Office 365 Subscription Slows Signficantly 

Microsoft said that consumer subscriptions to Office 365 topped 23 million, signaling that the segment’s once quite large year-over-year growth had slowed significantly.

Is Qualcomm In Trouble?

Qualcomm’s activities in China may lead to regulatory penalties for the chip vendor, this time from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over bribery allegations.

The company is currently facing an anti-monopoly probe from Chinese authorities for allegedly overcharging clients. Qualcomm  has also said that the SEC may also consider penalizing the company, as part of an anti-corruption investigation.

The SEC’s Los Angeles Regional Office has made a preliminary decision to recommend that the SEC take action against Qualcomm for violating anti-bribery controls, the company said in its second quarter report. The accusations involve Qualcomm offering benefits to “individuals associated with Chinese state-owned companies or agencies,” the report added.

Both the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice have been probing the company over alleged violations of the nation’s Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In cooperation with those official investigations, Qualcomm said it’s found instances of preferential hiring, and giving gifts and other benefits to “several individuals” with China’s state-owned companies. The gifts and benefits amounted to less than US$250,000 in value.

If the SEC takes action against Qualcomm, penalties could include giving up profits, facing injunctions, and other monetary penalties, the company said. Earlier this month, Qualcomm filed a submission with the U.S. regulator, countering any claims of wrongdoing.

Qualcomm is facing the investigations at a time when China is increasingly become a bigger part of its business. The nation is the world’s largest smartphone market, and more Chinese device manufacturers are expanding globally.

Last year, however, Chinese regulators began investigating Qualcomm due to complaints from industry groups. The company was allegedly abusing its market position and charging higher fees for its patent licensing business. In November, Chinese authorities conducted two surprise raids of Qualcomm offices in China for documents.

Chinese regulators could decide to penalize Qualcomm by confiscating financial gains made, and even imposing a fine of 1 to 10 percent on its revenues for the prior year, the company said in its quarterly report.

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Will GoDaddy Do An IPO?

Web hosting company The GoDaddy Group Inc is gearing up for a second attempt at an initial public offering, according to two people familiar with the matter, as the 2014 tech IPO pipeline continues to grow.

GoDaddy, the Internet domain registrar and web host known for its racy ads, would join a number of high-profile tech names expected to go public this year in the wake of Twitter Inc’s successful debut. They include “Candy Crush” developer King Digital and cloud services providers Box and Dropbox.

The company is in the process of selecting underwriters for its IPO, one of the two sources said on condition of anonymity.

GoDaddy was not immediately available for comment.

GoDaddy had filed to go public in 2006 but was told at the time that it would be required to take a 50 percent haircut — a percentage that is subtracted from the par value of assets that are being used as collateral — on its initial public offering.

The company instead decided to pull its filing, citing unfavorable market conditions.

The company, founded in 1997, was eventually acquired by a private equity consortium led by KKR & Co and Silver Lake in 2011 for $2.25 billion. Silver Lake declined to comment while KKR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other private equity buyers included Technology Crossover Ventures.

GoDaddy, which provides website domain names, is famous for airing bawdy commercials with scantily clad women for the past decade during the Super Bowl.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on the plans.

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SEC Plans Cybersecurity Meeting

The Securities and Exchange Commission said that its making plans to conduct a roundtable next month to discuss cybersecurity, after massive retailer breaches refocused the attention of the business community and policymakers on the area.

The SEC said that it would hold the event on March 26 to talk about the challenges cyber threats pose for market participants and public companies.

Recent breaches at Target Corp and Neiman Marcus have sparked concern from lawmakers and revived a long-running spat among retailers and banks over who should bear the cost of consumer losses and technology investments to improve security.

Last Thursday, trade groups for the two industries announced they are forming a partnership to work through the disputes.

U.S. lawmakers have also considered weighing in on how consumers should be notified of data theft. But progress on legislation is not guaranteed in a busy election year.

The SEC in 2011 drafted informal staff-level guidance for public companies to use when considering whether to disclose cyber attacks and their impact on a company’s financial condition.

SEC Chair Mary Jo White last year told Congress that her agency was reviewing whether a more robust disclosure process is needed. But she told reporters last fall she felt the guidance appeared to be working well and that she didn’t see an immediate need to create a rule that mandates public reporting on cyber attacks.

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Will Twitter IPO Shares Reach $20?

Twitter has decided to price its IPO shares between $17 and $20 when it lists on the New York Stock Exchange, the company said in its filing.

Based on an assumed initial public offering price of $18.50 — the midpoint of the range — Twitter estimates the net proceeds from the sale of shares of common stock will be roughly $1.25 billion, the company said in documentsfiled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Some 80.5 million shares of common stock will be registered, according to the filing.

Releasing its IPO price range positions Twitter to begin its “road show,” seeking to raise funds from investors across the country. In documents filed last week, the company said it would list its shares under the ticker symbol TWTR on the New York Stock Exchange, representing a big win for the market over rival Nasdaq.

Twitter has yet to determine a date for the listing, though one report suggested Nov. 15 could be the day.

Twitter’s IPO is likely to be one of the hottest of the year and the most prominent in social media since Facebook went public last year. Twitter’s share price range will be markedly lower than Facebook’s, which priced its IPO at $38 per share.

Twitter filed for its highly anticipated public offering earlier last  month.

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Is Verizon Interested In Clearwire?

Verizon Wireless reportedly has offered $1 billion to $1.5 billion to acquire some of Clearwire’s spectrum leases, possibly complicating Sprint Nextel’s attempt to buy out the company in conjunction with its acquisition by Softbank.

Clearwire is struggling financially but owns broad swaths of spectrum, the lifeblood of wireless networks. The April 8 bid from “Party J,” which Clearwire disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday, is the latest in a series of offers for its spectrum licenses. Unnamed people familiar with the matter identified “Party J” as Verizon Wireless, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Clearwire is a key part of a complicated set of possible transactions that could make a much stronger competitor out of Sprint, the country’s third-largest mobile operator. Sprint already owns roughly half of Clearwire and is bidding about $2.2 billion to buy the rest of its stock. That deal depends on Softbank’s planned $20.1 billion offer for 70% of Sprint, which is still undergoing regulatory review.

Clearwire holds 150MHz of spectrum or more in most major markets of the U.S. Verizon would buy only a portion of that spectrum. “Party J offered to acquire Clearwire spectrum leases generally located in large markets,” Clearwire said in the Friday filing, a proxy statement to shareholders on the Sprint buyout bid. The proposed gross price of $1 billion to $1.5 billion would be reduced by what Clearwire pays for the leases, which could be substantial, according to Clearwire’s filing. The company said it would discuss the offer with “Party J” and Sprint.

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Is Alcatel-Lucent Running Low?

Alcatel-Lucent, which was the combination of Lucent and French network equipment provider Alcatel, has been going through a tough few years as it battles against rivals such as Huawei, Nokia Siemens and Ericsson. Now the firm has reportedly looked to investment bank Goldman Sachs for a loan in return for the firm putting up some of its assets as collateral.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, the amount of the loan has yet to be disclosed and the firm even mooted the prospect of selling assets including its undersea cable and enterprise businesses. The sources said discussions about the sale were still at an early stage and claimed neither asset could fetch more than €1bn, highlighting just how far the firm has fallen in recent years.

Alcatel-Lucent needs to sort out its balance sheet because the firm needs to service more than €2bn debt in the next three years. The company might have to look at its vast patents portfolio, though whether it might sell them or merely license them is not clear at this stage.

With Huawei and ZTE winning business away from European vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens, it is not surprising that the firm is having to take drastic action in order to keep the lights on. However for Alcatel-Lucent it is a embarrassing situation for the firm.

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Oracle Wants More Money From SAP

Oracle is appealing the damages awarded from SAP that it was granted and is pushing for more.

The news has disappointed SAP, according to a German newspaper, and the firm is worried that the appeal will draw out the five year long legal battle even longer.

“We are disappointed that the lawsuit Oracle pulls further out,” said a SAP spokesman to the German newspaper Mannheimer Morgen.

“We had agreed on a sensible arrangement, because we believe that this case has gone on long enough. We remain committed to bring this dispute to an end.”

Neither firm has commented yet, but the appeal follows SAP’s admission of liability in the Tomorrownow affair.

SAP pleaded guilty last year and acknowledged that its Tomorrownow subsidiary had done wrong. Tomorrownow was accused of downloading information belonging to Oracle, including software and customer information related to Peoplesoft users.

Oracle was initially awarded $1.3bn in damages but this was knocked down to $306m by a judge who told it that it had two options, accept that sum or take SAP back to court.

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Is E-Commerce Next For Facebook?

A group of e-commerce start-ups, backed by some of the tech world’s most respected financiers, are hoping that Facebook Inc will become an e-commerce powerhouse to rival Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc.

As the world’s largest social network moves toward a $5 billion initial public offering, it will come under more pressure from Wall Street to generate new sources of profit growth and reduce its reliance on advertising, which accounted for 85 percent of its 2011 revenue.

Some entrepreneurs and investors increasingly think “f-commerce” – meaning e-commerce on Facebook – is the answer. Start-ups such as BeachMint, Yardsellr, Oodle and Fab.com are coming up with novel ways to persuade Facebook users to not just connect with friends on the social network, but to shop as well.

Backed by tens of millions of dollars from venture capital firms like Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, and other big investors like Goldman Sachs, these start-ups are pushing out shopping apps, hosting online garage sales and testing out new business models on Facebook.

“E-commerce is a huge category with very strong tailwinds and it’s a natural move for Facebook,” said Sam Schwerin of Millennium Technology Value Partners, which owns Facebook shares and has a stake in BeachMint.

Amazon revolutionized online shopping by crunching lots of customer and purchase data to come up with relevant, personalized recommendations. In the same vein, Facebook’s combination of data, analytics and payment technology could fuel the next generation of e-commerce, Schwerin said.

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Hacked Companies Still Not Alerting Investors

At least a half-dozen major U.S. companies whose computer networks have been breached by cyber criminals or international spies have not admitted to the incidents despite new guidance from securities regulators urging such disclosures.

Top U.S. cybersecurity officials believe corporate hacking is widespread, and the Securities and Exchange Commission issued a lengthy “guidance” document on October 13 outlining how and when publicly traded companies should report hacking incidents and cybersecurity risk.

But with one full quarter having elapsed since the SEC request, some major companies that are known to have had significant digital security breaches have said nothing about the incidents in their regulatory filings.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp, for example, said last May that it had fended off a “significant and tenacious” cyber attack on its networks. But Lockheed’s most recent 10-Q quarterly filing, like its filing for the period that included the attack, does not even list hacking as a generic risk, let alone state that it has been targeted.

A Reuters review of more than 2,000 filings since the SEC guidance found some companies, including Internet infrastructure company VeriSign Inc and credit card and debit card transaction processor VeriFone Systems Inc, revealed significant new information about hacking incidents.

Yet the vast majority of companies addressing the issue only used new boilerplate language to describe a general risk. Some hacking victims did not even do that.

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