Corporate America, flush with cash, is finally sharing a bit more with shareholders. It’s about time. U.S. corporations are on track yet again to report amazing returns for the first quarter. And they have tons of cash — about $3.6 trillion.
With its planned initial public offering just weeks away, social networking juggernaut Facebook announced plans to spend $550 million to bolster its patent portfolio amid a growing intellectual property dispute with Yahoo.
Wall Street cheered AOL’s deal to sell $1 billion worth of patents to Microsoft, sending the onetime Internet pioneer’s stock soaring over 40% Monday to levels not seen in nearly two years. For Microsoft, the deal highlights the premium that tech companies are willing to pay in order to bolster their intellectual property position and [...]
The kids’ e-book market is still nascent, with e-books making up just about three percent of children’s book sales. That could change now that Scholastic, the world’s largest children’s book publishers, is digitizing much of its list and releasing an e-reading app, “Storia,” that includes a large e-bookstore and lets kids read e-books based on [...]
Who says Congress never gets anything done? Pressed into action by the ongoing budget crunch, lawmakers have agreed to let the federal government raise as much as $25 billion by auctioning off valuable wireless spectrum, promising better mobile service for tens of millions of consumers and opening up new frequencies for next-generation WiFi networks. Proceeds [...]
First, the good news: Apple shares briefly hit $500 Monday for the first time in its history. The bad news? Apple’s headaches in China continue, as authorities in the northern city of Shijiazhuang have reportedly confiscated dozens of iPads due to an escalating copyright dispute.
Social networking giant Facebook filed IPO documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. Facebook’s public debut could value the company as high as $100 billion. Several individuals and venture capital firms stand to reap massive financial windfalls. Here’s a look at some of the biggest winners from the company’s offering.
A million years ago, Microsoft was a late arrival to this thing called the Internet. And it seems that the company has never ceased trying to play catch up in the various business segments the web has spawned. Search, games, email, commerce, news, advertising, social networks—you name it and the warriors of Redmond have been [...]
I just went to a panel discussion about Internet security and let me tell you, it was scar-y. Between individual fraud, organized crime, corporate espionage and government spying, it’s an incredibly dangerous world out there, which, according to one panelist, is growing exponentially worse. These are incredibly complex problems that even the smartest of the [...]
Fortune’s Jon Fortt reports that when long-time Microsoft-basher Larry Ellison (the CEO of Oracle) was asked this week if Microsoft was still relevant, his answer was: They make a lot of money. I think they’re clearly relevant. I divide the computer industry into two groups. And I know for a long time I was constantly [...]
