Will Icahn Boot Michael Dell?

Carl Icahn reportedly is drawing up a shortlist of potential Dell CEO replacements for Michael Dell should his bid for the company be successful.

Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management have made a bid to rival that of Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners in the high stakes fight over Dell and its board. Now it is being reported that Icahn has already started drawing up a list of candidates that he and Southeastern Asset Management will propose as replacements for Michael Dell as CEO of Dell.

Icahn has previously warned that should his offer for Dell be accepted by the shareholders he would look to not only oust Michael Dell as CEO but replace the firm’s board of directors. Reuters reports that Icahn is casting his net far and wide, including consideration of former HP CEO and current Oracle co-president Mark Hurd.

According to Reuters’ sources Cisco director Michael Capellas, IBM services head Michael Daniels and Oracle’s Hurd are all in the frame, although none of the individuals would confirm having been approached by Icahn.

Michael Dell’s initial plan to buy back the company he founded has met with strong opposition by existing shareholders, some of whom think they are getting shortchanged. According to Michael Dell, the firm’s reorganisation into an enterprise IT vendor will be easier if the company goes private and doesn’t face investor and market scrutiny.

So far Dell’s board is backing Michael Dell’s and Silver Lake Partners’ buyout offer, suggesting that Icahn’s offer is short of cash. However some of Dell’s investors might like the drastic action that Icahn is promising, along with the fact that his offer allows existing shareholders to maintain a diluted stake in the company.

Should Icahn manage to get his takeover offer accepted by Dell’s shareholders, it will set up a sensational return to the PC industry for Hurd and give Dell renewed momentum to compete with HP.

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Lenovo Soars

PC sales in China and high growth in smartphones sales helped boost Lenovo’s net profit for its fiscal fourth quarter by 90% year-over-year.

For the quarter ended March 31, Lenovo’s net profit was $127 million, the company said on Thursday. Revenue shattered records and was at $7.8 billion, growing 4% from the same period last year.

In Lenovo’s home market of China, the company had an operating margin of 4.9%, an increase of 8% year-over-year. The company also saw continued profitability in its mobile devices business, which makes up 9% of its overall sales. At the end of the quarter, Lenovo’s smartphone shipments were up 206% year-over-year.

Globally, PC shipments were down 13.9% year-over-year in the quarter, the market’s steepest decline since research firm IDC began tracking the market in 1994. Lenovo itself posted flat year-over-year PC shipment growth in the period.

Smartphone and tablet popularity have hurt PC sales, according to analysts. Computers running Microsoft’s Windows 8 have also failed to drum up consumer interest in the previous two quarters.

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Lenovo, however, has managed to weather the slowdown by taking advantage of the Chinese PC market, where it has an over 30% market share. Close to half of the company’s revenue comes from the country, now the world’s largest PC market.

The company is now close to surpassing leading PC vendor HP for the top spot. The company had a 15.3% share of the market in this year’s first quarter, while HP had a 15.7% share.

But the Chinese PC maker also plans to focus more of its investment on tablets, smartphones and enterprise hardware, the company’s CEO Yang Yuanqing said in a statement. Earlier this year, Lenovo also reorganized its operations to sharpen the company’s branding and compete better in high-end products.

For the current fiscal year, Lenovo aims to ship 50 million smartphones, up from 30 million last year, Yang said Thursday in an earnings call. It aims to ship 10 million tablets, a five-fold increase from the previous fiscal year.

Most of Lenovo’s smartphone sales come from China, but the company has also begun selling handsets in the emerging markets of Russia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. In addition, Lenovo is preparing to bring its smartphones to the U.S. and European markets, Yang said, without saying when.

Is Yahoo Really Back?

Yahoo has once again made the list as one of the world’s 100 most valuable brands.

The Internet company nabbed the 92nd spot in the annual list of global companies from multiple industries including technology, retail and service, released Tuesday by BrandZ, a brand equity database. The ranking gave Yahoo a “brand value” of US$9.83 billion, which is based on the opinions of current and potential users as well as actual financial data.

Apple occupied the number-one position on the list, with a brand value of $185 billion. Google was number two, with a value of roughly $114 billion.

The BrandZ ranking, commissioned by the advertising and marketing services group WPP, incorporates interviews with more than 2 million consumers globally about thousands of brands along with financial performance analysis to compile the list. Yahoo last appeared on the list in 2009 at number 81.

Yahoo’s inclusion on the 2013 list comes as the Internet company works to reinvent itself and win back users. Previously a formidable player in Silicon Valley, the company has struggled in recent years to compete against the likes of Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Improving its product offerings on mobile has been a focus. New mobile apps for email and weather have been unveiled, along with a new version of the main Yahoo app, featuring news summaries generated with technology the company acquired when it bought Summly.

Most notably, Monday the company announced it is acquiring the blogging site Tumblr for $1.1 billion in cash. Big changes to its Flickr photo sharing service were also announced.

Yahoo’s rebuilding efforts have picked up steam only during the last several months, but the 2013 BrandZ study was completed by March 1.

However, last July’s appointment of Marissa Mayer as CEO likely played a significant role in the company’s inclusion in the ranking, said Altimeter analyst Charlene Li. “Consumer perception has gone up since then,” she said.

“Yahoo’s leadership has a strong sense of what they want to do with the brand,” she added.

Yahoo’s 2012 total revenue was flat at $4.99 billion. However, after subtracting advertising fees and commissions paid to partners, net revenue was up 2 percent year-on-year.

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Qualcomm Sticks With Windows RT

Tim McDonough, Vice President, Marketing at Qualcomm, was Qualcomm´s commitment to Windows RT. Ever since Microsoft announced Windows RT, ARM supporters had high hopes and Windows RT has yet to live up to some.

Tim confirmed Qualcomm´s commitment to Windows RT and future releases, saying “we are here for the long run”. He describes the partnership as the beginning of a long journey and of course Qualcomm is going to continue rolling out chips that will run great with Windows RT.

Qualcomm mentioned that Samsung ATIV and Dell XPS 10, both of which use Qualcomm’s S4 dual-core APQ8060A chips, run really nice. Tim told us that he is a real fan of both devices and that he is currently using one of them.

We also learned that Snapdragon 600, the one used in the HTC One and some versions of Samsung’s Galaxy S4, is 40 per cent faster than the S4 Pro, adding that Adreno 320 graphics core is significantly faster than the Adreno 225 used in the S4 APQ8060A chip. Another number we got is that the Adreno 330 is up to four times faster than the 225, which is a huge leap forward. Let’s not forget that Snapdragon 800, which is up to 75 per cent faster than Snapdragon S4 Pro, is also coming in mid-year, second half of 2013. The 800 will be Qualcomm’s first chip with Adreno 330 graphics.

One can easily conclude that there should be some Snapdragon 600 and 800 Windows RT convertible tablets at some point in the future. To stay on the safe side, Qualcomm just confirmed that new and exciting things are coming in the next months and quarter and they are Windows based.

We have to notice that most people in the tablet world get really excited talking about convertible tablets in all shapes and sizes, as the physical keyboard is definitely an accessory you want to have.

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Microsoft Looks Into Smart Watches

Microsoft is developing designs for a touch-enabled smart watch, joining a number of other large competitors like Samsung Electronics and Apple who are said to be working on similar devices, according to a recent report.

Executives at suppliers to Microsoft told The Wall Street Journal that the company was sourcing components for the prototype of what could potentially be a “watch-style device.”

Microsoft has, for example, requested 1.5-inch displays from component makers for the prototype, an executive at a component supplier told the newspaper. It is unclear whether the company will decide to go ahead with the watch, the newspaper added.

Microsoft could not be immediately reached for comment.

A large number of vendors are looking at new product categories beyond smartphones and tablets.

This isn’t the first time, however, that Microsoft may be looking at watches as a product. It launched a smart wrist watch around a concept called Smart Personal Object Technology it unveiled in 2002, but withdrew it after a lackluster performance.

The Redmond, Wash., company is seeing its key PC market under threat from smartphones and tablets, and the failure of its new Windows 8 operating system to boost sales significantly. IDC said last week that first quarter PC shipments totaled 76.3 million units, down 13.9% compared to the same quarter last year. (The decline was worse than the 7.7% previously forecast by the analyst firm, and the market could be headed into further contraction, the research firm added.

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6 of 10 Companies Approve BYOD

More than six out of 10 companies allow or mandate the use of employee-owned mobile devices for work in order to increase productivity, according to a survey published on Tuesday.

While the BYOD (bring your own device) push has been at the forefront of press coverage, the majority of companies still provide at least a subset of devices to employees. One third of companies strictly mandate which devices can be used for work purposes and don’t allow any type of device provided by the employee, according to the survey conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), a nonprofit trade group.

The online survey of 502 U.S. IT and business executives was conducted in February. It also found that the most popular option, at 58%, was to have a mix of corporate-owned and employee-owned devices.

For 53% of those surveyed, the top reason for allowing employees to use or select their own devices was to increase productivity while employees are away from the office. Another reason was that employees like to use familiar devices.

Twelve percent of the respondents stated it was simply too difficult to stop employees from using their own devices.

CompTIA’s report said that companies looking to maximize the benefits of a mobile device-enabled workforce must “look beyond simply which devices are used and re-examine business processes and workforce needs.”

Companies should assess the specific needs of workers, rather than just deploying one device over another on a corporate-wide basis, said Seth Robinson, director, technology analysis, at CompTIA.

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IBM’s Next-gen Transistors Mimick Human Brain

IBM has discovered a way to make transistors that could be turned into virtual circuitry that mimics how the human brain operates.

The new transistors would be made from strongly correlated materials, such as metal oxides, which researchers say can be used to build more powerful — but less power-hungry — computation circuitry.

“The scaling of conventional-based transistors is nearing an end, after a fantastic run of 50 years,” said Stuart Parkin, an IBM fellow at IBM Research. “We need to consider alternative devices and materials that operate entirely differently.”

Researchers have been trying to find ways of changing conductivity states in strongly correlated materials for years. Parkin’s team is the first to convert metal oxides from an insulated to conductive state by applying oxygen ions to the material. The team recently published details of the work in the journal Science.

In theory, such transistors could mimic how the human brain operates in that “liquids and currents of ions [would be used] to change materials,” Parkin said, noting that “brains can carry out computing operations a million times more efficiently than silicon-based computers.”

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Windows RT Devices To Drop In Price

Prices of Windows RT devices have started to decline, signaling an attempt by PC makers to quickly clear out stock after poor adoption of tablets and convertibles with the operating system.

Microsoft released Windows RT for ARM-based devices and Windows 8 for Intel-based devices in October last year. The price drop is an acknowledgement that Windows RT has failed, analysts said.

Prices of popular products usually don’t fall, but Windows RT devices were not in demand, and prices fell, analysts said.

The starting price for Dell’s XPS 10 is now US$449 for a 32GB model, scalping $50 off the original launch price. The 64GB model is $499, which is a drop from the original $599 price. By comparison, the price of the Latitude 10 tablet with Intel processors and Microsoft’s Windows 8 OS remained stable at $499.

Asus’ VivoTab RT, which is largely sold through retailers, is being offered by Amazon.com for $382 with 32GB of storage, which is a heavy discount from the $599 launch price. Retailers like Best Buy, Staples and Office Depot have also dropped the price of the tablet by $50, now selling it for $549.

Newegg is listing VivoTab RT as having been discontinued. Asus did not respond to a request to comment on whether the company was still offering the tablet.

Lenovo is offering the IdeaPad Yoga 11 for $599 as part of a seven-day deal, which is a drop from the original $799 price. However, TigerDirect is offering an IdeaPad Yoga 11 model for $599 on its website, while Amazon is selling a model for $499.99.

Samsung did not ship its Windows RT tablet, Ativ Tab, to the U.S. market.

However, the starting price of Microsoft’s Surface RT remained consistent at $499 on its online store. Microsoft also offers Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga 11 through its store, but has stopped offering tablets like the VivoTab RT on its website. The company last month said it stocks its store with RT devices based on availability and demand.

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3G And 4G Modems Pose Security Threats

Researchers Nikita Tarakanov and Oleg Kupreev analyzed the security of 3G/4G USB modems obtained from Russian operators for the past several months. Their findings were presented Thursday at the Black Hat Europe 2013 security conference in Amsterdam.

Most 3G/4G modems used in Russia, Europe, and probably elsewhere in the world, are made by Chinese hardware manufacturers Huawei and ZTE, and are branded with the mobile operators’ logos and trademarks, Tarakanov said. Because of this, even if the research was done primarily on Huawei modems from Russian operators, the results should be relevant in other parts of the world as well, he said.

Tarakanov said that they weren’t able to test baseband attacks against the Qualcomm chips found inside the modems because it’s illegal in Russia to operate your own GSM base station if you’re not an intelligence agency or a telecom operator. “We’ll probably have to move to another country for a few months to do it,” he said.

There’s still a lot to investigate in terms of the hardware’s security. For example, the SoC (system on a chip) used in many modems has Bluetooth capability that is disabled from the firmware, but it might be possible to enable it, the researcher said.

For now, the researchers tested the software preloaded on the modems and found multiple ways to attack it or to use it in attacks.

For one, it’s easy to make an image of the USB modem’s file system, modify it and write it on the modem again. There’s a tool available from Huawei to do modem backup and restore, but there are also free tools that support modems from other manufacturers, Tarakanov said.

Malware running on the computer could detect the model and version of the active 3G modem and could write an image with malicious customizations to it using such tools. That modem would then compromise any computer it’s used on.

The researchers also found a possible mass attack vector. Once installed on a computer, the modem application — at least the one from Huawei — checks periodically for updates from a single server, Tarakanov said. Software branded for a specific operator searchers for updates in a server directory specific to that operator.

An attacker who manages to compromise this update server, can launch mass attacks against users from many operators, Tarakanov said. Huawei 3G modems from several different Russian operators used the same server, but there might be other update servers for other countries, he said.

Research in this area is just at the beginning and there’s more to investigate, Tarakanov said. Someone has to do it because many new laptops come with 3G/4G modems directly built in and people should know if they’re a security threat.

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Bonets Attack U.S. Banks

Evidence collected from a website that was recently used to flood U.S. banks with junk traffic suggests that the responsible parties behind the ongoing DDoS attack campaign against U.S. financial institutions — thought by some to be the work of Iran — are using botnets for hire.

The compromised website contained a PHP-based backdoor script that was regularly instructed to send numerous HTTP and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) requests to the websites of several U.S. banks, including PNC Bank, HSBC and Fifth Third Bank, Ronen Atias, a security analyst at Web security services provider Incapsula, said Tuesday in a blog post.

Atias described the compromised site as a “small and seemingly harmless general interest UK website” that recently signed up for Incapsula’s services.

An analysis of the site and the server logs revealed that attackers were instructing the rogue script to send junk traffic to U.S. banking sites for limited periods of time varying between seven minutes and one hour. The commands were being renewed as soon as the banking sites showed signs of recovery, Atias said.

During breaks from attacking financial websites the backdoor script was being instructed to attack unrelated commercial and e-commerce sites. “This all led us to believe that we were monitoring the activities of a Botnet for hire,” Atias said.

“The use of a Web Site as a Botnet zombie for hire did not surprise us,” the security analyst wrote. “After all, this is just a part of a growing trend we’re seeing in our DDoS prevention work.”

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