But it’s not all road rage and mayhem. Devour has posted a compilation of the softer side of Russia viewed from the dashboard — strangers lending a hand to fellow drivers, helping seniors and babies out of harm’s way and stopping so cats and other creatures can cross the road safely. Definitely worth watching, even if you have to mute the orchestral soundtrack. (via Kottke)

Lookout Mobile Security said yesterday that it has detected a significant outbreak of malware lurking inside 32 different apps that it says have been downloaded a combined two million to nine million times. (It’s unclear why that range is so large.)

Google was notified and the company removed the affected apps and killed the developer accounts associated with them. And Lookout’s product, the company says, gives its customers protection against it.

It’s called BadNews, and Lookout says it masquerades as “an innocent, if somewhat aggressive advertising network.” The network would initially serve up only ads, but later on, after having passed security scrutiny, it would start pushing malware to affected devices. Among other things, the servers controlling the apps were caught pushing AlphaSMS, a well-known app that creates fraudulent text messages.

One key takeaway is that apps need to be vetted and re-vetted more than once. “Enterprise security managers must assume that even very well-designed app-vetting processes will not be able to detect malicious behavior that hasn’t happened yet,” Lookout says. The delay in the bad behavior allowed it to be distributed pretty widely before the problems were detected.

About half of the naughty apps are in Russian, and AlphaSMS is intended to commit SMS fraud in Russia and neighboring countries, including Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Kazakhstan, Lookout says.

The folks at Lookout do happen to know a thing or two about hacking phones. In fact, its CEO, John Hering, appeared onstage at D: Dive Into Mobile earlier this week to show AllThingsD’s Liz Gannes just how easy it can be to hack a phone. It certainly doesn’t seem to be getting any harder.

Photo Credit: eBay

But the CEO has done well during his tenure at eBay thus far, kickstarting the company out of a period of stalled growth, spurring the Marketplace and PayPal payments businesses and continuing to see consecutive quarterly growth.

To keep this up, Donahoe is singing the same tune as the rest of the industry: Focus on mobile and target international markets. We caught up with him for a bit this week, where he expanded on eBay’s ambitions.

On the Rise of Mobile and Spurring Engagement

“We know that mobile users are more engaged than non-mobile users. To keep that going, the simplest thing we can do is to just be present and continue to make it easy for our customers. To do that, we’re building useful, compelling mobile apps and making the registration process very easy.

“For us, the registration flow on mobile devices in particular is easier — the best one we’ve got. You’ll remember we bought Card.io (a startup that makes mobile purchases much easier). You can just take out your credit card, take a picture and boom — you’ve made an account.

“During that first three to 18 months after registering, we see a kind of ramp up to what they buy, and the frequency with which they visit.

“Second, it’s the multiscreen users that tend to be more engaged over time. For example, we’ve seen you browsing on your smartphone and then you buy an item on your desktop. That’s increasingly the wave of the future. You’re going to have screens on everything — your smartphone, your laptop, your car, your watch, almost anything with a surface.”

On International Growth

“Here’s some facts in rough terms. There’s more than two billion Internet users today, and that number will double over the next two years. Think about who’s going to make up those new users — 78 percent of those new users will be in BRIC and emerging markets. You gotta go to where the people are, and the majority of those people will be accessing the Web by the smartphone.

“They’ve become global Internet citizens, if you will, but they want to trade, and in many cases there won’t be a local e-commerce option. Russia, for example, wants goods and services that aren’t available there. So they’ll shop on eBay. Because such a large portion of our business is cross-border, we see many consumers coming in from these emerging markets.

“Again, that’s where our mobile leadership really helps. There’s a lot being said about mobile first right now. We’re not saying it, we’re doing it.

“We’ve launched Russian mobile apps. We’ve got a large team of mobile app developers. We bought Critical Path Software. We bought Duff Research. The innovation and the cycle time with which we can build innovative work is getting faster and faster.”

MTS sells iPhones to rich people in the Russian capital of Moscow, but sells lower-end phones that bring in lower revenues in other markets throughout the country. That brings certain opportunities. For one thing, MTS has bought its way into banking. Russia, Hecker said, is “underbanked and [has] a low number of consumers with credit cards.” But MTS, he said, “has enough ingredients to make banking successful.”

Hecker appeared with Carlos Domingo, who has been spearheading numerous efforts for Spain-based Telefonica, and both gave a glimpse of the market conditions in their parts of the world in a joint interview with Ina Fried at D: Dive Into Mobile in New York.

Telefonica is also active in several markets in Latin America, where the mix of available devices varies quite a bit from the typical iPhone-Android mix seen in the U.S. BlackBerry devices are still popular, though they are quickly giving way to low-end Android devices. And Nokia still sells a fair number of devices running its Symbian 30 operating system in Latin America.

Regarding the forthcoming open source mobile operating system from Mozilla, Domingo said consumers still carrying an older feature phone may find it attractive when they’re ready to upgrade to their first smartphone. “We think consumers will buy the device if it brings value to them,” he said.

In that same spirit, Hecker said MTS puts a lot of effort into promoting Windows Phone, if only to prevent the onset of a true duopoly between Google and Apple. “Windows Phone is still a tough sell,” he said. “We believe we need to push it; no one else out there is going to. … If we don’t support it, we’ll have a duopoly until the end of days.”

Carlos Domingo

While it was heartbreaking to have to postpone the conference due to Hurricane Sandy, we’ve been using the extra time to add a number of additional speakers and demos to cover even more ground for the rescheduled event, set for April 15 and 16 in New York.

Continuing our pledge to make this the global edition of the conference, we’re adding executives from two international carriers: Carlos Domingo of Telefonica and Michael Hecker of Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), the largest carrier in Russia.

Michael Hecker

Domingo has been spearheading a number of initiatives for the Spain-based carrier, most recently leading its efforts around Firefox OS. Hecker, as vice president of strategy, M&A and corporate development, has overseen an aggressive acquisition spree that has helped MTS grow beyond just providing mobile access and become one of the leading telecommunications companies in the region.

Hecker and Domingo join executives from Brazil, China and Israel, among other locales, as well as top executives from Microsoft, Intel, Google, Facebook and Twitter — all part of a jam-packed lineup for the conference.

Mollie Spilman

Of course, what good is all this mobile stuff if you can’t make some money? So we’re also adding two prominent figures in mobile advertising: Google’s Jason Spero and Milllennial Media’s Mollie Spilman.

Jason Spero

Spero came to the search giant via AdMob and is now Google’s head of global mobile solutions (which means mobile ads). Spilman is Millennial’s EVP of North America, where she is responsible for leading the sales and operations, marketing and business development efforts; previously, she was CMO of Yahoo.

We’ll also have a new lineup of demos, as well as a revamped array of Global Voices — tales from around the world about people whose lives are being transformed through mobile technology.

Of course, we will have lots of coverage on AllThingsD, but if you want to be there in person you should hurry. The conference was sold out for October, and is likely to sell out again soon as just a handful of seats remain.

Yota Devices is betting on its soon-to-be revealed dual-screen product to break the mold of mobile technology– combining a traditional LCD screen on one side and an electronic-paper display on the other, allowing for seamless information streaming while promising better battery life than the average smartphone.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

The move nearly doubles the iTunes Store’s international footprint, raising the number of markets it serves to 119. And while the service’s offerings will initially be limited to music-only in many of those countries — only Russia, Turkey, India and Indonesia will support movie and video purchases — it’s a dramatic extension of Apple’s reach as a distributor of digital media. The addition of India and Russia alone increases the company’s addressable market by 105 million Internet users. Apple has 435 million iTunes accounts with associated credit card numbers; after today’s expansion, how many more will it have this time next year?

So this is a significant move for Apple. Not only will it boost revenue for the iTunes Store business, which generated total net sales of $7.5 billion during the company’s most recent fiscal year, it also brings important new content elements to the developing Apple ecosystems in those markets.

The addition of music, movie and video purchases increases the value proposition of Apple’s hardware. Remember, when it first debuted, the iTunes Store wasn’t intended to generate profits so much as it was meant to sell hardware. And that’s still one of its more important functions today. Enabling content purchases in these countries gives Apple one more hook with which to pull consumers into its ecosystem and keep them there.

The expansion of the iTunes Store follows the debut last week of iTunes 11, a complete overhaul of the media software.

Here are the newest additions to Apple’s global marketplace:

1. Anguilla
2. Antigua & Barbuda
3. Armenia
4. Azerbaijan
5. Bahamas
6. Bahrain
7. Barbados
8. Belarus
9. Belize
10. Bermuda
11. Botswana
12. Burkina-Faso
13. Cape Verde
14. Cayman Islands
15. Dominica
16. Egypt
17. Fiji
18. Gambia
19. Ghana
20. Grenada
21. Guinea-Bissau
22. India
23. Indonesia
24. Israel
25. Russia
26. Saudi Arabia
27. South Africa
28. Turkey
29. United Arab Emirates (UAE)
30. Jordan
31. Kazakhstan
32. Kenya
33. Kyrgyzstan
34. Lebanon
35. Mauritius
36. Micronesia, Fed States of
37. Moldova
38. Mongolia
39. Mozambique
40. Namibia
41. Nepal
42. Niger
43. Nigeria
44. Oman
45. Papua New Guinea
46. Qatar
47. Saint Kitts and Nevis
48. Swaziland
49. Tajikistan
50. Trinidad and Tobago
51. Turkmenistan
52. Uganda
53. Ukraine
54. Uzbekistan
55. Virgin Islands, British
56. Zimbabwe

Watch:

There aren’t a lot of specifics to get excited about in the 52-page report, though there are presumably some items of interest in classified portions of the report not released to the public. Huawei has had a difficult time showing to the satisfaction of Western sensibilities that its ties to China’s People’s Liberation Army are severed. If ordered, the thinking goes, Huawei gear could be turned into a valuable espionage tool in the event of war with the U.S. or another country.

The concerns on the part of U.S. lawmakers and the national security establishment are certainly valid, but not for the reasons you think. While Chinese actors have certainly been among the most active when it comes to attacking the networks of large U.S. corporations and stealing their secrets, the U.S. and its allies fret about letting Huawei in because they know from their own experience how imported electronics can be turned into a weapon of espionage and outright sabotage.

Remember that it was intelligence agencies of the U.S., in partnership with Israel, that turned deep knowledge of the numerous variants of Microsoft’s Windows operating system combined with specialized knowledge of industrial control systems to create the Stuxnet worm that damaged the Iranian nuclear research program. Later discoveries included other U.S.-Israeli cyber weapons called Flame and Gauss. Taken together, they amount to evidence that the countries had mounted a less-than-covert military campaign against Iran that could in time have significant unintended consequences.

Prior efforts include a largely forgotten 1982 campaign of electronic sabotage against the natural gas pipeline being built by the Soviet Union that caused so large an explosion that U.S. military forces briefly thought it was an early sign of a nuclear attack. The episode was documented in the book “At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War” by Thomas Reed, the late former secretary of the Air Force under President Reagan.

Another incident, this one not as well documented but the subject of a great deal of informed speculation, concerns a 2007 Israeli air strike against what was at the time a suspected nuclear weapons research facility in Syria. A report by the IEEE Spectrum the following year traced reports that a French chip company that supplied the manufacturer of Syrian radar defense gear included a “kill switch” that allowed Israeli bombers to carry out their attack undetected.

So it’s not from out of nowhere that such national security concerns arise about a Chinese telecom concern.

One fundamental failure of all this official hand-wringing is that it neglects the fact that many if not most of the components, with the exception of certain higher-value chips like those from Intel, are manufactured in China. Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks in the U.S., Alcatel-Lucent in France and Ericsson in Sweden, all use Chinese-made parts and carry out at least some portion of the final assembly of their equipment in China.

Huawei certainly hasn’t done itself any favors. While its most senior U.S. employee described the company as “an open book” in a surprisingly short segment on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last night (see the video below), its founder and chief executive, Ren Zhengfei, has never sat for an interview with a Western media outlet. And the precise ownership of the company’s shares are murky. U.S. regulators have prevented it from making certain acquisitions, and in Australia it was blocked from bidding on portions of a project to build a national broadband Internet network.

It hasn’t gotten to be the world’s largest telecom equipment concern for nothing. Wireless phone networks in Africa rely heavily on inexpensive gear sold by Huawei. There are suspicions about its dealings in this area too, though they are mostly economic. Huawei has a history of undercutting Western rivals in competitive bids by as much as 5 percent to 15 percent, raising suspicion that it is the benefactor of state-sponsored subsidies. However, it’s also to the benefit of these rivals to stoke the national security concerns as much as possible.

All told, it’s not as though there is no reason to be suspicious of Huawei, if only because the U.S. and its allies know too well from their own actions in recent years about the potential for electronic espionage, surveillance and warfare.

For its part, Huawei defended itself and attacked the report in a response today (read it in full here). The company said the committee’s report, an 11-month effort, “failed to provide clear information or evidence to substantiate the legitimacy of the Committee’s concerns” and “appears to have been committed to a predetermined outcome” and “employs many rumors and speculations to prove non-existent accusations.”

Without having read the classified portions of the report, which are said to contain more specifics — it mentions only vague instances of “beaconing,” which is intended to mean sending data back to China — it’s hard to argue with Huawei’s position.

Nor is it easy to dismiss the committee’s fears out of hand. Which brings us to the possible unintended result of all this: Might China respond with its own restrictions against U.S. telecom firms like Cisco and Juniper? Is this the first shot of a telecom trade war? We’ll see.

If that happens, expect Cisco to be hurt more than Huawei. U.S. sales account for only 4 percent of its overall revenue, whereas Cisco’s operations in Asia, the Pacific Rim and China account for more than 16 percent, and China was its second fastest-growing market in that region after Japan.

Huawei-ZTE Investigative Report (FINAL)

The latest company to fit that bill is MegaFon, a lesser-known but fast-growing Russian cellphone operator. Later this month, the company plans to start selling a modified version of Intel’s smartphone reference design.

The MegaFon Mint, as the phone will be known, will go on sale Wednesday for 17,990 rubles, roughly $550.

MegaFon joins carrier Orange and Indian device maker Lava among those selling the Intel-designed phone under their own brands.

Intel has also announced a deal with Motorola, though the first phones under that partnership have not yet been announced.

The stock market is closed today, as part of the Christmas holiday. But it is doubtful — barring any major announcements — that the vastly different performances seen by a range of tech companies will change much.

Which is to say, some companies — such as eBay and Google — did well, although only Apple shares rose significantly enough to cause festive feelings.

As of Friday, Google rose almost 7 percent for the year to date, eBay rose 10.8 percent and Apple was up almost 26 percent.

As for all the others in tech? Lumps of coal for investors of varying size.

Let’s start with the better negative performances: Amazon was down 1.95 percent, Yahoo was down 2.7 percent and Microsoft was down 6.7 percent.

Not exactly anything to wassail about. And Yahoo shares were only down a little, since the recent swirl around its possible sale gave its stock a recent bump, or the performance would have been worse, based on its financial results.

And the oft-troubled AOL? Down 35.3 percent.

The crop of new Internet companies was also not doing so great. The latest, Zynga was down only 1.2 percent, Groupon down 12.5 percent and LinkedIn down 32.3 percent. Pandora truly tanked, with a 42.5 decline in share price. Only Russia’s Yandex bested that, with a 48.6 percent drop.

Enterprise-focused companies also had a lackluster year. While recently public Jive Software was up 9.2 percent, Cisco was down 8.7 percent and Hewlett-Packard was down 38.5 percent. Juniper got truly socked, with a 43.6 percent decline.

The music you are looking for right about now is “(Hey, Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song” by B.J.Thomas, which you can enjoy here in this timely video:

“Let’s go. Yes, let’s go.” [They do not move.]

– Samuel Beckett, “Waiting for Godot”

In Internet terms, the removal of Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz happened a dog’s age ago.

In fact, it was September 6.

Since then, it has felt like a slow slog, especially contrasting the situation with that of another troubled Silicon Valley giant, Hewlett-Packard, which fired its CEO Léo Apotheker and appointed a new one, Meg Whitman on September 22.

Since then, in comparison, the former eBay CEO has been like the Energizer Bunny, making a series of major and often difficult decisions, including: Holding onto its PC unit; reaffirming its controversial deal to buy Autonomy; promising a decision on the fate of its webOS unit within the next two weeks; appointing new execs; and even buying a company.

To be fair, Yahoo did acquire advertising start-up Interclick.

Otherwise, still no sale or investment deal. No new CEO. No Asia resolution. And, perhaps most importantly, no clearly articulated strategy going forward.

It’s not that Yahoo’s leadership isn’t working at it.

Some fervently insist to me that there is a “plan,” as if there is some clever game of Internet Stratego going on that I cannot possibly grok.

Mebbe — but of this I have no doubt: The Yahoo board has indeed been huffing and puffing away, weighing and measuring, considering and debating.

A lot.

Maybe I’m just too impatient. I am (ask my kids).

Or maybe Yahoo’s beleaguered employees are, one of whom just wrote me plaintively, “unreal how they can drag this out,” in what has become a common refrain up and down the ranks.

Or maybe it’s the Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank, who are antsy and have considered a variety of nuclear options in order to get back stakes Yahoo holds in them. Said one: “The strategy seems to be to frustrate and exhaust us into submission.”

Or, finally, maybe it’s the newly frustrated recent bidders for a partial stake in Yahoo, Silver Lake and TPG Capital. Declared one to me after I warned that Yahoo might, in fact, drag the proceedings out longer than you might expect: “I thought you were kidding.”

Nope, welcome to the Yahoo waiting game, PE guys!

So, to help us all get through it, here’s a quick update primer on what’s what on the various fronts:

Who’s in Charge Here?

Technically, it is the Yahoo board, which is aided by interim CEO Tim Morse.

First, a word about Morse: By all accounts, he is doing a very good job as temporary head honcho — calming the troubled company, making swift decisions about daily operating issues and being a generally nice dude to deal with.

“He’s Yahoo’s no-drama Obama, in comparison to what was happening before,” said one exec, in reference to the more volatile regime under Bartz.

Still, despite his very pleasant all-hands meetings, such as one earlier this week, Morse had previously been Yahoo’s CFO and not an Internet-savvy visionary to give the company inspiration. No insult intended, but he’s the accountant guy.

To be fair, he is not meant to be the visionary, but many at the company are yearning for exactly that.

A role that is now being taken up again by co-founder, former CEO and director Jerry Yang, who dozens of employees tell me is unusually involved in operational details these days for a board member.

I get reports of sightings of him all the livelong day: Jerry in demand-side advertising confab! Jerry chitchatting with entrepreneurs from a possible start-up acquisition! Jerry weighing in on a variety of products. Look, over in the cubicle, it’s Jerry!

This is seen by Yahoo employees as a good thing and also a bad thing, since it’s hard to be running your little divisional show at Yahoo with the dude who invented it all looking over your shoulder, even if he means well. People naturally defer to Yang, the 800-pound Web icon in the room.

But, given the overwhelming state of stasis at Yahoo now — “No one can do anything until we find out how the story ends,” said one staffer — and employees eying the exits, no power at Yahoo really matters but the board.

You know, the board that has gotten the company to this moment of crisis and profound ennui, which is its own particularly ironic irony.

To better understand the power dynamics on the board, above is a little chart for you to peruse to give you an idea of which independent board member is running what key committee.

The only truly important one is the Transactions and Strategic Planning committee, which is headed by Intuit President and CEO Brad Smith and includes former Akamai President (and former Yahoo CEO candidate) David Kenny, top HP exec Vyomesh Joshi and other guy Gary Wilson.

And, in completely visible shadow form, Yang. Multiple sources close to the situation said he has been a key force in the strategery around a possible sale or investment.

This has caused not more than a little tension among board members, but everyone seems to like the much described nicest-man-in-the-room, Smith, and hopes his cool head will prevail.

Another important part of the board is the Nominating and Corporate Governance committee run by Patti Hart, who is energetically and simultaneously — if pointlessly — in search of a capable new Yahoo CEO.

Or, as I like to call this mythical person: The Unicorn.

The Deal

As I and many others have previously reported, there are bids on the table for partial investments in Yahoo by two very powerful private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital.

It’s a PE rumble, with a side of Microsoft financial backing! (I think Silver Lake’s Egon Durban makes a very nice Riff, while Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is the perfect Officer Krupke.)

My fervent wishes for some figurative and dance-accompanied knife-play aside, the bids are essentially the same in general and different in particular. Silver Lake is offering about $16.50 a share, while TPG is dangling a tiny bit more. Silver Lake has power entrepreneur and VC Marc Andreessen on its side, while TPG is trying to get Silicon Valley fave investor and start-up whisperer Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners and LinkedIn on its team. Both have ideas on CEOs, strategy and what to do about the Asian assets.

This type of deal could happen suddenly and you’ll hear about it quick, since the losing side will immediately trash it to the media.

As you might expect, each director has their favorite PE firm, with some not liking Andreessen, some thinking the TPG bid is a little light, some for a whole-company deal and some wanting Yahoo to hire its own CEO and run the place itself.

Of course, the last one shows a disturbing level of denial and should be a nonstarter, given the board’s abysmal record on CEO choice and its riding of Yahoo to this sad point in its storied history.

Here’s what to expect on the PE front: A lot of wrangling behind the scenes with frequent leaks to the media about what each side wants and will not yield on.

CEO choice or no CEO choice, that is the question!

Also a big factor are Yahoo’s major shareholders, few of whom like the partial investment deal, which is known as a PIPE (Private Investment in Public Equity), because of the insiderness of it all and because they prefer a whole-company sale at a higher price.

There is also pressure from activist shareholders like Daniel Loeb of Third Point, who has attacked Yang and others on the board and is ready to pounce with a proxy fight if Yahoo tries to override shareholders too egregiously. And, of course, the inevitable lawsuits over any arrangement that seems to block a whole-company bid.

That said, such a mega-deal seems unlikely, since it is too pricey and despite a lot of noise that Yahoo’s Asian partners were ready to strike with a takeover in order to get back Yahoo’s big stakes in their companies.

That’s kind of like buying a store to get back the cool pair of shoes you sold, but bankers love to scheme up this stuff. While it certainly could happen, it would be a bear of a deal.

Perhaps more like Yogi Bear, hopelessly angling for a tasty pic-a-nik basket — but grrrr anyway.

But perhaps the biggest factor in all of this mishegas is time. There is none on a lot of levels, most especially the increasing level of brain drain and drift at Yahoo. After the New Year dawns, this is going to spin right out of control and amount to the biggest internal challenge Yahoo faces.

An Asian Solution

As I and others have reported, Yahoo is entertaining yet another proposal to sell all or part of its Asian assets back to the companies, which make up a bulk of its market valuation.

The relationship between Yahoo and its Asian partners has long been fraught, and today the difficulty of reaching an agreement remains a vexing issue. That’s because it is hard and complex and because no one wants to do what the other side wants.

I am no tax attorney, but it seems as if Yahoo will ultimately come to some deal with China’s Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank, which could include big investors like Russia’s DST Global.

And, as I reported last week, the Asian partners want to strike a deal with the current board rather than lose leverage with a much cannier new owner.

It’s a tough decision in all aspects to strike, but would remove the focus on the fact that Yahoo’s most valuable asset is something it is not running and simply holds due to a good stock trade in years past.

Years past should be the operative thought here, since the Asian assets have nothing to do with what Yahoo needs to do with its core U.S. and global brand.

You know, the thing that allowed them to buy those lucrative Asian assets in the first place?

Strategery

And that’s the crux of all this, isn’t it? Yahoo needs a new strategy and fast.

Or it needs to clarify and hone its current strategies around advertising and media and define itself once and for all. While it often touts itself as a premier digital media company, it’s still not clear exactly what Yahoo is saying by that.

In fact, incredibly, sources told me that the board was still wrangling over the tired issue of what Yahoo is at its most recent meeting — essentially, is it a products company or a media company?

If I had to listen to that who-am-I-anyway debate again, I think I would scream, given how many important Web trends that Yahoo has whiffed in recent years, many of which were right in its own wheelhouse.

How much damage this has caused to Yahoo’s core business is a critical one to determine, with many feeling the situation is too far gone to revive it and others confident that this is simply an issue of poor execution.

I am in the middle on this one, but all the indicators of Yahoo’s business have long been heading in the wrong direction, and results in the next quarter are expected to underline this even more.

Thus, the board’s navel-gazing at this point is untoward, considering that it is presiding over the possibility of a sale that should not have had to happen in the first place. While it is not quite a fire sale, it’s no cause for celebration at all the attention, either.

In fact, it’s also pointless, since — if this all resolves as it should — the current Yahoo board will not be the one determining the company’s future any longer. Remember that: This group should and will be gone for the most part.

Yahoo shareholders and employees can hope, at least.

Then, it will be up to the next group of leaders to make the very hard choices — including what are likely to be massive layoffs and radical surgery on its offerings — for what’s to come next.

In the end, that is all that will matter. Until then, as usual, you’ll have to sit tight.

Russian intelligence agents also are conducting extensive spying to collect U.S. economic data and technology, according to a U.S. intelligence report released Thursday that concluded China and Russia are “the most aggressive collectors” of U.S. economic information and technology.

“The nations of China and Russia, through their intelligence services and through their corporations, are attacking our research and development,” said U.S. counterespionage chief Robert Bryant.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

China, which is the company’s second-largest market, accounted for 16 percent of Apple’s sales during the past quarter, with $4.5 billion in revenue, a year-over-year increase of 270 percent.

By comparison, in fiscal 2009 China accounted for only 2 percent of Apple revenue. Now “the sky is the limit,” Cook said.

Meanwhile, Cook said, Brazil was up 118 percent year over year, Russia looks “promising” and the Middle East should be a “significant opportunity.”

Apple is not launching as full an assault in other countries as in China, Cook noted. The company’s approach in China is basically the same as in the U.S., with six retail stores, 200 approved resellers, an online store and advertising. Other countries only have “portions of that” so far, Cook noted.

Around the world, Apple has 40,000 iPad points of sale, 50,000 for the iPod and 120,000 for the iPhone, Cook said.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer said Apple plans to open 40 new stores in fiscal 2012, with three quarters of them outside the United States.

In a study conducted by SuperData Research on behalf of Viximo, a social games and applications platform, it found that non-Facebook social gaming will explode to $5.6 billion in 2014, up from an estimated $3.2 billion this year.

At that level, the study found that it will represent 65 percent of the overall projected revenue, including both Facebook and non-Facebook social gaming networks, which together are expected to hit $8.6 billion in 2014.

Most of the non-Facebook revenue will be driven by international markets, where Facebook is not dominant, including Asia, Russia, Brazil and Turkey.

Some of the social networks include Hyves in the Netherlands; Tuenti in Spain; StudiVZ, a student-focused site in Germany; and Badoo, a dating site in the U.K. The study does not take into account the entrance of Google into the industry with its games network on Google+.

Other findings:

• Asia is the largest market for social games, with an estimated $2 billion in total revenue for 2011.
• Russia and Brazil also have large social gaming audiences, with 35 million and 32.6 million people, respectively.
• Germany’s social gaming revenue is expected to increase to $250 million in 2014, up from $173 million in 2011.

Silicon Valley’s Silver Lake and DST Global of Russia, as well as Chinese private equity firm Yunfeng Capital, are leading a $1.6 billion tender offer for privately held employee and shareholder stock of China’s Alibaba Group, according to sources close to the situation.

Yunfeng, by the way, was co-founded by Alibaba Chairman and CEO Jack Ma, as well as other prominent Chinese entrepreneurs.

Along with DST, Silver Lake and Yunfeng, Singapore-based investment firm Temasek is also participating in the tender offer as an investor, but in a smaller way.

The deal, which has been discussed for some time, was signed earlier today and will be presented to its employees in an internal company blog, which will be in Chinese.

To get around persistent foreign ownership issues in China, sources said, DST and Silver Lake are ceding voting control of their stakes to Alibaba management.

If the tender is fully subscribed, that would mean a stake of just under five percent for the group, sources said, and it gives Alibaba a $32 billion enterprise valuation.

The impetus for the tender offer, which begins today, appears to be trying to address a cash-out, paper-rich issue for Alibaba employees.

There are no active secondary private markets in China, as is the case for tech start-ups in the U.S., and there is also no IPO in the foreseeable future for Alibaba. Thus, management has been looking for a way to give its employees and also other shareholders some liquidity.

This tender offer is not a capital raise by Alibaba and is only aimed at eligible employees and shareholders. The purchase of the Alibaba shares is expected to close before the end of December.

It will be done via a special investment vehicle, specifically aimed at this purchase, that includes a spate of investors. Giant Interactive Group, a Chinese online game developer, for example, said it had committed $50 million to the fund.

It’s not clear what the implications are for Alibaba’s biggest shareholder, Yahoo, which sources said is not selling shares in the tender offer. Yahoo’s fully diluted Alibaba 39 percent stake is now worth $12.5 billion in the deal.

That’s discounted due to tax issues and also the inability of the Silicon Valley Internet giant to sell its Alibaba shares.

In other words, investors will likely welcome this higher valuation, but realize a public offering is farther away than ever.

But it is interesting in that it clearly shows a strong relationship between DST and Silver Lake, which have jointly been mulling a possible bid for Yahoo along with Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, as I previously reported.

Some will speculate that Silver Lake and DST now have an in with Alibaba, which is important, since a large slug of Yahoo’s market valuation is due to its Alibaba and also Yahoo Japan! assets.

If Yahoo is sold, of course, the disposition of the Alibaba asset is an important part of the deal.

More to come, including the implications for Ma, who has been under siege of late around his spinning out of Alibaba’s Alipay payments service and the noisy battle that later ensued with Yahoo. Yahoo and Alibaba, as well as its other large shareholder, Japan’s SoftBank, settled that dispute earlier this summer.

His involvement in Yunfeng, which is buying the company’s shares in a special fund that Ma is not in, will likely attract some scrutiny, anyway.

Sources said Ma is a minority investor in Yunfeng itself, has no control rights and is not a director. In addition, Yunfeng has no relationship with Alibaba.

In another interesting twist, Alibaba rival Tencent has close ties with DST’s Internet affiliate that used to share the same name, having invested $300 million last year in the affiliate that holds major Russian Internet properties.

A range of major players interested in acquiring all or a large piece of Yahoo have been prepping possible bids and have been in touch with the Internet giant’s board over the last several days.

While Yahoo has publicly said it was not for sale, according to numerous sources both inside and outside the company, it has been receptive to the interest and its Chairman Roy Bostock and Co-founder Jerry Yang have spoken to several.

Among the possible players: Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which is working with private equity firm Silver Lake, in a deal that also might include Russia’s DST Global and Yahoo’s Japanese partner Masa Son; former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin, who is partnered with Providence Equity Partners; and the possibility that Yahoo’s Chinese partner, Alibaba Group, might consider entering the fray in what could be a reverse merger of sorts.

Also being rung up by some of the parties: Microsoft — Yahoo’s advertising and search partner — which is being seen as a possibly moneybags in any deal.

The movement among these investors is against a backdrop of increasing pressure for Yahoo’s board, after it fired CEO Carol Bartz last week. In the wake of the dramatic move, shareholders have upped criticism of Bostock and the board and have been looking hard for alternatives.

Today, that included hedge fund investor Daniel Loeb of Third Point, which has a 5.1 percent stake in Yahoo. In a filing this morning, he said he might increase that amount, and described a testy hour-long phone call he had earlier this week with Bostock that ended abruptly with a hang-up from Yahoo.

Sources said Loeb called Bostock a “fool,” among other not-so-nice names, on the call and asked for Yang’s help in dumping him.

This comes as exactly no surprise, given his previously strong letter in which Loeb called for Bostock’s ouster.

Loeb has been calling out Bostock — who is also on the boards of Morgan Stanley and Delta Airlines — for a series of gaffes at Yahoo since he became chairman in 2008 (he’s been on the board since 2003).

Those have included: Yahoo’s bungled effort to stave off a takeover by Microsoft several years ago; the too-long enthusiasm for Bartz, who was hired in early 2009 and fired last week; sitting unusually still as competitors such as Facebook, Google and more have out-innovated and outgrown Yahoo; and, of course, the falling knife of a stock, which has dropped precipitously since Bostock has been in charge of the board.

As Loeb wrote in a letter he sent to the company last week:

“It is time that certain members of this Board were held accountable for its past failures and their individual roles. Accordingly, we insist that Mr. Bostock, who championed Ms. Bartz’s hiring and led the charge against the Microsoft deal, promptly resign from the Board.”

Loeb is likely to add to that later today at a high-profile investor conference in New York, where the colorful but tough-talking investor is sure to add more logs to the fire.

But it not only him. Other major shareholders of Yahoo are also in touch with possible outside buyers, seeking a change at the long-troubled company, after its shares have remained in the doldrums, its attrition rate of employees has spiked and its product pipeline has slowed to drip.

This has all been taking place — of course — during one of tech biggest and most innovative booms, in which Yahoo competitors have grown strongly.

Enter Marc Andreessen, the well-known entrepreneur who has transformed himself into one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful venture capitalists.

He and his partner Ben Horowitz recently pulled off another similar deal — with Silver Lake — to take control of a then-troubled Skype. They later flipped it to Microsoft for a large return.

Sources familiar with the situation said the pair have become increasingly intrigued by the situation at Yahoo and believe that its assets and brand are still strong, despite its management turmoil in recent years.

One problem is the huge cost of almost any kind of takeover and also the complexity, given much of Yahoo’s $18.5 billion valuation is due to its Asian assets.

The sale of those shares, as well as the selling off of some of Yahoo’s less core properties, makes for a very complicated situation for anyone.

Said one person looking at the company: “It is one of the more massive hairballs around.”

That is a common sentiment among many of those looking at Yahoo, which has hired Allen & Co. to manage the process.

Also of worry is a bid that would include too many players. Yahoo has long been plagued by indecisiveness on the part of its execs and, mostly, its board.

But one thing all the possible buyers of Yahoo, as well as an increasing number of its shareholders, agree on: The Yahoo board needs a major shake-up.

As Loeb wrote last week, which many I interviewed also echoed:

“This letter details our principled demands for sweeping changes in both the Board of Directors (the “Board”) and Company leadership, and outlines the hidden value of Yahoo, which has been severely damaged — but not irreparably — by poor management and governance.”

Whether or not to sell any of their shares in Twitter is the big decision facing stakeholders of the microblogging service right now, as the second $400 million part of the company’s recent funding by Russia’s DST Global is completed in the next several weeks.

That includes everyone from early angel investors to those who bought it on the secondary markets to Twitter’s 600 employees, all of whom can sell a portion — up to 20 percent, sources said — of their holdings.

It’s all part of a recent $800 million mega-funding by Twitter, valuing the San Francisco company at $8.4 billion.

While $400 million went to Twitter, the second tranche of $400 million of the total was targeted to cash out current investors and also employees of the company.

Current investors include Benchmark Capital, Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital and several other venture firms, as well as a spate of prominent angel investors, such as Ron Conway.

Whether DST — as well as other smaller buyers, including early Twitter investor Chris Sacca and T. Rowe Price, according to the tender offer — gets them and others to sell enough shares is the big question, especially since few want to get caught in what one shareholder called the “Facebook idiot box.”

That would be referring to those who sold their investments in Facebook two years ago, when the social networking giant allowed its employees to sell 20 percent of their stakes to DST.

The financing was part of a $100 million add-on to a $200 million investment in the social networking company by the aggressive Russian investor.

At the time, the tender offer valued Facebook at $6.5 billion for the common stock, or $14.77 a share.

Of course, Facebook is worth upward of more than 10 times that now. Oops!

That’s why high-profile Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, for example, is not selling out any of the shares it bought earlier this year in an $80 million transaction in private secondary markets.

Reasons to sell, of course, are also compelling.

Some investors might want to lock in upside, especially if they think the latest valuation is too high.

For venture capitalists in the company, some might want to return a win to their limited partners, while Twitter employees might want to put a down payment on a house after years of toiling in the start-up.

Others might also be worried about Twitter’s prospects going forward and might determine that the recent round was the high point of its market value. Twitter has indeed struggled to find a sustainable and lucrative business model, focused on advertising.

In addition, although it has recently stabilized, others might worry about Twitter’s management changes over the last year, as co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams have departed. Twitter creator and other co-founder Jack Dorsey is now running the company’s product efforts, with CEO Dick Costolo (who looks a lot like that Woody Allen shot above from the classic movie, “Take the Money and Run”).

Then again, that was exactly the take on Facebook several years ago, so it is now a case on all sides of seller beware.

Twitter declined to comment and I have not heard back yet from DST about the status of the transaction.

Russian newspaper RBC Daily claims the iPhone 5 could go on sale in Russia in November, “almost immediately” after the smartphone launches in the U.S. (ahem …). The publication claims Russian carriers are particularly keen on adding the device to their lineups as quickly after its official launch as possible to avoid losing revenue to the country’s gray market.

Without giving any financial details, low down in a blog post this morning, Twitter confirmed it had gotten “significant” new venture funding from DST Global of Russia, as well as from existing investors.

As AllThingsD previously reported, DST will be the biggest player in a total round of $800 million for the San Francisco microblogging site, with $400 million going to cash out employees and other shareholders. The new funding will value Twitter at $8.4 billion.

In a quote, DST’s Yuri Milner said:

“Twitter is one of the few companies that has truly changed the world. Twitter’s astonishing growth is a testament to how important it is becoming to more people every day, and why we couldn’t pass up the chance to be a bigger part of its future.”

DST has funded all the prominent Web 2.0 companies, from Facebook to Zynga to Groupon, so now it is apparently Twitter’s turn.

Here’s the full blog post from Twitter:

Your World, More Connected

Twitter continues to grow around the globe at a record pace. Just a year ago, we delivered 65 million Tweets a day. Today, we generate over 200 million Tweets per day. One year ago, there were approximately 150,000 registered Twitter apps. Now, there are more than one million that connect to Twitter. And our team has grown from 250 people to more than 600 in the past 12 months.

More importantly, Twitter is where people around the globe come to instantly connect to what’s most meaningful to them. This makes Twitter the only place in the world to get a real-time pulse on what people are thinking and doing practically anywhere.

We’ve come very far in a short time. Now we have an opportunity to expand Twitter’s reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors. We will use these resources to aggressively innovate, hire more great people and invest in international expansion.

Thank you for everything you’ve done to help get us here and for inspiring us to work even harder. We can’t wait for you to see what we have planned to make Twitter even better.

What gives? The research firms don’t have access to the same kinds of sales-channel data that Intel does, especially when it comes to emerging markets. Namely Brazil, Turkey, Russia and other rapidly developing revenue streams.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini called this “channel revenue” during the conference call with analysts. Channel is industry lingo for the business Intel does that’s not with major PC manufacturers like Apple or Hewlett-Packard or Dell, but instead goes through indirect sales channels to smaller companies that make PCs with lesser-known brands geared toward specific markets.

This channel revenue grew 17 percent during the quarter, Otellini said, because demand for PCs remains healthy in these countries. Turkey and Indonesia were both up 70 percent over last year. India was up 17 percent. Russia, 15 percent. China, 14 percent. Latin America as a whole was up 12 percent.

But then there’s Brazil. Otellini said it’s growing like crazy and is on track to become the world’s third-largest PC market next year, after the U.S. and China.

This channel business in emerging markets helps explain at least part of the dichotomy between the results that Gartner and IDC report in their quarterly market surveys — both of which show a market that grew by less than three percent — and Intel, which saw sales in its PC division grow 11 percent.

Later, Otellini and Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith addressed this issue in response to a question from Evercore analyst Patrick Wang. You can hear their exchange, which runs less than three minutes, below.

Intel-q2-2011-call by ahess247

The company sold 52.2 million Class A shares, raising a total of $1.3 billion. Yandex had originally set its expected price range at $20 to $22. The stock will trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol YNDX.

Yandex, the largest Russian Internet company by revenue, is also its most popular search engine, generating 65% of all search traffic in a country that isn’t dominated by Google Inc.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »