Baidu posted double-digit percentage revenue growth in 1Q2013–but its earnings still missed analysts’ expectations as the Chinese search giant’s costs soared.
Baidu’s 1Q2013 net income increased 8.5 percent to $328.9 million (2.043 billion RMB), short of the $354.9 million (2.19 billion yuan) expected by analysts polled by Bloomberg. Total revenue rose 40 percent from $961 million (5.97 billion RMB), missing the 5.99 billion RMB analysts expected.
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...
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.
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...
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.Business Insider
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.
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.
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...
Twitter acquired the music discovery service We Are Hunted last year and is using its technology to build a standalone music app, CNET has learned.
The app, to be called Twitter Music, could be released on iOS by the end of this month, according to a person familiar with the matter. Twitter Music suggests artists and songs to listen to based on a variety of signals, and is personalized based on which accounts a user follows on Twitter. Songs are streamed to the app via SoundCloud.
Twitter Music, which is set to arrive in the wake of key competitor Facebook overhauling the music section of its News Feed, shows Twitter taking new steps into becoming a full-fledged media company. The app acknowledges the key role music has played in drawing new users to the service -- particularly younger, mainstream users. Pop stars have some of Twitter's most popular accounts, with followings in the tens of millions. The TwitterMusic account has 2.3 million followers -- not a bad perch from which to launch an eponymous app...
Foursquare is borrowing $41 million from private equity firm Silver Lake and venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Spark Capital.
Silver Lake is leading the debt round. The money from the VC firms is convertible debt.
Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Sarah Frier broke the news this morning.
It reports that Foursquare generated just $2 million in revenues last year...
There are not very many billion-dollar consumer Internet companies in the U.S.
Greylock Partners VC James Slavet recently dove head-first into the data, and found that there are only 24 publicly traded consumer Internet companies worth $1 billion or more in the U.S.
Of those 24 companies, two-thirds of them are digital transaction firms, including Priceline, Expedia, Groupon, Amazon, eBay, and Netflix.
What’s Your Small Business Brand Strategy? | Branding is about more than having an eye-catching logo. It’s about the promise you make to your customers to provide a product or service, to do so with consistency and quality, and to do a better job of it than your competitors.
If you have a brand, you need a brand strategy. Here are some guidelines for crafting one — and making the most effective use of your small business brand.
Facebook, despite any criticisms, is still the social network - but its engagement problem is no secret. We’ll cut to the chase: Facebook needs to provide users more value to keep us coming back – before it’s too late.
The problem is that Facebook has always been a passive listener of everything we’re sharing, and sometimes that’s leading to regurgitation. That’s why the company has been busy pulling out all the stops with feature updates that are trying to keep everyone happy. The result? A Facebook we hardly recognized. Think back to when you originally opened your account – if it was more than two or three years ago, you know what we’re talking about.
The Facebook of 2004 looks nothing like that Facebook of 2013 … so what is the Future Facebook going to look like? Consider this a look into the Internet’s crystal ball, full of hypotheses about what the Future Facebook is like.
I picked up a book recently called The $100 Start-Up. The name alone was enough to hook me — it sounded perfect for someone interested in the startup scene, and the title implied that it was flying in the face of the VC-funded status quo.
Unfortunately, after just a few pages, it became clear that the book wasn’t about startups at all; it was about starting a lifestyle business. Nothing wrong with that, but a lifestyle business just isn’t the same as a startup. The title misrepresented the product, in the hopes of cashing in on the popularity of a word.
The world of startups has attained such mystique that people are scrambling to get involved. The word alone can sell a book, even if that book is about something only tangentially related. Somehow, entrepreneurship has become de rigeur, and everybody wants a piece of the pie.
Dell’s board is looking at two surprise takeover bids from Blackstone Group and billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, reports Reuters citing sources close to the discussion. A special committee is deciding whether either proposal would trump an existing $24.4 billion buyout offer from the PC maker’s founder Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake.
The new bids mean that Michael Dell could potentially lose control of the company he founded in 1984 and that he and Silver Lake will most likely need to reconsider their original proposal to make it more attractive to Dell shareholders, some of whom have complained that its terms undervalue the PC maker.
Icahn and Blackstone put in their bids on March 22, the last day of the “go-shop” period to solicit competing offers for Dell. The company could potentially announce as soon as Monday whether or not they will be interested in either of the new proposals.
Looking for a new job?
It helps to know which companies are hiring.
But more than that. It helps to know which companies have lots of openings. The more employees they need, the better your chances to get the job you want at the salary you want.
With that in mind, we asked job search site Indeed.com to sift through its massive database of job openings to tell us which tech companies are in hyper-hiring mode, with thousands of openings.
Even if we don’t remember Thorsten Heins ever taking swings at the competition, as other smartphone manufacturer execs do nowadays, you can always count on BlackBerry’s CEO to reveal interesting things in his talks with the media.
Most recently, Heins has spilled the beans on Z10 and Q10’s follow-ups, saying there will probably be four different BlackBerry phones launched during 2013. Of course, everything the CEO reveals is carefully planned ahead, so we can assume he wants to build hype mostly on BB’s next flagship device.
From centuries business cards are evolving day by day and with the help of photoshop, coral draw and special designed 3D fonts print media is offering ultimate 3D business card print services as a new service to businesses. A new Phenomenon and trend is to print 3D effect business cards Which can give boost and extra ordinary exposure to your business as they look different and attractive then other business cards.
Everybody know business cards can give you the opportunity to stand out from the crowd, be unique, and never compromise on quality printing. My advice is to find best print services available locally or on internet, which create and print business cards that are state of the art, using the specialty materials ensuring that you leave a lasting and memorable impression.
Today in our showcased 3D business card design examples, we have collected most fascinating 3D business cards which will explode your creativity by stretching your imaginations and designing skills.
South by Southwest is an annual technology, film, and music conference in Austin, Texas. It's in full swing right now; tens of thousands of investors, entrepreneurs, writers, and early adopters have flown south to catch a glimpse of the Next Big Thing.
In previous years, Foursquare, Twitter, and Skype-owned GroupMe broke out during the conference. Each gave conference goers a better way to communicate and find friends during their time in Austin.
This year, the break out app seems to be Tinder, and it was already up-and-coming before the conference.
No one is using it in Austin, but everyone is talking about the Hot-or-Not dating app, from Ashton Kutcher to Path's Dave Morin.
Lack of Apple magic is a popular topic these days, from this excellent Huffington Post article to this Google+ post I commented on yesterday.
Is it just the popular thing to write about today, or is it real?
I thought Huff Post had some excellent points, especially their reminder that Apple didn’t invent technology (like the MP3 player or the tablet computer). They just made them popular. I never bought an iPod; I waited until I bought my first iPhone (which I resisted for years–I’m on my third now). When Microsoft created their first tablets, I was scratching my head trying to figure out why I’d want one. Again, I resisted the iPad for a while, but I own one now. (By the way, go check out an old episode of Babylon 5. They had tablets then that look eerily like my Nexus 7.)
Entrepreneurship is packed with risks and even untouched territory. Making mistakes and hitting a few booby traps is a common theme for the brave men/women who take this path in life. Creating a new company and trying fresh ideas to disrupt a specific market is obviously not easy. Startupvitamins provides wisdom packed quotes and tips to keep your startup inspired.
Many people have ideas, but only a few get off their butts and start doing something. The true entrepreneurs are doers, not dreamers. They are the ones who realize that ”If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to help you build theirs.” This awesome quote was said by Tony Gaskins. As soon as you read it, you view the business environment with a unique angle. Nobody is perfect, and everybody makes mistakes. The following quotes will help you get through bad days. Every single poster is available for purchase on Startupvitamins.com. Enjoy!
While Apple’s stock declines, Google’s stock keeps zooming the other way.
If you go back six months, changes in the two companies’ share prices seem to be almost in lockstep, but heading in opposite directions. Overall, Google is up 20.6 percent, while Apple is down 37.8 percent.
As of today, at a market cap of $400 billion, Apple is no longer the most valuable company in the world. Google, meanwhile, hit an all-time high of $822.84, closing the day at $821.50 for a gain of 1.9 percent.
