Did Google Increase Microsoft’s Ad Rates?

Google might have increased Microsoft’s ad rates 50 fold, a Bloomberg report says.

Someone familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is looking into the rate increase.

It will also be looking into other allegations against Google about advertising as a result of complaints from Microsoft.

This is part of a larger antitrust probe into Google that began earlier this year, the source told Bloomberg.

An antitrust lawyer at Doyle Barlow & Mazard PLLC in Washington, Andre Barlow, told Bloomberg that, if true, the Microsoft allegations could be used to help the FTC build a case showing that Google has abused its power as the owner of the world’s most popular search engine, violating the Sherman Act and other antitrust laws.

He said, “A lot of this conduct, when put together with a firm with market power, could be viewed as a violation” of antitrust laws.

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RIM’s Woes Continue

PlayBook shipments dropped in half for Research In Motion during its second quarter, which also saw revenue continue its steep decline.

RIM shipped just 200,000 PlayBooks in the second quarter, down from 500,000 last quarter, when it started offering the tablet device.

Revenue was US$4.2 billion, hitting the low end of the company’s expectation and down 10 percent from the same quarter last year. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected $4.47 billion.

RIM’s net income was $329 million, or $0.63 per share. Adjusted net income was $419 million, or $0.80 per share. Analysts were expecting better: Those polled by Thomson predicted $0.87 per share.

RIM shipped 10.6 million smartphones during the second quarter. In June, RIM warned that the second quarter might be weak because of delays in shipping new phones. The delays meant RIM would miss the back-to-school sales period, negatively impacting sales, it said at the time.

Executives who spoke during a conference call to discuss the results put a positive spin on phone sales, however. The company only began launching phones running the new BlackBerry 7 software within the past few weeks, and so far it’s the “largest and most successful launch in our history,” Mike Lazaridis, co-CEO of RIM, said during the call.

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Will HP Temporarily Resurrects The TouchPad?

Hewlett Packard Co plans to produce “one last run” of TouchPads, days after declaring it will discontinue a line of tablets that failed to challenge Apple Inc’s domination of the booming market.

A day after the chief of HP’s personal devices division told Reuters the TouchPad might get a second lease on life, HP announced a temporary about-face on the gadget after being “pleasantly surprised” by the outsized demand generated by a weekend fire-sale.

HP slashed the price of its tablet to $99 from $399 and $499 the weekend after announcing the TouchPad’s demise on August 18, part of a raft of decisions intended to move HP away from the consumer and focus on enterprise clientele.

That ignited an online frenzy and long lines at retailers as bargain-hunters chased down a gadget that had been on store shelves just six weeks.

“The speed at which it disappeared from inventory has been stunning,” the company said. “We have decided to produce one last run of TouchPads to meet unfulfilled demand.”

HP may lose money on every TouchPad in its final production run. According to IHS iSuppli’s preliminary estimates, the 32GB version carries a bill of materials of $318.

“We don’t know exactly when these units will be available or how many we’ll get, and we can’t promise we’ll have enough for everyone. We do know that it will be at least a few weeks before you can purchase,” HP said in a blogpost.

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RIM Unveils New BlackBerry Torch Phones

Research In Motion on Wednesday unveiled two more powerful versions of its touchscreen BlackBerry Torch, hoping to buy time until it can introduce a radically new software package in its smartphones.

The new smartphones, along with a Bold upgrade unveiled earlier, are part of what the Canadian company called its biggest global launch ever as it seeks to claw back North American market share losses from Apple’s iconic iPhone and a slew of devices running on Google’s Android software.

The three touchscreen phones, running on the new BlackBerry OS 7, each boast an improved screen display and pack a 1.2 GHz processor from Qualcomm, the most powerful ever for a BlackBerry phone. All three devices will launch with carriers globally by the end of August, RIM said.

The browser for the new phones is 40 percent faster than the original Torch, RIM’s last major phone launch which hit shelves almost a year ago.

But since co-chief executive Mike Lazaridis has already promised “superphones” next year using the QNX-based operating system running RIM’s PlayBook tablet
computer, analysts are looking beyond the launch.

“This is a necessary product refresh in advance of the big bang that we hope and expect will happen with QNX-based phones,” said CCS Insight vice-president of research John Jackson.

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EMC’s Data Breach Cost $66 Million

Between April and June 2011, EMC spent $66 million handling the fallout from a March cyber attack against its systems, which resulted in the compromise of information relating to the SecurID two-factor authentication sold by EMC’s security division, RSA.

That clean-up figure was disclosed last week during an EMC earnings call, by David Goulden, the company’s chief financial officer. It doesn’t include post-breach expenses from the first quarter, when EMC began investigating the attack, hardening its systems, and working with customers to prevent their being exploited as a result of the attacks.

In spite of the breach, EMC reported strong second-quarter financial results, earning consolidated revenue of $4.85 billion, which is an increase of 20% compared with the same period one year ago. Meanwhile, second-quarter GAAP net income increased by 28% from the same period last year, to reach $546 million. The company saw large growth in its information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure products and services, including quarterly revenue increases of 19% for its information storage group.

Those results led executives to increase their financial outlook for 2011 and predict consolidated revenue in excess of $19.8 billion, which would be a 16% increase from EMC’s 2010 revenues of $17 billion.

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nVidia’s Tegra 3 Coming To Smartphones

It appears as though Nvidia’s next generation quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) quad core SoC will also show up on smartphones too. Originally, it was believed that the SoC would only support the ever growing tablet space.

Inside sources have confirmed that projects are already underway and that Tegra 3 aka Kal-El smartphones will be make a debut as well.

Nvidia had hoped to get a lot of play out of Tegra 2, unfortunately the chip was not as embraced as Nvidia had wanted. Even though the Tegra 2 SoC did manage to get a few design wins.

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Samsung Asks ITC To Ban Apple Products

Samsung requested that the U.S. International Trade Commission ban the importation of Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods, ratcheting up its fight with Apple.

The filing, dated Tuesday, states Apple’s iPhone, iPod digital music player and iPad tablet infringe on five of Samsung’s patents involving telecommunications standards and user interface inventions.

Samsung also filed a fresh patent lawsuit against Apple in a Delaware federal court on Wednesday.

The complaints are the latest salvo in a growing legal battle between the two electronics giants.

In April, Apple sued Samsung in a California federal court, claiming the South Korean firm’s Galaxy line of mobile phones and tablets “slavishly” copies the iPhone and iPad.

Samsung then countersued in California, and Apple last week filed another lawsuit in South Korea. An Apple spokesman could not be immediately reached on Wednesday.

As well as its own phones and tablets, Samsung manufactures microchips for Apple’s gadgets, a business that brought in about $5.7 billion in revenue for the South Korean company last year.

Before banning the importation of Apple’s popular devices, the ITC would first have to agree to look into Samsung’s allegations, a process that could be quite lengthy.

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Facebook Is Display Advertising King

Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will reach roughly $2.2 billion in 2011, toppling Yahoo Inc to collect the biggest portion of online display advertising dollars, according to a new study.

Facebook’s U.S. advertising revenue will give it a 17.7 percent share of the market for graphical display ads that appear on websites, according to a report released on Monday by research firm eMarketer.

Last year Facebook garnered 12.2 percent share of the U.S. market.

The figures highlights the growing clout of Facebook, the world’s No.1 Internet social network. It has seen its valuation soar to roughly $80 billion in recent transactions for its shares on the private markets as some investors anticipate it could have an initial public offering next year.

While Facebook has grabbed the top ranking, eMarketer analyst David Hallerman said the overall market for display ads, which include banner ads, video ads and Web page sponsorships, is growing robustly enough that it is benefiting numerous companies.

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Verizon May Not Carry The PlayBook

Verizon Wireless is still evaluating whether or not it will carry the PlayBook tablet computer from Research In Motion, the biggest U.S. mobile operator stated on Wednesday.

While BlackBerry maker RIM had said it expected Verizon Wireless to be one of its distribution partners for PlayBook, the company said it has yet to make such a determination.

“We’re still evaluating the BlackBerry Playbook and have not made a determination as to whether we’re going to distribute it,” Verizon Wireless Spokeswoman Brenda Raney said.

The comment came the day after PlayBook debuted at North American electronics retailers.

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HTC Profits Rise, Lead By Android Popularity

Taiwan smartphone maker HTC Corp said first-quarter profit almost tripled, beating forecasts, driven by strong demand for its mobile devices, especially those running on Google’s Android operating system.

The company, which has just overtaken industry giant Nokia in terms of market capitalization, said on Friday that first-quarter net profit was $511 million.

“That its first quarter would be above expectations was well foreseen, Q1 seasonality was better than expected,” said Bonnie Chang, an analyst at Yuanta Securities in Hong Kong.

“For the second quarter everyone is expecting revenue sequential growth in the high teens to 20 percent, shipments will be strong and average selling prices are holding up pretty well.”

Growing demand for phones running on Google’s Android platform will help the smartphone market grow in 2011, boosting companies such as HTC and Samsung Electronics who are betting on the platform.

The smartphone market is likely to grow 58 percent this year and 35 percent the next, according to research firm Gartner.

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