AllThingsD » Shira Ovide

Microsoft to Name New Software Windows 8.1, and It’s Free

Shira Ovide — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:45:38 +0000

Microsoft announced Tuesday the updated version of its Windows 8 operating system — which had been code-named Windows Blue — will be called Windows 8.1, and it will be available for free to encourage as many people as possible to take up the new software.

The software expected in coming months will effectively be a second launch of Windows 8, the operating system that debuted last October to great fanfare but fairly tepid sales. But the Windows 8.1 name underscores that Microsoft considers the revised software a relatively minor update and not a do-over, which would point to fundamental problems with the original product.

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Icahn, Southeastern Propose Alternative to Dell Buyout

Shira Ovide — Fri, 10 May 2013 07:25:48 +0000

Two of Dell Inc.’s largest stockholders, investor Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management Inc., proposed an alternative offer to a $24.4 billion deal to buy out the company’s public stockholders.

In a letter to Dell’s board, Mr. Icahn and Southeastern said they propose giving Dell shareholders the option to keep holding stock in the company, and take an additional $12 a share in cash or stock, according to a copy of the correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

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Blackstone Ends Pursuit of Dell

Sharon Terlep, David Benoit and Shira Ovide — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:35:11 +0000

Blackstone Group has ended its pursuit of Dell Inc., less than a month after the private-equity firm said it would try to top a leveraged buyout by the computer maker’s founder and a rival investment firm.

Blackstone had been putting together a bid for Dell to trump the $24.4 billion offer from founder and Chief Executive Michael Dell and private-equity firm Silver Lake Partners. Blackstone’s offer would have kept part of the company in the hands of public shareholders.

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Microsoft Working With Suppliers on Designs for Touch-Enabled Watch Device

Lorraine Luk and Shira Ovide — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 02:58:32 +0000

Microsoft Corp. is working on designs for a touch-enabled watch device, executives at suppliers said, potentially joining rivals like Apple Inc. in working on a new class of computing products.

Earlier this year, Microsoft asked suppliers in Asia to ship components for a potential watch-style device, the executives said. One executive said he met with Microsoft’s research and development team at the software company’s Redmond, Wash., headquarters. But it’s unclear whether Microsoft will opt to move ahead with the watch, they said.

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Microsoft Plans Seven-Inch Tablet

Lorraine Luk, Shira Ovide and Eva Dou — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 05:27:03 +0000

The personal computer business is at a crossroads, and Microsoft isn’t sitting still.

The software giant is developing a new lineup of its Surface tablets, including a seven-inch version expected to go into mass production later this year, said people familiar with the company’s plans.

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Blackstone Solicits Partners for Dell Bid

Sharon Terlep and Shira Ovide — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 12:30:44 +0000

Blackstone Group LP is talking to several technology companies about potentially joining its bid to take computer maker Dell Inc. private, people familiar with the matter said.

Any technology firm that joins the private-equity giant’s potential bid for Dell would likely be involved in the company’s strategic direction as well as having a financial role, the people said. Blackstone has discussed a number of scenarios with prospective partners, including an equity stake, debt financing or a combination of the two, one of the people said.

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From Dell Insider to Suitor

Ian Sherr and Shira Ovide — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 12:30:40 +0000

Blackstone Group LP’s letter laying out a potential bid for Dell Inc. was co-signed by someone very familiar to the computer maker: David Johnson.

Mr. Johnson, a graduate of Boston College and a 27-year alum of International Business Machines Corp., joined Dell in 2009 as its senior vice president of corporate strategy and led the Round Rock, Texas, company’s mergers-and-acquisitions team.

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Michael Dell Could Lose CEO Job in Rival Buyout Bid

Shira Ovide — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 22:02:56 +0000

Michael Dell kicked off the process to take Dell Inc. private. Now as other potential bidders crowd into the picture, Mr. Dell may end up losing control of his company.

Blackstone Group and activist investor Carl Icahn expressed interest in the computer maker before a key deadline for offers expired Friday, with each notifying a special committee of Dell’s board that they are working on firm bids for the Round Rock, Texas, company, people familiar with the matter have said.

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Dell Walks Fine Line in Pitch for Buyout

Shira Ovide and Sharon Terlep — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 11:45:27 +0000

Chief executives typically like to boast about their companies, but as a Friday deadline for rival bids to buy his firm approaches, Michael Dell finds himself in the opposite position.

Mr. Dell needs to persuade Dell Inc. investors that the prospects for the company he founded in his dorm room in 1984 and has been running for the past six years are anything but rosy if he is to succeed with his plan to take the computer maker private.

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U.S. Probes Microsoft, Partners Over Bribery Claims

Christopher M. Matthews, Joe Palazzolo and Shira Ovide — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:27:14 +0000

Federal regulators are investigating Microsoft Corp.’s relationship with business partners that allegedly bribed foreign government officials in return for software contracts, according to people familiar with the matter.

Lawyers from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are examining kickback allegations made by a former Microsoft representative in China, as well as the company’s relationship with certain resellers and consultants in Romania and Italy, these people said.

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Meet the New Mobile Workers

Shira Ovide — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:00:35 +0000

A half-built medical complex in San Leandro, Calif., is on the leading edge of an emerging workplace-technology boom.

Instead of working from the standard paper blueprints, supervisors on the construction site tote iPads loaded with digitized blueprints they can annotate with finger swipe. Each time the architect or building owner changes a paint color or the location of a wall in the plans, the information arrives electronically from the offices of Rudolph & Sletten, the contractor based in Redwood City, Calif

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New Money Ventures to Silicon Valley

Shira Ovide and Pui-Wing Tam — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 16:30:18 +0000

When SurveyMonkey LLC Chief Executive Dave Goldberg wanted to raise money for his Palo Alto, Calif., company, he didn’t lean on the venture capitalists that scour Silicon Valley looking for the next Google Inc. or Facebook Inc.

Instead, Mr. Goldberg tapped Tiger Global Management LLC, an investment firm run by Chase Coleman, an East Coast native and protégé of hedge-fund guru Julian Robertson. In January, Tiger helped lead the $444 million equity portion of SurveyMonkey’s $800 million recapitalization.

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Microsoft Backs School Privacy Bill Taking Aim at Google

Jacob Gershman and Shira Ovide — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 12:08:54 +0000

Massachusetts lawmakers could soon consider a bill that would restrict the commercial use of data gathered while children use computers at public schools.

Its stated purpose is protecting privacy. An unnamed focus of the bill — backed by Microsoft Corp. — is Google Inc.

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Don’t Weep for Groupon Ex-CEO Andrew Mason

Shira Ovide — Sun, 03 Mar 2013 23:00:39 +0000

Andrew Mason isn’t leaving Groupon empty handed.

Groupon’s board gave the 32-year-old chief executive the heave-ho on Thursday, after Mason presided over the controversial and one of the fastest-growing young companies in recent memory. Time will tell whether Mason will be remembered for his antics and for being loosey-goosey with accounting rules, or for building a new marketing category with a company he steered to $5 billion in annual billings and an IPO faster than most companies on the planet.

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Google, Microsoft, Amazon Clash in Cloud Services

Shira Ovide, Greg Bensinger and Amir Efrati — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 13:00:47 +0000

Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. have fought each other for dominance in mobile gadgets and Web searches. The latest front in their war is invisible: Computing horsepower.

Microsoft and Google are increasingly trying to unseat Amazon in the lucrative business of renting out computing storage and number-crunching to thousands of companies.

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Small Firms Say LinkedIn Works, Twitter Doesn't

Emily Maltby and Shira Ovide — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:00:30 +0000

Six out of 10 small-business owners say they believe social-media tools are valuable to their company’s growth — but most aren’t impressed by Twitter Inc.

Just 3 percent of 835 business owners surveyed earlier this month by The Wall Street Journal and Vistage International said Twitter had the most potential to help their companies.

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Microsoft in Talks to Help Finance Dell Buyout

Anupreeta Das and Shira Ovide — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 18:13:41 +0000

Microsoft Corp. is in discussions about helping to finance a buyout of computer maker Dell Inc., according to a person familiar with the deal deliberations.

The software company hasn’t made a commitment, but if it were to join an investor group for a Dell buyout, its investment would likely be in the range of a couple of billion dollars, this person said.

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Behind Google's Antitrust Escape

Brent Kendall, Amir Efrati, Thomas Catan and Shira Ovide — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 08:21:49 +0000

After early hopes for a sweeping antitrust case against Google Inc., it became clear to the Federal Trade Commission last fall that no such lawsuit was in the offing.

A clinching moment came in November when FTC staff, who had exhaustively investigated the Internet search giant for 18 months, told the five FTC commissioners that they shouldn’t bring a broad antitrust case, rebutting the theory that Google abused its dominant market position in Internet search to favor its own products and services at rivals’ expense.

Instead, in a series of packed meetings at room 432 of FTC headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., they recommended pursuing a series of smaller issues. That culminated Thursday in an announcement by the FTC that it wouldn’t bring sweeping charges against Google.

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SEC Asked Groupon for Financial Disclosures

Shira Ovide — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 23:12:21 +0000

The Securities and Exchange Commission this summer began pressing Groupon Inc. to disclose more details on revenue from its new business lines and on reasons behind the daily-deal site’s financial revision this spring, according to newly disclosed correspondence between the regulator and the company.

The SEC has completed its review of Groupon’s filings, the agency said in a letter dated Oct. 4 and released Friday by Groupon. The SEC letter said the regulator still can take action later against Groupon.

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Microsoft Tests Smartphone With Asia Suppliers

Lorraine Luk and Shira Ovide — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 11:13:11 +0000

Microsoft Corp. is working with component suppliers in Asia to test its own smartphone design, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting the computer-software giant is increasingly adopting a variation of a business model favored by rival Apple Inc., which designs computers and phones along with the software that powers them.

Officials at some of Microsoft’s parts suppliers, who declined to be named, said the Redmond, Wash.-based company is testing a smartphone design but isn’t sure if a product will go into mass production.

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Ballmer's New Mission for Microsoft

Shira Ovide — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 11:35:03 +0000

Chief Executive Steve Ballmer is betting on one of Microsoft Corp.’s busiest years ever to keep the company relevant in a new age of mobile technology.

In an interview in San Francisco Monday, the 56-year-old Mr. Ballmer discussed the initial reception for Windows 8, how Microsoft can play catch-up in the mobile market and the company’s changing mission in an evolving market.

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Microsoft Dives Into the Retail Scene

Shira Ovide and Ann Zimmerman — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:00:01 +0000

Microsoft Corp. typically lets its software out in the world and leaves decisions about how to sell computers to retailers. This time, though, the company is taking matters into its own hands.

As systems running its latest operating software go on sale Friday, Microsoft is playing an unprecedented role in dictating how computers should be displayed in big-box stores and how they should be pitched and explained to shoppers.

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Mobile Ads: Here's What Works and What Doesn't

Shira Ovide and Greg Bensinger — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 14:30:20 +0000

In 2010, Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs proclaimed, “Mobile advertising really sucks.” Now, however, the rule book for what works in mobile advertising is slowly being written.

Some of the ingredients to success include ads that play on the unique properties of mobile gadgets, including location, or ads disguised as a game, coupon or information that consumers want, say ad executives and industry observers.

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Some Groupon Investors Give Up

Shayndi Raice and Shira Ovide — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 13:30:10 +0000

Some of the early backers of Groupon Inc., including Silicon Valley veteran Marc Andreessen, are heading for the exits, joining investors who have lost faith in companies that had been expected to drive a new Internet boom.

At least four Groupon investors who held stock in the daily-deals company before it went public have sold or significantly pared back their holdings in recent months. Since its initial public offering in November, Groupon has shed more than three-quarters of its stock-market value, or about $10 billion.

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Groupon Staff Feel the Heat

Shira Ovide — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 14:00:16 +0000

Groupon Inc. is facing a new hurdle: Strains on its sales force.

Such pressures are a boon to people like Mike Silagadze. The chief executive of education-software firm Top Hat Monocle Inc. said that over the past month, his Toronto start-up has received hundreds of résumés from Groupon sales representatives who may want to jump ship. Mr. Silagadze said he interviews a couple of such people each day.

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