After a year of litigation, which examined some 700 infringement
claims, the court in California ordered Samsung to pay more than $1
billion in damages.
The jury rejected claims by Samsung that several of its patents had been breached.
The verdict - which came after less than three days of jury
deliberations - could lead to an outright ban on sales of key Samsung
products and will likely solidify Apple's dominance of the exploding
mobile computing market.
Apple's victory is a big blow to Google, whose Android software
powers the Samsung products that were found to infringe on Apple
patents.
Google and its hardware partners, including the company's own
Motorola unit, could now face further legal hurdles in their effort to
compete with the Apple juggernaut.
Samsung lawyers were grimfaced
in the quiet but crowded San Jose courtroom as the verdict was read, and
the company later put out a statement calling the outcome "a loss for
the American consumer."
Apple upended the mobile phone business when it introduced the iPhone
in 2007, and shook the industry again in 2010 when it rolled out the
iPad.
It has been able to charge premium prices for the iPhone - with
profit margins of as much as 58% per phone - for a product consumers
regarded as a huge advance in design and usability.
The company's late founder, Steve Jobs, vowed to "go to thermonuclear
war" when Google launched Android, according to his biographer, and the
company has filed lawsuits around the world in an effort to block what
it considers brazen copying of its inventions.
The legal win came one year after CEO Tim Cook assumed the helm of the company.
Shares in Apple, which just this week became the biggest company by
market value in history, climbed almost 2% to a record high of $675 in
after-hours trade.
The verdict comes as competition in the mobile device industry
intensifies, with Google jumping into hardware for the first time with
its Nexus 7 tablet, and Microsoft's new touchscreen friendly Windows 8
coming in October, led by its "Surface" tablet.
Apple's victory could present immediate issues for companies that
sell Android-based smartphones and tablets, including Google's own
Motorola subsidiary, which it acquired last year for $12.5 billion, and
HTC of Taiwan.
Amazon - which has made major inroads into the tablet market with its
cheaper Kindle Fire - uses a modified version of Android for its Kindle
products but has not yet been subject to legal challenge by Apple.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Thursday, August 16, 2012
Facebook - Going, Going, Gone ??
Facebook's stock plunged to a new low as some of its early backers
got their first chance to sell their shares since its initial public
offering went awry.
Analysts interpreted the unusually high trading volume as a clear sign that at least a few of the insiders were seizing on a fresh selling opportunity.
That is stirring a debate over whether they are locking in long-awaited gains on investments made years ago or bailing out of the firm.
Facebook shares traded as low as $19.69 before bouncing back slightly. They closed at $19.87 last night, down $1.33, or over 6%.
Over 156 million shares were traded, more than five times the stock's average volume over the past month. Trading in the overall market was lighter than usual.
A breakdown on just how many major Facebook shareholders sold their
stock probably will not be available until next week at the earliest.
Securities regulations give them at least three business days before they have to disclose such transactions.
All told, investors who owned a combined 271 million Facebook shares could have sold their holdings yesterday with the expiration of a ban known as a lock-up period.
The restrictions were imposed on a group of venture capitalists, companies and Silicon Valley leaders who invested in Facebook during its formative years and sold some of their holdings three months ago when the company went public at $38 a share.
The highly anticipated IPO had valued the company at $104 billion, similar to those of Amazon.com and PepsiCo. The shares have plunged by nearly 50% since then amid concerns about whether Facebook is destined to become a passing fancy and worries about whether it will be able to sell more advertising on mobile devices as users gravitate there.
Facebook' stock traded as low as $19.69 before bouncing back slightly. The shares closed at $19.87 last night, down $1.33, or more than 6%. More than 156 million shares were traded, more than five times the stock's average volume over the past month. Trading in the overall market was lighter than usual.
The Facebook investors eligible to sell their shares yesterday included venture capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners; investment banker Goldman Sachs, software maker Microsoft.; Zynga CEO Marc Pincus; LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman; and former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel.
If there was mass selling within this group, Facebook's stock could decline further because the market would be flooded with nearly two-thirds more shares. Given that most of these investors put their money into Facebook five to eight years ago, they probably were eager to sell, analysts said.
But despite the sharp drop in Facebook's market value during the past three months, the early investors can still reap huge windfalls by selling at the current price.
For instance, Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook in 2004, the year CEO Mark Zuckerberg began the site in a Harvard dorm room. After selling 16.8 million shares for $640m at the time of the initial public offering in May, Thiel still owned nearly 28 million shares worth about $560m at yesterday's trading prices.
Accel Partners invested $12.7m in Facebook in 2005. The firm sold nearly 58 million shares for $2.2 billion as part of Facebook's IPO and still owned nearly 144 million shares worth about $2.9 billion.
On the other side, other key investors seem unlikely to sell additional shares right away. Microsoft, which invested $240m in Facebook in 2007, relies on Facebook's social network to help bring more traffic to its Bing search engine, making it less likely that it would risk antagonizing Facebook executives by bailing out. The software company also does not need the money, as it is already is sitting on $63 billion in cash.
The selling shackles will come off of an additional 1.66 billion locked-up Facebook shares during the next nine months to place more potential pressure on the stock. One of the biggest tests will come in November when about 1.2 billion insider shares will be eligible for sale.
The freed-up shares will include those owned by Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive and founder who sold 30 million shares for $1.1 billion in the May IPO to cover his taxes. Other Internet companies that have gone public in the past year have been hit hard by the expiration of their lock-up periods.
Shares of online reviews service Angie's List suffered their biggest one-day drop so far and closed at a new low following the expiration of a similar ban earlier this week. The price dropped, even though there was no word on whether any of the major investors had dumped their shares.
LinkedIn, which runs a professional networking version of Facebook, also took a big hit when restrictions on insider selling lifted last November. Its shares sank to their trading low of $55.98 after the lock-up period expired, but have since rebounded strongly. The shares closed at $103.99 last night, more than twice its IPO price of $45.
Source : RTE News 17th August 2012
Analysts interpreted the unusually high trading volume as a clear sign that at least a few of the insiders were seizing on a fresh selling opportunity.
That is stirring a debate over whether they are locking in long-awaited gains on investments made years ago or bailing out of the firm.
Facebook shares traded as low as $19.69 before bouncing back slightly. They closed at $19.87 last night, down $1.33, or over 6%.
Over 156 million shares were traded, more than five times the stock's average volume over the past month. Trading in the overall market was lighter than usual.
A breakdown on just how many major Facebook shareholders sold their
stock probably will not be available until next week at the earliest.Securities regulations give them at least three business days before they have to disclose such transactions.
All told, investors who owned a combined 271 million Facebook shares could have sold their holdings yesterday with the expiration of a ban known as a lock-up period.
The restrictions were imposed on a group of venture capitalists, companies and Silicon Valley leaders who invested in Facebook during its formative years and sold some of their holdings three months ago when the company went public at $38 a share.
The highly anticipated IPO had valued the company at $104 billion, similar to those of Amazon.com and PepsiCo. The shares have plunged by nearly 50% since then amid concerns about whether Facebook is destined to become a passing fancy and worries about whether it will be able to sell more advertising on mobile devices as users gravitate there.
Facebook' stock traded as low as $19.69 before bouncing back slightly. The shares closed at $19.87 last night, down $1.33, or more than 6%. More than 156 million shares were traded, more than five times the stock's average volume over the past month. Trading in the overall market was lighter than usual.
The Facebook investors eligible to sell their shares yesterday included venture capital firms Accel Partners and Greylock Partners; investment banker Goldman Sachs, software maker Microsoft.; Zynga CEO Marc Pincus; LinkedIn chairman Reid Hoffman; and former PayPal CEO Peter Thiel.
If there was mass selling within this group, Facebook's stock could decline further because the market would be flooded with nearly two-thirds more shares. Given that most of these investors put their money into Facebook five to eight years ago, they probably were eager to sell, analysts said.
But despite the sharp drop in Facebook's market value during the past three months, the early investors can still reap huge windfalls by selling at the current price.
For instance, Thiel invested $500,000 in Facebook in 2004, the year CEO Mark Zuckerberg began the site in a Harvard dorm room. After selling 16.8 million shares for $640m at the time of the initial public offering in May, Thiel still owned nearly 28 million shares worth about $560m at yesterday's trading prices.
Accel Partners invested $12.7m in Facebook in 2005. The firm sold nearly 58 million shares for $2.2 billion as part of Facebook's IPO and still owned nearly 144 million shares worth about $2.9 billion.
On the other side, other key investors seem unlikely to sell additional shares right away. Microsoft, which invested $240m in Facebook in 2007, relies on Facebook's social network to help bring more traffic to its Bing search engine, making it less likely that it would risk antagonizing Facebook executives by bailing out. The software company also does not need the money, as it is already is sitting on $63 billion in cash.
The selling shackles will come off of an additional 1.66 billion locked-up Facebook shares during the next nine months to place more potential pressure on the stock. One of the biggest tests will come in November when about 1.2 billion insider shares will be eligible for sale.
The freed-up shares will include those owned by Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive and founder who sold 30 million shares for $1.1 billion in the May IPO to cover his taxes. Other Internet companies that have gone public in the past year have been hit hard by the expiration of their lock-up periods.
Shares of online reviews service Angie's List suffered their biggest one-day drop so far and closed at a new low following the expiration of a similar ban earlier this week. The price dropped, even though there was no word on whether any of the major investors had dumped their shares.
LinkedIn, which runs a professional networking version of Facebook, also took a big hit when restrictions on insider selling lifted last November. Its shares sank to their trading low of $55.98 after the lock-up period expired, but have since rebounded strongly. The shares closed at $103.99 last night, more than twice its IPO price of $45.
Source : RTE News 17th August 2012
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