In recent years, Sony’s state of the union report has made for wince-inducing reading, but one year into Kaz Hirai’s “One Sony” strategy we seem to be seeing hints of a turnaround. The company is trumpeting its return to profitability after several loss-making quarters, thanks to boosts in its film and financial services units — not to mention some aggressive asset sales. Unfortunately, Sony still has the weak heart of its consumer electronics business to nurse, but promises that aggressive cost-cutting in its TV department will see it back in the black shortly.
Sony has also announced plans to “significantly expand” its business model around the PlayStation 4 and promises to speed up smartphone development to incorporate the company’s hardware and imaging know-how. With one eye on those dwindling PC market figures, Sony will look to make profitable machines rather than chasing market share. The company has also said that, aside from its successful Mirrorless ILC division, will shift focus on its imaging business from consumer electronics to medical and security. With all of this change, let’s just hope that no-one forgets to buy someone in the PR department a wider camera lens.
Filed under: Sony
Source: Sony
LG is an Android smartphone OEM that, like many others, finds itself in the shadow of Samsung. But it scored an impressive hit with the Nexus 4, the $ 300 unlocked Google-branded Android reference phone it released last year, and according to the Korea Times, it’s already working on a follow-up with the search giant.
E-commerce giant 
Google’s search results in Europe could soon look a bit different if a number of new reports about the company’s settlement with the European Union’s competition commission are correct. After a three-year investigation into its potentially anti-competitive practices, Google submitted its proposal for an agreement with the EU last week, but the details remained under wraps. According to reports from the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal, however, Google’s proposal includes a number of changes to how it will do business (at least in the EU). According to these reports, Google has offered to “make users clearly aware” when it is linking to its own specialized services and vertical search engines. Every time Google promotes one of its own links, it will also show “at least three links to rival, non-Google sites that have information relevant to a user’s query,” the Wall Street Journal’s Amir Efrati reports. So whenever a search on Google would naturally highlight a result from Google+ Local, Google would also add links to sites like Yelp, UrbanSpoon, TripAdvisor or other relevant sites. This part of the agreement would at least cover Google’s search services for restaurants, finance and shopping. Results from Google News, the Financial Times says, would “merely need to be labelled and separated.” Under this proposed settlement, Google will also offer sites the ability to easily remove 10 percent of their content from its vertical search engines (though it’s not clear how this would actually work) and make it easier for advertisers to move their campaigns to other search engines (similar to what Google is doing in the U.S. after its settlement with the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year). Google’s search algorithm itself would remain untouched in this agreement. If the EU agrees to these terms, Google will avoid the large financial penalties that the EU could have levied against the search company. The proposal, if the reports are correct, would be binding for five years, and a neutral third party would ensure that Google doesn’t stray from the agreement. Google competitors, whose official complaint started this investigation, were probably hoping for larger changes, and fines will probably not be in favor of these relatively small changes Google is offering to make. Last week, FairSearch.org already filed another complaint against Google in the EU. This time, the organization, which is backed by Microsoft, Expedia, Oracle, TripAdvisor and 13 other search and technology companies,
Right after it launched the iPad mini, Apple filed a trademark application for the name with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As Patently Apple noticed earlier today, however, the USPTO will likely refuse Apple’s trademark filing because, the reviewer argues, “the applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s goods.” The letter was mailed to Apple on January 24, but only made public in the last few days. Apple can still respond to this notice and correct its application, though it’s hard to see how Apple could argue against the USPTO’s argument that ‘mini’ is ‘merely descriptive.’ “The applied-for mark merely describes a feature or characteristic of applicant’s goods.” The word ‘mini,’ the reviewer argues, just describes that the iPad mini is indeed “a small sized handheld tablet computer” and just describes the mini’s features. It is not, the reviewing attorney says, “a unitary mark with a unique, incongruous, or otherwise nondescriptive meaning in relation to the goods and/or services.” The USPTO would only grant Apple the trademark to the full iPad mini name if the company could show that the word ‘mini’ has now acquired a “distinctiveness.” In addition, Patently Apple also notes, the reviewer also denied the application for now because Apple should have provided the USPTO with a specimen other than its own product website, even though Apple always uses these for its trademark applications and this was never a reason for a denial before. The reviewer also believes that there is a “likelihood of confusion” between Apple’s existing iPad trademarks and this new iPad® mini application, which, to be honest, doesn’t make a lot of sense. Here is the letter the USPTO sent to Apple in January: USPTO Refuses Apple’s iPad mini Trademark Application
Clash of Clans, the title that’s made Finland’s Supercell the new darling of the mobile gaming industry, has doubled its marketshare among U.S. iPhone users over the last six months, according to Onavo, an app tracking company that can actually see active usage. The data is part of a monthly report Onavo does on winners and losers in marketshare — which is defined as the percentage of U.S. iPhone users who open an app at least once in a 30-day period. The last time Supercell publicly shared its revenues was last fall when it said it was pulling in $ 500,000 per day about five months ago – when Clash of Clans’ marketshare was one-third of what it is now. But from sources in the industry, we hear that figure is much higher now, in the $ 1 to $ 1.3 million range per day. Generally, the top grossing games are doing about four times what they were pulling in a year ago. With the iOS base of devices growing, we could see a $ 2 million per day for a single developer by summer. The big question for a lot of observers in the industry is if and when Supercell will raise a massive funding round off the back of its success. Meanwhile, the bootstrapped husband-and-wife team at Imangi looks like they are making a successful sequel transition with Temple Run 2 picking up market share where the original game left off. Sequels can be pretty risky for studios if they’re not executed properly because they cannibalize players from the original. And if the sequel isn’t good at retaining users, then the entire franchise can suffer. EA Popcap’s Plants Vs. Zombies also made a big comeback this month after the company made the paid title free. Many developers behind the older, popular titles on iOS from several years ago are making their original games free. Rovio just made the original Angry Birds game free this month. Perhaps it’s a bid to rekindle interest in these games, or perhaps it’s a recognition of the huge shift in the industry toward free-to-play games. More midcore games are also climbing in active usage. Phoenix Age, the quiet studio behind Castle Age HD, saw its title triple its marketshare over the past month. The developer, which often has titles in the top-grossing charts, hasn’t publicly announced any funding to date and is based out of the San Francisco Bay Area. Meanwhile,
Windows Phone 8 is Nokia’s big play for the future, but as a result of focusing on those devices and their higher-end target market, the company is giving up ground to firms like Huawei and ZTE with lower end devices. But the Finnish company may be looking to get its budget-friendly groove back with the introduction of new, basic handsets not based on Microsoft’s mobile OS, to be unveiled at MWC next week according to Reuters.
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