a way they could only dream about before. All that is true. And yet…It’s also true that in our rush to embrace the possibilities of big data, we may be overlooking the challenges that big data poses—including the way companies interpret the information, manage the politics of data and find the necessary talent to make sense of the flood of new information. Read more of this post

IT Reuse Helps Companies Thrive

IT Reuse Helps Companies Thrive

Organizations should encourage technology sharing among business units and departments

PETER WEILL, STEPHANIE L. WOERNER AND MARK MCDONALDPeter Weill

Oct. 20, 2013 4:59 p.m. ET

Everyone knows that reinventing the wheel is a bad idea, but apparently many large organizations haven’t gotten the memo. When faced with a new business issue or challenge, these companies typically rush to build something new, instead of exploring whether technology, data or business processes deployed elsewhere in the firm could be part of the solution. “We are different,” they say, to justify starting from scratch. Read more of this post

IBM Is Not A Cloud King with its confused cloud services strategy; SEC is investigating how IBM is counting its revenues for how it recognizes cloud computing

IBM Is Not A Cloud King

Posted 20 minutes ago by Alex Williams

IBM reported its third quarter financials this past week that showed a company struggling with its legacy hardware business and the problems that come with a confused cloud services strategy. Revenues were down $1 billion with hardware sales declining 17 percent. Overall revenues for the nine-month period totaled $72.1 billion, a decrease of 4 percent, compared with $75.2 billion for the nine months of 2012. The software division is not having tremendous success, either. This last quarter software sales were up just one percent. Read more of this post

Foldable boats – what will they think of next?

Foldable boats – what will they think of next?

October 4, 2013

Adam Courtenay

This entrepreneur liked the idea so much he bought the company.

When Perth entrepreneur Deryck Graham first saw the original prototype for his Quickboat, he liked it so much he bought the company. It was not the first foldable boat ever made – but Graham saw the potential to make it work without the use of clips or latches, nuts and bolts. He planned to make it into the ultimate DIY-friendly boat, capable of being stored under a bed or in a garage, transported on roof racks and constructed in less than a minute.

Read more of this post

Flipboard hopes to be the savior of the publishing business

Flipboard hopes to be the savior of the publishing business

By Dan Mitchell, contributor October 18, 2013: 2:40 PM ET

Some publishers have pulled out from mobile news-aggregators like Flipboard because they don’t see any real payoff. But the company says it’s creating a program to help such smaller publishers earn more. FORTUNE — In July of last year, the political news and opinion site Talking Points Memo proudly declared that it was “excited to announce that tablet and smartphone users can now read TPM on Flipboard,” a popular, magazine-style news-reading app for mobile devices. Read more of this post

Design Revolution Sweeps the Auto Industry; New technology and computing power allow vehicle makers to conceive and test designs much more quickly—and cheaply

Design Revolution Sweeps the Auto Industry

New technology and computing power allow vehicle makers to conceive and test designs much more quickly—and cheaply

MIKE RAMSEY

Oct. 20, 2013 4:59 p.m. ET

Altair design software produces ideal shapes for vehicle parts like this motorcyle frame… which designers then modify to account for manufacturing constraints. 

Ford Motor Co. F +0.40% engineer Kevin Tallio holds up a twisty series of loops made of hardened sand and declares that the object—a mold for a new engine part, a cylinder head—was an impossibility not long ago. Mr. Tallio, a senior engine developer at Ford, is taking part in a revolution in vehicle design that has swept the auto industry. Advances in computer-aided engineering and big investments in computing power have given manufacturers new tools to create designs and the ability to test their ideas in a fraction of the time and at far less cost than they could before.

Read more of this post

Demand Media’s eHow Learns Hard Lessons; Strategy Began to Fall Apart as Google Changed Search Algorithms

Demand Media’s eHow Learns Hard Lessons

Strategy Began to Fall Apart as Google Changed Search Algorithms

WILLIAM LAUNDER

Oct. 20, 2013 8:13 p.m. ET

When Demand Media Inc. DMD +2.97% went public in early 2011, rising to an early valuation of over $2 billion, traffic to its “how-to” website eHow was soaring. Demand’s business model of creating content to answer search queries posed by Web surfers seemed to have legs. But the strategy began to fall apart within months of the IPO as Google introduced changes to its search algorithms to weed out content its computers showed wasn’t what searchers sought. EHow, a major source of ad revenue, saw its traffic plunge from a high of 70.5 million unique U.S. visitors in March 2011 to 46.3 million last month, according to comScore. Along the way, Demand’s stock price dropped 79% from an early peak, cutting its market capitalization below $500 million. Read more of this post

Can Osborne’s British technology firms crack China?

Can Osborne’s British technology firms crack China?

Matt Warman travelled with the Chancellor on his trip to China this week. The business delegation on the same trip tell him it was invaluable.

George Osborne visited Huawei and met their founder while in China Photo: Rex

By Matt Warman, Head of Technology

7:00AM BST 20 Oct 2013

As George Osborne recovers from the jet lag following his whistlestop tour around China, the select band of businesses that joined the Chancellor’s trade delegation have a more complicated headache: how do they turn the new relationships and the kind Chinese words into real business deals? Or is trading in China simply so complex as to not be worthwhile? Read more of this post

As Downloads Dip, Music Executives Cast a Wary Eye on Streaming Services

October 20, 2013

As Downloads Dip, Music Executives Cast a Wary Eye on Streaming Services

By BEN SISARIO

As sales of CDs plunged over the last decade, the music industry clung to one comfort: downloads continued to sell briskly as people filled their computers and iPods with songs by the billions. Now even that certainty seems to have disappeared, as downloads head toward their first yearly decline. So far this year, 1.01 billion track downloads have been sold in the United States, down 4 percent from the same time last year, according to the tracking service Nielsen SoundScan. Album downloads are up 2 percent, to 91.9 million; combining these results using the industry’s standard yardstick of 10 tracks to an album, total digital sales are down almost 1 percent. Read more of this post

Amazon Bets on ‘Betas’ to Turn Web Viewers Into Shoppers

Amazon Bets on ‘Betas’ to Turn Web Viewers Into Shoppers

Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)’s new comedy show “Betas” depicts a motley band of twenty-something Silicon Valley entrepreneurs coding around the clock to develop a social-media site to rival Facebook Inc. (FB) Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive officer, is using “Betas” to do some disrupting of his own. Amazon, which is spending an estimated $10 million to $50 million on “Betas” and other shows like it, joins Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and Hulu LLC in delivering original programming directly to viewers that serve as an alternative to cable and network television. The growing list of Web series is helping to fragment an already-splintering audience for pay-television providers such as Comcast Corp. (CMCSA) and DirecTV. Read more of this post

“We will become the world’s top electronic materials manufacturer like Germany-based BASF”; Cheil Ind acquires Novaled to be global leader in electronic materials

Cheil Ind acquires Novaled to be global leader in electronic materials

Sohn Jae-gwon

2013.10.21 14:45:20

“We will become the world’s top electronic materials manufacturer like Germany-based BASF and Merck.” Cheil Industries recently sold its fashion unit to Samsung Everland, aiming to grow into a company specializing in producing electronic materials. Park Jong-woo, CEO of Cheil Industries, and Gildas Sorin, CEO of Novaled, as well as other 100 members of both companies attended a ceremony for Cheil Industries’ acquisition of Novaled, Cheil Industries said Sunday. CEO Park said “Novaled’s technological competence in OLED will take on a major role in the Cheil Industries’ cutting-edge material business” at the ceremony. “I will spare no investment and support to develop products that will set global trends.” The acquisition was valued at 345.5 billion won ($325.2 million), the largest among all merger and acquisition deals reached by Samsung Group’s subsidiaries. The South Korea-based company went out of its way to acquire Novaled with cash by issuing commercial paper for short-term financing. Novaled is a global top-notch provider of OLED materials and over 60 percent of its employees have diplomas of Master’s degrees or higher and work at the research and development (R&D) department. Novaled has made no secret of its expectation about Samsung’s investment. Cheil Industries, Samsung Electronics, and Samsung Venture Investment own a combined 100 percent stake in Novaled, yet Mr Sorin and the company’s other current management will retain their titles and R&D personnel will stay as well.

Is it Too Soon for Xiaomi to Go Global?

Is it Too Soon for Xiaomi to Go Global?

OCTOBER 21, 2013 BY DAVID WOLF LEAVE A COMMENT

Hutong West Wiping the floor
2117 hrs.

I had a long talk with Michael Kan at IDG recently about China mobile phone maker Xiaomi and its high-profile hire of Google refugee Hugo Barra to head up the company’s international expansion. The core of our discussion was around whether it would make a difference. Michael was circumspect about his opinion, but I wasn’t: Hugo is a great hire, but he will not easily solve the challenges to Xiaomi’s global ambitions. Read more of this post

HTC hints at life beyond smartphones; Chairwoman Takes More Active Management Role

October 20, 2013 10:39 pm

HTC hints at life beyond smartphones

By Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco and Sarah Mishkin in Taipei

Five years ago, HTC acquired One & Co, a San Francisco industrial design agency, as it began its drive to grow from mid-ranking smartphone maker to fully fledged consumer brand. It is a journey that almost succeeded, with Hollywood stars in its ads and a flagship device adored by gadget reviewers. But in a smartphone market dominated by Appleand Samsung, consumers are still treating HTC like a second-class citizen. Read more of this post

Elderly Dying in Crashes Seen Spurring Self-Driving Car Demand

Elderly Dying in Crashes Seen Spurring Self-Driving Car Demand

Self-driving cars being planned by Google Inc. (GOOG) and global automakers may help counter slumping demand from younger customers by tapping the fastest-growing demographic in the world’s largest vehicle markets: the elderly. As baby boomers age in markets including the U.S. and Japan, rising numbers of older drivers being killed or injured in accidents may spur demand for autonomous vehicles. With as many as 90 percent of traffic accidents caused by human error, a key benefit of the technology is boosting safety, executives from automakers including General Motors Co. (GM) and Toyota Motor Corp. said at an industry conference in Tokyo last week. Read more of this post

Q&A: KKBOX’s Founder Chris Lin on Profitable Music Streaming in Asia

Oct 20, 2013

Q&A: KKBOX’s Founder on Profitable Music Streaming in Asia

EVA DOU

With music piracy rampant in East Asia, can a paid music streaming service succeed? Chris Lin is the Stanford-educated founder of KKBOX, Taiwan’s largest cloud-based music service provider and a service sometimes described as an Asian Spotify. Both music streaming companies have been expanding in Asia as they seek to tap this vast market. Unlike Spotify, KKBOX is now profitable. But Mr. Lin said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that there are still many challenges to hitting it big in Asia, especially in its  key target market like Japan.  Edited excerpts:

WSJ:  How did KKBOX get started?

Mr. Lin: Back in late 2004, iTunes and the iPod were hot, and we decided there was a chance for us to get into the music business. The problem for us in Asia was piracy. But there was piracy in the U.S. too. We thought, if Apple was able to solve the problem, why couldn’t we do it here? People aren’t that accustomed to buying music in Asia, so we didn’t try to sell individual tracks. Rather we decided to sell access. Read more of this post

Will Twitter Have Second-Class Shareholders?

Will Twitter Have Second-Class Shareholders?

When a company goes public, it must tell shareholders how it plans to govern itself. The new owners are promised a piece of the profits and a say in how the company is run. The standard arrangement for apportioning control is “one share, one vote.” That’s a good, tried-and-tested design, but it seems to be going out of fashion. Upcoming initial public offerings by two large Internet companies, Twitter Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., are putting a spotlight on dual-class ownership, which gives certain shareholders fewer voting rights, or none. Dual shares, often known as Class A and Class B stock, until recently were out of favor, but they are making a spectacular comeback, especially among technology companies. Google Inc. led the way with its 2004 IPO, followed by LinkedIn Corp., Groupon Inc., Zynga Inc. and Facebook Inc., which all have two or more share classes. Read more of this post

Queue-Jumping Apps Aim to Boost Buzz at British Pubs

Queue-Jumping Apps Aim to Boost Buzz at British Pubs

At Frank’s, a hipster hangout atop a parking garage in South London, drinkers keen for a Negroni or Aperol spritz had to line up for 25 minutes at the height of the summer season. Ben Floyd has a way to jump the queue. Floyd is a co-founder of Bar Pass, an app that lets drinkers order and pay for a round at their table, then collect their beverages when the bartender has poured or pulled them. Frank’s says the app, tested at the bar this summer, cut wait times and helped boost sales. Read more of this post

Motorola looking to exit wireless LAN business

Motorola looking to exit wireless LAN business – sources

Fri, Oct 18 2013

By Nadia Damouni, Soyoung Kim and Nicola Leske

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Motorola Solutions Inc is exploring the sale of its underperforming wireless LAN business, which has grappled with declining share in a market dominated by rivals such as Cisco Systems Inc, people familiar with the matter said. An exit from the wireless LAN market would come as Motorola, the provider of data communications and telecommunications equipment, seeks to focus on its core government and public safety division. Read more of this post

Big data heralds return of the Cray supercomputer

Big data heralds return of the Cray supercomputer

7:33am EDT

By Bill Rigby

SEATTLE (Reuters) – “Big data” means big computers, and good news for Cray Inc. The pioneer of supercomputers in the 1970s stood on the brink of obscurity 20 years ago but is now surging back to prominence. Its shares have almost doubled over the past 12 months. The explosion of data – measuring weather, traffic, health and countless other areas – coupled with a desire to tease meaning out of it, demands greater computing power than is accessible via standard machines. Read more of this post

To Catch Up, Walmart Moves to Amazon Turf

To Catch Up, Walmart Moves to Amazon Turf

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER and STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

OCT. 19, 2013

SAN BRUNO, Calif. — A plucky Silicon Valley company, forced to compete for talented engineers, is trying it all — recruiting billboards on Highway 101; workplace perks like treadmill workstations and foosball tables; and conference rooms named after celebrities like Rihanna and Justin Bieber.

The name of that arriviste company?

Walmart.

The country’s largest retailer, which for years didn’t blink at would-be competitors, is now under such a threat from Amazon that it is frantically playing catch-up by learning the technology business, including starting @WalmartLabs, its dot-com headquarters. The two retail behemoths, one the king of the physical store and the other the conqueror of the online world, are battling over e-commerce — competing for the most talented engineers, trying to gain the upper hand in the new frontier of same-day delivery and warring over online pricing. Read more of this post