AllThingsD » emerging market

Visa Acquires Fundamo, Inks a Deal With Monitise

Drake Martinet — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 18:26:15 +0000

In a pair of mobile moves, Visa today announced its acquisition of Fundamo, a mobile banking platform for developing nations, and an agreement with Monitise, a provider of, among other things, mobile-based person-to-person payments. Price of the deals was not disclosed. The moves come on the heels of Visa’s late-April investment in Jack Dorsey’s Square, a mobile payments platform for iPhone and iPad.

New From Google Labs: Google Plutocrat

John Paczkowski — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:00:30 +0000

The broader advertising recovery may take time, but search advertising is clearly beating a hasty path back toward normalcy. Or it is in Google’s case anyway.

Reporting third-quarter results after market close Thursday, Google (GOOG) topped estimates, posting net income that rose to $1.64 billion, or $5.13 a share, from $1.29 billion, or $4.06 a share in the same period last year. Net revenue for the period ended in September rose nearly one percent to $4.38 billion. Excluding items, earnings for the quarter were $5.89 a share. Consensus estimates had been calling for $5.42 a share and $4.24 billion in net revenue. The chart below shows revenue sources within Google (click to enlarge).

Impressive. Seems paid clicks grew 14 percent compared to the same period last year, and four percent compared to the prior period. Cost per click was down six percent year over year, but up five percent sequentially.

“Google had a strong quarter–we saw seven percent year-over-year revenue growth despite the tough economic conditions,” said CEO Eric Schmidt. “While there is a lot of uncertainty about the pace of economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future.”

Good to hear. Google’s shares, which have already risen more than 50 percent in the past six months, are on another upward tear. They rose 1.82 percent to $539.27 on the news in after-hours trading.

Earnings call highlights via The Wall Street Journal’s Andrew LaVallee:

4:32: Call starts. The cast is the same as last quarter: Mr. Schmidt, CEO; Patrick Pichette, CFO; Jonathan Rosenberg, SVP of product management; and for the first time, Nikesh Arora, president of global sales operations and business development. But there’s a twist–they’ll be using Google’s moderator to vet questions with voters. They vote on “the most relevant questions,” which go to the Google execs, the operator says.

4:35: “While there’s obviously a lot of uncertainty about the pace of the economic recovery, we believe the worst of the recession is behind us,” Schmidt says.

He adds that Google now has the confidence to invest “heavily” in its future. “It’s all good news from our perspective, at least in looking at the quarter.”

4:37: Says “we want to really get to the perfect search engine” and that many advertisers would like to spend more with Google if the company’s product allow them to do that.

4:38: Schmidt says “we’re open for business in making strategic acquisitions, both large and small.”

4:39: It’s Pichette’s turn. “At a high level, we’re very pleased with our Q3 results,” he says. The quarter benefited from growth in AdSense for content and display initiatives.

4:41: U.S. revenue up 4% to $2.8 billion. U.K. revenue decline affected by foreign exchange as well as ongoing macroeconomic weakness, Pichette says.

4:42: Operating expenses rose from the prior quarter, mostly due to payroll, equipment and facilities-related expenses.

“We believe the worst of the recession is behind us,” he says.

4:44: Brazil was a standout in Latin America, Arora says. We’re beginning to see signs of recovery in Europe and Africa, particularly Spain. In Asia, China performed strongly as an emerging market.

4:46: Looking at the display-advertising business, those have also shown strong results, he says.

On YouTube, new advertisers and partners are helping with monetization efforts. Ninety percent of the top 50 advertisers have run YouTube campaigns with successful results–recent examples include McDonald’s and Hewlett-Packard.

4:47: YouTube has signed deals with all four major record labels and several independent labels. Earlier today, Google announced a partnership with Channel 4 in the U.K., which will bring full-length programming to the video-sharing site.

4:48: Arora adds a personal shout-out to the sales team.

4:50: Rosenberg calls the new AdWords front-end one of the company’s biggest investments of the year. Advertisers have new reports, can run more efficient campaigns and can get new features faster thanks to the platform, he says.

Hasta la Vista: The Many Versions of Windows 7

Walter S. Mossberg — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 01:02:03 +0000

Last week, this column laid out the painful, tedious process that awaits Windows XP users in October if they choose to migrate their existing PCs to Microsoft’s forthcoming new edition of Windows, called Windows 7. This week, I aim to explain some of the other details and issues involved in upgrading a PC to Windows 7, even if you are currently running Windows Vista, from which an upgrade is far simpler.

Unlike migrating from XP–still the most common version of Windows, despite its age–moving up from Vista is designed to be relatively straightforward. It’s a direct upgrade process that preserves all your personal files, settings and programs.

However, even this easier transition involves some choices and limitations that can be confusing for mainstream, non-techie users, so I will try to sort them out here. Throughout this column, I will be referring to simple, direct, upgrades meant for average users. I won’t be discussing more complex methods that require things like wiping out, or dividing, hard disks.

[ See post to watch video ]

Unlike Vista, Windows 7 doesn’t require beefier hardware than its immediate predecessor. It should work fine on nearly every Vista PC, and even on many late-model computers running XP. In fact, it is a bit less demanding than Vista. For instance, Microsoft (MSFT) has repeatedly demonstrated Windows 7 working on low-powered netbooks that choked on Vista.

However, just like Vista, Windows 7 will be sold in a multitude of different editions, and deciding which one to buy can be confusing. There are six different flavors, though one is reserved for countries Microsoft calls “emerging markets.” Of the remaining five, one is for big businesses. Another, a stripped-down edition called Starter, can’t be installed as a direct upgrade for existing computers, according to Microsoft.

Most consumers will likely choose Windows 7 Home Premium, which costs $120 for upgraders and has all the key Windows 7 features. The next step up, called Professional, adds a few extras that may be especially useful for consumers who work at large companies or use older, specialized programs. Most notably, the Professional edition, unlike the Home Premium version, can remotely tap into certain corporate networks that use a system called “Domain Joining.” And the Professional version has the ability to run older Windows XP programs that wouldn’t otherwise work in Windows 7. It costs $200 for upgraders. The other likely choice is called Ultimate. It combines every feature of the other editions but costs upgraders $100 more than Home Premium.

There are limitations on which current Vista machines can be directly upgraded to the various versions of Windows 7. In general, you can only upgrade your current version of Vista to the comparable version of Windows 7. For instance, Vista Home Premium can only be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium and Vista Business can only be upgraded to Windows 7 Professional. This rule has two exceptions. Any flavor of Vista except Starter can be upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate, if you care to spend the extra money. And Vista Home Basic can be upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium.

All of the three common consumer versions of Windows 7 can run inside virtual machines, such as the faux Windows computers created on Apple (AAPL) Macintosh hardware using the Fusion and Parallels software. However, the upgrade rules still apply.

After you’ve installed Windows 7, you can move up from Home Premium to Professional with minimal extra effort, for an added sum, by using a program from Microsoft called Windows Anytime Upgrade. This unlocks the added features of Professional, which were actually already on your machine, but were hidden. You can do the same thing to move up to Ultimate.

However, there’s another complication. For each of the three main consumer versions of Windows 7, there are actually two editions. One is meant for PCs with standard processors, called 32-bit processors, and the other for PCs that sport newer processors called 64-bit processors. The 32-bit version of Windows can recognize only 3 gigabytes of memory, but the 64-bit version can use much, much more. For most average users, 3 gigabytes is plenty, but some consumers have 64-bit Vista machines, which can move faster when lots of programs are being used at once, or when doing tasks like playing back high-definition video.

The problem is that you cannot directly upgrade 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7, or vice versa. So that adds another layer of complexity to the upgrade process.

Finally, a note about prices. Most major Windows PC makers are offering free, or very low cost, upgrades to Windows 7 later, if you buy a Vista PC now. They are doing this, in cooperation with Microsoft, to discourage people from waiting until October to buy a new PC. Each hardware company has slightly different policies on this. However, this free upgrade program isn’t of any help if you simply want to keep your existing PC and upgrade it to Windows 7.

You can learn more about the various editions of Windows 7 at: windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/compare-editions?T1=tab01. And I’ll have a full review closer to its Oct. 22 release date.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

IBM: The "M" Stands for "Mobility"

John Paczkowski — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:19:06 +0000

Between 2006 and 2011, IBM expects the number of mobile phone users to increase by 191 percent to approximately one billion. Little wonder then that the company is dedicating more resources to mobile services-related R&D. With mobile computing becoming increasingly more ubiquitous, it would be foolish not to.

On Thursday, Big Blue said it plans to invest $100 million over the next five years in mobile computing efforts, specifically emerging market mobility, mobile enterprise enablement and enterprise-to-end-user mobile experience. “Mobility and the associated analytics will change virtually every enterprise business process,” said Paul Bloom, chief technologist, IBM Telecom Research. “It will change the relationship between enterprises and their customers, their employees and their partners, enabling them to do business in more intelligent, efficient ways.”

A smart move for IBM, I think. With innovation in the mobile sector so focused on the everyday consumer, there’s certainly room for more corporate computing initiatives. And IBM (IBM) has the market heft and reputation to spur adoption there–particularly if it manages to develop some strong authentication and security measures.

IBM: The "M" Stands for "Mobility"

John Paczkowski — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:19:06 +0000

O3b. That's Short for (An)other 3 Billion Google Users

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:26:13 +0000

Google services are near-ubiquitous in mature markets, but in emerging ones? Not so much. That will soon change, however, thanks to an ambitious plan to bring affordable Internet access to some three billion people in Africa and other emerging markets. The company has allied with John Malone’s Liberty Global and banking giant HSBC to form O3b Networks, a reference to the “other 3 billion” people to which it hopes to provide Internet access.

Together, the three companies are investing $750 million in 16 low-earth orbit satellites that collectively will provide Internet back-haul capacity to areas that lack it. This additional capacity will make it substantially easier and less expensive for others to deliver high-speed Web access to underserved locations. Indeed, according to Larry Alder, product manager in Google’s (GOOG) alternative access group, the project could drop the cost of bandwidth in those regions by 95 percent. Said Alder, “This really fits into Google’s mission to extend Internet use around the developing world.”

Fits nicely into Google’s mission to extend Google use around the world as well. “Google has an interest in boosting the Internet all over the world to reach new masses,” said Bank Degroof Group fund manager Wim Zwanenburg. “The growth market for Internet and mobile phones is in emerging countries.”

O3b. That's Short for (An)other 3 Billion Google Users

John Paczkowski — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:26:13 +0000