Larry and David Ellison at “The Wind Gods” premiere

A few weeks ago, Larry Ellison threw a party in San Francisco for the premiere of “The Wind Gods: 33rd America’s Cup,” a documentary that also called attention to a whole lot of high-tech sailing set to take place starting in July in the San Francisco Bay.

But that 34th America’s Cup has been under some level of scrutiny of late, ever since an accident the day after the screening that resulted in the drowning death of a member of the Artemis Racing team, after its boat dramatically capsized in the San Francisco Bay.

That possibility of danger is abundantly clear in “The Wind Gods,” which was produced by Ellison’s son and successful movie producer, David Ellison. (His production company — Skydance — is also behind the new “Star Trek Into Darkness” blockbuster.)

This documentary certainly isn’t a 3-D spectacular, but it is a pretty dramatic paean to how the tech mogul’s sailing team, BMW-Oracle, after a decade of failed attempts, finally snatched America’s Cup in 2010 in Valencia, Spain, back from the Swiss team Alinghi and its leader Ernesto Bertarelli, a former Ellison friend.

Emphasis on former, according to “The Wind Gods,” narrated in basso-profondo tones by actor Jeremy Irons and in the construct of the underdog — in this unlikely case, Ellison — against the villainous snob from Europe.

This despite the huge advantage BMW-Oracle had via its USA-17 trimaran, with its breathtakingly massive, fabulously computerized rigid-wing sail, for which price was apparently no object.

“Someone once asked me if it’s worth $100 million to win the America’s Cup,” said Ellison in the documentary. “It’s certainly not worth $100 million to lose the America’s Cup.”

Ellison was full of bon mots like this in “The Wind Gods” and also at the event, held at the new America’s Cup pavilion on the Bay and chock full of the Oracle team members — such as skipper James Spithill — as well as the enormous silver cup itself that now has a new carbon-fiber base similar to the materials the boats are made of.

“The biggest lie told in professional sports is, ‘We’re just going out there to have fun,’” he said in a panel discussion after the film was shown. “There’s one team that wins the championship — all the rest don’t.”

And Ellison later noted about being on the fast-moving boats in cold weather: “It’s very much like driving a car from Chicago to New York with the top down in January.”

After the panel, I did an interview with Ellison about the upcoming defense by Oracle Team USA, an effort that has been seen quite a bit of controversy over the dangers of the new boats in the upcoming race, called AC72s, which are 131 feet high, 46 feet across and 72 feet long.

Even before the accidents — there was a first capsizing by Oracle before the Artemis’ — the cutting-edge design has led to a series of worries about the success of this 162-year-old race and if a major lessening of the size and scope is needed now. Even Russell Coutts, the legendary sailing champion who is CEO of Oracle’s effort, said as much in an article in Wired magazine titled, “The Boat That Could Sink America’s Cup.”

“No matter who wins,” Coutts said to Wired, “they are definitely going to make changes: make the boat smaller, bring the team budgets down, stuff like that.”

Due to the high costs, though, there will only be the three teams that will compete in the Louis Vuitton Cup — also known as the America’s Cup Defender Series — that starts July 4, rather than more than a dozen that are more typical. Oracle Team USA does not compete in this part of the series. It will face the winner in the finals, which will take place from September 7 to 21.

Ellison is certainly not sanguine about the issues raised by the hyped-up boats and the extreme pushing of the edge, which in truth have been a reality since America’s Cup’s very beginnings.

But the unusual, perhaps never-to-be-seen-again, nature of the boat design is part of the reason for the film about the 2010 race, he said.

“It was important to document it, because that trimaran, that thing, 23 stories high, we knew it was never likely to sail again,” he said about the USA-17, which is now in a shed in San Francisco. “Not very many people would see it sail and it was such a spectacular piece of technology.”

In fact, its very existence was in question, due to the legal wrangling over the boat that Ellison had with Bertarelli, which is chronicled not in the Alinghi leader’s favor in “The Wind Gods.”

“You don’t think he’s going to like it?,” asked Ellison, with a sly smile, about Bertarelli’s arrogant portrayal in “The Wind Gods.” “He tore up America’s Cup rules and he did it because he thought he could get away with it and he was desperately afraid of losing.”

Since the documentary needed to be only 56 minutes for television, a lot about the boat’s technology was left on the cutting room floor.

“The engineering is phenomenal, there are 2,000 sensors on the mast,” said Ellison, who noted the new one for the upcoming race will also be outfitted from back to front with cameras and microphones.

“It’s primarily for the television audience,” he said, due to the efforts to make this America’s Cup, which will take place in perhaps the most picturesque setting under the Golden Gate Bridge, more interesting to viewers (races will be shown on NBC and elsewhere).

Ellison said he hoped that people not particularly interested in sailing will find the races gripping, although perhaps not in the same way he did when he first learned to sail taking lessons at the University of California at Berkeley when he first arrived in Silicon Valley. He was instantly entranced.

Why the attraction?

“I was always in love with the idea of sailing and the freedom it represents, the fact you can go anywhere with just the power of the wind,” he recalled, saying a series of National Geographic articles by Robin L. Graham about his solo 1965 sail around the world as a teenager was inspiring to him.

“It was an idealized version of it, but it was that combination of freedom and self-reliance that impacted me,” said Ellison. “What’s the right word? Independence. If you are a control freak [like me], you think that’s pretty great.”

Ellison has not decided if he will be on the AC72 — as he was at the last America’s Cup — as part of the crew in the finals.

“I am not sure, but I am getting into shape in case, although it’s a chore,” said Ellison, who is working out by running and playing tennis, but still makes fun of all the various athletes — including some on his sailing team — who are on a gluten-free diet.

Having already competed professionally, he said he might be satisfied to not compete himself, which does not seem very much like Larry Ellison.

“Whoever is best should be driving the boat,” he said. “In this case, that’s not me.”

America’s Cup practices on the San Francisco Bay resumed this week by Oracle, as well as Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand, for the first time since the accident — but with a drop in maximum wind limits and a list of new safety requirements. Artemis, which has had a new replacement boat brought in, has not decided if it is going to compete as yet in sailing’s premier regatta.

Until we know more and the next race begins, here’s the trailer for “The Wind Gods” to look back on the last one:

Salesforce shares closed at $43.25 a share, down $2.44, or 5.25 percent. Yesterday the company said it earned 10 cents a share on a non-GAAP basis on sales of $893 million. Both figures were short of consensus forecasts by analysts, which called for 12 cents in EPS and revenue of $935 million. Gross margins fell slightly, while operating expenses rose by 29 percent. The company said it expects full-year non-GAAP earnings of 47 cents to 49 cents per share and sales in the range of $3.84 billion to $3.88 billion, up slightly from prior guidance. CEO Marc Benioff has been saying the company is getting close to recording its first $4 billion year.

Most analysts today, including those at Stifel Nicolaus, Lazard Capital, Oppenheimer and Barrington, looked at the price drop as a buying opportunity. Most but not all. One analyst, Steve Koenig of Wedbush Securities, took the opportunity to cut his rating on Salesforce. Salesforce is a sufficiently large company that it can now be affected by overall shifts in the IT spending budget, Koenig argued.

One problem the company said it experienced was currency headwinds, specifically regarding the Japanese yen. As he does every quarter, CEO Marc Benioff appeared on CNBC’s “Mad Money with Jim Cramer.” The deflationary trends on the Japanese yen are hurting payments to Salesforce when they get converted to U.S. dollars, and Benioff said during the segment that Japan has become Salesforce’s largest customer. Previously that distinction had been held by Hewlett-Packard.

The Web giant submitted a bid for the video site this morning, according to a person familiar with process. Other people looking to buy all or a piece of Hulu include:

• Directv,
• Time Warner Cable
• William Morris Endeavor, along with with PE backer Silverlake
• KKR
• Guggenheim Digital
• The Chernin Group

As AllThingsD reported earlier this month, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer and COO Henrique De Castro have met with Hulu’s team recently for a get-to-know-you; Yahoo had previously tried to buy a large stake in French video site DailyMotion, but that bid was stymied by the French government.

Yahoo declined to comment.

The question, as it always is with Hulu, is what its owners — News Corp., Disney and Comcast — are actually willing to sell, and at what price. The three media conglomerates provide the site’s most valuable programming, primarily via shows that have already aired on their broadcast networks. Disney and News Corp. have been at odds about the best way to manage the site for some time; Comcast gave up its management rights as a concession to Federal regulators a few years ago. (News Corp. also owns this website.)

In 2011, Hulu’s owners put the company up for sale and were looking for a bid of at least $2 billion; in exchange, they would offer content licenses that would run for two to three years. But they ended up pulling the site back off the sales block after a few months.

Last month, former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin submitted a starting bid of $500 million, with the understanding that he would be willing to pay more for extended licenses. Bloomberg first reported on the KKR and William Morris Endeavor/Silverlake bids today.

Hulu hasn’t had a formal M&A process, but had asked prospective bidders to make an offer by Wednesday. That deadline apparently isn’t a firm one, so it’s worth wondering if the field will grow more crowded before this over.

You’ll remember that SAP paid $3.4 billion to acquire SuccessFactors in late 2011 (a deal that brought tears to the eyes of certain writers).

That kicked off a spate of HR-focused cloud acquisitions. Within two months, Oracle had paid $1.9 billion for Taleo, and Salesforce.com acquired Rypple and turned it into Work.com. This string of deals was taking place against the backdrop of Workday raising a lot of money from investors, on its way to going public in one of the more successful IPOs of 2012.

Since SuccessFactors was a cloud-born company and SAP is, let’s face it, an old-school on-premise software company working hard to transition to a more cloud-friendly way of doing things with its HANA line, it’s not hard to imagine some cultural friction.

That’s what analyst Karl Keirstead of BMO Capital Markets attributed Dalgaard’s departure to in a note to clients following the announcement. “We believe that there were some conflicts between the cloud development efforts under Dalgaard and the HANA and on-premises development team under CTO Vishal Sikka. We’re not altogether surprised by the changes given the challenge of integrating fast-growing SuccessFactors with a more methodical SAP culture, but despite this, SAP has made solid progress in closing its cloud gaps over the past 12 months,” Keirstead wrote.

In a company statement and on Twitter, Dalgaard said he’s going to become an investor. One other factor that is likely playing into his decision to leave SAP is the fact that he has a 3-year-old son who is battling leukemia.

Dalgaard just tweeted this about an hour ago:

Look forward to becoming worlds best professional investor – and continue to help SAP as formal advisor – will try to honor all I learned

May 24, 2013 9:56 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@LarsLuv

Lars Dalgaard

SAP cloud efforts will now be headed up by Bob Calderoni, the CEO of Ariba, another cloud company that SAP acquired last year for $4.3 billion, and Rob Enslin, an SAP veteran.

Keirstead worries that the pair may not bring enough HR-specific expertise to the business. Ariba runs a cloud-based network focused on business-to-business commerce — human capital management in the cloud is still a pretty hot business. Earlier this week, Workday reported a smaller-than-expected loss and raised its revenue outlook for the year.

As Keirstead at BMO put it: “Our key concern is that SAP’s on-premises business is most vulnerable on the HCM [human capital management] side, where Workday is increasingly competitive and where Dalgaard brought strong domain expertise. SAP’s new cloud business head [Calderoni] has no such expertise in the HCM arena and in our judgment will need to bolster SAP’s presence with some key HCM hires.”

For what it’s worth, SAP shares are down by more than 3 percent this morning to $75.85.

Asked during a pretrial hearing Thursday for her thoughts on a likely outcome, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote said her view is that the U.S. Justice Department will prevail over Apple.

Said Cote, “I believe that the government will be able to show at trial direct evidence that Apple knowingly participated in and facilitated a conspiracy to raise prices of e-books, and that the circumstantial evidence in this case, including the terms of the agreements, will confirm that.”

Though delivered with a caveat noting that she has not yet reviewed all the evidence in the case, and that her view was delivered without “the benefit of the testimony of the witnesses and further argument from counsel,” Cote’s remarks are a little unusual, to say the least, and don’t bode particularly well for Apple’s chances at trial.

That said, they also don’t reflect particularly well on Cote’s impartiality. The case hasn’t even been heard, and she has just gone on record saying she is reasonably certain that the plaintiff will win. And while her comments don’t quite rise to the level of smack talk that undermined Thomas Penfield Jackson’s ruling in the United States v. Microsoft case, one could imagine them resurfacing at a later date in an appeal if this trial goes south for Apple. Cote here is commenting on a potential outcome for the case without having heard testimony from Apple’s witnesses or the cross-examination of the DOJ’s witnesses. That’s a crucial test of truth. And if this case does end up in appeal, Cote’s apparent prejudging here could be harmful to her ruling.

Apple disputed Cote’s remarks and characterized them as premature.

“Apple fundamentally disagrees with the judge’s preliminary comments,” Apple attorney Orin Snyder told AllThingsD. “We look forward to presenting our side of the evidence and bringing our witnesses to court. We will prove that Apple did nothing wrong and that consumers greatly benefited from Apple’s entry into a new and emerging market.”

The case heads to bench trial on June 3.

HP said it had named Jim Murrin as its corporate treasurer, effective July 1. He’ll replace John McMullen, who is retiring after 32 years with HP. Murrin is a former senior VP and general manager in the enterprise services business. His current job — which he’ll be keeping — is SVP in charge of corporate development.

Since a lot of HP’s recent success on the quarterly earnings front is due to its careful management of cash flow, paying down debt and setting money aside for investment purposes, the treasurer job is a pretty important one that’s front and center in the turnaround campaign that CEO Meg Whitman has been pushing. Murrin will report up to CFO Cathie Lesjak.

Here’s HP’s original announcement:

HP Names Jim Murrin Treasurer

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwired – May 24, 2013) – HP (NYSE: HPQ) today announced that Jim Murrin has been elected to serve as treasurer in addition to his current role as senior vice president of Corporate Development and Corporate Financial Analytics, effective July 1.

In this expanded role, Murrin will manage the company’s worldwide cash, debt, foreign exchange, capital structure, risk management and benefits-plan administration, in addition to performing his current duties, which include assessing ongoing corporate development and company performance, establishing short- and long-term plans and helping to drive decisions on investment choices. He will continue to report to Cathie Lesjak, executive vice president and chief financial officer, HP.

“Jim is a highly adaptable and accomplished veteran HP leader,” said Lesjak. “He has spent the last 23 years in a variety of roles, including several senior leadership positions, giving him a diverse perspective that is especially valuable as we make progress towards the company’s turnaround.”

In January, Murrin rejoined the Finance organization in his current role. Before returning to Finance, he was leading the Select Accounts Group within HP Enterprise Services; he previously served as HP’s corporate controller.

Murrin will succeed John McMullen, senior vice president and treasurer, HP, who is retiring on July 1 after an impressive 32-year career with the company.

“John’s tremendous business acumen and collaborative leadership style all have contributed to his stellar reputation at HP,” said Lesjak. “He is a talented leader and dedicated mentor who will be greatly missed.”
McMullen is looking forward to spending time with his family, exploring new hobbies and traveling during his retirement.

Shutterstock / Andrea Izzotti

But Ergen also makes the case that Sprint would be better in the hands of an American than controlled by a foreign entity.

That argument appears to be getting some legs. On Friday, influential New York Sen. Charles Schumer expressed concerns that a SoftBank deal could leave Sprint — and the U.S. — more vulnerable to Chinese hacking.

“I have real concerns that this deal, if approved, could make American industry and government agencies far more susceptible to cyber attacks from China and the People’s Liberation Army, already the number one source of electronic espionage against American interest,” Schumer said in a statement. “We must proceed with extreme caution before allowing something as vital as our communications and Internet infrastructure from falling into the hands of a foreign company with reported ties to China.”

Schumer sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and acting Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. Both the FCC and the U.S. committee on foreign investment need to approve the deal.

SoftBank noted yesterday that it had gotten all the state-level approvals it needs, though the deal still requires shareholder approval — as well as the federal okays. A shareholder vote is scheduled for June 12, although a committee of Sprint outside directors is also evaluating Dish’s interest to see if its offer might yet lead to a superior bid.

As for Schumer’s interest, a person close to SoftBank notes that Dish’s top government relations executive — Jessica Straus — is also Schumer’s former chief fundraiser.

Dish praised Schumer’s letter. “We are pleased that Sen. Schumer shares our concern with SoftBank’s attempt to control an asset of national strategic importance and that he is calling for a careful review of a transaction that could ‘undermine core U.S. national-security interests.’ ” a Dish spokesman told AllThingsD.

A U.S.-based spokesman for SoftBank said, “The blatant attempt to politicize the (government approval) process by Dish is inappropriate and threatens to discourage important foreign investment in the United States.”

SoftBank has also been working on plans to ease government concerns over Chinese influence. One approach would let the U.S. have approval over one of SoftBank’s Sprint board members who would have responsibility for national security issues.

Image: Shutterstock / Andrea Izzotti

Enjoy:

That’s what Snapdeal and its investors are betting on. The India e-commerce marketplace is coming off of a $50 million Series C investment round, which included participation by eBay, pushing total funding past $100 million.

Snapdeal cofounders Rohit Bansal (left) and Kunal Bahl

The 800-person company started as a site that listed deals for services, but has since shifted to one that sells everything from consumer electronics to women’s shoes — all from third parties, akin to the Amazon Marketplace.

I sat down with CEO Kunal Bahl earlier this week, while he was on one of his biannual U.S. visits where he meets with investors and other e-commerce entrepreneurs. Here’s an edited version of our conversation:

Jason Del Rey: You started as a deals site, a la Groupon. Why the switch to a broad online marketplace model?

We started in February 2010 as a local merchants marketplace for services. Merchants would come and list their discounted services for an entire year. It wasn’t valued for just one day, like daily deals. It helped us build a lot of traffic and become a household name. Within six months, there were 50 players in the space.

By mid-2011, something interesting was happening. Merchants started reaching out, saying, “You have a lot of reach, and I manufacture watches, or men’s footwear. Can I list these on Snapdeal?” We started testing out listing physical products and showing early progress. Then we took a trip to China that convinced us this was the way forward.

What was that trip?

At the end of 2011, we visited China and did the same trip there that we do here, where we meet with investors and e-commerce companies. It gave us a very deep understanding of where India is headed in the next six or seven years. It’s very hard for us to relate to eBay or Amazon, because they are 20 years ahead of us. But Chinese companies are a lot scrappier, and maybe only six or seven years ahead of us. It’s a lot easier for us to empathize with them.

How much of your business is still the deals business?

One percent. This is the pivot Groupon always wanted to make. But they wouldn’t have been able to make it, because eBay and Amazon are already there.

But eBay, for example, is also in India, right?

EBay came to India in 2004. They’ve done a pretty good job, but are focused on C-to-C. Our focus is B-to-C, primarily. Globally, marketplaces are moving more and more to B-to-C.

Why’s that?

It’s very difficult to build trust in C-to-C. In B-to-C, you really know who the seller is. It’s typically high-trust, and tends to get faster traction.

And here is the macro reason: India retail is about 600 billion, out of which about 7 percent is modern, organized retail like big-box stores. Everything else is small mom-and-pops, export/import businesses. No individual fashion brand does more than $200 million in sales. There’s huge fragmentation from the supply side and retail distribution. The marketplace is really set up to aggregate long-tail of supply on one side and demand on the other.

You say you have 20 million registered users. How many visit the site each month?

About 14 to 15 million.

How do you market to them right now?

Mostly email. We create customer segments, and email at different frequency with different segments. We’ve also put a lot of effort into personalization and recommendation on-site. Those things account for 25 percent of our sales right now.

Amazon and eBay now have huge advertising businesses. Do you sell advertising on your site?

We recently started testing it. In the coming quarter or two, we’ll be launching our own ad exchange, giving sellers the opportunity to get prominent placement, but not in search results. We’re going to have a display ad network on the site for sellers.

eBay just led a $50 million round in Snapdeal. How did that happen?

India is really the last large ecommerce frontier left in the world. The Snapdeal team has been successful in building a scaled business in 18 or so months. Needless to say, that attracted interest of many large players, given the importance of the Indian market to their future growth, to which they set very, very aggressive targets. One way to achieve that is through the BRIC markets. And out of the BRIC markets, India has a tremendous amount of headroom for growth. And, hence, are some of the big, global players very interested in Snapdeal? The answer is, “yes.”

How do you make money?

We take commission on everything we sell. No insertion fee, no listing fee; we will never charge a listing fee, even though most marketplaces charge a listing fee. We realize the market in India is young, and we need to reduce hurdle for sellers to come to list.

What cut does Snapdeal keep?

It can range by category from 5 percent to 15 percent.

What’s your revenue?

We’ll do $400 million in topline this year — gross merchandise value. And, in India, building a $400 million business is like building a $1.5 billion business in U.S.

But your cut of that is only 5 percent to 15 percent?

It averages out to somewhere in the low teens.

Is it safe to assume you’re not profitable?

No, we’re not. And that’s okay. There’s a time for everything, and right now getting to great scale is very important to us.

What’s your biggest challenge right now?

Making sure enough new transactors are coming onboard in India. There are 100 million Internet users and a little over a billion people. But only seven to eight million have done a non-travel e-commerce transaction online.

Khan, a former Samsung and Motorola executive, served a stint at financial giant Citigroup before taking his current post as co-head of security firm NQ Mobile.

“Think about the types of information we carry — photos, geolocation data, passwords, credit card information,” said Khan. “We have very intimate relationships with our smartphones.”

And individuals and companies need to do a far better job of securing all that information.

During his appearance at D: Dive Into Mobile, Khan talked plenty about security and where NQ Mobile is headed.

And, just as interesting, he offered his take on the overall mobile landscape including competition among Android hardware makers, as well as those such as Firefox and Microsoft that seek to take on Google and Apple.

Here’s the full video of his interview with AllThingsD’s Ina Fried.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130524/omar-khan-on-security-china-and-the-state-of-the-mobile-industry-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130524/big-blog-bet-round-2-tiger-global-puts-50-million-into-wordpress/ http://allthingsd.com/20130524/big-blog-bet-round-2-tiger-global-puts-50-million-into-wordpress/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 15:16:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=325099 It’s a big week for blogs: Tiger Global Management has invested $50 million in Automattic, the parent company of blogging platform WordPress.com. Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg said Tiger is buying the shares from early investors and employees, but said the sellers will hold on to “the vast majority” of their Automattic holdings. The announcement comes days after Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr (CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported that Tiger Global was associated with Tiger Management founder Julian Robertson).

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130524/big-blog-bet-round-2-tiger-global-puts-50-million-into-wordpress/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130524/apple-pumping-more-money-into-lobbying/ http://allthingsd.com/20130524/apple-pumping-more-money-into-lobbying/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 12:30:05 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=324992 Apple has never had much of a profile inside the Beltway. It shuttered its big government affairs office in Washington, D.C., in the late ’90s and since that time hasn’t had much of a presence in the nation’s capital.

But now, as it finds itself under increasing scrutiny for its business practices and tax policies, the company is ramping up its Washington lobbying efforts.

In 2012, Apple spent $1,970,000 on lobbying, according to Open Secrets. This year, Reuters reports, it’s on track to spend double that. So, close to $4 million.

That’s not a massive lobbying expenditure; certainly it pales in comparison to those of rivals like Google and Microsoft, which doled out $18 million and $8 million, respectively. But it’s high for Apple, which a decade ago spent a little more than half a million dollars on lobbying. And it reflects a renewed effort to make its voice heard by D.C. policymakers, one that began in early 2011 with the hiring of Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, a formidable lobbying firm with a number of executives who did stints in the Bush administration and the Republican National Committee.

Not at all surprising, given Apple CEO Tim Cook’s calls this week for a “dramatic simplification” of U.S. tax code that should eliminate corporate tax expenditures, lower overall tax rates, and make it easier to repatriate funds from overseas. If Apple truly wants a corporate tax rate in the “mid-20s” and a single-digit repatriation rate, as Cook said, it’s going to have to fight for them in Washington.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130524/apple-pumping-more-money-into-lobbying/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130524/best-buy-to-offer-50-off-apples-iphone-starting-sunday/ http://allthingsd.com/20130524/best-buy-to-offer-50-off-apples-iphone-starting-sunday/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 11:00:48 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=324998 Best Buy is planning to cut $50 off the iPhone in a four-week promotion that kicks off on Sunday.

The price cut applies to the purchase of the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 in conjunction with a two-year contract with Verizon, AT&T or Sprint.

The company is also doing some shorter-term promotions over Memorial Day, cutting the price on several popular but older Android models. From May 26 to June 1, Best Buy is selling Samsung’s Galaxy S III for $49 on AT&T or Sprint, a $50 price cut. Meanwhile, it is offering the HTC Droid DNA for Verizon for $49 ($150 savings) and the HTC One X on AT&T for free (a $100 price cut).

The moves come as Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 is now available for a variety of carriers and with Apple’s iPhones getting a bit longer in the tooth. Discounts on the iPhone are infrequent but not unheard of, particularly in the weeks and months leading up to a new model.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130524/best-buy-to-offer-50-off-apples-iphone-starting-sunday/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/that-social-media-show/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/that-social-media-show/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 06:59:02 +0000 Voices http://allthingsd.com/?p=325020

For lack of a better verb, I think the media kind of fucked it up.

– Ashton Kutcher’s current view of Twitter

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/that-social-media-show/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/nokia-adds-new-suits-in-patent-spat-with-htc/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/nokia-adds-new-suits-in-patent-spat-with-htc/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 04:23:24 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=325025 Nokia on Thursday said it had filed additional cases in its patent dispute with Taiwanese phone maker HTC.

The new actions, which include a second complaint to the U.S. International Trade Commission and a federal suit in Southern California, come on top of existing legal actions that date back to last year.

“We began actions against HTC in 2012 to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies,” Nokia said. “Since then, despite the German courts confirming infringements of Nokia patents in HTC products, HTC has shown no intention to end its practices; instead it has tried to shift responsibility to its suppliers. We have therefore taken these further steps to hold HTC accountable for its actions.”

An HTC representative was not immediately available for comment.

Overall, Nokia has asserted 50 patents in its various complaints around the world, including nine that were added through the new actions.

Nokia’s litigation with HTC is just one of many patent disputes in the mobile world, a legal landscape that includes battles between Samsung and Apple, and between Microsoft and Google’s Motorola unit.

There have been some settlements in the industry of late, including a deal between HTC and Apple that was announced in November, and a number of licensing deals between Microsoft and various Android sellers.

Update: HTC said it will take a look at the latest legal papers.

“Upon receiving the official document, HTC is to consider all legal options to protect our rights,” the company said in a statement.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/nokia-adds-new-suits-in-patent-spat-with-htc/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/apples-newest-iphone-ad-still-says-nothing-is-a-little-less-great/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/apples-newest-iphone-ad-still-says-nothing-is-a-little-less-great/#comments Fri, 24 May 2013 03:23:44 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=325001 The deceptively simple iPhone ad Apple rolled out last month has garnered all sorts of praise. Totally justified!

So you can see why they’d try a new one, using the exact same format, music and spec-less pitch. The only difference is that this time, instead of focusing on the notion that iPhones = cameras, Apple is reminding you that iPhones also = personal stereos.

So why don’t I like this one quite as much as the first?

My gut: Because when you take a picture, you’re probably doing it with the hope of sharing it with someone.

And while Apple makes a point of showing some scenarios where the iPhone brings music to more than one person, it is honest about the primary use case: Just you, your phone and some ear buds, sealed off from the rest of the world.

Honest. But not as much fun.

(Bonus content for hardcore Apple tea-leaf readers: Note that several of the shots in the camera ad showed iPhone owners using Facebook-owned Instagram. In this one, there’s no indication what service or software iPhone users are listening to.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/apples-newest-iphone-ad-still-says-nothing-is-a-little-less-great/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/googles-end-to-end-advertising-business-draws-ftc-scrutiny/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/googles-end-to-end-advertising-business-draws-ftc-scrutiny/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 23:54:24 +0000 Liz Gannes http://allthingsd.com/?p=324971 Bloomberg today reported that the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is taking a hard look at Google’s display advertising business to evaluate whether it is cramming multiple products on customers and elbowing out competitors.

AllThingsD independently confirmed that this has been discussed at the FTC, but it’s in the earliest of stages. Google and the FTC both declined to comment.

The players are all too familiar, but the game is different, as the FTC largely cleared Google in a separate search and patent antitrust investigation last year.

Google is nowhere near as dominant in advertising as it is in search, but the company has clearly been building up its advertising stack through acquisitions and its own product development — with regulators’ permission, so far.

The cornerstone of those was buying DoubleClick in 2007, which the FTC itself cleared. The commission said at the time, “We want to be clear, however, that we will closely watch these markets and, should Google engage in unlawful tying or other anticompetitive conduct, the Commission intends to act quickly.” Since then, Google added other important buys such as AdMob and Invite Media and built its AdX ad exchange.

The question is whether Google is using anticompetitive tactics to try to force its combined “end-to-end” solution onto advertisers, for instance by taking a loss on some products in order to make the full package more attractive.

IDC reported this week that Google had 24.1 percent of the $3 billion U.S. display advertising market in the first quarter of this year, widening its lead over Yahoo and Facebook.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/googles-end-to-end-advertising-business-draws-ftc-scrutiny/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/tremor-video-files-for-ipo/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/tremor-video-files-for-ipo/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 22:10:29 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=324942 Tremor Video, a big video ad network that has long been eyeing a public offering, has finally decided to go ahead with one. The New York-based company just filed its S-1, and should be headed out on a road show within the next month.

Here’s the summary of what Tremor executives will be telling investors:

• Last year they lost $16.4 million on revenue of $105.2 million; the previous year, they lost $21 million on revenue of $90.3 million.
• During that same time period, gross margins improved from 35.2 percent to 41.7 percent.
• Its ads run on more than 500 websites and mobile apps.
• Big backers include Canaan Partners, which owns more than 19 percent of the company, as well as W Capital, Masthead Venture Partners, Meritech Capital, DFJ and General Catalyst.
• Tremor wants to raise at least $86 million, and plans to trade on the NYSE as TRMR.

Video industry officials expect that rival video ad nets YuMe and Adapt.tv may also go public this year; all of them will be looking to compete in a space dominated by Google’s YouTube, along with smaller players like Hulu.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/tremor-video-files-for-ipo/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/jon-stewart-on-tim-cooks-less-than-taxing-senate-reception/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/jon-stewart-on-tim-cooks-less-than-taxing-senate-reception/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 21:10:39 +0000 John Paczkowski http://allthingsd.com/?p=324914 Apple CEO Tim Cook’s appearance before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations earlier this week to defend Apple’s tax practices was a largely uneventful affair, particularly given the issues at hand.

While the subcommittee panel described Apple on paper as an “egregious offender” that has “sought the Holy Grail of tax avoidance,” it took a very different tone while meeting in person with Cook. “So nice to meet you. I have an iPad,” Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R.-N.H., said while greeting the Apple CEO — a cordial, but fawning, welcome, surpassed only by that of her counterpart, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. who said simply: “I love Apple. … I love Apple.”

All of this was great fodder for Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” team. As Stewart quipped during last night’s broadcast, “Who are those people? What is the opposite of a Genius Bar?”

“Apparently there is nothing Apple can do to get us mad at them,” Stewart marveled. “We could find out they’re using kitten hearts to power iPhones and we’d be like, ‘Well, if it doubles battery life, I’ll take two!’”

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/jon-stewart-on-tim-cooks-less-than-taxing-senate-reception/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/draw-something-from-this-yahoos-design-chief-tim-parsey-to-depart/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/draw-something-from-this-yahoos-design-chief-tim-parsey-to-depart/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 20:43:28 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=324885

Yahoo’s design chief, the effervescent Tim Parsey, will be leaving his job at the Silicon Valley Internet giant, sources said.

As SVP of User Experience Design at Yahoo, which centralized the task under Parsey, he has been part of a range of redesigns of its major properties, including its homepage, Flickr photo-sharing site, email and more.

As I noted when Parsey arrived in early 2011, “in the 67-ring circus that has been Yahoo’s product organization, design was widely dispersed.”

Translation: It was not pretty, unless you enjoyed the Web stylings of 1997.

Parsey certainly had the cred in the design industry, with stints at Apple, Microsoft’s entertainment and devices unit, Mattel and Motorola. Just before Yahoo, he was a principal at a Seattle-based design firm called shiftalliance.

The British native ran Apple’s design studio for five years in the early 1990s and was the main dude behind Motorola’s freaky V70 switchblade mobile phone in 2001.

It’s not clear why he is leaving now, or where the crackerjack designer is headed. But, amid a lot of Yahoo turmoil since he arrived, Parsey certainly stabilized the design culture at the company.

Also in play, according to numerous sources: New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has a very “hands-on” style with regard to design — she pretty much considers herself the last and only stop on that train, among others, based on her experience at Google running a number of products including its pristine and much acclaimed front page search box. No surprise, then, she has involved herself strongly in the design process.

On his LinkedIn profile, which still lists him as working at Yahoo, Parsey talked about his ethos of design there:

“This is about weaving a global UX and UER organization from the existing 200+ designers and researchers that today support an array of different businesses. It’s part of a rather cool broader corporate transition project. It’s also very much about establishing design as a potent, world-class entity that’s fun to be part of.”

He also notes: “These days I’m very excited about the correlation between internal cultures that are truly ‘meaningful’ to designers ( and other functions ), and world-class design innovation.”

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/draw-something-from-this-yahoos-design-chief-tim-parsey-to-depart/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/kiloo-touts-175-million-downloads-for-subway-surfers/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/kiloo-touts-175-million-downloads-for-subway-surfers/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 19:58:38 +0000 Eric Johnson http://allthingsd.com/?p=324890 Danish mobile games company Kiloo’s most popular app, the runner game Subway Surfers, has racked up 175 million downloads since it launched one year ago. In that time, the game has been played 5.5 billion times, the company said in a press release today. Subway Surfers is often used as a reference point among free-to-play game developers seeking to monetize their games with in-app purchases. Kiloo’s IAP store has kept the game in the top 50 of Apple’s “top grossing” charts for the past nine months.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/kiloo-touts-175-million-downloads-for-subway-surfers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/hearst-taps-demand-medias-bradford-and-yucaipas-johnson-redefine-the-san-francisco-chronicle/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/hearst-taps-demand-medias-bradford-and-yucaipas-johnson-redefine-the-san-francisco-chronicle/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 19:49:46 +0000 Kara Swisher http://allthingsd.com/?p=324607

Media giant Hearst has hired two senior execs — Demand Media’s Joanne Bradford and former Los Angeles Times CEO Jeffrey Johnson — in a significant move to digitally turbocharge and jumpstart its flagship but long-suffering newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle and its SFGate.com website.

“They have deep publishing and new media experience and believe in the power of great content with a valued brand,” said Heart CEO Frank Bennack in a statement. “We are excited to work with them to redefine the choices for how and where readers can experience the trusted Chronicle content they depend on.”

In the new leadership, Johnson will be the publisher of the Chronicle, while Bradford will be its president. Both will report to Hearst Newspapers President Mark Aldam. Current publisher Frank Vega — an old-style publisher who has had a controversial tenure at the Chronicle — will retire, though Hearst said he will continue as chairman through the transition.

“The San Francisco Chronicle should be a shining star and use case of how to build a community and cover local news,” said Bradford in a text to me today.

Indeed. While the Chronicle and its website is the largest for local news in the Bay area, it has lagged a lot in aggressively covering key trends — such as tech — and the fast growth of the region. While the area has blossomed, the Chronicle, like many big-city newspapers, has suffered, as digital businesses of all kinds have made incursions on its business.

Its daily print circulation is now 265,000, and combined with its website it reaches close to two million people.

Getting all that a whole lot higher — and, perhaps more importantly, a lot more relevant — will be a tough job and will likely require a major reinvention of the Chronicle brand.

That is especially true since the San Francisco area, including Silicon Valley, is the world’s key digital hub, as well as a leader in a number of areas — from top-notch sports teams to having one of the most innovative food and indie cultures. After a few years of rough economic times, the city is on a bit of a roll, including being the location of some upcoming major events such as the Super Bowl and America’s Cup.

Bradford has a lot of experience in both old and new media and is well known in the online media advertising space, having had top sales and media jobs at BusinessWeek magazine, Microsoft, Yahoo and, now, Demand.

She has been at that content site, where she has been its chief revenue and marketing officer, since 2010. At Yahoo, previous to Demand, she was an SVP in charge of North American revenue and also worked on branded entertainment partnerships. At Microsoft, she was a corporate VP and chief media officer of MSN Media Network.

And, although I have known her well over many years — full disclosure: We are very good friends — I had no idea she had an undergraduate degree in journalism from San Diego State University.

Johnson is also a longtime media exec. He has recently been an operating partner at the Yucaipa Companies — owned by kingpin Ron Burkle — focusing on media investments since 2007. Previous to that, he was president, publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times for just a year, but had been its SVP and GM since 2000. At the Times, he was responsible for the newspaper’s digital and print operations including editorial, advertising, circulation, consumer sales and marketing, finance and technology. Johnson has also worked at the Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel and has an undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

The Chronicle is the largest newspaper in Northern California, founded in 1865 by Charles and Michael de Young. Its owner, the privately-held Hearst, is one of the nation’s largest media companies, with dozens of daily and weekly newspapers; has a huge group of television stations and cable network stakes, such as Lifetime, A&E and ESPN; hundreds of magazines, such as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Elle; and many other varied holdings.

Bradford will be replaced at Demand Media by Jeff Dossett.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130523/hearst-taps-demand-medias-bradford-and-yucaipas-johnson-redefine-the-san-francisco-chronicle/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130523/htc-firsts-trip-to-europe-on-hold-as-facebook-works-to-improve-its-home/ http://allthingsd.com/20130523/htc-firsts-trip-to-europe-on-hold-as-facebook-works-to-improve-its-home/#comments Thu, 23 May 2013 18:26:57 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=324860 The plan was for the HTC First to launch at AT&T, then also quickly go on sale in France and the United Kingdom.

But that plan is now on hold.

“While Facebook works to create a better Facebook Home experience, they have recommended that Orange in France and EE in the U.K. hold off on launching the HTC First at this time,” a France Telecom-Orange representative told AllThingsD.

Facebook is saying that it wants to work on retooling Home before it renews its effort to get the software preloaded on new devices. “As a result of customer feedback, Facebook has decided to focus on adding customization features to Facebook Home, and will limit support for new devices at this time,” Orange said.

At the launch of Facebook Home, the social network talked about a program to get more phone makers to preload the software. It showed a slide listing other hardware partners, including Samsung, ZTE, Lenovo, Sony, Alcatel One Touch and Huawei, in addition to launch partner HTC.

Neither AT&T nor HTC has commented directly on sales of the HTC First, though the carrier has dropped the price to 99 cents with a contract, down from the initial $99 sticker price.

Whether the HTC First will ever see the light of day in Europe remains unclear, though Orange said it still wants to work closely with the social network.

“Orange remains committed to bringing our customers the newest and best mobile experiences, and we will continue to build on our strong relationship with Facebook to provide these new experiences in the future,” the carrier said.

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