Tivo boosts boxes, lowers subscription
Tivo has lowered the monthly subscription to its DVR service, a move that may be aimed at stemming subscriber losses.
The company dropped its monthly service fee for its machines from $20, with a one-year commitment, to $15. It also raised the price of its entry-level Premiere digital video recorder from $100 to $150 as it increased its capacity from 45 hours of HD video recording to 75. Read more
Can a company still be lovable when it has $100bn in the bank? For Apple, this is starting to become a serious question. The maker of iPhones and iPads arouses some of the warmest feelings among consumers of any brand in the world, thanks to a string of breakthrough gadgets and classy marketing. Something changes, though, when the underdog comes out on top – and there’s nothing like unrivalled corporate wealth to drive the point home.
Steve Jobs was fond of saying that he wanted to sail with the pirates, not the navy. In any popularity contest between the establishment and the lovable rogues, the latter always win hands down. But what happens when the pirates have made off with all the gold?
Minecraft makers Mojang notch up $80m revenues
Although Angry Birds, by Rovio of Finland, is the best-known videogame to come out of Scandinavia, it has a close rival in Sweden’s Minecraft - a game Sean Parker loved so much he flew all its developers to London for a party. Read more
Last week I wrote about the new iPad, which Apple sees as the poster child of a post-PC world. Can the PC fight back? New contenders from the leading manufacturers – Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Dell – are staking their claims.
Broadcom a pathfinder on location
Broadcom is set to make indoor navigation easier and our online lives faster with two developments – the networking chipmaker is launching a new location-finding platform and acquiring the Israeli fibre-optics company BroadLink for $195m.
On a visit to San Francisco, Scott McGregor, chief executive (pictured), discussed the new moves and the prospects for a company that claims 99.9 per cent of all internet traffic and 100 per cent of smartphone data goes across at least one Broadcom chip. Highlights after the jump: Read more
Apple iPad complaints seem like hot air
Apple must be wondering whether it was worth the improvements, particularly the addition of 4G LTE, to the new version of its iPad.
The extra mobile connectivity has earned the company plenty of criticism, despite it offering the opportunity to enjoy, at least theoretically, 73 megabits-per-second 4G speeds for the same price as the old single-megabit 3G models. Read more
Zynga bets $200m that Draw Something will become its next big franchise
Is Zynga hopelessly exposed to the hit-driven nature of the games business, or do its scale and business model give it a sustainable competitive edge?
Depending on your point of view, its acquisition on Wednesday of OMGPOP, maker of the red-hot game Draw Something, could be used to support either side of this argument. Read more
Buchanan adds Arm to knees and hips
There is no doubt that Arm Holdings, the UK chip designer, plays in the big league now. The Cambridge-based company’s designs are in most smartphones, and in coveted Apple products such as the iPad.
So it is appropriate that they have a weighty name for their new chairman. Sir John Buchanan, knighted in the recent New Year’s honours list, is chairman of Smith and Nephew, which makes artificial knees and hips. Read more
Behind Monday’s headlines of Misys’s board accepting a £1.27bn cash bid from Vista Equity Partners, the perennial takeover target also updated the market on recent trading – and the figures were not exactly glowing.
Third-quarter revenues fell by 12 per cent year-on-year fall to £89m, which the London-based group attributed to customers procrastinating over software licence purchases. Read more
Apple’s dividend and buyback – how it happened
Apple has announced plans to pay a dividend and institute a share buyback programme as it deals with a cash mountain that has grown to more than $100bn.
The maker of the iPhone and iPad said it would begin with a quarterly dividend of $2.65 a share, sometime in its fiscal fourth quarter, which begins on July 1. A $10bn share buyback would begin in its next fiscal year, starting September 30 and be executed over three years.
Apple held a conference call to discuss the moves (it also revealed a record weekend of sales for the new iPad). Our live blog on that, and the reaction to it, is after the jump. Read more
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Richard Waters has headed the FT's San Francisco bureau since 2002 and covers Google and Microsoft, among other things. A former New York bureau chief for the FT, he is intrigued by Silicon Valley's unique financial and business culture, and is looking forward to covering his second Tech Bust.
Chris Nuttall has been online and messing around with computers for more than 20 years and since 2004 has reported from the FT's San Francisco bureau on semiconductors, video games, consumer electronics and all things interwebby.
Maija Palmer has been writing about technology for the FT since 1999 and is fascinated by cybercrime, privacy and all the other issues of the information society. Based in London, she covers European tech companies and hopes that they won't all get acquired by American rivals.
Robin Kwong is the FT's technology, media and telecoms page editor in London. Formerly he was the Taipei correspondent and wrote about the companies that manufacture the vast majority of the world's computers and gadgets. He is interested in the intricacies of the technology supply chain and how China is increasingly changing the tech landscape.
Tim Bradshaw is the FT's digital media correspondent, and has just moved from London to join our team in San Francisco. He has covered start-ups such as Twitter and Spotify, as well as the online ambitions of more established media companies, such as the BBC iPlayer. He also covers the advertising, marketing and video-game industries. Tim has been writing about technology, business and finance since 2003.
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