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Sony To Acquire Toshiba’s Sensor Business
November 4, 2015 by admin
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Toshiba Corp is offload its image sensor business to Sony Corp for around 20 billion yen ($164.68 million) as part of a restructuring plan laid out earlier this year, sources with knowledge of the deal said on Saturday.
Toshiba, whose businesses range from laptops to nuclear power, is undergoing a restructuring after revelations this year that it overstated earnings by $1.3 billion going back to fiscal 2008/09.
Image sensors, which are used in digital cameras and smartphones, are part of Toshiba’s system LSI semiconductor business. Toshiba plans to sell its image sensor manufacturing plant in Oita, southern Japan, and pull out of the sensor business altogether, said the sources, who declined to be identified.
The sale is likely to be finalized soon, the sources said.
Toshiba is considering several options for its system LSI semiconductor business and its discrete semiconductor business and that debate is ongoing, a Toshiba official said when contacted.
An official from Sony declined to comment.
Masashi Muromachi, who became Toshiba’s CEO following the accounting scandal, has promised to restructure lower-margin businesses.
The deal for the image sensor business would be the beginning of the restructuring, Nikkei reported earlier on Saturday.
Sony is already a dominant player in the image sensor market, with its products used in phones made by China’s Xiaomi and India’s Micromax Informatix Ltd.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/consumer-category/sony-to-acquire-toshibas-sensor-business.html
Steve Ballmer Believes In Twitter
Ex Microsoft Corp Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has purchased a 4 percent stake in Twitter Inc, according to his spokesman, making him the third-biggest individual shareholder in the social media company.
Ballmer’s stake is worth more than $800 million based on Twitter’s $21 billion market value. Only co-founder Evan Williams and Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal have greater stakes among individual investors.
Friday Ballmer tweeted from a non-verified account that he built up his stake over the past several months.
His tweet lauded Twitter’s new ‘Moments’ feature, which curates the best tweets of the day, and Dorsey’s appointment as permanent CEO last week.
“Good job @twitter, @twittermoments innovation, @jack Ceo, leaner, more focused,” the tweet said. “Glad I bought 4% past few months.”
Twitter declined to comment. Ballmer himself did not return requests for comment.
Ballmer, who bought the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team after retiring as Microsoft CEO in February 2014, has a personal fortune of about $21.5 billion, making him the 35th richest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine.
Ballmer now owns more of Twitter than co-founder and CEO Dorsey, who has a 3.2 percent stake, according to Thomson Reuters data. Williams is the largest individual shareholder with about 7.5 percent, followed by Alwaleed with about 5.2 percent.
Like @alwaleedbinT move too,” Ballmer’s tweet said. Alwaleed and his investment firm, Kingdom Holding Co 4280.SE, said earlier this month they had raised their stake in Twitter to more than 5 percent.
Ballmer’s investment is a sign that Twitter’s efforts to revive growth under Dorsey is being appreciated, Monness, Crespi, Hardt, & Co Inc analyst James Cakmak said.
“I think it’s just another point of evidence that the step that they are taking to redirect the business toward growth is resonating,” Cakmak said.
Twitter has made several new announcements since Dorsey, who also served as CEO in 2008, returned on a permanent basis last week. On Tuesday, Twitter said it will lay off about 8 percent of its workforce and on Wednesday, it hired Google Inc executive Omid Kordestani as executive chairman.
FBN Securities analyst Shebly Seyrafi said Ballmer’s stake could be indicative of widespread confidence in Dorsey and his strategy.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/steve-ballmer-believes-in-twitter.html
Is Canon Betting Its Future On IoT?
Canon has announced that it is joining the raft of technology companies attempting to take on the Internet of Things (IoT) through what it is calling the ‘Imaging of Things’.
Speaking at the firm’s EXPO 2015 event in Paris on Tuesday, Canon CEO Fujio Mitarai talked up the firm’s global vision for the future as the IoT becomes more pervasive.
“Canon is showing how the world of imaging is expanding rapidly in the age of the IoT,” said Mitarai.
“In the future nearly everything will be connected through smart devices. These rely on built-in cameras or sensors and the data they generate. As a result, Canon predicts that the IoT will largely depend on the ‘Imaging of Things’.”
To take on this future, Mitarai plans to overhaul Canon’s business structure to build a network of smaller Canon companies and thus create an “ecosystem of innovation”.
The CEO said that these companies have been designed to “harness innovation and creative talents from across the regions”, and will include more investment in what Canon does but on a more local level in different regions across the world, as opposed to all of the innovation being created in Tokyo, as it is at the moment.
This will allow “regional independence and international collaboration [to be] put into practice”, Mitarai said.
In this new “network of companies”, Mitarai explained that each regional headquarters will manage local R&D and manufacturing, as well as service and support customised to its market.
In Europe, the smaller Canon companies will focus on printing and network video surveillance, and the firm has already brought in specialists in these business areas such as Océ, Axis and Milestone Systems.
Mitarai said that, along with its global reputation for cameras, this will make Canon the largest printing and network video surveillance company in the world.
On a B2B level, the move is also about helping other firms build new competitive advantages and improve services for their own customers.
“We are changing our own operation model and go to market structure to build more expertise in these areas and connect with our customers,” said Jeppe Frandsen, head of the Production Printing Group at Canon Europe.
“Our customers are changing so we are now looking at a way customers are changing to what their customers want – new ways to do business together.”
Canon’s EXPO 2015 event was also an opportunity for the company to show off many of the latest projects from its R&D centre in Tokyo for the first time in Europe.
These tie in with the firm’s new focus as it launches smaller companies in more regional areas, and include a range of innovative practices such as responding to society’s monitoring needs, 3D printing as part of a partnership with 3D Systems in Europe, and graphic arts via investment in digital print technologies.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/technology-2/is-canon-betting-its-future-on-iot.html
Qualcomm Goes LTE For Microsoft
Qualcomm has continued its friendship with Microsoft by extending its latest LTE-Advanced modem, the X12, to Windows 10 notebooks and tablets.
The chipmaker was the only major chip provider to optimize its architecture for Windows Phone, and Microsoft’s Lumia devices, which run on Snapdragon 808 and 810 chips.
The Windows 10 devices which come to market later this year will have the option to integrate cellular connectivity with the X12, X7 or X5 LTE modems, which support the Microsoft operating system’s native Mobile Broadband Interface Model (MBIM).
Qualcomm said this would give business users, in particular, a similar experience on their large-screened devices as on their smartphones, giving the particular examples of location-based services and security driving LTE usage on PCs and tablets.
Integrated cellular connectivity has not been so important for notebook users, outside of a few scenarios such as WiFi-less trains, most wireless access from notebooks, and even tablets, is over a WLAN.
Qualcomm makes WiFi chips for portable devices but it does not have such a big market share. Working with Microsoft means it could have a higher presence and a far better chance of delivering mass sales. The Surface Pro and its new Surface Book, is getting good reviews and might even be popular.
Courtesy-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/qualcomm-goes-lte-for-microsoft.html
Apple Removes Data Spying Apps From Store
October 21, 2015 by admin
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Apple has removed several apps from its store that it said could pose a security risk by exposing a person’s Web traffic to untrusted sources.
The company recommended deleting the apps but did not name them, which may make it hard for people to know which apps put their data at risk.
The apps in question installed their own digital certificates on a person’s Apple mobile device. It would enable the apps to terminate an encrypted connection between a device and a service and view the traffic, which is a potential security risk.
Most websites and many apps use SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Security Layer), a protocol that encrypts data traffic exchanged with a user. SSL/TLS is a cornerstone of Web security, ensuring data traffic that is intercepted is unreadable.
It is possible in some cases to interfere with an encrypted connection. Many enterprises that want to analyze encrypted traffic for security reasons will use SSL proxies to terminate a session at the edge of their network and initiate a new one with their own digital certificate, allowing them to inspect traffic for malicious behavior.
In that scenario, employees would likely be more aware or expect that kind of monitoring. But people downloading something from the App Store probably would have no idea of the access granted to their sensitive data traffic.
Apple checks applications to ensure that malicious ones are not offered in its store. Those checks are in large part the reason why Apple has had fewer problems with malicious mobile applications in its store.
Installing digital certificates isn’t itself a malicious action per se, but Apple may be concerned that users are not fully aware of the consequences of allowing an app to do so.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/apple-removes-data-spying-apps-from-store.html
Kemoge Malware Menacing Android Phones
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Smartphone owners running Google’s Android operating system
in more than 20 countries have been infected with a particularly aggressive malware program that bombards devices with unwanted advertisements.
Researchers from FireEye found that the malicious component, nicknamed Kemoge, has been seeded inside what appear to be legitimate apps offered on third-party application stores.
“This is another malicious adware family, possibly written by Chinese developers or controlled by Chinese hackers, spreading on a global scale that represents a significant threat,” wrote Yulong Zhang, a staff research scientist with FireEye.
Whomever created Kemoge repackaged legitimate apps with the malware and then promoted them on websites and through in-app ads to persuade people to download them.
Zhang listed a dozed affected apps: Sex Cademy, Assistive Touch, Calculator, Kiss Browser, Smart Touch, Shareit, Privacy Lock, Easy Locker, 2048kg, Talking Tom 3, WiFi Enhancer and Light Browser.
Third-party apps stores are considered risky places to download Android apps, as hackers frequently upload malicious apps to them. Google performs a security check on apps in its Play store, although harmful ones occasionally sneak in.
Kemoge not only displays unwanted ads, but it’s also loaded with eight root exploits that target a wide range of Android devices, Zhang wrote. A successful attack using those exploits means an attacker would have complete control over the device.
Kemoge will collect a device’s IMEI (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity) and IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) numbers, information on storage and apps, and send the information to a remote server.
That command-and-control server was still running, Zhang wrote. An analysis of traffic exchanged between an infected device and the server showed Kemoge also tries to uninstall antivirus apps.
FireEye came across an app called Shareit in Google’s Play store that was signed by the same digital certificate as the malicious one found on the third-party source.
The Google Play version of ShareIt did not have the eight root exploits or contact the command-and-control server, but it did have some of the same Kemoge code libraries. It now appears to be gone from Google Play.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/kemoge-malware-menacing-android-phones.html
IBM Makes Carbon Nanotube Breakthrough
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IBM’S research and development department has announced “a major engineering breakthrough” in transistor technology that could transform the mobile device space as we know it, especially wearables.
IBM scientists demonstrated a new way to shrink transistor contacts in chips, thus speeding up the replacing of silicon transistors with carbon nanotubes which the firm has been working on for several years.
The company said that the breakthrough brings it closer to creating fully scaled carbon nanotube technology that will power future computing technologies while increasing performance and “opening a pathway to dramatically faster, smaller and more powerful chips”.
Carbon nanotube chips have many benefits over traditional silicon. Transistors in silicon are approaching a point of physical limitation. They have been made smaller year after year, but shrinking the size of the transistor, including the channels and contacts, without compromising performance is becoming increasingly difficult.
Carbon nanotube chips could improve the capabilities of high-performance computers because they allow these contacts to be so small that they are virtually transparent.
This means that the size of the semiconductor can decrease dramatically, while the substrate of carbon nanotubes makes the chip more energy efficient and is a soft and flexible material that could allow new device form factors.
Shu-jen Han, IBM’s manager of nanoscale science and technology, told us in an interview that wearable technology is one of the most exciting areas that this technology could transform owing to the unique property of the substrate, allowing new form factors with better performance and battery life.
However, the breakthrough isn’t about the carbon nanotube material being a better replacement for silicon, but more of an engineering innovation that addresses part of the problem in successfully rolling out better performing and more efficient chips.
“We know what the issue has been, and the limits of the technology, for years. What we solved here is a device-level issue, a one-dimensional structure. We need to make a wafer of them, a high-quality wafer, which does not exist yet,” Shu-jen said.
The next stage for IBM’s research group is to scale up the carbon nanotube technology to make reliable mass produced chips before they can make a difference to businesses and consumers.
Shu-jen said this could take five to 10 years, but could enable big data to be analysed faster and allow cloud data centres to deliver services more efficiently and economically.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/ibm-makes-carbon-nanotube-breakthrough.html
Can IBM Beat Moore’s Law?
Big Blue Researchers have discovered a way to replace silicon semiconductors with carbon nanotube transistors and think that the development will push the industry past Moore’s law limits.
IBM said its researchers successfully shrunk transistor contacts in a way that didn’t limit the power of carbon nanotube devices. The chips could be smaller and faster and significantly surpass what’s possible with today’s silicon semiconductors.
The chips are made from carbon nanotubes consist of single atomic sheets of carbon in rolled-up tubes. This means that high-performance computers may well be capable of analysing big data faster, and battery life and the power of mobile and connected devices will be better. The advance may enable cloud-based data centres to provide more efficient services, IBM claims.
Moore’s law, which has for years governed the ability of the semiconductor industry to double the processing power of chips every 24 months is starting to reach the limits of physics when it comes to doubling the power of silicon chips. This could mean a slowing of significant computing performance boosts unless someone comes up with something fast.
IBM researchers claim to have proved that carbon nanotube transistors can work as switches at widths of 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, and less than half the size of the most advanced silicon technology.
The latest research has overcome “the other major hurdle in incorporating carbon nanotubes into semiconductor devices which could result in smaller chips with greater performance and lower power consumption,” IBM said.
Electrons found in carbon transistors move more efficiently than those that are silicon-based, even as the extremely thin bodies of carbon nanotubes offer more advantages at the atomic scale, IBM says.
The new research is jump-starting the move to a post-silicon future, and paying off on $3 billion in chip research and development investment IBM announced in 2014.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/computing-category/can-ibm-beat-moores-law.html
Microsoft, Google Cease Fire In Global Patent Deal
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Microsoft has been pursuing a more collaborative approach under CEO Satya Nadella, engaging longtime rivals like Salesforce, VMware and Apple. There hasn’t been much love between Microsoft and Google, but an announcement on Wednesday points towards an easing of those tensions.
Google and Microsoft have reached a broad agreement on patent matters, with a legal settlement ending some 20 lawsuits between the companies in the U.S. and Germany. Financial terms weren’t disclosed, but the deal brings a laundry list of lawsuits to a close.
“Microsoft and Google are pleased to announce an agreement on patent issues,” they said in a joint statement. “As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility.”
They also agreed to collaborate on patent matters and work together “to benefit our customers.”
The suits that have been settled include those related to mobile phones, video encoding and Wi-Fi technologies. That doesn’t mean Microsoft has given up its campaign to collect royalties from Android device makers for the mobile operating system’s alleged infringement of Microsoft patents.
It’s not clear from the statement what patent matters the companies will be working on together in the future, but changes have already begun. The two companies agreed earlier this month to work together (alongside other firms like Netflix and Mozilla) on a royalty-free video codec.
It remains to be seen if the settlement will lead to more work between Microsoft and Google in other areas. A major sticking point for consumers has been the lack of a Google-made YouTube app for smartphones and tablets running Windows.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/aroundnet-category/microsoft-google-cease-fire-in-global-patent-deal.html
Stagefright 2.0 Exploits Android Vulnerabilities
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Newly found vulnerabilities in the way Android handles media files can allow attackers to compromise devices by tricking users into visiting maliciously crafted Web pages.
The vulnerabilities can lead to remote code execution on almost all devices that run Android, starting with version 1.0 of the OS released in 2008 to the latest 5.1.1, researchers from mobile security firm Zimperium said in a report published Thursday.
The flaws are in the way Android processes the metadata of MP3 audio files and MP4 video files, and they can be exploited when the Android system or another app that relies on Android’s media libraries previews such files.
The Zimperium researchers found similar multimedia processing flaws earlier this year in an Android library called Stagefright that could have been exploited by simply sending Android devices a maliciously crafted MMS message.
Those flaws triggered a coordinated patching effort from device manufacturers that Android’s lead security engineer, Adrian Ludwig, called the “single largest unified software update in the world.” It also contributed to Google, Samsung and LG committing to monthly security updates going forward.
One of the flaws newly discovered by Zimperium is located in a core Android library called libutils and affects almost all devices running Android versions older than 5.0 (Lollipop). The vulnerability can also be exploited in Android Lollipop (5.0 – 5.1.1) by combining it with another bug found in the Stagefright library.
The Zimperium researchers refer to the new attack as Stagefright 2.0 and believe that it affects more than 1 billion devices.
Since the previous attack vector of MMS was closed in newer versions of Google Hangouts and other messaging apps after the previous Stagefright flaws were found, the most straight-forward exploitation method for the latest vulnerabilities is through Web browsers, the Zimperium researchers said.
Zimperium reported the flaws to Google on Aug. 15 and plans to release proof-of-concept exploit code once a fix is released.
That fix will come on Oct. 5 as part of the new scheduled monthly Android security update, a Google representative said.
Source-http://www.thegurureview.net/mobile-category/stagefright-2-0-exploits-android-vulnerabilities.html