Apple put some of the vast $28 billion in cash and short-term investments it has socked away to good use this week by raising its stake in Imagination Technologies. The $5.16 million investment nearly triples Apple’s original 3.6 percent stake, giving it 9.5 percent ownership of the British chip designer whose PowerVR graphics technology figures prominently in the iPhone and iPod touch.
With $25 billion in its coffers, Microsoft isn’t exactly hurting for cash. So why is the company planning a bond offering that could raise billions in additional capital? Microsoft will say only that the sale of the notes will be used for “general corporate purposes.” Those include working capital and share buybacks. They also include acquisitions.
They say “flat is the new up” and that certainly seems to be the case with the venture capital industry. Though we’ve had two consecutive quarters without an IPO and the venture market is all but frozen, VC optimism is beginning to return. The latest Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist Confidence Index shows a small but noteworthy uptick in the VC community’s views of the entrepreneurial environment in the San Francisco Bay Area.
It’s been well over two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. To wit, a report this week from Credit Suisse that predicts YouTube will earn $240 million in revenue in 2009. Which wouldn’t be half bad were it not for the fact that YouTube is on track to lose $470 million in 2009.
Sequoia Capital partner Michael Moritz often says that the best time to invest is when people are cowering under their desks. Google appears to have taken that message to heart because it’s launching a new venture fund at a time when the VC industry is busy practicing its duck-for-cover exercises.
Oracle’s ongoing pursuit of vertical markets has served it well, particularly in these recessionary times–as its latest earnings prove. No surprise then to see the company bolstering its presence in the health care market with yet another acquisition–its 50th since 2005.
Whatever does not kill us will make us stronger. That’s the view of IBM CEO Sam Palmisano, who says the recession will not do to Big Blue what it is doing to so many others. In an exuberant letter to shareholders today, Palmisano wrote that IBM will not cower before the current economic turmoil.
Investors holding shares in foundering satellite radio outfit Sirius XM just received a bit of welcome news. The company has closed its investment deal with Liberty Media, resolving the “uncertainty” surrounding its debt maturing in 2009. Good thing too, because that uncertainty was pretty worrisome.
The debut of the Palm Pre can’t come soon enough for the long-suffering handset maker. Palm reported preliminary results for its third quarter after market close Tuesday, and they were ugly, to say the least.
As bad as predictions are for global IT spending during the next year, they’re not nearly as bad as what the industry experienced between 2001 and 2003. So when the Semiconductor Industry Association says worldwide sales of semiconductors declined more steeply in November than in October, well, we’ve seen worse, right?
This has proven to be quite a week for Imagination Technologies. Just days after it was revealed that Apple has taken a 3.6 percent stake in the U.K. chip designer–whose PowerVR mobile graphics components are now expected to figure prominently in future iPhones–Intel raised its own stake in the company to 3.04 percent.
Earlier this afternoon, Peter Kafka reported in Media Memo that RealNetworks was “next up in today’s layoff parade.” Here’s the official internal memo from RealNetworks founder, chairman and CEO, Rob Glaser.
The semiconductor industry is widely considered a bellwether for the tech economy. So when the Semiconductor Industry Association starts sounding alarms over its outlook, it’s probably an opportune time to just stop tracking the tech investments in your stock portfolio. If you haven’t stopped tracking them already, that is.
It’s been two years since the $1.65 billion acquisition and Google has yet to truly monetize YouTube. And while Google CEO Eric Schmidt insists the company has the “luxury of time” as it searches for ways to recoup its investment in the popular video site, it’s clear the issue is gradually becoming more pressing. “We’re waiting for the innovations,” he said recently. “The innovation will come. We know it will come. We know it’s there.” Could the “it” to which Schmidt refers be the new e-commerce platform YouTube is launching?
You can make money without doing evil. You can also make it without using so much fossil fuel. That’s the word from Google, which today unveiled a $4.4 trillion plan it says will reduce the nation’s dependence on coal and oil. Google’s “Clean Energy 2030” plan proposes to wean the U.S. off of coal and oil for electricity generation by 2030 by relying on power from wind, nuclear and geothermal sources instead.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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