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Facebook to offer free ads to small businesses, report says

Advertising has long been the lifeblood of Facebook, and now, the company is hoping small businesses will also find use for its ad platform, a new report claims.

Facebook is looking to partner with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) to inform small businesses on the value of Facebook advertising, and educate them on why they should buy spots on the site

Facebook plans to announce the agreement today.

When the program starts in October Facebook and folks from the U.S. Chamber and the NFIB will head to local chambers of commerce around the country to teach small businesses the most effective ways to advertise on the service. And to help coax those firms into trying out some of the techniques they've learned, Facebook plans in January to give away $50 in advertising rebates to 200,000 small businesses.

Advertising is extremely important for Facebook. Earlier this month, research firm eMarketer revealed that the social network will generate $4.27 billion this year, including $3.8 billion in advertising worldwide. That figure is up a whopping 104 percent compared to its 2010 ad revenue of $1.86 billion.

But even though more companies are putting ads on Facebook, eMarketer says that the world's largest social network has hit a point where it needs to show value in its service. Debra Aho Williamson, a principal analyst at eMarketer, said that Facebook needs to "show advertisers that advertising on the site is effective even without a click or other action." The issue, Williamson says, is that many companies that have "amassed a large of quantity of 'likes,'" feel that they can simply market to customers through their own Pages, rather than through ads.

That might be a problem for Facebook's push to small businesses, as well

small businesses have 9.2 million Pages on the site.

But it's the ad sales pitch Facebook wants to make clear. Speaking to the Journal in an interview published today, Facebook vice president of advertising and global operations, David Fischer, said that the social network can see a way "to give small businesses a boost" with its ads.

Apple: Samsung got 'caught' mimicking iPad

Samsung has been accused by Apple of intentionally designing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with the Apple iPad in mind.

Presenting arguments to the New South Wales Federal Court today, Apple's lawyers alleged that Samsung has designed its Galaxy Tab 10.1 to look, feel and operate like the iPad and iPad 2 and, in this instance, has been caught in the act. Samsung will "have a go at launching a product and if they get caught out [infringing patents], they'll design around it," Apple's legal counsel said.

Apple originally took Samsung to court in Australia in August, claiming that the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringed on patents used for the creation of the iPad. Samsung, for its part, claims that Apple was basing its case on the U.S. version of the device and offered up three Australian models for study, agreeing to push back the release of the device to market. Apple claims that the devices it received were hurriedly stripped of contested features in an attempt to dodge the litigation and enable the release of the product.

Apple: Samsung seeks 'excessive' price for patents

Samsung is reportedly looking to exact a hefty price on Apple in their patent dispute.

Samsung wants to charge Apple 2.4 percent of its chip price for every patent, according to Andreas Udo de Haes, an editor at Dutch publication Webwereld, who was tweeting today from one battleground: a courtroom in the Netherlands where Samsung is demanding a ban on the iPhone and iPad in that country due to 3G patents held by Samsung that Apple allegedly is infringing upon.

The demands were supposed to be confidential, Haes tweeted, but were revealed by Apple's counsel. In addition, Apple said that it had purchased chips from Infineon, which was acquired by Intel last year, and as a result doesn't have to pay a royalty to Samsung.

Haes also tweeted that Apple called Samsung's demands "simply excessive."

The revelation of the demands is just the latest in an ever-expanding conflict between the two technology titans. Patent infringement lawsuits span courts in the U.S., Australia, Asia, and Europe, and underscore the growing friction between Apple and the coalition of companies that use Google's Android platform.

A Samsung representative wasn't immediately available to confir

the 2.4 percent figure. An Apple representative wasn't immediately available to comment.

Apple has sued various Android partners as it looks to maintain its leadership in the smartphone business. Android has since overtaken Apple in total market share, but the iPhone remains the top-selling single smartphone and continues to be the leader among high-end handsets.

Tumblr raises $85 million as growth continues

Microblogging provider Tumblr has raised $85 million in a new round of financing.

Greylock Partners and Insight Venture Partners led the financing round,
Virgin Group chief Richard Branson, along with Spark Capital and Sequoia Capital, also contributed to the round. Tumblr did not disclose its valuation, but the company said that it plans to use the cash to "continue to scale our business and give real focus to the further development of Tumblr."

Tumblr's $85 million in new cash is a major step up in investment for the company. Prior to this round, the firm had raised about $40 million in several different rounds of financing. Its last major round came last November when it raised $30 million From Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, among others.

Since its launch over four years ago, Tumblr has watched its growth rates soar.

Tumblr generates 13 billion page views each month. What's more, the company is closing in on 30 million blogs, and has seen over 45 million posts added to the site today alone. Recently, Tumblr announced that it reached 10 billion posts since its inception.

Nielsen earlier this month helped shed even more light on Tumblr's growth, saying that the company is an "emerging player in social media." In the past year alone, Nielsen said, Tumblr has nearly tripled its "audience."

Android use surges on mobile ad network

Android continued to scoop up a healthy share of users on Millennial Media's mobile ad network in August, while growth for Apple's iOS was relatively flat.

For the month, Android ad impressions jumped 48 percent over July, giving Google's mobile OS a 54 percent slice of the ad network

In contrast, Apple's iOS failed to gain much ground from July, leaving it with a 28 percent share.

The new market share figures actually showed a decline for Google and a gain for iOS from July. However, the August numbers included both smartphones and connected devices, such as tablets, whereas past rankings covered only smartphones. So the strong demand for the iPad and the lackluster sales for Android tablets certainly played a role in the latest results.

Looking at other mobile platforms, ad impressions for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion grew 10 percent from July, while those for Nokia's Symbian were relatively flat. And though Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 still grabbed only 1 percent overall share from Millennial Media, its ad impressions grew 48 percent from July.

From the hardware side, Apple continued to retain its top perch as the leading mobile device maker with 23 percent of all impressions. The iPhone was also by far the leading mobile phone with a 13 percent share.

HTC shot up to second place in August from fourth place the prior month with more than 16 percent of all impressions. The company saw 5 of its mobile phones on the top 20 list, including the Desire, Evo, Droid Incredible, MyTouch 4G Glacier, and Thunderbolt.

Altogether, Android devices accounted for 15 of the top 20 mobile phones, capturing a collective share of 32 percent among all 20 phones last month.

Smartphones in general continued to inch up in popularity, as measured by the report. Growing 6 percent from July, smartphones grabbed 72 percent of all ad impressions last month, compared with 14 percent for connected devices and 14 percent for feature phones. Those numbers show a dramatic difference from August 2010 when smartphones held 51 percent of the market and feature phones 33 percent.

Google+ officially tops 10 million users

Google's latest social-networking experiment is officially 10 million users strong.

That number, which appeared earlier this week as a third-party estimate, was confirmed today by Google CEO Larry Page, who spent the first few minutes of the company's second-quarter earnings call talking up Google+ and its features.

"I'm super excited about the amazing response to Google+ which lets you share just like in real life," Page said in a statement ahead of the call. Page then kicked off the call by talking up the new property, saying that it's a good representation of the kind of clean and easy to use products he wants the company to be making. Page also noted how features like circles and hangouts mimic real-life human interactions.

Google launched Google+ late last month not even in beta, letting in only a handful of users, who could later invite their friends and family. Page noted that the service remains in a "field trial" mode, and with "a lot of barriers" to use it right now, but that the company is continuing to expand how many have access to it. Page referred to the 10 million benchmark as "a great achievement" for the team that worked on the product.

Beyond raw user numbers, Page said the service has received "a ton of activity" with more than 1 billion items shared and received each day. That's been bolstered by the +1 button, which Page said is now being served up around the Web 2.3 billion times a day.

"We want to make products that everybody uses twice a day, like their toothbrush," Page said during the earnings call. "We certainly think about Plus that way, and just generally having a shared identity experience across Google and its products."

Page is currently the second most followed user on the new service
a third-party analytics tool that's currently tracking more than 28,000 profiles on the service. Page is second only to Facebook's CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who has approximately twice as many followers.

Google+ users up 30 percent since going public?

After opening its doors to the public last Tuesday, Google+ may now have more than as 43 million users.So says Ancestry.com co-founder and Google+ unofficial statistician Paul Allen, who's been keeping a running tally of how big the social network is growing.

Compiling his regular series of stats based on surnames used around the world, Allen said last Thursday that Google+ witnessed a 30 percent jump in users in the two days following its official opening to all users on September 20.

In just those two days, the growth rate skyrocketed to that only seen during the first week of the network's "field test" in late June, according to Allen, who's unrelated to the Microsoft co-founder of the same name.

Projecting the figures over the past few weeks, Allen's model came up with 28.7 million users on September 9. Last Thursday morning, that number had swelled to 37.8 million, with most of the growth coming from the prior two days. And accounting for a fudge factor and other elements, the unofficial statistician came up with an estimate as of last Thursday of 43.4 million users.

Over the past couple of months, Allen has been busy projecting the ongoing growth of the social network. From 1.7 million users on July 4, about a week after Google+ kicked off, Allen's estimate rose to 4.5 million on July 9, 10 million on July 12, and 18 million on July 20.

Google itself has generally been mum about user counts as its social network has grown, though it did cite 10 million users on July 14, not too far off from Allen's projection at the time.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for more current figures or a comment on Allen's estimate.

Despite the ongoing growth in overall users for Google+, a report from Experian Hitwise earlier this month claimed that the number of weekly visits to the service has been dropping since mid July.

Facebook unfriending 'bug' gets quick fix

Facebook users who were spying on their Timeline to see who had unfriended them in the past will no longer be able to do so.

Late last week, Facebook users discovered that when accessing the social network's new Timeline feature and choosing a year, they could find out which former friends had unfriended them. When viewing their friends list in a particular year, users who saw an "Add Friend" icon next to a person's name knew that that particular user had unfriended them since that time.

As expected, folks who have access to Timeline rushed to the new feature to see who had decided against keeping in contact. Meanwhile, some privacy advocates complained that the feature was a violation of user privacy, since it was made abundantly clear to de-friended people who no longer wanted contact with them. After just a couple days of outcry, Facebook nixed the feature, telling some reporters it had been a bug.

Over the years, Facebook has shied away from allowing users to find out when they're unfriended by a person. That said, it isn't all that difficult to determine. If users sift through their friends list looking for someone who used to be there and now isn't, they're no longer a friend. And when they view that person's profile page, they'll be given the "Add Friend" option.

So, while the Timeline bug was by no means groundbreaking, it was notable, since it made it much easier for folks to determine who had unfriended them.

Timeline was announced last week during Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's keynote address at the F8 conference. The feature, which will be rolled out to the entire Facebook community in the coming weeks, allows users to take a glimpse into their lives on the social network over the years by viewing updates they posted, friends they had, and other content shared with the site. During his address, Zuckerberg said Timeline is "the story of your life."

Microsoft addresses Windows 8 secure boot issue

Microsoft is trying to shed light on the new secure boot process in Windows 8 to address concerns from people who may want to dual-boot a non-Windows OS, such as Linux.

In an update posted Thursday to the Building Windows 8 blog , Tony Mangefeste, a member of Microsoft's Ecosystem team, discussed how secure boot attempts to protect the PC against boot loader attacks, which can compromise a system before the OS even loads.

Secure boot is actually a feature of Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), a new type of boot environment that has gradually been replacing the standard BIOS process. As Mangefeste explained, Windows 8 taps into UEFI's secure boot to ensure that the pre-OS environment is safe and secure.

The concern raised by some--in particular, Matthew Garrett, a Linux developer at Red Hat--is that the security certificates used by Microsoft to authenticate the boot environment will support only a Microsoft operating system.

"A system that ships with only OEM [original equipment manufacturer] and Microsoft keys will not boot a generic copy of Linux," Garrett said.

The problem may also stretch beyond just the OS, according to Garrett. Since any hardware in the PC also needs to be authenticated, installing new components in a Windows 8 PC may pose a challenge.

"A hardware vendor cannot run their hardware inside the EFI environment unless their drivers are signed with a key that's included in the system firmware," wrote Garrett. "If you install a new graphics card that either has unsigned drivers, or drivers that are signed with a key that's not in your system firmware, you'll get no graphics support in the firmware."

In his blog, Mangefeste countered such a position by saying that PC makers will have the option of giving customers the ability to disable secure boot and manage the security certificates if they wish to run other systems or potentially change the hardware.

"Microsoft supports OEMs having the flexibility to decide who manages security certificates and how to allow customers to import and manage those certificates, and manage secure boot," wrote Mangefeste. "We believe it is important to support this flexibility to the OEMs and to allow our customers to decide how they want to manage their systems."

Specifically, hardware makers would be able to customize how users can manage the security certificates and policies. Mangefeste also pointed out that people who want to run "older operating systems" would then have the flexibility to disable secure boot or otherwise modify the certificates if they chose to do so.

However, the blog did state that "Microsoft does not mandate or control the settings on PC firmware that control or enable secured boot from any operating system other than Windows," which again goes back to the issue of dual-booting an OS such as Linux.

Microsoft's blog prompted a response from Garrett, who labeled the company's explanation as "factually accurate" but "misleading." Since Microsoft is working with the OEMs, the company can require that PCs include the necessary security certificates for Windows, something that other OS vendors, such as Red Hat, cannot do. As a result, the user would not be able to run a secure boot on a non-Microsoft operating system, argued Garrett.

"The truth is that Microsoft's move removes control from the end user and places it in the hands of Microsoft and the hardware vendors," Garrett wrote. "The truth is that it makes it more difficult to run anything other than Windows. The truth is that UEFI secure boot is a valuable and worthwhile feature that Microsoft are misusing to gain tighter control over the market."

Apple to hold iPhone 5 event on-campus

Apple will unveil the next incarnation of the iPhone on its corporate campus in Cupertino, Calif., instead of in San Francisco, All Things Digital is reporting.

Citing unnamed sources

John Paczkowski says the October 4 event will go down at Apple's Town Hall Auditorium and that it's not clear why the change is being made this time around.

Could it be, Paczkowski wonders, that setting the final date was too fluid a proposition to make it practical for Apple to book one of its usual venues in advance? Perhaps the venues were already taken, or maybe Apple simply wanted a more intimate setting, he adds.

ZTE Tania joins Windows Phone Mango brigade, says Ni Hao to Chinese market

With Mango finally on its very official way -- that'd be one day away for certain AT&T owners -- it's hardly surprising to see OEMs jumping on Redmond's mobile bandwagon.

ZTE's joined the allied Windows Phone 7.5 ranks, outing its Tania phone at the China International Postal and Telecommunications Exhibition 2011. The modestly specced 4.3-inch device runs Microsoft's latest OS atop a single-core 1GHz processor, with 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a 5 megapixel rear camera on-board.

It's certainly no HTC Titan, but then again, not every smartphone needs to be a roided-up beast. Let's just hope MS gets those regional marketplace availability issues squared away before this handset's Chinese launch. After all, what fun is a live-tiled phone without the apps?

Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare

A few million virtual monkeys are close to re-creating the complete works of Shakespeare by randomly mashing keys on virtual typewriters.

A running total of how well they are doing shows that the re-creation is 99.990% complete.

The first single work to be completed was the poem A Lover's Complaint.

Set up by US programmer Jesse Anderson the project co-ordinates the virtual monkeys sitting on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing system via a home PC.

Mr Anderson said he started the project as a way to get to know the Hadoop programming tool better and to put Amazon's web services to the test.

It is also a practical test of the thought experiment that wonders whether an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters would be able to produce Shakespeare's works by accident.

Mr Anderson's virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. These coded apes regularly pump out random sequences of text.

Each sequence is nine characters long and each is checked to see if that string of characters appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard.

To get a sense of the scale of the project, there are about 5.5 trillion different combinations of any nine characters from the English alphabet.

Mr Anderson's monkeys are generating random nine-character strings to try to produce all these strings and thereby find those that appear in Shakespeare's works.

Mr Anderson kicked off the project on 21 August using Amazon's cloud computers. Each day of virtual monkey keyboard mashing processing cost $19.20 (£12.40).

The project has been moved to a home PC to speed up text string generation and to cut the cost. To make the task even easier the text being sampled has had all the spaces and punctuation removed.

Mathematicians said the constraints Mr Anderson introduced to the project mean he will complete it in a reasonable amount of time.
"If he's running an evolutionary approach, holding on to successful guesses, then he'll get there," said Tim Harford

And without those constraints?

"Not a chance," said Dr Ian Stewart, emeritus professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick.

His calculations suggest it would take far, far longer than the age of the Universe for monkeys to completely randomly produce a flawless copy of the 3,695,990 or so characters in the works.

"Along the way there would be untold numbers of attempts with one character wrong; even more with two wrong, and so on." he said. "Almost all other books, being shorter, would appear (countless times) before Shakespeare did."

Earlier experiments have shown how difficult the task is. Wikipedia mentions a 2003 project that used computer programs to simulate a lot of monkeys randomly typing.

After the equivalent of billions and billions and billions of monkey years the simulated apes had only produced part of a line from Henry IV, Part 2.

Also in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard.

Apple slashes fourth-quarter iPad orders, report says

Apple has cut iPad orders from manufacturing partnersApple has reportedly cut fourth-quarter iPad shipments by 25 percent

, per JP Morgan Chase. The analysts at JP Morgan said that this is the first time they've seen Apple slash iPad shipments since the tablet launched last year.

If Apple has, in fact, cut iPad shipments for the fourth quarter, it will have a profound impact on many of its suppliers, including Hon Hai Precision. According to the analysts,
Hon Hai was planning to ship 17 million iPads in the fourth quarter, but will now only ship 13 million units.

It's unclear why Apple might want to cut back on iPad shipments, if that is in fact what's happening. Perhaps it ordered too many iPads in previous quarters, or it's slowing down iPad 2 production to prepare for the eventual iPad 3, or there might be other supply chain management and spending issues involved.

What's more, even with those purportedly reduced shipments, analysts aren't ready to say that Apple will sell fewer iPads in the fourth quarter. According to Bloomberg, JP Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz will maintain estimates that Apple will ship up to 12 million iPad units in that quarter, even with reduced orders to suppliers.

If Apple can keep up its momentum, and sell as many iPads as researchers expect, this could be another big year for the tablet. Last week, research firm Gartner reported that it expects Apple to sell nearly 47 million iPads this year, up from the 14.7 million it sold last year. Even more impressive, Gartner believes Apple will ship nearly 149 million iPads in 2015.

Yahoo received inquiries from many parties: memo

Yahoo Inc has received inquiries from multiple parties about "potential options," but the struggling Web company expects to take months to decide its future, the company's co-founders and chairman said in a letter to employees on Friday.

"Our advisers are working with us to develop ideas that we will pursue proactively," read the letter

Yahoo retained Allen & Co to help it conduct a "strategic review" after it fired Chief Executive Carol Bartz earlier this month.

"They are fielding inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed interest in a number of potential options," read the letter on Friday, signed by Chairman Roy Bostock and co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo.

Private equity firm Silver Lake Partners is among the parties that have been in touch with Allen & Co, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Yahoo's board has started a search for a permanent CEO, the letter said, but provided no details on the progress of the search, or whether the company has hired an executive recruiting firm to oversee the search.

At an all-hands meeting the day after Bartz was fired, Yang said the company was not for sale, according to another source familiar with the matter. Although Friday's note did not explicitly mention a sale of the company, it said the company was exploring various options to "structure the best approach for the company."

"While we will move with a sense of urgency, this process will take time," the letter said. "Months, not weeks."

A Yahoo spokesman declined to comment on the memo.

Donovan Data, MediaBank to form new company: report

U.S. advertising-technology companies Donovan Data Systems Inc and MediaBank LLC plan to merge and create a new company called MediaOcean, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The companies valued their combination at $1.5 billion and together will process $150 billion in global advertising spending annually, the newspaper, citing people familiar with the matter, reported in its electronic edition.

The companies provide software that lets ad agencies book advertising time, make sure those ads appear properly, bill clients and pay the media platforms that host the ads.

Bill Wise, chief executive of MediaBank, will serve as CEO of MediaOcean.

Donovan Data and MediaBank could not immediately be reached for comment.

EU opens antitrust probe into e-payment market

EU antitrust regulators are investigating whether a group of banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Spain's BBVA, is blocking new players from entering the European online payments market.

The European Commission opened an investigation into the standardization process for e-payments by the European Payments Council (EPC) on Monday, saying the move was prompted by a complaint. It did not identify the complainant.

"Standards promote interoperability and competition, but we need to ensure that the standardization process does not unnecessarily restrict opportunities for non-participants," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.

The Commission said the exclusion of new players and payment providers not controlled by a bank could result in higher prices for web merchants and consumers.

EPC, which is the coordination and decision-making body of the European banking industry in relation to payments, supports the creation of an integrated payments market through the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA).

EPC could not be reached for comment.

In its July newsletter, EPC head Gerard Hartsink said the Commission's competition division had requested information on the cooperation of competing banks and payment institutions regarding rules and technical standards for payment services.

EPC's other members include Spain's Banco Santander, the British unit of Citigroup, Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole and Intesa Sanpaolo.

Almunia, who is currently investigating credit default swaps, Libor transactions by banks and the activities of several providers of financial information, has said repeatedly that distortions in competition may pose systemic risks for EU economies because of the prominent role of capital markets.

App helps travelers speak in foreign languages

Communicating with local people in a foreign country can pose difficulties, whether it is asking for direction or making a special request at a restaurant.

But Vocre, a new iPhone app released by translation company myLanguage, aims to ease those problems by enabling users to translate their spoken voice into foreign languages.

It leverages crowd-sourcing to continually improve the accuracy of its translations to allow people to express themselves in the same way as native speakers.

"It's like asking your friend down the street, 'How would I say this in Spanish?" said Andrew Lauder, founder and CEO of myLanguage.

"It might not be something that's expected by a dictionary -- but it is the right way to say it when you go to that specific part of the world. It has the colloquialisms or slang of the area."

The app uses the iPhones accelerometer as a source of input so that users don't need to tap the screen. They simply hold the phone in one direction to record their voice, and then flip it in the other direction to make it talk in the translated language.

Lauder said that the company's expertise lies in the translation technology, rather than the voice transcription or human speech technology, which are driven by Nuance (speech-to-text) and iSpeech (text-to-speech) respectively.

The translation engine trains itself based on user-contributed corrections, queries made by other users in their native languages, as well as their own linguists, to determine the most common way a native speaker would say a particular phrase.

"We've really invented a new type of translation technology that learns every single time a translation is done," said Lauder. "Nobody has focused on what's the right way of saying this. And that's important because there's meaning attached to what we say -- people will know if you're saying something funny, for example."

Although the technology has been praised, the app has been criticized for its ease of use and pricing. Lauder said the company hopes to resolve both issues in an update expected this week that will make the app more intuitive to use, and also introduce a new pricing model.

The pricing will move away from a credit-based model toward a subscription-based model. The app will be free for use for the first 24 hours upon initial launch, but then will require a weekly or monthly subscription.

Competitors for the app include Google Translate, Jibbigo (both of which have free versions of their apps) and SmartTrans, which also makes use of Nuances voice recognition software and costs $19.99.

The app, available on the Apple App Store, currently supports nine languages - three dialects of English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chinese and Japanese. Support for ten more languages is planned.

Hynix advisors approaching potential bidders: source

Advisors in the sale of a controlling stake in Hynix Semiconductor are tapping potential bidders as shareholders are now open to new bids for the world's No.2 memory chipmaker after STX pulled out, an official with one of the shareholders said.

Following its contender's withdrawal, the country's top mobile carrier SK Telecom was left as sole bidder for the stake, casing a shadow over shareholders' efforts to find a new owner after previous aborted attempts.

Lead shareholder Korea Exchange Bank said on Wednesday it would allow new bidders to participate in the stake sale in the interests of valid competition.

The 146.1 million shares on offer, including new shares, are worth at $2.5 billion at Friday's closing price.

The official said final bids were likely to be pushed back from late October.

New bidders will not be given a chance to conduct due diligence, as opposed to SK Telecom's seven-week inspection, sources with knowledge of the deal have said.

Nine shareholders of Hynix, including Korea Finance Corp, Korea Exchange Bank, Shinhan Bank and Woori Bank had planned to receive final bids around Oct 24.

Shares in Hynix Semiconductor rose 2 percent and SK Telecom also advanced 2 percent in a flat broader market as of 0032 GMT.

The official added that the shareholders would this week discuss the details of an invitation letter to be sent out as late as early October.

Shareholders have scaled down their stake in Hynix but failed several times to complete a full sale, with investors avoiding a risky jump into the capital intensive, cyclical memory chip sector.

Groupon uncertain about IPO timing: report

Daily deal website Groupon Inc is committed to launching an initial public offering but the exact timing remains uncertain

The timing remains unclear because regulators have been reviewing the company's IPO documents more aggressively than was initially expected, the newspaper said, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The current volatility in the stock market is also delaying the company's move to launch its stock, the newspaper said.

Groupon was not immediately available to comment.

Groupon on Friday amended its offering documents to reduce reported revenue for 2010 to $312.9 million from $713.4 million, the newspaper said.

The amended filing also included parts of a letter written by Chief Executive Andrew Mason to employees earlier this month.

The letter could be seen as a violation of regulatory rules that prevent companies from making public statements about their stock during the IPO process, the newspaper said.

Groupon also announced that its No. 2 executive, Margo Georgiadis, was leaving after five months to return to her former employer, Google Inc.

Apple down on report of iPad supply slowdown

Apple Inc shares dipped nearly 3 percent in early trading on Monday after an analyst said the iPhone maker is cutting orders from suppliers of parts for its iPad tablet.

JPMorgan Chase said in the research note that several suppliers indicated in the past two weeks that Apple lowered fourth-quarter iPad orders by 25 percent.

"Our understanding is that this is not in preparation for a new model launch," said Gokul Hariharan, JP Morgan's Asia Pacific electronic manufacturing services analyst.

The move could result in slower sales for suppliers like Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, the analyst added.

Apple shares were down $12 at $392.30 on Nasdaq.

Hariharan noted that Mark Moskowitz, JP Morgan's U.S.-based Apple analyst, does not expect the supply chain adjustments to result in downside to his estimates for iPad shipments.

Another analyst report out of Asia over the weekend indicated that the retail outlook was that Apple remained positive on the continent with packed Apple stores in several Chinese cities..

"We anticipate continued strong earnings growth for Apple due to our checks indicating strong global demand for the iPhone and iPad," said analysts at Canaccord Genuity.

Apple did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Amazon's tablet serious challenge to Apple's iPad: analysts

Amazon.com Inc, which revolutionized reading with its Kindle e-reader, is expected to unveil a tablet computer this week that analysts say will seriously challenge Apple's market dominating iPad.

Amazon on Friday invited media to a press conference to be held in New York on Wednesday, declining to provide further details.

But analysts were confident that the world's largest Internet retailer will introduce its long-awaited tablet computer this year to expand in mobile commerce and sell more digital goods and services.

"Wednesday is tablet day," BGC partners analyst Colin Gillis told Reuters.

The tablet has been awaited as a strong competitor to Apple Inc's iPad. Apple has sold about 29 million of the devices since its launch in April 2010.

"The real issue here is that, you know, it is likely going to be good for consumers; is this going to be good for shareholders?," Gillis said. He wondered whether Amazon would price the tablet below those of rivals -- and thereby do little to boost margins.

"Knowing Amazon, it is likely to be a very aggressive price," Gillis said.

In much the same way Amazon's Kindle e-reader was priced low to quickly get traction among readers the company is likely to keep the price of its tablet low to attract users and sell other content and services, one analyst said.

"It's a marketing tool to build a relationship with customers and sell them cloud (computing) services," said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.

While Amazon has remained tight lipped even about the device's existence, the TechCrunch blog earlier this month said the Amazon tablet also will be called Kindle.

It will be a 7 inch device with a full color, touch screen, run on Google's Android software and cost $250, the blog said, well below the price of the least expensive iPad.

Robert Baird & Co analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note last month than an Amazon tablet would be a "game-changer." Sebastian forecast the device could sell 3 million units in its first year.

The tablet could pose a major threat to Apple because of the Kindle's popularity and the movie and music services Amazon sells.

Forrester's McQuivey said the device also takes aim at Barnes & Noble Inc's NookColor device, which hit the market last year and features tablet functionalities.

Several technology companies like Research In Motion and Samsung have introduced tablets that sold poorly. Hewlett Packard Co announced recently it would abandon its tablet.

Amazon shares finished the day up 0.2 percent at $223.61 on Friday on Nasdaq. The stock had traded as low as $219.06, but rallied as invitations to the media event began arriving.

Netflix signs pay TV deal for Dreamworks animation

Online video rental company Netflix Inc said it won pay TV rights to Dreamworks Animation movies starting in 2013, the first time a major Hollywood studio has chosen an Internet streaming player over a traditional cable channel.

News of the deal drove Netflix's stock up nearly 7 percent to a high of $137.88 in early trade on Nasdaq on Monday.

Netflix did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.

However, Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said that the deal, worth $30 million per picture to Dreamworks over a number of years, was "game-changing" and represented a bet that viewers would soon no longer make distinctions between content streamed on the Internet or through cable.

The Netflix deal means Dreamworks -- the studio behind family friendly fare from "Shrek" to "Kung Fu Panda" -- is eschewing premium pay-TV operator HBO in favor of online streaming, the Times reported. HBO is a unit of Time Warner Inc.

"We are really starting to see a long-term road map of where the industry is headed," Katzenberg said.

The content agreement comes days after Netflix, which has seen its share price decline sharply after a series of missteps, sealed an agreement to broadcast TV shows from Discovery Communications Inc.

Netflix needs to add more content to its streaming service to keep drawing in new customers and fend off competition from the likes of Amazon.com, Google Inc and Apple Inc.

Shares of the one-time Wall Street darling have fallen 50 percent in two months. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has apologized for failing to explain moves adequately, from a surprise price hike in July to a separation of its DVD-mail from streaming services, and the company is trying to win customers back.

But adding customers is suddenly proving difficult, with Netflix on the receiving end of heated complaints from customers still upset over the price hike announced in July.

It cut its subscriber forecast by 1 million, saying it now expected to have 24 million subscribers at the end of the third quarter. The last time Netflix reported a subscriber decline was the second quarter of 2007, when Blockbuster was aggressively pushing a DVD rental package called Total Access.

Netflix was quick to pump up the Dreamworks deal.

"This is one of the few family entertainment brands that matter," Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos was quoted as saying. "It's also a signal to people that we are in no way moving away from movies. Our programing is just reflecting more and more what people want."

Verizon takes Samsung's side in spat with Apple

Verizon Wireless, the biggest U.S. mobile provider, has taken a legal stand against Apple Inc's (AAPL.O) request to prohibit the sale of some Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) models in the United States.

"The requested injunction of certain Samsung products will harm Verizon Wireless and U.S. consumers," Verizon said in a court filing dated September 23.

"It also has the possibility of slowing the deployment of next-generation networks -- such as Verizon Wireless's -- contrary to the stated goals of the U.S. government," it said.

Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N) and Vodafone Plc (VOD.L).

Apple and Samsung have been locked in an acrimonious global battle over smartphone and tablet patents since April. Last month Apple won a symbolic legal victory when a German court upheld a ban on Samsung's local unit (005930.KS) selling its Galaxy 10.1 tablets in Europe's biggest economy.

Legal battle between Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc Expected

An intensifying legal battle between Samsung Electronics Co and Apple Inc is expected to crimp growth at one of the fastest growing businesses of the Korean company, while threatening to worsen business ties with the firm's largest customer.

The two technology firms have been locked in an acrimonious global battle over smartphone and tablet patents since April, and Apple has successfully blocked Samsung from selling its latest tablets in Germany and some smartphone models in the Netherlands.

The iPhone and iPad maker has also forced its rival to indefinitely delay launching its new Galaxy tablets in Australia, where a court will give its ruling this week.

Another loss could dent Samsung's ambitious attempt to close the gap with Apple in the global tablet market. The Galaxy gadgets, powered by Google's Android operating system are seen as the biggest challengers to Apple's mobile devices.

"Samsung's tablet business will be most affected and its chip business will also take a hit as Apple moves to diversify away from Samsung to the likes of Toshiba," said Nho Geun-chang, an analyst at HMC Investment Securities.

"But taking passive steps for fear of losing its biggest customer will slow down strong growth momentum at its telecoms business, which Samsung doesn't want to see as the business is set to become the biggest earnings generator this year and make up for weakening chip profits. It'll be a costly battle for Samsung."

The South Korean conglomerate supplied Apple with about $5.7 billion in components last year, some 4 percent of Samsung's total sales.

Apple's portion grew to 5.8 percent of Samsung's sales in the first quarter, driven by booming iPad and iPhone sales, which Samsung supplies chips for, along with Japan's Toshiba.

Apple and Samsung are scrapping for top spot in the smartphone market, having overtaken the market leader for the past decade, Finland's Nokia, in the second quarter.

Samsung still trails badly in tablet sales, where Apple racked up 14 million iPad sales in the first half, versus analysts' sales estimates of about 7.5 million Samsung tablet products for all of 2011.

Samsung and Apple will square off in a more significant U.S. court hearing next month about an injunction case.

Technology experts say Apple's intellectual property battle with Samsung Electronics is part of its broader strategy of using the courts to help cement the unassailable lead its iPad has in the tablet market.

Samsung is betting on its new tablets to close the gap with Apple and reach its target of increasing tablet sales by more than five folds this year.

SUPPLIER AND RIVAL

Analysts said what may become a longer-term challenge for Samsung, is losing chip orders from Apple.

"For Samsung, (the) biggest concern is reduced order from Apple. Without Apple's big backing, it would be difficult for Samsung to boost its chip market share sharply," said Nho at HMC.

"Apple is leveraging the fact that it's got alternative suppliers. They may offer inferior or more expensive components but it's something consumers barely notice and something Apple can successfully use to pressure Samsung."

Samsung's smartphone business has been growing furiously, powered by its flagship Galaxy lineups. Some analysts expect Samsung to overtake Apple as the world's No.1 smartphone vendor and report record profits in July-September, as it has much broader lineups than the high-end focused Apple.

Samsung's smartphone sales soared more than 500 percent in the second quarter, easily eclipsing Apple's 142 percent growth, though Apple sold about 1 million more units. Nokia sales fell 30 percent.

Samsung and Apple are suing each other in 9 countries over 20 cases. Apple first fired salvo in April by suing Samsung in a California court, saying the Galaxy lineup devices infringed on its mobile technology patents and design.

Samsung shot back with claims of its own.

Some analysts said Samsung's aggressive stance could help it gain some support from consumers.

"These legal battles are raising perception among consumers that Samsung is the only one capable of competing against Apple," said Choi Do-youn, an analyst at LIG Investment & Securities.

Despite the global court cases, both companies could end up settling the cases, HSBC said in a note.

"The most likely scenario is an out-of-court settlement, after a long-drawn IP battle... As in the case of the Nokia-Apple dispute, this issue too is likely to be settled out of the court, after a long drawn legal dispute," said HSBC analyst Daniel Kim.

HP and Apple face-off: EliteBook vs. MacBook

As Hewlett-Packard mulls the fate of its PC operations, this is a good opportunity to contrast HP's ultraportable workhorse with Apple's popular MacBook Air.

Just before the news broke about Hewlett-Packard considering a spin-off of its PC operations, I received an EliteBook 2560p from HP to try out. Call it uncanny. Or, better yet, call it an opportune time to take a high-end HP laptop for a spin and compare two competing design philosophies from two of the most successful--and biggest--computer companies in the world.

And, yes, I wondered for a moment if this was the last opportunity to handle a new HP-branded laptop. But that thought quickly vanished. HP Executive Chairman Ray Lane has said--as recently as Thursday--that the $40 billion PC operations will either be spun off as an "HP branded" company or kept inside.

The 2560p is the most recent offering in a long line of high-end business ultraportables. Before the 2560p came the 2540p, 2530p, 2510p--and before that, models like the Compaq Armada m300. Previous models were actually lighter. For example, the 2510p was about 3.4 pounds. The 2560p weighs about 3.7 pounds. That said, it's HP's most portable business laptop (excluding Netbooks). And HP is all about business computers. That's its bread and butter: supplying laptops to Fortune 500 companies.

I've always thought that HP's business laptops were underexposed (if not underrated). They get relatively little media attention despite wide use. As I've said before, at airports, conferences, and hotels, the most widely used laptops I see are MacBooks, ThinkPads, and HP's business laptops. And it's obvious that HP ships a lot of these as it's the largest PC maker in the world.

So, let's get the spec comparison out the way.

HP EliteBook 2560p:

• Weight/size: 1.08 inches thick, 3.7 pounds
  
• Chassis build materials: plenty of aluminum and magnesium (military spec'd MIL-STD-810G)
  
• Processor: Core i5 "Sandy Bridge" 2410M, 2.3 GHz.
  
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 3000.
  
• Display: 12.5-inch LED-backlit HD antiglare (1,366x768).
  
• Storage: 320GB 7,200RPM hard disk drive.
  
• Optical drive: built-in
  
• Memory: 4GB.
  
• Ports: USB 2.0 (3), DisplayPort, VGA, Ethernet, docking connector, among others.
  
• 3G: option for internal AT&T or Verizon broadband card
  
• Battery: 6-cell rated at up to 8 hours
  
• Input: Touchpad with gestures and pointstick
  
• Operating system: Windows 7 Professional
  
• Price: $1,099
  

Apple MacBook Air:

• Weight/size: 0.68 inches thick, 2.4 pounds
  
• Chassis build materials: aluminum.
  
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo ULV 1.6GHz.
  
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 320M
  
• Display: 11.6-inch LED-backlit glossy widescreen display (1,366x768).
  
• Storage: 128GB solid-state drive.
  
• Optical drive: N/A
  
• Memory: 4GB.
  
• Ports: USB 2.0 (2), Mini DisplayPort.
  
• 3G: N/A
  
• Battery: rated at up to 5 hours
  
• Input: Touchpad
  
• Operating system: OS X
  
• Price: when purchased in 2010, $1,399
  

Build quality: The EliteBook is built like a tank. It seems practically indestructible. And that's what corporate road warriors need. The HP product manager who oversees the EliteBook line said in a phone interview that it is tested to withstand a dead drop from desk-level height at every different angle (it's dropped 26 times during testing). I believe him. And I have a feeling that I could drop kick the 2560p across my front lawn and see no appreciable damage. The Air is of course well built too, but it's not military-spec'd to the max like the EliteBook.

Performance: I'm not going to cite EliteBook and MacBook Air benchmarks (you can get that in any formal review) but, rather, give a subjective opinion. Despite its having a "faster" Sandy Bridge processor, I didn't feel that the EliteBook was faster than the Air (equipped with an Ultra Low Voltage 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo). In fact, I noticed no difference bouncing between the two on a daily basis. My work routine includes tab-intensive Web surfing (usually 20 tabs open), flash video, photo editing, MS Office-related tasks, and audio and video encoding.

The only appreciable performance difference favored the Air. Which is testimony to the criticality of a solid-state drive. I can't say enough about the importance (necessity?) of having an SSD. Apple understands this. Everything feels faster with an SSD--and I'm not just talking about boot times and data reads. That said, put the optional 128GB SSD in the EliteBook (not the HDD that I got) and I guarantee you will have an extremely fast system that easily out-benchmarks the Air that I have (if not the newer MBA with the Sandy Bridge processor).

Keyboard: I like the feel and tactility of the MBA's keyboard but have no complaints about the 2560p's. Nothing really to say beyond this because I could easily adjust to the EliteBook's keyboard.

Touchpad: Big, big difference. The Windows camp does not seem to understand the significance of a good touchpad experience. The MacBook's multigesture touchpad is close to flawless. HP's is anything but.

Touchpad issue No. 1: The problems begin with the size of the touchpad. HP's is too small. (I mentioned this to the HP product manager. He said they have a limited amount of space to work with because they must also make room for two extra mouse buttons to use with the pointing stick.)

Touchpad issue No. 2: But size is probably the lesser of the two problems. For two-finger scrolling, unless your fingers fall in just the right place (at the top of the touchpad in the middle), the touchpad misfires, i.e., nothing happens. And that happened a lot. Granted, I got better at it over time, and it did become less hit-or-miss, but it is still far from fluid. And the blame doesn't lie only with HP. I have a Dell Adamo that has the exact same problem.

Docking station/port replicator: Big difference--in favor of the EliteBook. Apple doesn't like docking stations. I'm sure Apple engineers think they have good reasons, but I respectfully disagree. I loved the EliteBook's docking station. It worked flawlessly and made grabbing the EliteBook and taking it somewhere else a pleasure. Not so with the Air. I have to undo four connections if I want to take the Air somewhere. That's a big disincentive. Point: a well-designed docking station is a godsend. In fact, this killer feature alone is almost reason enough to go out and buy an EliteBook of my own and relegate the Air to a backup machine. (Maybe.)

Display: The EliteBook's display is dimmer than the MBA's. But that's partly due to the EliteBook's being a matte display (not glossy like the Air's). Many people prefer matte displays. In fact, I do too as long as they're bright. The 2560p's was not bright enough for me.

Portability: The EliteBook's wonderful docking station aside, the Air wins this contest. Indeed, that's why I bought the 11.6-inch Air. A relatively high-performance laptop at 2.4 pounds is hard to beat for portability. For the uninitiated, I would suggest going to an Apple store and picking up an 11.6-inch MBA. A laptop doesn't get much lighter. By comparison, the EliteBook feels like a dead weight. This is all very relative, of course. Someone used to a 6-pound laptop would find the EliteBook light.

That said, I would strongly suggest to HP (and I mentioned this to the product manager) that it make the next rev of the EliteBook lighter. An "ultraportable" just south of four pounds in 2011 seems like a Luddite resisting progress. Even if it means making the EliteBook a little less indestructible.

Battery life: This may surprise some readers, but not a lot to say here. The HP has a 6-cell tube battery that protrudes from the back. But based on what I do with a laptop (discussed above), I found it roughly on par with Apple's smaller battery. In short, after four or five hours of use (depending on how processor-intensive), the Air and 2560p fare about the same.

3G: This is personal preference (I know some people don't care) and another big upside of the EliteBook (and many Windows laptops for that matter). In short, I have found that as a longtime user of built-in 3G (in previous HP laptops that I owned, and in my current Dell lappy) it is more convenient than hauling around a portable Mi-Fi router. Yes, I know that you can use Mi-Fi on multiple computers, which makes it cost-efficient. I still prefer built-in 3G. Especially when I'm traveling. Again, at least the option for built-in 3G makes the 2560p the big winner here.

Storage: Already covered above. SSD beats a rotating HDD any day.

Optical drive: The EliteBook has one, the Air doesn't. That said, I don't see this as an advantage for the EliteBook. And it's possibly even detrimental to the overall design. It makes the EliteBook heavier and bulkier than it needs to be. I have no need for a built-in optical drive these days.

Ports: The HP has lots of ports as cited in the specs above. A big advantage? I don't think so.

Conclusion: The EliteBook is designed for a corporate workforce and has all the hallmarks of a system designed by focus groups. That makes for a very practical laptop with almost everything you could possibly need crammed into a compact form factor. It also results in an awkward design that tries to please everyone. That said, give it a better touchpad and make it a little lighter and, in my opinion, you have an MBA killer. Because of the docking station, build quality, and 3G, I would certainly consider it. I am not wedded to Apple products by any means.

The MBA has the opposite design philosophy: To roughly paraphrase something Steve Jobs has said, focus groups are for losers. (I think he actually said, "users don't know what they want" or something along those lines.) Hey, he's right. Design something great and that's what consumers want. HP should try to incorporate more of that thinking into at least some its business laptops. I think theHP ProBook 5330m is a step in the right direction. Double down on a 5330m-like design and stick with it. Or tweak the 2560p as described above.

With that preamble, let's get down to business. First, some quick notes about the EliteBook 2560p. Among the business models announced in the last six months or so, the 2560p is the closest that HP gets to the Air. (Some might argue that the ProBook 5330m or Pavilion dm1 are closer, but I'm sticking with the 2560p as the best point of comparison for reasons cited below--besides, that's all I've got to work with.)

(Note: this is not a formal review but general impressions of the 2560p after using it for about three weeks. And also note that I am not comparing it to the latest MacBook Air with Intel Sandy Bridge chips inside. I'm sure the MacBook faithful will cry foul on that account. My everyday machine is the MBA spec'd below.)

Fresh iPhone/iOS 5 rumors cite Twitter events, vacay days

Tired of speculation about when, exactly, the iPhone 5 and its iOS 5 operating system will appear? No? Well, we've got a couple more clues for you then, you incurable gadgiopath.

Reports say that the dates of a couple of upcoming Twitter developer events suggest that Apple will release iOS 5 on or before October 10.

The events, "seem to be focusing on the integration of Twitter into Apple's upcoming iOS 5 software." The first is in London on the 10th, and the second is in New York on the 12th. And neither event

is limited to Apple Developer program members. That means attendees won't be under a nondisclosure agreement--so, the theorizing goes, there probably won't be anything to disclose: by then it'll all be out of the iBag.

Of course, these dates jibe with a lot of earlier reports about an early to mid-October launch for iOS 5 and the iPhone 5, including a report from All Things D that pegs the iPhone 5 announcement for the fourth day of the month.

Another clue being offered up today is that Apple is reportedly telling staffers at its Apple Stores that they can't go on vacation during the second week of October (this from AppleInsider). Who's gonna wrangle with the iPhone-buying hordes if Apple-ites are all lolling about at home, wiping fingerprints from their iPads?

"The first block of [blacked out ] dates--the 9th through the 12th--could pertain to the release of iOS 5 for existing iOS device owners on Monday the 10th," says AppleInsider. And "the second block of retail blackout dates--October 14th and 15th--could signal availability of the fifth-generation iPhone hardware by that Friday."

Netflix apologizes then creates new uproar

The CEO of Netflix said he was sorry for mishandling a recent price increase that caused customers to cancel the service in droves. But the apology was drowned out by a decision that angered subscribers all over again.

The company will split into two services -- one with an odd new name that offers the familiar discs in red envelopes and another for online streaming of TV shows and movies.

The DVD service will be called Qwikster, a name that is supposed to signify a commitment to fast service but quickly became an object of ridicule Monday on the Internet. The streaming service will keep the Netflix name.

Netflix, which had 24.6 million U.S. subscribers at the end of June and is the nation's largest video subscription service, redefined home entertainment over the past decade with its DVDs by mail. Now it's trying to prepare for the day when watching movies on a disc goes the way of driving to the video store to pick up a VHS tape.

But lately, it has bungled the transition. The company has lost half its market value since July, when it announced that customers who wanted DVDs and streaming had to pay for them separately -- and pay up to 60 percent more.

The decision to rebrand the best-known part of Netflix's business left some experts wondering whether CEO Reed Hastings is losing the touch that established him as an influential figure in technology and entertainment.

Others see the logic in trying to make sure Netflix keeps a thriving business as customers abandon DVDs and shift in greater numbers to beaming movies and TV shows into their living rooms over high-speed Internet connections.

It's going to be a painful transition, as Hastings acknowledged as he cut loose the DVD service.

"It's hard for me to write this after over 10 years of mailing DVDs with pride, but we think it is necessary and best," Hastings wrote on a Netflix blog. The CEO of the rechristened Qwikster service will be Andy Rendich, a longtime Netflix employee.

Hastings found little sympathy among the more than 10,000 people who commented on the blog posting.

Most of them lambasted him for making life more difficult for about 12 million customers who get both streaming and DVD rentals. Those people will have to visit two websites to make requests and update their billing information.

Other critics questioned the sincerity of his apology for the recent price increase and ripped him for giving DVD rentals a different identity -- and for the name Qwikster in particular.

"It's a really dumb name," said Scott Devine of Burbank, Calif., who dropped the DVD service after the price increase was announced two months ago. "You would think they would choose something that at least had `flick" in the name."

The split may seem like the natural next step to Hastings, but he appears tone deaf to subscribers, said John Tschohl, president of the Service Quality Institute, a consulting service, and author of the book "Achieving Excellence Through Customer Service."

"I don't think Netflix is listening to its customers at all," he said. "They have really blown it."

Columbia Business School marketing professor Brett Gordon thinks Hastings knows exactly what he's doing by starting to bury the DVD business, even if Hastings didn't say it in his blog post.

By the end of September, Netflix figures less than 10 percent of its expected 24 million customers in the U.S. will subscribe to DVD-only plans.

"They don't want the Netflix brand to be damaged by the inevitable death of physical digital goods," Gordon said.

Netflix was a Wall Street star until the jarring July 12 announcement about its prices. Its stock rose from about $50 at the beginning of 2009 to more than $300 in early July.

Since backlash to the price increase, investors have grown disillusioned. Netflix's market value has plummeted 53 percent from its high, wiping out about $8 billion in stockholder wealth. On Monday, the stock shed more than $11 to close at $143.75.

The steepest declines have comes since Netflix warned it expected to have 600,000 fewer subscribers at the end of this month than at the end of June, by far the worst downturn in the company's history.

Netflix's stock has been hit so hard that it made Hastings' apology seem like little more than damage control, Devine said.

In his blog post, Hastings wrote that he "slid into arrogance based upon past success" when he decided to raise prices so dramatically. He emphasized the higher prices were the right thing to do, but said he should have done more to explain them.

Hastings said his biggest fear is that Netflix will be left behind by technological upheaval, like what happened to AOL when people switched from dial-up Internet to widely available broadband, or Borders when readers gravitated to the e-book.

Netflix itself has killed off thousands of video rental stores during the past five years, and it devastated Blockbuster, which once dominated the home-video market and went bankrupt last year.

Hastings began Netflix's evolution in early 2007 when he added Internet video streaming. That option grew in popularity even faster than he anticipated, causing video distributors to demand ever higher licensing fees.

Those expenses are one reason Netflix raised prices. Hastings has promised to use the additional money it gets from its subscribers to stockpile its video streaming library with more content.

Some subscribers are upset by Netflix's inability to renew a contract with Starz Entertainment that included many recently released movies from Walt Disney Co.'s studios. The Starz deal expires in February.

More broadly, Netflix customers have complained that its TV and movie titles available for streaming pale next to its menu of more than 100,000 DVD titles. And they have other places to turn for streaming entertainment -- Amazon.com, iTunes and Hulu, among others.

In Monday's blog post, Hastings wrote that Netflix will make "substantial" additions during the next few months.

Michele Lucas of Denver is among the Netflix subscribers who think its streaming library is already losing its appeal. Her family pays only for streaming now. They stopped renting DVDs from Netflix after the price increase.

"We sit down at night and go through and we have a really hard time finding a movie to watch," Lucas said.

Spinning off the DVD services will also allow Netflix to provide studios with a clearer idea of how many people are streaming their content. That could be critical as it negotiates future licensing deals.

In addition to the split, Netflix will expand into an area Hastings had steadfastly resisted -- video game rentals. Adding it to Qwikster may not make investors happy, though, because video games are more expensive and have a shorter shelf life than DVDs.

But video-game availability could win back alienated subscribers. Devine said he might sign up for Qwikster if the selection is good enough. Hastings seems confident he won't be the only one.

"Both the Qwikster and Netflix teams will work hard to regain your trust," Hastings wrote on the blog and a mass email to subscribers. "We know it will not be overnight. Actions speak louder than words. But words help people to understand actions."

Silver Lake Is Said to Consider Acquiring Yahoo, Then Selling Asian Assets

Private-equity investor Silver Lake is considering a bid for Yahoo! Inc., the Web company that ousted Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz, two people involved in the deliberations said.

As part of a deal, Silver Lake would sell off Yahoo’s Asian assets and then attempt to turn around the main operations or find a buyer for that business, said the people, who asked not to be named because the matter is private. Representatives of Silver Lake have approached other companies to gauge interest in purchasing Yahoo’s main business, one person said.

Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock fired Bartz last week after her efforts to fend off Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. fell short. Asian assets that include a 43 percent stake in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., combined with a slumping share price, make the company a possible takeover candidate, said analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities and such investors as Di Zhou, an analyst at Thornburg Investment Management.

Representatives of Yahoo and Silver Lake didn’t return phone messages seeking comment.

Yahoo’s board met yesterday to hear a presentation from investment bank Allen & Co. on the company’s options and deliberate the search for a successor to Bartz, another person familiar with the matter said earlier this week.

A range of companies have been preparing possible bids for Yahoo and have gotten in touch with the company’s board in recent days, the technology blog AllThingsDigital reported this week. Silver Lake is among potential buyers, it reported.
Alibaba, Softbank

A private-equity company would likely seek a buyer for Yahoo’s stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan Corp. (4689), which according to Gabelli & Co., account for about 80 percent of the company’s market value. Alibaba Group Chairman Jack Ma tried to repurchase the stake from Bartz and was rebuffed.

Other Yahoo assets include e-mail, instant messaging and news and information portals that generate revenue from advertising and, according to ComScore Inc., were viewed by 674 million people in July. Yahoo also owns the No. 2 U.S. Web- search engine, after Google’s.

Yahoo’s directors are under pressure from investors such as Third Point LLC, which urged the board to resign last week after buying a 5.2 percent stake. The investment firm said directors erred in spurning a takeover bid from Microsoft Corp. in 2008 and hired a CEO who wasn’t up to the job.

The “board of directors has made a number of decisions that have directly harmed the company and resulted in a stock price far below the company’s intrinsic value,” New York-based Third Point said in a filing.

Yahoo shares rose 8 cents to $14.97 at 4 p.m. New York time on the Nasdaq Stock Market. The stock has dropped 10 percent this year.

Separately, Yahoo said today that it raised interim CEO Tim Morse’s base pay. His salary increased to $750,000 from $600,000. The raise, approved by the board, took effect yesterday, Yahoo said in a regulatory filing.

RIM Chiefs Lose Billionaire Status as Stock Drops on Lower Sales

Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM)’s largest shareholders and co-chief executive officers, have lost their status as billionaires from the stock this year as it has shed more than half its value.

The executives, who each own about 5 percent of the BlackBerry maker, had the value of their stakes drop to about $640 million yesterday from about $1.9 billion in February.

RIM’s earnings reports have disappointed investors for three consecutive quarters as the company struggles to gain ground from Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone and iPad. Waterloo, Ontario- based RIM missed analysts’ estimates Sept. 15 for profit and shipments of the Blackberry and PlayBook tablet computer.

“These guys have misexecuted,” said Matthew Thornton, an analyst for Avian Securities LLC in Boston. “They have been very late with the new products. They’ve missed their own forecasts. They’ve done nothing to reassure Wall Street that they’re going to get more competitive against Apple and Google’s Android products.”

RIM fell 19 percent to $23.93 on the Nasdaq Stock Market at 4 p.m. New York time yesterday, down 66 percent from a 2011 peak and 84 percent from its record in June 2008.

The plunge in RIM’s stock price this year marks a reversal in the fortunes of a company that dominated the U.S. smartphone market after introducing the BlackBerry in 1999. The stock rose more than 70-fold between 1999, when it began trading on the Nasdaq, and its 2008 peak.
Wireless Pioneer

Lazaridis founded RIM in 1984 when he was a senior at the University of Waterloo in Canada. The company began working on wireless products three years later, developing a pager that evolved into what is known as the BlackBerry. Balsillie, a 1989 graduate of Harvard Business School, joined RIM in 1992.

The company’s smartphone market share started eroding after Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007 and phones running Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android software gained popularity. In the second quarter, RIM’s share of the global smartphone market dropped to 12 percent from 19 percent a year earlier, according to Gartner Inc. In the same period, Apple climbed to 18 percent from 14 percent, and Google’s Android rose to 43 percent.

This month, investor Jaguar Financial Corp. asked RIM to consider selling itself or spinning off its patents to boost investor returns.

“Given today’s stock action, you’ll get more activists going in and seeing what’s the strategic direction, and does it make sense,”, Jeff Fidacaro, an analyst at Susquehanna International Group in New York, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “Everything is on the table.”

Women lack in technology

The lack of women in technology will hinder U.S. companies’ global competitiveness, leaving a valuable source of female workers untapped, Cisco Systems Inc. (CSCO) executive Kathy Hill said yesterday at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco.

Companies should overhaul policies starting at the training level to ensure a balance between the sexes, Hill said at the APEC meeting, which was attended by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. APEC represents 21 economies that account for more than 55 percent of global gross domestic product.

“Technology has to play a role,” said Hill, a senior vice president of development strategy and operations at San Jose, California-based Cisco, the world’s largest maker of networking equipment. “Technology makes a lot more money than other businesses, and we’ve got job growth.”

While women hold about half the jobs in the broader U.S. economy, they account for less than 25 percent of science, technology, engineering and math positions, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

“We need to unlock a vital source of growth that can power our economy in the decades to come, and that vital source of growth is women,” Clinton said yesterday at the conference. “By increasing women’s part in the economy and enhancing their efficiency and productivity, we can bring about a dramatic effect to the competitiveness and growth of our economies.”
Technical Majors

The disparity begins in college. More than 31,000 men graduated with bachelor’s degrees in computer and information sciences, outnumbering women by more than fourfold, according to a 2008-2009 study by the National Center for Education Statistics. Males who graduated with technological engineering degrees during that period dwarfed female counterparts by almost ninefold, the study found.

Females who start in science, technology, engineering and math concentrations often switch to other fields before graduating, said Marilyn Nagel, chief executive officer of Watermark, a Palo Alto, California-based, 4,000-member organization for professional women. Corporations and universities should make efforts to retain women in those majors throughout the students’ college careers, she said.

That means supporting them when they’re most likely to switch from math to another major -- between freshman and sophomore year -- and bringing them into corporate environments so they can visualize what they will be doing in their careers.
‘Business Imperative’

“It’s a business imperative to increase diversity,” Nagel, 62, said in an interview. “A homogeneous team is not going to be as innovative and is not going to produce the same level of well-thought-out results as a diverse team.”

Design skills also may help women break into technology, said Weili Dai, the 50-year-old co-founder of Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (MRVL), which makes chips for personal computers and mobile phones. The iPad and iPhone have spotlighted the need for practical, elegant designs, she said.

”Technology used to be boring, but now technology is fashion,” Dai said in an interview at the conference.

Companies need to make sure female mentors are accessible to younger employees, she said. That allows women to more easily see themselves in top positions, Dai said.

Just 12 percent of the students majoring in electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, are women, said Claire Tomlin, a professor who oversees those majors at the school.

The college is working with middle-school girls to spark interest in engineering at a young age, and it invites females from other schools to the campus for summer programs to cultivate more interest in the field, she said.

Companies in the U.S., where the overall population is 51 percent female, will be more profitable if they foster collaboration between the sexes, Dai said.

“In my company, any function could be done by a man or woman,” she said. “How do we leverage the natural attributes and talents of women?”

Turkish Stocks Rebound to World’s Best in Month as Rate Cuts Boost Banks

Turkey’s benchmark stock index is climbing the most among major equity gauges worldwide in the past month as investors grow convinced that interest rate cuts will stimulate growth without causing the economy to overheat.

The nation’s benchmark ISE National 100 Index (XU100) rose 6.5 percent since Aug. 16, the best performance among 45 advanced and developing-nation equity markets included in MSCI Inc. gauges. Turkey’s index of 16 banks has rebounded 18 percent from its lowest level since 2009 on Aug. 10.

Turkish equities, which lagged behind peers in the first seven months this year, climbed after policy makers lowered borrowing costs on Aug. 4, the third cut since December, to bolster the economy amid the global slowdown. Societe Generale SA’s Benoit Anne said Aug. 19 that he “got it wrong” by earlier saying Turkish monetary policy was stoking inflation and overheating the economy. Brazil followed with a rate cut on Aug. 31, Russia lowered its repurchase rate Sept. 14 and analysts predict reductions in Mexico and Poland.

“Foreigners are just starting to realize that our central bank is doing great things for bank earnings at the moment, and the ISE is going to outperform as long as banks are being bought,” said Isik Okte, a trader at Finans Invest, an Istanbul-based brokerage.

The ISE Banks (XBANK) Index rose 4.2 percent last week to the highest level since July as authorities said lending curbs may be relaxed. The gauge trades at 8.8 times estimated earnings, compared with 9.4 times for the MSCI Emerging Markets Financial Index.
Halkbank, Garanti

State-run lender Turkiye Halk Bankasi AS (HALKB) jumped 5.8 percent to 11.8 liras. Yapi & Kredi Bankasi AS, the Turkish bank part- owned by UniCredit SpA, rose 5 percent to 3.8 liras. Turkiye Garanti Bankasi AS (GARAN), the largest Turkish bank by market value, gained 5.5 percent to 6.96 liras.

Turkey’s economy expanded 8.8 percent in the second quarter, more than analysts estimated and down from 11.7 percent in the first three months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

While the central bank’s actions have supported economic growth, Turkey’s current-account deficit remains too high and threatens the country’s financial stability, according to Ozgur Altug, chief economist at brokerage BGC Partners in Istanbul.

Turkey’s current-account deficit narrowed to $5.3 billion in July from $7.7 billion in June as the lira weakened and economic growth slowed, leaving the 12-month deficit at 9.5 percent of gross domestic product, the central bank said Sept. 12. The gap needs to narrow to 5 percent to 6 percent of GDP to stabilize the economy, Altug said.
Worst Performer

The lira has depreciated 4.7 percent against the dollar since the last rate cut, extending this year’s decline to 13 percent, the worst performance among more than 20 emerging- market currencies.

While the weaker currency may ease pressure on the current account, it may spur inflation as prices for imports increase, Ozgur said. A possible upgrade of Turkey’s debt to investment- grade status will depend on the balancing act of “achieving strong growth without high inflation,” Fitch Ratings Managing Director Ed Parker said in an interview Sept. 7.

Turkey’s central bank has lowered its benchmark interest rate by 125 basis points since December to a record-low 5.75 percent last month. Inflation accelerated to 6.7 percent in August from 6.3 percent a month earlier, government data showed.
Brazil, Russia

“What has changed from an equity perspective is that the rest of the world just looks so much worse now, and at least Turkey has growth and its banks are still pretty clean from a balance sheet perspective,” said Tim Ash, chief economist for emerging markets at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc in London. “I still think it is unorthodox when a central bank is cutting rates when it has a record high current-account deficit” financed by “hot money flows” along with rising inflation and rapid economic growth, he said in response to e-mailed questions.

Brazil cut its key rate to 12 percent from 12.50 percent last month, citing a “substantial deterioration” in the global economy. Russia’s central bank unexpectedly lowered its repurchase rate last week and raised the rate it pays on deposits to avert a potential ruble shortage in money markets as a slower global economy threatens the world’s biggest energy exporter.

Brazil’s Bovespa index of stocks climbed 3.3 percent since the cut, while the real lost 8 percent against the dollar. Russia’s Micex Index gained 0.9 percent after last week’s reduction in the repo rate, with the ruble weakening 1 percent.
Stock Forecasts

Turkey “may actually be at the forefront of central bank policy-making,” and countries including Mexico, South Africa, Hungary and Poland may follow, Anne, the head of emerging-market strategy at Societe Generale, said in an interview.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. raised its recommendations on Turkish banks Sept. 14, saying earnings will be helped by cuts in reserve requirements after the government relaxed limits on loan growth a day earlier.

Banks are “likely to benefit from monetary stimulus as growth slows,” Goldman analysts including William Mejia and Waleed Mohsi in Dubai wrote in the report, recommending investors buy shares of Halkbank.

Shares of Halkbank may rally 36 percent in 12 months and Yapi Kredi will probably climb 26 percent, according to Goldman. Halkbank probably will advance 19 percent, and Garanti jump 25 percent, UBS AG wrote in a report Sept. 16, saying the country’s banking industry is “one of the best placed in emerging Europe, the Middle East and Africa to absorb the shocks from a global slowdown.”

“The central bank’s monetary policy, which has come under some criticism from most commentators, including us, looks arguably less misplaced, given the global slowdown,” UBS analysts Alexander Kyrtsis and Margarita Streltses said in the report. “Concerns over the overheating of the economy have been removed.”

Google’s Schmidt Urges Support for Obama’s Jobs Bill, Government Stimulus

Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt said lawmakers should approve more government stimulus to prompt companies to hire, and called the political focus on cutting spending “ludicrous.”

“The economy is, today, stuck behind the power curve -- it needs a lot of encouragement,” Schmidt said

” Without a measure like President Barack Obama’s jobs bill, “we’re set up for years of extraordinarily low growth in the economy and no real solution to the jobless problem.”

Schmidt said lawmakers need to pass the jobs bill, which is aimed at helping small businesses expand and young people and veterans find jobs. Obama proposed the $447 billion plan this month, which includes initiatives to boost spending on school construction and cut payroll taxes.

“Business can create enormous numbers of new jobs in America, all we need to see is more demand,” Schmidt said.

Schmidt is scheduled to testify to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 21, followed by representatives of companies who say Mountain View, California- based Google’s power via its Internet search engine is too vast.

The subcommittee is examining whether Google is hurting competition in the Internet industry, a charge that Schmidt said the company avoids by “focusing on the end user.”

Neither the U.S. nor the European Union authorities “have complained against anything yet, but they’re looking and that’s appropriate for a democracy,” he said. Regarding the results of the inquiries, Schmidt said “we won’t know for a long time, but I’m pretty comfortable that we are in pretty good shape.”

Jeff Katz, chief executive officer of Nextag Inc., and Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO of Yelp Inc., also are scheduled to testify at the hearing.