Hasta La Gadget!

Like a handful of computer manufacturers lately, Dell hasn’t been doing so hot, and it’s rumored that the company is considering going private and taking its name off the public stock market. Anonymous sources have told Bloomberg that “several large banks have already been contacted about financing an offer to take Dell private.”

Trading was halted on the company for a short while, but shares jumped 15% when trading resumed. Dell has declined to comment on any rumors or speculation, but it’s said that the company is in talks to go private with at least two private equity firms. However, the deal could easily fall apart if the firms can’t line up the needed financing, or can’t figure out how to exit the investment in the future if need be.

Dell was once a giant in the personal computer market, but the company has struggled in recent years, losing over a third of its value just last year. In the most recent financial report, Dell’s revenue was down 7% year-over-year, while profits were down 34%. However, the company currently has a little over $5 billion in cash to help it float through the decline.

Since CEO Michael Dell owns a large percentage of shares (15.7%, to be exact), Bloomberg‘s sources say that it’s easier for financial firms to work out the deal. If Dell were to actually go private, that would mean that all of the publicly traded shares would be bought up by a private firm, and being private means looser regulatory issues to deal with, which could be an opportunity for shareholders to cash out.

[via Bloomberg]

Dell rumored to be going private, shares jump 15% is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week there’s been more than one claim against the growing state of Facebook and its most powerful purchased ecosystem: Instagram. What we’re seeing for the latter is a chart from AppStats that cuts their active user numbers in half, while Facebook is facing claims that they’ve lost 600,000 users in a month. That’s not a whole lot compared to the number of people who use Facebook every day, but you’ll find that Facebook isn’t about to see claims against its popularity go unchecked.

The Instagram numbers we’re talking about here have its 40 million active users near the middle of December, 2012, cut down now here in the middle of January to somewhere closer to 17 million. You’ll see the holiday claim we spoke about just a couple of weeks ago in the same chart from AppStats here, but even after the rapid resurgence after the Privacy Policy incidence, the app is being shown to have a rather clear slide downward.

This slide could also very well have to do with the Twitter de-integration that happened over the past couple of weeks, this cutting off a massive tie with one of the most popular social networking systems on the planet. It’s not clear at the moment whether or not Instagram will recover from this downturn. Meanwhile Facebook is battling against the Guardian’s post with Socialbakers analytics information on a 600,000 user decline in the UK.

This decline represents part of a 1.86% slide for Facebook overall, the time period being the month of December and not seeming all that odd to the analytics group due to the holiday season. Though Facebook has more than 33 million unique users according to the same firm through the month of December, Facebook has made it clear in an emailed statement that they don’t trust the methods used by Socialbakers:

“From time to time, we see stories about Facebook losing users in some regions. Some of these reports use data extracted from our advertising tool, which provides broad estimates on the reach of Facebook ads and isn’t designed to be a source for tracking the overall growth of Facebook. We are very pleased with our growth and with the way people are engaged with Facebook – more than 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.” – Facebook Representative

The folks at Socialbakers have also responded to the whole situation, CEO Jan Rezab making it clear that several factors should be considered when thinking about the power of Facebook in the UK.

“• Over 50% of UK’s entire population is on Facebook – which is amazing!
• About 15% of people in UK are under 13 years old therefore “not allowed” on Facebook
• 16.5% of people in UK are older than 65 and typically not on Facebook (only 4% of 65+ year olds out of the 33M are on Facebook in UK)”
– Socialbakers

Rezab also mentions that the ad interface for Facebook, the interface they’ve been working with to find the numbers they’ve presented this week, has a slight delay – slight as in typically by several weeks. Because of this, the changes in Monthly Active Users they’ve found cannot be accounted for by any of Facebook or Instagram’s Privacy Policy changes, and such conclusions should not be drawn from the numbers they’ve posted.

Instagram’s active users cut in half while Facebook fights loss claims is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

HP may still have the lead when it comes to global PC sales, but Lenovo is right behind in a very tight second. Research firm IDC reported that HP maintained its worldwide PC lead in the fourth quarter of 2012 despite a slight decline in sales. Shipments for the company went down by 0.6% from the same time last year, while Lenovo’s grew by 8.2%.

However, while the growth of Lenovo seems significant, outpacing everyone else in the PC industry, it still wasn’t a good as the growth the company had earlier in 2012. Q3 saw Lenovo’s shipment growth up a whopping 30%. According to IDC, that didn’t give Lenovo quite enough momentum to pass HP, which held a slim third quarter lead, holding 15.9% of the PC market, while Lenovo held 15.7%.

However, if Lenovo keeps up the effort, they could easily see themselves blasting past HP before long. It seems many are questioning HP’s commitment to the PC business in the first place. After deciding to stay in the PC business after announcing that they would possibly sell it off, many potential customers remained skeptical.

Finishing out the top five PC makers on the list, according to IDC, include third-place Dell, whose shipments declined by 20.8% in the fourth quarter compared to a year earlier, Acer, whose PC shipments declined by 28.2% in the fourth quarter, and ASUS, whose shipments grew by 5.6%, making them the only company besides Lenovo to see a gain in sales.

[via Computerworld]

HP, Lenovo in tight battle over PC sales in Q4 2012 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

They say that the ultimate measure of a company’s success is through its sales. That might be true for Finnish phone manufacturer Nokia, who once ruled the cellphone industry. The company has recently published preliminary information regarding its performance in Q4 last year. Nokia estimates that its Devices & Services has “exceeded expectations” and has achieved profitability in during the last quarter of 2012. Nokia is referring to its mobile phone business, which sold a total of 15.9 million units. Breaking down the stats, Nokia estimates that is sold 9.3 million Asha units, 4.4 million Lumia smartphones, and 2.2 million Symbian smartphones. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Ex-Angry Birds Developers Launch Noble Nutlings On iOS For Free, Verizon, AT&T, And T-Mobile Confirm Support For BlackBerry 10,

Kickstarter saw a lot of action in 2012, and there were a ton of funded projects that ended up being a huge hit, the Pebble smartwatch and the OUYA game console just to name a few. Today, the online start-up service released some crazy statistics and figures of 2012, the main number being almost $320 million in pledges during those 12 months.

In total, 2,241,475 people pledged $319,786,629, resulting in 18,109 successfully-funded projects. This means that backers pledged $606.76 per minute on average. Out of the more than 2.2 million people who backed Kickstarter projects, 570,672 of them backed two or more projects, while just over 50,000 back ten or more. 452 people backed 100 or more projects.

Kickstarter also notes that people in 177 countries have backed projects, which accounts for about 90% of all the countries in the world. Furthermore, out of the 13 categories that Kickstarter has, Music was the most-funded category, seeing over 5,000 successfully-funded projects, and the Games category saw the most money pledged, over $83 million.

Other categories, including Art, Film, Music, Publishing, and Theater each had more than 1,000 funded projects. Out of the 18,000 funded projects, 17 of them raised $1 million or more, which says a lot about what it takes to have a very successful project on the online service. 17 projects is only 0.0009% out of the funded projects on Kickstarter.

Kickstarter achieves nearly $320 million in pledges in 2012 is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.