THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY
Baidu managed to post impressive revenue growth of 40 percent for the first quarter of 2013, but its earnings missed analysts’ expectations due to excessive R&D costs. The company earned $961 million in total revenue, or 5.97 billion RMB, but missed analyst pre-estimates of 5.99 RMB. Its net income increased 8.5 percent to $328.9 million but … [Read more...]
Netflix topped expectations with its first quarter revenue report this year, earning $1 billion in quarterly revenue and surpassing HBO’s user base with 29.2 million subscribers. Though HBO does not publish customer data, the research firm SNL Kagan estimated that the cable channel had 28.7 million subscribers at the end of 2012. As the New York … [Read more...]
The China Internet Network Information Center released some startling figures on the growth, size and potential of China’s ecommerce market. The sector earned more than 1.2 trillion RMB ($190 billion) in 2012. That’s a 66.5 increase over what it made the year before. And with 242 million Chinese Internet users purchasing goods last year in a … [Read more...]
Apple has acquired WiFiSlam, an indoor GPS startup that can pinpoint a smartphone in real time within 2.5 meters of accuracy. The move bolsters the company’s shoddy map product and makes it more competitive to Google Maps, improves indoor GPS mapping capabilities and will likely eventually create new mapping functions, such as the ability to … [Read more...]
Nasdaq received SEC approval for a $62 million payout to investors following the stock exchange’s botched Facebook IPO. Though it sounds like a pile of money, it’s a little more than pocket change for the estimated $500 million the errors reportedly cost investors. The company’s IPO last May was troubled to say the least. Nasdaq’s systems … [Read more...]
Apple was awarded a patent this week for an augmented reality function that can tag objects in a live video stream and present information about those objects in an overlay on the screen, the Apple Insider reported. Published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Apple's U.S. Patent No. 8,400,548 for "Synchronized, interactive augmented reality … [Read more...]
In China, Google’s Android platform truly lives in the wild, wild West. A recent report from the Data Center of China Internet indicated that nearly 35 percent of Android apps secretly steal data unrelated to the functionality of the app, Tech in Asia reported. The center examined 1,400 apps downloaded from a variety of app markets, and found … [Read more...]
Facebook knows all about you, more than you probably know about yourself. A new study reveals that Facebook “Like” button data can reveal a surprising amount of information. Studying more than 58,000 volunteers who participated in the “myPersonality” app on Facebook, the research shows that the magical “Like” thumb can be used with over … [Read more...]
Oracle, the enterprise software giant, has acquired Nimbula, the cloud management software company built by the original creators of Amazon Web Services, to help brighten its cloud offering with some much needed direction. Nimbula offers a cloud management platform that lets people easily establish on-premise pools of visualized … [Read more...]