Strong smartphone sales boost Samsung to $7.9 billion profit in Q1 2013

via theverge.com

Samsung Electronics made an operating profit of 8.78 trillion won ($7.9 billion) in the first quarter of 2013, matching its guidance and representing a more than 50 percent improvement on its performance last year. Revenues were 52.87 trillion won ($47.6 billion), and net profit was 7.15 trillion won ($6.45 billion). The company said strong smartphone sales coupled with reduced marketing expenses helped boost its IT & Mobile Communications division to revenues of 32.82 trillion alone. However, Samsung's revenues were hit by seasonality — the company took in 6 percent less cash than in the previous quarter — and what it describes as a sluggish economy that meant lower TV and home appliance sales.

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Is Nintendo Over?

via businessinsider.com

People are shocked that Nintendo is not going to have a press conference at the biggest video gaming show of the year, E3, in June.

"Wow. no nintendo press conference at this year's e3. that's ... ceding a lot of oxygen to the competition," Arthur Gies, a video game reviewer, tweeted yesterday.

It's surprising because Nintendo's sales figures for the Wii U were pretty disappointing.

"Now this is a bad earnings report," influential tech blogger John Gruber recently wrote. "Really hope Nintendo figures a way to pull itself out of this spiral."

The gaming company sold 3.45 million Wii U consoles by the end of March, missing its target of 4 million units. But it expects new games to increase the sales of the Wii U to 9 million this fiscal year...

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Build a Better Professional Network and Transform Your Business

via copyblogger.com

Did you know there is a direct correlation between who you spend time with and what your life looks like?

True.

You tend to be happier if you hang out with happy people, more successful if you hang out with successful people, more pessimistic if you hang out with pessimistic people.

So if you’ve got some audacious goals and want to nudge them closer to reality, one thing you can do is spend more time with the people who have the qualities you want.

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Apple Profits Fall And Growth Slows. Welcome To The New Normal

via readwrite.com

Apple reported its first profit decline in over a decade and bluntly admitted that its growth is slowing. It was, indeed, a strange but not wholly unexpected change of pace for the wildly successful Cupertino company.

Despite that bad news, the stock market barely hiccupped. As of writing, Apple shares were virtually unchanged in after-hours trading from their close of $406.13 — a level roughly 42% below their peak just seven months ago. Which means that these diminished expectations are, for now, Apple's new normal.

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Activist Hedge Fund Buys $2 Billion Worth Of Microsoft

via businessinsider.com

Activist hedge fund ValueAct Capital took a $2 billion stake in Microsoft, its CEO Jeffery Ubben announced at an investment a conference in New York, today.

He explained the investment by saying, "In three to five years, which is our time horizon, we’ll stop talking about PC cycles and instead talk about Microsoft as the largest cloud-computing company in the world."

For his sake, let's hope so. The PC business is imploding, so Microsoft's traditionally lucrative Windows business is flattening, and could start shrinking soon.

Microsoft has two other businesses that are doing well — Servers and Tools and the Business Division, which is home to Office. Those businesses are strong enough to offset Windows, for now.

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12 Best Landing Page Templates for Your Product Brand

via ibrandstudio.com

Landing page job is to promote your product effectively and bring the brand in visitors memory, it is commonly used in online marketing to enhance the effectiveness of advertisements and at the same time increase the sales of the product. A good landing page design must have an effective call to action, good copywriting and a common thread that ties the message well together. So it can even optimize your conversion dramatically and drive more customers to your business.

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Want To Raise A Million Bucks? Here’s What You’ll Need

via techcrunch.com

So, you’ve built yourself a nice little product. Maybe you’ve raised a small friends-and-family round; maybe you’re still bootstrappin’ on your own. Either way, now you’re looking to raise at least a million dollars to help with the next steps.

While there’s no perfect formula for stuff like this, these stats from AngelList’s Ash Fontana are a pretty good indication of the metrics you should be aiming for.

As part of a presentation at a startup gathering in Santiago, Chile this evening, Ash presented a slide outlining some ballpark metrics that startups should aim for before swoopin’ in for a big first round...

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5 Practical Tips for Perfecting Your Startup Pitch

via mashable.com

We are living in the age of the entrepreneur — more people are starting up, and it's ever important to stand out in the crowd. When pitching investors, then, it's crucial that entrepreneurs do their research, understand what's expected of them and pitch accordingly.

We spoke to a handful of venture capitalists and startup entrepreneurs to get their top tips on how to put together the ideal startup pitch. Here are the best five tips we heard.

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After Its Worst Quarter In 8 Years, IBM Might Sell Its Server Business

via businessinsider.com

On the same day that IBM posted one of its worst quarters in eight years — at least according to this analyst — word leaked that it might be trying to sell its x86 server business to China's Lenovo Group.

The news first broke yesterday by Kevin McLaughlin at CRN and today CRN's Joseph Kovar vaguely confirmed that Lenovo was in "preliminary talks," with somebody, though Lenovo wouldn't say it was IBM...

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Yahoo kills off a bunch of features you didn’t know existed

via techi.com

As of April 30th, several of Yahoo’s products will be shuttered as part of their initiative to consolidate focus and resources around their core services. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you’re probably not using any of them. You probably didn’t even know some of them existed.

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Nokia hits $7.7 billion in revenue for Q1 2013 with 5.6 million Lumias sold

via engadget.com

Nokia may have seen an operating loss in Q1 2013, but the news isn't all bad. The company saw revenue of $7.7 billion and managed to sell 5.6 million Lumias, which equates to a 30 percent increase in handset sales over last quarter. As for earnings, Nokia put a shiny buff on them by trumpeting a net profit of $236 million using the non-IFRS accounting method. By stricter IFRS rules, it actually lost $150 million, but that still compares favorably to the vast billion dollar losses it made in the same quarter of 2012...

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How to Utilize Web UI/UX Design to Improve Your Businesses

via graphicdesignjunction.com

The phrases UI/UX are increasingly used in today’s environment that calls for creativity and technical know-how in order to be relevant. These are also used to describe all the ideas and specialties, which have been there even before the advent of abbreviated terminology.

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Report: Hulu Is Up For Sale and Ex-Yahoo Exec Ross Levinsohn Might Be Buying

Business Insider

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Hulu is looking for a buyer and one of the companies that might be bidding is Guggenheim Digital Media, run by former Yahoo executive Ross Levinsohn, reports Ronald Grover at Reuters.

That's ironic because, rumor has it, back in 2011, when Levinsohn was an exec at Yahoo, Yahoo tried to buy Hulu for about $2 billion.

Hulu, the TV Internet streaming service jointly controlled by Disney's ABC and News Corp's Fox network, says it has more than 3 million subscribers paying $7.99 a month for its premium service. It generated about $700 million in revenue last year, it says.  But it also had about $330 million in debt and lost about $30 million per quarter last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Last month Hulu CEO Jason Kilaran left the company and Andy Forssell took over. His departure wasn't a surprise. After many rumors about it, Kilar announced in January that he would leave at the end of the first quarter.

SEE ALSO:  Everything We Know About Microsoft's Next Version Of Windows, 'Windows Blue'

via businessinsider.com

Hulu is looking for a buyer and one of the companies that might be bidding is Guggenheim Digital Media, run by former Yahoo executive Ross Levinsohn, reports Ronald Grover at Reuters.

That's ironic because, rumor has it, back in 2011, when Levinsohn was an exec at Yahoo, Yahoo tried to buy Hulu for about $2 billion.

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Apple Stock Falls Below $400 For First Time Since December 2011

via mashable.com

Apple's stock collapsed below $400 during midday trading Wednesday, a decline of more than 6% on the day and the first time that the stock has fallen below that milestone since December 2011...

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Microsoft Takes Aim at Amazon With a New Cloud Service

As president of Microsoft’s server and tools division, a $19 billion-a-year business devoted to databases, servers and other software products, Satya Nadella has a predictable cast of competitors to worry about. There is Oracle, VMware, SAP and a bunch of other makers of highly technical products that make everyday services like banking and airline reservations work, even if the software running them is invisible to most consumers.

But one of Mr. Nadella’s competitors – Amazon – is not like the others.

The Internet retailer is beloved by consumers for its seemingly infinite online selection of merchandise available for one-click purchasing, speedy delivery and Kindle e-readers. Out of view of most of the public, though, it has transformed itself into a huge player in the field of cloud computing. By renting capacity on the industrial-strength servers and beefy Internet connections in its data centers to anyone willing to pay for it, Amazon has become the virtual landlord of choice for technology start-ups, including the likes of Instagram and Foursquare.

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Leap Motion-HP Deal: Gesture Control Goes Mainstream

via readwrite.com

Leap Motion, creators of a motion-control device that allows interaction with a computer interface through hand movements, has announced a partnership with Hewlett Packard that will embed gesture control directly within HP hardware and get this technology out to more mainstream consumers.

The Leap Motion device was already scheduled for a standalone launch on May 13, and the announcement calls for it to be bundled with HP products beginning this summer.

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Trader admits fraud in $1-billion Apple stock scheme

via theglobeandmail.com

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.

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Big Business Pouring Money Into Social Tools

via businessinsider.com

Large companies aren’t just spending on social media in a way that touches customers directly. They’re also investing in developing social media capabilities within their own organizations. According to a study of worldwide companies with over 1,000 employees conducted by the The Altimeter Group, companies dedicated between 20% and 37% of their total social media development spending to “internal social media” in 2012. Larger companies were the biggest investors in internal social development, both in dollar terms and as a percentage of total social development spending. Companies with revenues between $1 billion and $10 billion spent an average $562,069 on internal social media, compared with $968,548 on external spending. Companies with revenues over $10 billion spent $1.3 million on average on internal measures and $2.9 million on outward-facing ones...

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Dish Network Makes $25.5 Billion Bid for Sprint Nextel

via mashable.com

Charging it will offer a "superior value for Sprint shareholders," Dish Network on Monday announced it was making a $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel.

Dish is offering Sprint shareholders $17.3 billion in cash plus $8.2 billion in stock. Dish's bid of $7 a share is a 12.5% premium over Sprint's closing price on Friday. However, Monday morning Sprint's shares were up about 15% to $7.18 on the news. Dish's bid comes as Japan's SoftBank in October agreed to buy a 70% stake in Sprint.

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Microsoft working on a smartwatch, says WSJ

via theverge.com

Microsoft is working on a touch-enabled smartwatch, reports The Wall Street Journal. Citing unnamed supply chain sources, The Journal claims that Microsoft asked Asian suppliers to ship components for the device. If the reports are true, Microsoft would be joining the likes of Apple, Samsung, Google, and others looking to capitalize on a forecasted boom in wearable electronics. Microsoft has so far refused to comment on the rumors.

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