Hasta La Gadget!

This week Barnes & Noble has made the call on their financial second quarter, citing increased spending on their Nook division to keep pace with Amazon.com and Apple. The company made it clear that as the Nook accounts for 8.5 percent of their total revenue, it wasn’t going away any time soon – meanwhile same-store in-store book sales dropped over Black Friday weekend – imagine that! Barnes & Noble also reported that quarterly sales of its high-margin digital periodicals and books went up significantly.

Chief Executive William Lynch let it be known that his forecast for the fiscal year stands – he believes that the Nook segment of the company’s loss will narrow without a doubt. It’s not out of the question as just half way through the fiscal year the business is in, loss had increased just 6.1 percent to $108.1 million – much narrower than it could have been.

Meanwhile the new Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets were launched right after the company’s second fiscal quarter – that being the one ending on October 27th of 2012. The real battle, then, is now for Barnes & Noble’s tablet warriors to take out the iPad mini as well as the Kindle Fire HD 7 and 8.9. They’re certainly making strides in Target and Wal-Mart stores, it seems, as the company reported sales doubling from last year over Thanksgiving weekend.

This was helped at least a little bit by the fact that Target and Walmart no longer sell Kindle tablets of any kind. Lynch noted that Barnes & Noble continues to rule a 25-30 percent share of the e-books market in the USA, while net quarterly income was positive at $2.2 million – this much, much better than last year’s results at this time which were a loss of $6.6 million.

[via Reuters]

Barnes and Noble Q2 earnings show digital content grind is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Back in October, we reported that, according to a source over at TNW, Apple was acquiring Color Labs, a company founded by Bill Nguyen and Adam Witherspoon. The deal was never confirmed, but speculation had it that Apple paid somewhere in the range of $5 million. Now we have confirmation that Apple did acquire the company thanks to a lawsuit against both the company and Nguyen in which Witherspoon alleges that his boss was abusive and threatening.

When the story originally broke, it was said that Nguyen had been absent from the company for three months over some “intense strain” going on with the company board. According to a lawsuit filed by co-founder Witherspoon, that strain encompasses such things as employee intimidation and threats regarding cooperation with an investigation into Nguyen’s various “improprieties.” Reportedly, both Witherspoon and Nguyen were close, with their respective families spending much time together.

Witherspoon stated that he had caught Nguyen kicking his son during a mutual family vacation, and that such abuse had happened on other occasions. The problems escalated, with Witherspoon reporting that Nguyen’s antics grew worse, and included the public ostracization and humiliation of his (Witherspoon’s) family. Finally, Nguyen, according to the lawsuit, then hit Witherspoon with a small severance package while getting in the way of whatever benefits Witherspoon would have received from the Apple acquisition.

Says the lawsuit, “When the company failed and key assets were being sold to Apple, Nguyen specifically retaliated against Witherspoon by blocking his job opportunities at Apple, offering him a de minimis severance package, disparaging him in the workplace and communicating to others that Witherspoon was being punished for cooperating with an investigation into Nguyen supervised by Color’s outside counsel Gunederson Dettmer.” The attacks went so far as to include the introduction of an “armed crony” into the workplace. The lawsuit is just getting started, but if the allegations prove to be true, it would seem that Color’s employees have found themselves in a nicer workplace than where they started.

[via The Verge]

Apple’s acquisition of Color Labs confirmed via a lawsuit claiming rampant intimidation is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If there’s one (of many things) customers don’t like seeing on their monthly statement, it’s a frivolous charge. It’s not surprising that when Time Warner started sending out notifications alerting customers to a monthly $3.95 modem rental fee, the results were less than enthusiastic. Now the company is being hit with a class action lawsuit in New York and New Jersey.

The basis for the lawsuit is the claim that Time Warner failed to follow its own policy, which states that customers will be given a 30-day notice before prices are increased. The fee went into effect back on October 15, however, netting the company approximately $40 million per month. The company plans to use the additional revenue for infrastructure and service improvements.

Customers were given the option to buy their own modemn as a way to avoid the monthly rental fee. There’s a catch, however; only devices that Time Warner approves can be used, with every option costing more than it would to rent a modem. The lawsuit alleges that customers who don’t want to buy a more expensive option are being forced to pay a monthly fee on old, outdated equipment.

Said Steven Wittels, one of the lawyers involved, “It’s just a scam to increase revenue.” Meanwhile, lawyer Richard Roth says, “You can’t do this to the little guy.” According to Roth, the addition of the fee was not only a breaking of contract, but also consumer fraud. The lawsuit requests that the fee be blocked in both states.

[via ars technica]

Time Warner hit with class action suit over $4 fee is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA has published its Q3 financial report, showing off its record revenue of $1.2 billion. Also included in the report is its announcement of initiating quarterly cash dividend payment, as well as extending its share-repurchase program until December of 2014. All of this was rounded out by some enthusiastic statements by the company’s president and CEO about a promising future.

Aside from the company’s record revenue, GAAP net income was $209.1 million, which comes in at $0.33 per diluted share. Non-GAAP income was a bit higher at $0.39 per diluted share. The newly-initiated quarterly dividend is 7.5 cents a share. Overall, the quarterly revenue represents a 12.9-percent jump over last year, and a 15.3-percent jump over the last quarter.

NVIDIA’s President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang offered this statement. “Investments in our new growth strategies paid off this quarter in record revenues and margins. Kepler GPUs are winning across the special-purpose PC markets we serve, from gaming to design to supercomputing. And Tegra is powering some of the most innovative tablets, phones and cars in the market.”

Some of the company’s Q3 highlights include the launch of the Tegra 3-based Surface RT hybrid from Microsoft, as well as the company’s Kepler GPU getting some market action. Moving forward, NVIDIA has expectations of revenue between $1.025 and $1.175 billion for the fiscal fourth quarter. Previously, the company reported that the decline in the PC market was resulting in unsold chips, hurting its profits.

[via Bloomberg]

NVIDIA Q3 financial report shows record revenue is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Concerns have been voiced lately about Apple‘s happenings, such as the company’s changes in management, Foxconn’s continual difficulty in keeping up production levels for the iPhone 5, and a slowdown in earnings growth. Despite the recent announcements and launches of the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, and the 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro, among others, Apple still closed today at the five-month low of $558. This comes in contrast to the company’s all-time high of $705.07 back in September.

According to the Financial Times, Apple has experienced an overall stock drop in market value since September of $138 billion. Investors have been vocal about their concerns regarding the aforementioned issues with production and such, though the iPad mini has given it a much-needed boost, being labelled as the company’s “best new product in years.” After today’s decline of 3.8-percent, Apple has experienced its largest drop since 2008.

One of the larger issues affecting the company right now is concern regarding whether Apple’s manufacturers can meet the current demand for products. Foxconn’s CEO Terry Gou issued a statement that “it’s not easy to make the iPhones. We are falling short of meeting the huge demand.” The iPhone 5 is a difficult product to make due to its complexity, and presently there is a 3 to 4 week delay.

Analysts believe that Apple is facing the same type of issues with the iPad mini. Other issues involve the ongoing patent spats, including its loss in court today that requires the company to shell out $368 million in damages. All of this is compounded by the fairly sudden alterations in staff, with it being revealed that Scott Forstall was on the way out and other workers were being shuffled around.

[via Financial Times]

Apple closes at five-month low, shares down 20% is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.