Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts

Thursday, 9 February 2023

Microsoft to enhance search engine, browser

Microsoft is rolling out an intelligent chatbot to live alongside Bing’s search results, putting AI that can summarise web pages, synthesise disparate sources, even compose emails and translate them into more consumers’ hands. — Reuters

REDMOND: Microsoft Corp is revamping its Bing search engine and Edge Web browser with artificial intelligence (AI), the company says, signalling its ambition to retake the lead in consumer technology markets where it has fallen behind.

The maker of the Windows operating system is staking its future on AI through billions of dollars of investment as it directly challenges Alphabet Inc’s Google, which for years has outpaced Microsoft in search and browser technology.

Now, Microsoft is rolling out an intelligent chatbot to live alongside Bing’s search results, putting AI that can summarise web pages, synthesise disparate sources, even compose emails and translate them into more consumers’ hands.

Microsoft expects every percentage point of share it gains will bring in another US$2bil (RM8.6bil) in search advertising revenue.

Working with the startup OpenAI, Microsoft is aiming to leapfrog its Silicon Valley rival and potentially claim vast returns from tools that generally speed up content creation by automating tasks, if not jobs themselves.

That would affect products for businesses, such as the cloud computing and collaboration tools Microsoft sells, as well as the consumer Internet.

“This technology is going to reshape pretty much every software category,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella told reporters in a briefing at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

The company’s share of search so far is about an estimated 10th of the market. Still, many investors see new technology as a win for all players. Microsoft’s stock closed 4.2% higher on Tuesday, while Alphabet gained 4.6%.

The power of so-called “generative AI” that can create virtually any text or image dawned on the public last year with the release of ChatGPT, the chatbot sensation from OpenAI.

Its human-like responses to any prompt have given people new ways to think about the possibilities of marketing, writing term papers, disseminating news or querying information online.

Microsoft’s new Bing search engine is live in limited preview on desktop computers and will be available for mobile devices in the coming weeks.

The company hopes user feedback will improve its AI, which Microsoft officials said may still produce factually inaccurate information known as hallucinations. Meanwhile, it has worked to prevent the misuse of its technology.

Underpinning the new Bing is what Microsoft is calling the Prometheus model - OpenAI’s most powerful technology, informed as needed by real-time web data from Bing.

That means Bing’s chatbot can brief consumers on current events, a step beyond ChatGPT’s answers that are currently limited to data as of 2021.

Jordi Ribas, Microsoft’s corporate vice president for search and AI, told Reuters the tech advances his team witnessed last summer emboldened the company to move ahead with an AI-infused Bing.

Microsoft’s chief financial officer also said OpenAI’s “new, next-generation” technology is powering its search engine, though officials declined to specify if this entailed the startup’s highly anticipated upgrade known as GPT-4.

Microsoft is aiming to market OpenAI’s technology, including ChatGPT, to its cloud customers and add the same power to its entire suite of products, not just search.

In the near term, Gartner analyst Jason Wong said Microsoft’s “partnership with OpenAI is more relevant for its business customers.

It could offer “disruptive opportunities” in consumer businesses as well.

“Except for gaming, Microsoft has not been a leader in key consumer technologies, such as search, mobile and social media,” he added.

Google has nonetheless taken note of Microsoft’s challenge.

On Monday, it unveiled a chatbot of its own called Bard, and it is planning to release its own AI in search that can synthesise material when no simple answer exists online.

Microsoft’s decision to update its Edge browser will likewise intensify competition – with Google’s Chrome competitor.

However, the Redmond-based company expects to roll out the updated Bing to other browsers eventually. — Reuters

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Wednesday, 5 August 2020

US president’s move to get a cut from TikTok as an ‘extortion threat’ and ‘mafia deal’

Washington robs TikTok by treading upon rules

TikTok for Business: What is TikTok Anyway?

ByteDance investors value TikTok at $50 billion in ...

Countries mull reducing reliance on US tech in wake of TikTok drama

As the US shocked the free world with its mafia-style forced sale of Chinese-owned short-form video platform TikTok, Chinese experts said that US extortion and looting have left a deep impression on the minds of the nations of the world, and pointed out that many of the countries are already striving to boost self-reliance in terms of security, industrial independence and technological ownership.

Expert slams US president’s move to get a cut from TikTok as an ‘extortion threat’ and ‘mafia deal’.

https://youtu.be/cOgQnIJJRZs

https://youtu.be/j7Zi1CCtQIQ

Controversial: Trump has said he would approve TikTok’s sale to Microsoft only if the US government gets a cut from the deal. — Reuters

TikTok's roller-coaster ride in the United States continued on Monday as President Donald Trump said he would approve the video-sharing app's sale to Microsoft only if the US government gets a cut, a condition that one expert called a "mafia" deal.

The president also gave Microsoft and TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, a deadline of Sept 15 to complete the deal, or the app will be banned in the US.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular media briefing in Beijing on Tuesday that the US treatment of TikTok is "outright bullying", and the US only uses a "national security risk" as an excuse to suppress Chinese tech enterprises.

"The relevant enterprises carry out business activities in the US following market principles and international rules and abiding by local laws and regulations," he said. "However, the US has set restrictions and suppressed them with unwarranted charges, which is political manipulation."

Wang said that if the wrongdoing by the US continues, then any country could take similar measures against any American enterprise on the grounds of national security.

"The US side must not open this Pandora's box, otherwise it will suffer its consequences," he said.

The increased scrutiny of TikTok culminated on Friday when Trump threatened to ban the app from operating in the US due to a "national security risk". The negotiations between the two companies were then halted.

But after a weekend phone call with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Trump reversed his stance and reportedly gave the two companies 45 days to close the deal. This was confirmed by Microsoft on Sunday, which said in a statement it "will move quickly to pursue discussions" with ByteDance and complete the talks "no later than" Sept 15.

The president added a condition to the potential purchase on Monday: Microsoft should buy TikTok outright, and the US Treasury Department should be paid because the government made the deal possible.

"It's a little bit like the landlord/tenant; without a lease the tenant has nothing, so they pay what's called 'key money', or they pay something," Trump told reporters in the Cabinet Room at the White House on Monday. "But the United States should be reimbursed or should be paid a substantial amount of money, because, without the United States, they don't have anything."

Investors in privately owned Byte-Dance valued TikTok at $50 billion, according to a Reuters report.

Kai-Fu Lee, former chairman of Google China, said the US treatment of TikTok, including "forced acquisition, plus only 45 days, plus finder's fees", is "incredible".

Lee said that China has set clear rules for internet companies that want to operate in the country, and Google had decided to exit as it didn't want to comply with Chinese laws and regulations.

"The US didn't give any parameters that TikTok could work with, and didn't provide any evidence for their claims that TikTok had caused national security risks to the US," he said.

The legal basis of Trump's requirement that some of the money from the deal go to the US Treasury was immediately questioned by experts.

"This is quite unusual; this is out of the norm," Gene Kimmelman, a former chief counsel for the US Department of Justice's Antitrust Division, told CNN.

"It's actually quite hard to understand what the president is actually talking about here.... It's not unheard of for transactions to have broader geopolitical implications between countries, but it's quite remarkable to think about some kind of money being on the table in connection with a transaction," said Kimmelman, a senior adviser to the policy group Public Knowledge.

Julian Sanchez, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., said Trump's "extortion threat" is a "mafia business model".

"Trump's full explanation of why the Treasury should get a 'cut' of a Microsoft/TikTok deal is, somehow, even more grotesque and shameless than I had anticipated," said Sanchez.

"As with his tariff policy, there doesn't seem to be any consideration of whether this sets a dangerous precedent for other countries to engage in similar pretextual protectionism against us, or how whimsically compelling divestment might affect international investment," he said.

Samm Sacks, a senior fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center, also warned that shutting down the app altogether would set "a dangerous precedent in which the US government can blacklist companies based on country of origin using blanket national security as justification".

The Trump administration has been scrutinizing TikTok for several months, claiming that the platform shares the data of US users with the Chinese government. The company has repeatedly denied the accusations, maintaining that all the users' information is stored in the US.

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Related:

US degrades from innovator to digital rogue

While China is busy innovating, the US is guarding against an innovative China. This twisted behavior has prevented the US from continuing to innovate and reform. The dominant position it acquired, or its hegemony, is becoming a self-inflicted fetter for its progress.

Hard to say who will surprise you in the future, US or TikTok

In addition to power, there exist rules and morals in this world. Although Trump's power can overwhelm rules and ethics, he has only fewer than three months left before the presidential election. People have a subtle perception of rules and ethics in their minds. Trump could thus lose votes due to any most slightly careless move.

TikTok ban demonstrates barbaric act of rogue US: Global Times editorial

In the most barbaric way, the US is trying to solidify a high-tech world order in which it is the absolute center. Whether it ends up "killing" TikTok or forcibly taking the child out of Bytedance's arms, it is one of the ugliest scenes of the 21st century in the high-tech competition

Trump wants to kill TikTok

We are not the enemy: TikTok chief

https://youtu.be/4bS5ukQGa_Y

TikTok users take on Trump

https://youtu.be/Jo6LHELhhnM

Related posts:

US adopts blinkered view of TikTok

Unknown Chinese startup creates the world's most valuable Bytedance

Sunday, 20 October 2013

Kinect Technologies for PCs, can track you through walls

Intel’s gesture control tech will be built into PCs from 2014

Ever since Microsoft’s Kinect came out, it has been wondering when the technology would get built into PCs. Yes, there is Kinect for Windows, but it’s a peripheral — about having advanced motion detection capabilities in the webcam, as a bridge to exciting future user interfaces.

Well, today, such technology is on its way, but not from Microsoft. No, it’s Intel that the PC manufacturers are talking to, and it’s not Kinect that’s the base: it’s Intel’s perceptual computing technology.

According to Paul Tapp, senior product manager in Intel’s perceptual computing division, manufacturers have “committed to doing it” in 2014 – “it” being the integration of an Intel-designed motion-detection system into their machines. And in the meanwhile, peripherals maker Creative put its $210 Senz3D, the first retail device to use the technology.

Creative’s Senz3D camera is up for pre-order. It’s the first peripheral to use Intel’s perceptual computing tech, which will be built into computers from next year. >>

Contributed by By David Meyer Gigaom.com

MIT’s ‘Kinect of the future’ can track you through walls

Researchers from MIT have unveiled a new form of motion tracking that uses a three-point system to follow a person’s position, even through a totally opaque wall. Though the word “Kinect” has been thrown around quite liberally for the sake of accessibility, this is strictly a positional tracker — that means that it won’t be interpreting sign language or reading lips any time soon. Rather than being a control mechanism, this device is purely for keeping tabs on users as they move both within and between rooms. At present the tracker is set up directionally, so it can only see through the single wall at which it is pointed, but the obvious end goal is an omnidirectional tracker that could follow a user through the whole house, upstairs and down.

The system works using three radio antennas spaced about a meter apart to bounce signals off a person’s body. Even through the researchers’ office wall, it can follow people with an accuracy of up to 10 centimeters (four inches), better than WiFi localization can currently provide. Though the device is exploded and sitting as component parts at present, one grad student working on the project said they expect to be able to condense it down to a final unit no larger than Microsoft’s Kinect sensor.

Beyond the loss of Kinect-like image and silhouette tracking, the MIT system can also only track a single person at a time. A second moving object within the system’s field of view will cause confusion and make the system useless — though that problem is, of course, to be addressed soon. It also has trouble with stationary objects, but they already have a first pass on an algorithm to get around this by recognizing the motion of a person breathing.

Applications for the technology, assuming its kinks and limitations are addressed, are numerous. There are the obvious gaming applications, perhaps blurring the line between real and virtual locations as players stalk through real hallways full of video-game enemies. All Oculus Rift fantasies aside though, there are plenty of more substantive reasons to be excited about the ability to keep track of people without their need to carry a transmitter. Rather than installing motion trackers in every corner of the home, a single tracker near the center might be able to intelligently turn the lights on and off as you move from room to room.

Architects and advertising researchers would love to know how people move through a particular space, where they spend their time, and what places they tend to avoid. The health care industry could keep better track of people in need of supervision, receiving an alert if, say, a person with dementia begins to wander away.

Though it's a sprawling array today, the researchers say they the device could end up smaller than a Kinect.

Of course, there are also the more troubling possible uses. WiFi localization currently requires users to hold a tracking device, while more versatile options like holographic localization are slow and low fidelity. MIT is now bringing a high degree of accuracy and usability together with the versatility that comes with being able to track people who have never consented to be tracked. If the signal could be made strong enough, it could render prison break-outs virtually impossible, or let law enforcement quickly check the number and position of people in a hostage situation.

Human and civil rights activists might have something to say about such applications, however. That’s really the downfall of a catch-all people-tracker for use outside of private homes: I can’t imagine a world in which its use would remain legal for long. People are leery enough about ad agencies tracking their online activities — how might people react to the idea of a company monetizing their walking path through the local mall? The Kinect has already got certain people up in arms over just the possibility of always-on functionality, and that would only have mattered when the user was standing directly in front of their television.

The team has a patent pending for the technology, but the concept seems like it would be easy enough to adapt with slight changes. It’s still in its infancy, but finding a person through a wall by picking up on their breathing is about as strong a proof of concept as they could ever have hoped for.

Contributed by Graham Templeton Extremetech.com

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Wednesday, 4 September 2013

Microsoft buys Nokia’s phone for $7.2 Billion

Ballmer: Nokia Deal Accelerates Share Position
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-03/microsoft-to-buy-nokia-s-devices-business-for-5-44-billion-euros.html

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) is spending 5.44 billion euros ($7.2 billion) to buy Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)’s handset unit so it can gain ground on Apple Inc. and Google (GOOG) Inc. in a smartphone market it let get away -- gaining a possible new chief executive officer in the process.

Nokia’s devices and services unit, which accounted for half of the company’s 2012 revenue, along with 32,000 employees, will transfer to Microsoft, the companies said. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, 49, will return to Microsoft after a three-year stint running the Finnish manufacturer. The move stoked speculation he may be a successor to CEO Steve Ballmer, who said last month he’d retire within 12 months.

Microsoft is deepening a push into hardware as dwindling computer sales sap demand for the programs that made it the world’s largest software maker. Nokia shares jumped as much as 48 percent in Helsinki as the sale removes a money-losing handset business and lets it focus on higher-margin networking gear. Even combined, the companies have less than 4 percent of the smartphone market, leaving them far behind Apple and Google.

“The question is whether combining two weak companies will get you a strong new competitor -- it’s doubtful,” said Paul Budde, a telecommunications consultant in Sydney. “Both Nokia and Microsoft really missed the boat in terms of smartphones, and it is extremely difficult to claw your way back from that.”

Market-Share Decline

Nokia, based in Espoo, Finland, racked up losses of more than 5 billion euros over nine quarters as Elop’s comeback efforts failed to eat into the dominance of Apple (AAPL) and Google’s Android platform in the smartphone market. The stock has lost more than 80 percent in the five years through yesterday.

The shares rose 34 percent to 3.97 euros in Helsinki, valuing Nokia at 14.9 billion euros. The shares of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft fell 4.6 percent to $31.88 at the close in New York, wiping out more than $12.6 billion in market value. The company’s market capitalization is now about $265.6 billion.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft will pay 3.79 billion euros for Nokia’s devices division and 1.65 billion euros for patents, according to a statement from the companies. The all-cash transaction, subject to Nokia investors’ approval, is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2014. JPMorgan Chase & Co. advised Nokia on the transaction, while Goldman Sachs Group Inc. worked with Microsoft.

‘Big Transformation’

Nokia said it will book a gain of 3.2 billion euros, with the sale “significantly” accretive to earnings. It also said it aims to return its debt, which is ranked junk by all three major rating companies, to an investment grade. Chairman Risto Siilasmaa, who will become Nokia’s interim CEO, said the company may return excess capital to shareholders.

“It’s a big transformation, but that’s what you’ve got to do in the tech business to move forward,” Ballmer told Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse.”

Microsoft said it is confident of getting the deal approved by early next year. The transaction will shave 12 cents a share off earnings in the current fiscal year, or 8 cents excluding some items, the company said. In 2015, the cost will be 6 cents based on generally accepted accounting principles. Excluding some costs, the deal will add to profit that year.

Microsoft also expects to get more profit for every device sold -- more than $40 a unit for smartphones, compared with the less than $10 in gross profit it currently gets for Windows Phone sold by Nokia. That doesn’t include the costs of marketing and development, though.

Cost Savings

Based on generally accepted accounting principles, the transaction will add to earnings in fiscal 2016, Microsoft said. The company expects to have annual cost savings of $600 million 18 months after the deal closes.

The Microsoft purchase was the second major deal to be announced during the U.S. Labor Day holiday yesterday. Verizon Communications Inc. agreed to pay $130 billion for Vodafone Group Plc’s stake in their U.S. wireless venture in the biggest transaction in more than a decade.

The Microsoft-Nokia deal is the largest for a wireless device maker after Google’s purchase of Motorola’s handset unit in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. For Microsoft, the deal including the payment to license Nokia’s patents is its second-biggest behind the $8.5 billion purchase of Internet telephone company Skype in 2011.

Motorola Comparison

Microsoft agreed to pay about 0.35 times annual revenue, compared with the median of about 1.4 times for 60 wireless equipment-maker deals tracked by Bloomberg. That also compares with the 0.77 times revenue Google paid for Motorola Mobility, the data show.

Google paid about 1.3 times annual operating income for the handset maker, while Nokia’s device and services business reported an operating loss last year, according to the data.

With the latest sale, the original pioneers in the mobile-phone industry -- Motorola, Nokia and Ericsson AB -- have all ceased to be independent handset manufacturers or given up on the business. BlackBerry Ltd. said last month it’s considering putting itself up for sale. Its shares advanced less than 1 percent to $10.21 in today’s trading.

Microsoft, meanwhile, becomes the last major developer of smartphone operating systems to get into manufacturing. Apple makes its own handsets, which use its iOS operating system. Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility gave it its own lineup of phones.

Surface Tablet

Microsoft’s other recent significant move into hardware -- the Surface tablet -- has trailed expectations and the company wrote down inventory last quarter.

To break even on an operating basis, Microsoft will need Nokia to sell about 50 million smartphones a year, it said in a presentation. Nokia has a run-rate of about 30 million units. In the second quarter, Nokia sold 7.4 million smartphones under the Lumia line.

Microsoft acquired the Lumia brand to use with smartphones, while it will license the Nokia brand to use with low-end phones for 10 years, Elop said at a press briefing today. Microsoft will later decide what to call its future smartphones.

Microsoft will face a balancing act owning Nokia and keeping its other hardware partners, including HTC Corp. (2498) and Samsung Electronics Co., committed to its Windows Phone. Aiming to reassure other phone makers that Microsoft will still support them, Ballmer said that the company was “100 percent” committed to helping its manufacturing partners.

Ballmer declined to say whether Elop would become CEO, or had been a candidate to succeed him.

Microsoft Tie-Up

Ballmer called Nokia’s Siilasmaa shortly after the new year to initiate discussions on an acquisition and the two met in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, according to Microsoft. Talks heated up in recent months and a deal was lined up before Ballmer announced his retirement last month, the company said.

Microsoft and Nokia have had a close relationship through Elop, who had run Microsoft’s Office unit. He left the software maker in September 2010 to take the top job at Nokia.

At the time, Elop likened Nokia’s position to a man standing on a burning oil platform on the verge of being engulfed in flames, facing the option of staying aboard or jumping to the ocean to have a chance to survive.

In February 2011, Elop struck a deal with Ballmer to switch Nokia’s smartphones from its own Symbian operating system to Windows Phone. In exchange, Microsoft ponied up more than $1 billion to pay for Nokia marketing and developing products on Windows.

Losing Share

Nokia had the largest share of the mobile phone handset market until it was overtaken by Samsung (005930) in 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Still, Nokia remains a top seller of traditional mobile phones -- models that are more popular in developing markets. In total shipments, the company ranks second to Samsung among device manufacturers. Samsung accounted for 26 percent of shipments last quarter, while Nokia had 14 percent. Apple came in third with 7.2 percent.

After the sale to Microsoft, Nokia’s biggest business will be network equipment, which it recently fully took over from Siemens AG (SIE) and renamed Nokia Solutions and Networks. The unit competes with Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent as well as China’s Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. (763)

Ericsson jumped 5 percent to 82.50 kronor in Stockholm. Alcatel-Lucent, which under new CEO Michel Combes is streamlining its business, added 9.2 percent to 2.20 euros in Paris trading.

Mapping Unit

Nokia said it will also keep its mapping and location services unit, called Here, and its technology development and licensing division.

“Nokia has a highly evolved device design and manufacturing process which will benefit Microsoft greatly,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst at research firm IDC. “This is simply the fastest path in front of Microsoft to achieve something like Apple’s vision on devices.”

Contributed by Bloomberg

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Thursday, 30 August 2012

Apple's rot starts with its Samsung lawsuit win

Just like Microsoft, Apple's evolution from smart tech company to global uber-brand contains the seeds of its own destruction

The risk for Apple is that it focuses more and more on intellectual property rights – filing patents and litigating – than it does on product innovation. Photograph: Ahn Young-Joon/AP

Apple came close to destroying its business in the late 1980s by pursuing a suit against Microsoft claiming that Windows infringed the look and feel of the Mac desktop metaphor. Apple focused its hopes and business future on this lawsuit, while its market share dwindled. Rather than competing, it litigated. And lost.

Last week, it litigated against Samsung over its iPhone design and won.

The first justifiable conclusion might be that big companies get their way. The second might reasonably be that Apple doesn't change much: its business model remains aggressive self-righteousness. The third is what everybody knows: patent rules and philosophy are all screwed up.

As for the first point, Apple is not just a big company, but the biggest. And it is not just the biggest American company, but the most American company. It has entered a rarefied brand status in which it is now almost synonymous with American virtue: American as Apple. Its good design sense has become a major point of American pride, if not nationalism.

The brand is a national asset. Apple is AT&T in its pre-break-up from; it's GM, in its what's-good-for-General-Motors-is-good-for-the-country stage; it's United Fruit when it made US foreign policy; it's Microsoft when desktop computing was transforming the world.

Commercial omnipotence

This is about as close to commercial omnipotence as it gets. Its unassailability, its right to be preternaturally aggressive, is built into its share price. We believe in Apple. So let us briefly consider the chance for a Korean company defending itself against (or, perish the thought, challenging) the greatest American company of the age in the eyes of an American jury.

And then, there's the self-righteousness. Apple is one of the most aggressive intellectual property litigators of all time. Its major moves have not been about protecting precise technical innovations, but about claiming the much softer zone of look and feel.

It sues for brand rather than engineering. It has pioneered a new modern sensibility: taste is what's most valuable; identity is king. It's sued about the lower case "i"; it's sued about the word "pod"; it's sued New York City over the "big Apple"; it's sued over using the words "app store".

This fierce defensiveness might be rightly understood in a psychological sense: Apple itself is based on stolen iconography. There was first the Beatle's Apple and there was Xerox PARC's desktop design.

Apple's self-righteousness masks its guilt. (It may be sheepish, too, about being more of a marketing organization than a technology company.) What's more, it knows better than anybody that if you relax your vigilance, somebody can easily walk off with what you've done – and improve it.

And then, in the algebra of Samsung's loss and Apple's victory, there's patent hell. Or absurdity.

System of litigation

Patents are, arguably, no longer a system of protection; they are a system of litigation. Great numbers of patents are now filed, in an over-burdened system, to protect not innovations but the right to litigate over innovations. Indeed, any patent of value will ultimately be litigated.

What's more, as the system has become ever more over-taxed, as technology itself has become more complex, the ill-equipped and under-trained bureaucracy has increasingly taken to giving patents to wide-ranging abstractions.

Design concepts, behavior adjustments, and new approaches to problem solving are all patentable innovations. The system itself assumes that litigation is the check on the system. Which means, fundamentally, that the litigant with the most resources and greatest status wins.

But let us not argue the case that all this quite obviously impedes innovation and is part of a new unreal property land grab – not about technology at all, but about intellectual property: an effort to privatize much of what was once understood to be shared and public (indeed, not ownable, like the shape of the iPhone). But rather, for a moment, let's look at this as a form of hubris that has inevitable consequences.

The Apple that has won against Samsung is the same Apple that lost against Microsoft. In other words, it is the kind of company that, through sheer willfulness, discipline, and perfectionism, can achieve brand hegemony of a singular type. But it is, too, the kind of company – the exact sort of company – that becomes, perhaps inevitably becomes, the bete noire of consumerists, regulators and, of course, most of all, its competitors.

This is the story between the lines of its great victory and its further share price surge. On the one hand, there is this seemingly golden company. On the other hand, there is anybody with any sense of history knowing this is going to end badly.

American capitalism

Companies that acquire the nation's imprimatur often, if not invariably, over-reach. It is a characteristic of American capitalism: the price of getting really big and overbearing is that you incur an inverse reaction. In the early 1990s, an ambitious department of justice (a Republican administration DOJ at that) commenced its assault on Microsoft.

For better or worse, by the time the feds were finished, the company, with its rotten operating system, besieged and beleaguered, had become just one of many not-very-adept players in the space – an unimaginable outcome if you remember the once God-like power and scorched-earth wrath of Microsoft.

Apple, and its rotten phone, have a ways to go. But karma should not be underestimated as a factor in this game.

- By Michael Wolff
- guardian.co.uk

Apple's rot starts with its Samsung lawsuit win

Just like Microsoft, Apple's evolution from smart tech company to global uber-brand contains the seeds of its own destruction

The risk for Apple is that it focuses more and more on intellectual property rights – filing patents and litigating – than it does on product innovation. Photograph: Ahn Young-Joon/AP

- By Michael Wolff
- guardian.co.uk

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

US Stocks dominate; Korean share drops after US's ruling on Apple-Samsung patent wars

US ascends in biggest stocks as Google, Apple oust Gazprom

Shares of Apple have hit new record highs after the company won its patent lawsuit against Samsung, but overall stocks traded mixed.

Image Credit: AP
Apple Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and four more US companies joined the top 20 since stocks peaked in 2007, bringing the total to 14, according to data compiled by Bloomberg

New York: American stocks are dominating global equities by the most in a decade, taking a majority of the spots in a ranking of the 20 biggest companies, after earnings rose faster than the rest of the world as the global economy rebounded.

Apple Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and four more US companies joined the top 20 since stocks peaked in 2007, bringing the total to 14, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They replaced Moscow-based Gazprom OAO, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. in Beijing, Petroleo Brasileiro SA of Rio de Janeiro and six others from Europe and Asia. Of the nine added, only BHP Billiton Ltd. and Nestle SA are based outside the US.

More US corporations are represented than any time since 2003 after 10 quarters of economic expansion and profit growth lifted the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index 109 per cent since shares bottomed in March 2009. The shift reflects volatility in emerging markets and shows how innovation builds value in the US.

“The US is just the best place on the planet to have a great idea and turn it into a big business,” according to Michael Shaoul, chairman of New York-based Marketfield Asset Management, which oversees $2.7 billion (Dh9.9 billion).

“There’s another reason for this list to have shifted and that is the falling of prior darlings,” Shaoul said. “A lot of the ones which have fallen are energy and emerging-market related.”

Reasons for strength

American companies are gaining strength in part because of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis. While the S&P 500 fell 0.5 per cent last week to 1,411.13, retreating from a four-year high, amid concern European leaders will fail to preserve the 17-nation currency union, the Euro Stoxx 50 Index slid 1.5 per cent. S&P 500 futures added 0.1 per cent to 1,410.6 at 8.52am in London on Monday.

Computer and software makers became the top industry in the S&P 500, overtaking financial companies, as Apple and IBM joined Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. among the biggest stocks. The last time a non-US technology producer made the global ranking was in 2001, when Finland-based Nokia Oyj was the world’s largest mobile phone maker. Nokia’s market value has fallen by 92 per cent since Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007.

The Cupertino, California-based maker of iPad computers last week became the most valuable US company ever as the stock rose to $668.87 on August 22, giving the company a value of $627 billion. Apple, which approached bankruptcy in 1997, has jumped more than 80-fold in the past decade.

IBM’s market value more than doubled over the decade as the company shifted its strategy toward more profitable software sales and away from hardware and consulting. The New York-based company, with a market capitalisation of $226 billion, closed the gap with Microsoft, valued at $256.2 billion, to become the No. 3 technology maker and the world’s seventh-biggest company.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, was worth four times as much as IBM in 1999. Mountain View, California-based Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, is valued at $222.6 billion.

No match to Apple, Google

“There are not a lot of other companies that can compete with the Googles and the Apples of the world,” Jeffrey Saut, chief investment strategist at Raymond James & Associates in St. Petersburg, Florida, said. “We have probably the most cutting-edge companies in the technology space that exist today. Who can match Apple? I can’t think of anybody.”

Computer and software makers represent 20 per cent of the S&P 500. The industry’s weighting outside the US is 4 per cent, as measured by the MSCI World ex-US Index.

Profit growth drove the US gains. The 14 biggest US companies earned $248.4 billion in the last 12 months, more than double the total made by the 67 companies in Brazil’s Bovespa Index. Their market value reached $3.57 trillion, about the size of Germany’s 2011 gross domestic product.

Earnings at the seven newly added American companies surged 40 per cent during the past four years, while income for the 13 non-US firms that made the 2007 list rose 6 per cent, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The ranking reflects the US economy, where growth climbed back toward pre-2008 levels faster than other countries. Gross domestic product is forecast to gain 2.2 per cent this year, according to the median estimate of 78 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. That compares with an average of 2.6 per cent between 2002 and 2007, before the credit crisis, the data show.

Growth declines elsewhere

China is projected to expand by 8.1 per cent, compared with its mean rate of 11.2 per cent before the global recession. Brazil’s GDP may increase 1.9 per cent, down from an average of 3.8 per cent. Russia may grow by 3.8 per cent, next to 7.1 per cent in the five years before the credit crisis.

“People perceive not only better growth for the US, but also less risk,” Chris Leavy, the chief investment officer of fundamental equities at New York-based BlackRock Inc., which oversees $3.56 trillion as the world’s biggest money manager, said in an August 22 interview.

Investors are demanding more profit to reward companies with higher stock prices than before the credit crisis shattered confidence in equities. The average capitalisation of the largest 20 companies shrunk 17 per cent to $242.5 billion since 2007 even as profits surged almost fourfold to $18.8 billion, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The biggest companies, dominated in 2007 by commodity explorers and enterprises controlled by China’s government, traded at an average price-earnings ratio of 57.6, the data show. Today, after the addition of two American technology developers and a California bank, the average valuation is 12.9, according to the data.

“It’s so commonplace in this country to vilify corporations, but the truth is the American corporate structure has worked very well,” David Kelly, chief market strategist at JPMorgan Funds in New York, said in an August 22 phone interview. His firm oversees about $348 billion. “There are other countries which are doing very well economically, but don’t do as good a job as inventing and reinventing themselves.”

The S&P 500 trailed the rest of the world in the previous bull market as accelerating growth in China boosted demand for commodities from Brazil to Russia. The index rose 99 per cent during the five-year rally that ended in October 2007, lagging behind a 187 per cent gain by the MSCI World ex-US Index and a 416 per cent surge in an MSCI gauge tracking 21 emerging markets. - Bloomberg

Samsung share price drops on Apple patent ruling

How South Koreans view Samsung ruling

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW The share price of Samsung Electronics dropped nearly 7.5% in trading Monday
Comes after a California jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in a patent dispute with Samsung
The tumble erased about $12 billion from the South Korean electronics giant's market value

(CNN) -- The share price of Samsung Electronics dropped nearly 7.5% in trading Monday as investors had their first opportunity to react to the more than $1 billion decision against the Korean electronics giant by a California jury for infringing on Apple patents.

Samsung dropped 6.3% at the open of South Korea's Kospi index and finished the day down 7.45%, after dropping as much as 7.7%. The tumble erased about $12 billion from the company's market value Monday.

Samsung is planning to appeal Friday's decision of a U.S. federal jury which awarded Apple $1.05 billion for copying the look and feel of iPhones and iPad design. The jury rejected Samsung's counterclaims against Apple.

A senior Samsung executive told the Korea Times the decision was "absolutely the worst scenario for us" as he was heading into an emergency meeting at the company's Seoul headquarters on Sunday.

The decision could lead to the prohibition of sales in the U.S. of Samsung smarphones and computer tablets found to have violated Apple's patents. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for September 20.

Apple vs. Samsung: Tale of two countries

CNNMoney: What the Apple-Samsung verdict means for your smartphone

"As far as the money damages are concerned, (Samsung) will make that up in the long run. The bigger issue at the moment them having to come up with new and unique designs appealing to the customer base," said Christopher Carani, chairman of the design rights committee of the American Bar Association.

"It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices," Samsung said in a written statement after Friday's decision. "It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies."

Apple, meanwhile, praised the court for "sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

"The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew," the company said in a statement.

A nine-person jury spent just two and a half days puzzling out its final verdict, with weeks of notes and memories of testimony, 109 pages of jury instructions, and boxes of evidence including a collection of contested smartphones and tablets as their guide.

The jury award shows the growing importance of design for electronics makers. In 2001, Apple and Samsung were awarded 10 and eight U.S. design patents, respectively. This year, Apple could have as many as 333 design patents approved, while Samsung could have as many as 500, Carani said.

"Central to the U.S. case and at its very core was design rights, the way things look, and that's really where the large amount of this billion-dollar damages judgment comes from," Carani said.

The lawsuit is the largest yet in the ongoing worldwide patent brawl between the two companies, which itself is just one battle in Apple's war against Google's Android mobile operating system. On Friday, a South Korean court found that both parties had infringed on each other's patents, banning the sale of the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, two iPad models and Samsung's Galaxy S2.

The Korean court ordered Apple to pay Samsung $35,000 and Samsung to pay Apple $22,000.

US Stocks dominate; Korean share drops after US's ruling on Apple-Samsung patent wars

US ascends in biggest stocks as Google, Apple oust Gazprom

Shares of Apple have hit new record highs after the company won its patent lawsuit against Samsung, but overall stocks traded mixed.

Image Credit: AP
Apple Inc., International Business Machines Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and four more US companies joined the top 20 since stocks peaked in 2007, bringing the total to 14, according to data compiled by Bloomberg

Samsung share price drops on Apple patent ruling

How South Koreans view Samsung ruling

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

NEW The share price of Samsung Electronics dropped nearly 7.5% in trading Monday
Comes after a California jury awarded Apple $1.05 billion in a patent dispute with Samsung
The tumble erased about $12 billion from the South Korean electronics giant's market value

A senior Samsung executive told the Korea Times the decision was "absolutely the worst scenario for us" as he was heading into an emergency meeting at the company's Seoul headquarters on Sunday.

Apple vs. Samsung: Tale of two countries

CNNMoney: What the Apple-Samsung verdict means for your smartphone

Apple, meanwhile, praised the court for "sending a loud and clear message that stealing isn't right."

"The mountain of evidence presented during the trial showed that Samsung's copying went far deeper than even we knew," the company said in a statement.

"Central to the U.S. case and at its very core was design rights, the way things look, and that's really where the large amount of this billion-dollar damages judgment comes from," Carani said.

The Korean court ordered Apple to pay Samsung $35,000 and Samsung to pay Apple $22,000.

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US ascends in biggest stocks as Google, Apple oust Gazprom

Shares of Apple have hit new record highs after the company won its patent lawsuit against Samsung, but overall stocks traded mixed.

Samsung share price drops on Apple patent ruling

US ascends in biggest stocks as Google, Apple oust Gazprom

Shares of Apple have hit new record highs after the company won its patent lawsuit against Samsung, but overall stocks traded mixed.

Samsung share price drops on Apple patent ruling