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| Amazon leaps into home entertainment fray with $99 Fire TV Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 04:05 PM PDT  By Jennifer Saba and Deepa Seetharaman NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc made a play for the increasingly crowded home entertainment arena by unveiling the $99 "Fire TV" video and game streaming device on Wednesday, with hopes of boosting its main online retail business over the longer term. The square device, which just about fits in the palm of one hand, streams content from Netflix Inc, Hulu and other video services - much like Apple TV or Google Inc's Chromecast. It also offers a prominent platform for Amazon's own fast-growing streaming video service as well as its growing slate of original television programs and games. Amazon will also sell a separate controller for gaming that costs $39.99. Full Story | Top |
| Vodafone to add 150 shops, create 1,400 jobs in UK Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 04:04 PM PDT  (Reuters) - Vodafone Group Plc said on Thursday it would add 150 shops and create 1,400 jobs across the United Kingdom during the next 12 months in a 100 million pound ($166.33 million) investment. The British group said the expansion is part of the company's plans to invest 1 billion pounds ($1.66 billion) in the United Kingdom in 2014 where it serves 19 million customers. Vodafone last year in June said that it would increase its UK expenditure by more than 50 percent to nearly 1 billion pounds. The opening of the new shops will increase the total number of Vodafone's branded UK outlets to more than 500, the company said. Full Story | Top |
| Juniper to cut 6 percent jobs, focus on high-growth businesses Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 03:39 PM PDT  (Reuters) - Network gear maker Juniper Networks Inc, which is under pressure from investor Elliott Management Corp to slim down, said it plans to reduce its global workforce by 6 percent and focus on its high-growth businesses. Juniper said most of the cuts would impact middle management positions and that it expected to incur cash charges of about $35 million in the first quarter, related to severance and other expenses. Juniper also said it would stop development of the application delivery controller technology, which helps remove excess load from servers, resulting in a non-cash intangible asset impairment charge of about $85 million. Juniper added that it expected to record other non-cash asset write-downs of about $10 million in the first quarter and that it expects to carry out more restructuring in the second quarter. Full Story | Top |
| Alibaba's IPO architect lays out blueprint for e-commerce empire Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 02:48 PM PDT  By Paul Carsten and Matthew Miller HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Alibaba, the world's biggest e-commerce company, changed how China shops. Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, sees an Alibaba future that stretches from banking to education, travel to entertainment. Customers will buy mutual funds using Alibaba mobile applications, safeguard homes with Alibaba insurance, and use Alibaba virtual credit cards to order goods from U.S. websites that will arrive on China's doorsteps in 10 days. On March 16, Alibaba said it's planning an initial public offering in the U.S. Analysts say it could be worth more than $16 billion. Full Story | Top |
| ICANN chief: Russia, China will not hijack Internet oversight Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 02:20 PM PDT  By Alina Selyukh WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of a nonprofit that manages the infrastructure of the Internet defended on Wednesday the U.S. government's move to cede oversight of the body, and downplayed concerns that Russia, China or other countries could exert control and restrict the web's openness. The Obama administration last month said it would relinquish oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, which controls the "address book" of the Internet, the master database of top-level domain names such as .com and .net. The United States, which gave birth to the Internet, has overseen the process but since 1998 has contracted it out to ICANN. The U.S. contract with ICANN will expire in September 2015, and last month the Commerce Department said it plans to formally turn the oversight capacity, which it says has become symbolic, over to a global multi-stakeholder mechanism that the ICANN community will propose. Full Story | Top |
| Microsoft to offer Windows for free on phones, tablets Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 01:59 PM PDT  By Bill Rigby SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is to give away its Windows operating system to makers of smartphones and small tablets for consumers as it seeks to make more of an impact on those fast-growing markets and counter the massive success of Google Inc's free Android platform. Microsoft's move, announced at its annual developers conference in San Francisco, is an attempt to broaden the small user base of mobile versions of Windows, in the hope that more customers will end up using Microsoft's money-making, cloud-based services such as Skype and Office. Up to now, Microsoft has charged phone and tablet makers between $5 and $15 per device to use its Windows system, as it has done successfully at higher prices for many years with Windows on personal computers. That model has been obliterated in the past few years by the fast adoption of Google's Android system for phones and tablets, which hardware makers quickly embraced and now accounts for more than 75 percent of all smartphones sold last year. Full Story | Top |
| U.S. regulators warn banks about rise in cyber-attacks Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 01:12 PM PDT  By Douwe Miedema WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A group of top U.S. regulators on Wednesday warned about the threat of rising cyber-attacks on bank websites and cash machines, urging the industry to put proper measures in place to guard against fraud. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) said it had seen a rise of so-called denial-of-service attacks on bank websites, which were sometimes a cover for criminals committing fraud. Massive client data breaches at retailers Target Corp and Neiman Marcus Group LLC put the focus on cybersecurity last month, leading banks and retail groups to join forces to try and fix the issues. The problems described by the FFIEC, which comprises top officials from the Federal Reserve and other bank regulators, are of a different nature, if no less harmful. Full Story | Top |
| Docomo to invest about $4 billion to expand LTE network: Nikkei Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 12:32 PM PDT  (Reuters) - NTT Docomo Inc will spend more than 400 billion yen ($4 billion) this year to expand its LTE network in Japan to all regions now covered by the slower 3G service, the Nikkei said. LTE, more than five times faster than 3G, is used by about a third of Japanese mobile phone subscribers, Nikkei said. The company plans to increase by next March its LTE base stations by 40,000 to around 100,000 -- roughly equal to its 3G service, Nikkei said. Full Story | Top |
| Apple in talks to buy Japan chip venture to secure iPhone supply chain Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 12:14 PM PDT  By Reiji Murai TOKYO (Reuters) - Apple Inc, seeking to secure its mobile supply chain, has opened discussions to buy control of a Japanese venture that makes key microchips for its iPhone screens, sources familiar with the matter say. The talks on what would be a rare acquisition in Japan for the U.S. technology giant come as competition heats up in the smartphone industry, with pressure to produce larger, sharper and less battery-draining screens. Apple's once undisputed command of the global mobile electronics supply chain has diminished in past years as Samsung Electronics Co and other manufacturers that make smartphones powered by Google Inc's Android began to dominate the market. That makes the advanced chips made by the Renesas Electronics Corp division all the more valuable in future. Full Story | Top |
| Apple, Facebook, Google Web data centers getting greener: report Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 10:38 AM PDT  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple Inc, Google Inc and Facebook Inc have made significant progress in adopting renewable energy sources to power their Web services, the environmental group Greenpeace said in a report on Wednesday. Apple Inc, which built an on-site solar panel farm and fuel-cells at its North Carolina data center and has procured renewable energy directly at its other three facilities, earned the highest marks on the "scorecard" of Internet company data centers that Greenpeace issues every two years. Full Story | Top |
| Microsoft unveils voice assistant Cortana to rival Apple's Siri Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 10:19 AM PDT  Microsoft Corp on Wednesday formally announced it has developed a voice activated phone assistant feature called Cortana, a direct rival to Apple Inc's Siri. The feature has been rumored for some months and a test version was demonstrated by Joe Belfiore, a Windows Phone executive, at Microsoft's annual developer conference in San Francisco. Belfiore announced that the latest version of Microsoft's smartphone software, called Windows Phone 8.1, will be rolled out to consumers as a downloadable upgrade in the next few months, and new phones running the software will be in stores by late April or early May. (Reporting by Bill Rigby. Full Story | Top |
| Turkey's Twitter ban violates free speech: constitutional court Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 08:57 AM PDT  Turkey's block on access to Twitter violated freedom of expression and individual rights, the constitutional court said on Wednesday, the most significant legal challenge yet to a ban which caused public uproar and international condemnation. Turkey's telecoms authority TIB blocked access to Twitter on March 21 after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said he would "root out" the network, following a stream of anonymously posted audio tapes purporting to expose corruption in his inner circle days ahead of nationwide elections. The constitutional court said it had sent its verdict to the TIB and the Transport Ministry, which also has responsibility for communications. Full Story | Top |
| AOL poaches J&J executive to head global partnerships Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 07:01 AM PDT  (Reuters) - AOL Inc named on Wednesday Johnson & Johnson executive Kim Kadlec to a newly created position in charge of distribution partnerships for AOL's media properties such as TechCrunch, The Huffington Post and AOL On video network. Kadlec will serve as the head of relationship management and will report to AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong and the CEO of AOL's brand group Susan Lyne. "I have been working with AOL for a long time as a client and I really came to understand Tim's vision around video and mobile," Kadlec said. ... Full Story | Top |
| Samsung chairman ordered to appear in Indian court in decade-old dispute Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 07:00 AM PDT  NEW DELHI/SEOUL (Reuters) - India's Supreme Court has ordered the chairman of Samsung Electronics, Lee Kun-hee, to appear before a local court within six weeks to avoid arrest in a decade-old dispute with a supplier over a $1.4 million payment. A two-judge panel ruled on Monday that an arrest warrant issued against Lee by a local court in Ghaziabad, near New Delhi, would not be executed for six weeks, according to an order posted on the court's website. Lee will have to appear before the local court and can seek bail and an exemption from further hearings, the Supreme Court judges ruled. ... Full Story | Top |
| How to run or ruin a company in 140 characters Wednesday, Apr 02, 2014 06:31 AM PDT  By Stephen Eisenhammer and Silvia Antonioli LONDON (Reuters) - When Nat Rothschild, the co-founder of troubled miner ARMS, insulted his former investment partner on Twitter last week, he showed the power of social media for business leaders seeking publicity - but also the perils of saying the wrong thing. "Whilst your dad is an evil genius," the scion of the Rothschild banking dynasty tweeted to Aga Bakrie, "the word on the street is that you are extremely DUMB." The tweet made the front pages of media around the world as journalists, used to the measured language of corporate press releases, seized on a seemingly unguarded remark showing that even powerful businessmen can descend to playground taunts. Within 24 hours, his number of followers on Twitter had jumped to 1,700 from 200. But not all business leaders have been so fortunate with their apparently off-the-cuff remarks on social media. Full Story | Top |
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