Panasonic to axe up to 4,000 jobs?

It looks like it's not just Research In Motion (RIM) that are imminently set to announce job losses given stories floating about that Japanese based electronics giant Panasonic is to axe anywhere between 3,000 and 4,000 roles at their Osaka based headquarters.

The company employs 7,000 staff at their head office and are looking to make cuts to turn around a record loss, with the employees going mainly through early retirements and the transferring of roles to subsidiaries.

A company spokeswoman would not be drawn on the rumours:

"The reports were not something that our company has announced. We are considering reforms of the headquarters, but it's not true that we have reached a decision now."

Like the rest of the Japanese electronics sector, Panasonic have been hardly hit by the appreciation of the Yen (which has devalued their exports) as well as competition from others.  The company, whose President has already announced he is to leave, recorded record losses of 772.2bn yen (£6.2bn) for their financial year to March.

Virgin Media speedtest results April 2012

Virgin Media have published the results of their monthly speedtests for April, using the same technology (but on different end customer connections) that Ofcom uses to benchmark the UK's ISPs against each other - SamKnows' custom developed router firmware on routers connected to the main broadband connection in customer homes.

The results are of course particularly pertinent as the company works through their programme of doubling the speeds of their existing customers as well as having launched their new 'Collections' bundles, with the April results including performance measurement of the new 30Mb and 60Mb tiers that their new bundle structure brings:

Virgin have re-arranged their website a bit - the results can now be found here.

ICO considers further Street View action

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) is pondering whether they need to take any further action about the scanning of open WiFi networks that Google's Street View cars undertook on the back of a report from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US which cast doubt on whether the information was captured from the WiFi networks inadvertently.

When the company's cars drove around the country they captured personal information from open wireless networks - usually domestic ones - and you may recall the scandal this caused after it was discovered in Germany, with Google facing much privacy action around the globe and having to make a number of payouts, agree to much additional privacy scrutiny as well as delete the offending data.

The FCC said that a Google engineer knowingly developed the software that was "intended to collect, store and review payload data for possible use in other Google projects", which is a categorisation that Google disagrees with, claiming that he was operating as a rogue.

The engineer, since named as 41-year-old Brit Marius Milner, refused to co-operate with the FCC investigation on the grounds that it may have incriminated him (the fifth amendment to the US Constitution protects his right to this) - but the report from the FCC has led to the ICO considering whether to take further action.

A spokesman for the privacy regulator said:

"We are currently studying the FCC report to consider what further action, if any, needs to be taken.

Google provided our office with a formal undertaking in November 2010 about their future conduct, following their failure in relation to the collection of WiFi data by their Street View cars.

This included a provision for the ICO to audit Google's privacy practices. The audit was published in August 2011 and we will be following up on it later this year, to ensure our recommendations have been put in place."

In response Google said via a spokesman that they "want to put the matter behind us", adding:

"We have always been clear that the leaders of this project did not want or intend to use this payload data.

Indeed Google never used it in any of our products or services. Both the Department of Justice and the FCC have looked into this closely - including reviewing the internal correspondence - and both found no violation of law."

Sky denies spectrum rumours

There have been rumours spreading in the last few days that Sky may use their massive war chest of cash (much of which is now being returned to investors) to make a bid for the spectrum that Everything Everywhere (EE) is being made to sell off as part of the deal that the company made with Ofcom when they were created out of the merger of the UK operations of T-Mobile and Orange.

Rumours had centred on the thought that Sky would use the spectrum to create their own mobile service so that they could take on Virgin Media in the 'quad play' market (broadband, TV, fixed line phone & mobile) - but a company spokesman has played down such speculation in saying:

"As you might expect we regularly meet with a wide range of companies to explore and understand potential opportunities. While we continue to extend our leadership in mobile content, we currently have no plans to offer mobile access beyond our existing public wi-fi network."

Sky's public WiFi (Hotspot) network is the one that they picked up when they purchased The Cloud - a network that they are expanding and using as the basis for much of their promotion of their Sky Go service for customers (free access) who are out and about.

6,000 RIM jobs to go

Sorry, I can never resist that joke :-)

Times are not good at Canadian BlackBerry manufacturer Research In Motion (RIM), which continues to be trounced by both Android and iPhone in the smartphone market and has yet to establish a footing in the tablet market with their BlackBerry PlayBook.

Canadian media have reported that around 2,000 jobs (from the company's overall global headcount of 16,500) could go as part of restructuring - but a source has told Reuters that the actual figure could be as high as a staggering 6,000 roles to go.

Job losses are of course nothing new to RIM - they axed 2,000 jobs last year - and they are said to have been letting junior staff leave for several months in what have become known as 'Goodbye Thursdays', named after the day of the week when the bad news tends to be dished out.

The Reuters source wonders where the business is going:

"The strategic question is: are you accelerating into a better future or shrinking to a niche operation?"

Definitely leaving the business is the company's chief legal officer Karima Bawa - the latest senior executive to depart since Thorsten Heins was appointed as chief executive earlier this year.

Facebook to buy Opera and launch own smartphone?

Social networking behemoth Facebook is rumoured to be considering buying Norwegian mobile browser specialists Opera Software and to launch their own smartphone by next year according to a pair of reports over the last few days.

Opera Software have made much progress in the previously niche world of mobile browsing with their Opera browser and with mobile being the new battleground for all the tech giants the development would both makes sense for Facebook and be seen as a serious threat to the likes of Google - whose Chrome browser is now the most popular desktop browser in the world.

Should they purchase 200-million user strong Opera, it is thought that Facebook would then integrate with the smartphone desktop and browser plugins to improve the mobile user experience - and they could go a step further with the launch of their own smartphone, claims The New York Times.

They cite unnamed sources including Facebook employees as saying that the company has started hiring smartphone engineers in earnest as they tackle head-on the world of mobile which they have admitted they are struggling to monetise - a key factor in the limp reception that their stock listing has received over the last few weeks.

Gartner researcher Caroline Milanesi explained why they would be entering the smartphone market:

"They are not doing a phone to enter the devices market. If they do a phone they will have to embed Facebook and Instagram at the core of the device, learning from every click the user does."

In response, a Facebook spokeswoman did something that a West Indian top order batsman has failed to do over the last two tests (i.e. play a straight bat) in saying:

"Our mobile strategy is simple: we think every mobile device is better if it is deeply social.

We're working across the entire mobile industry; with operators, hardware manufacturers, OS providers, and application developers to bring powerful social experiences to more people around the world."

Will TfL add WiFi to Oyster bundles?

Rumours circulated at the weekend that Transport for London (TfL) are looking at bundling in WiFi Hotspot access on the London Underground with their Oyster prepay card in order to maximise usage of the network that Virgin Media are rolling out across the Tube infrastructure (largely) ahead of the Olympics.

While the network is free to all ahead of the games, it is switching to a model of remaining free for the cable operator's punters after the games and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) for others, and the TfL consideration is said to be as a result of concerns about how successful a PAYG model will be with many not familiar with such approaches.

Details of when such an addition to the service might become available were not revealed and TfL did not comment when asked about the rumour.

Another great use of QR Codes

No, I'm not warming to QR Codes given some of the crappy and poorly thought out uses that the 'stopgap technology' (as one blogger called them) has been deployed for.

However, after the example earlier I have come across a second excellent use for them in one day from one Korean store (E-mart, the local equivalent of Wal-Mart) who is using them to do something about their lunchtime lull:



Again, very well thought through - which is the secret of the best marketing pracices, on or off line.

Virgin boss: BT gets millions in broadband subsidy

Virgin Media's chief operating officer (COO) Andrew Barron appeared in front of the House of Lords' communications committee on Tuesday, and claimed that BT are getting billions in terms of a government subsidy as they are the only provider being selected for the vast majority of faster broadband rollouts that are being funded with government funding via the Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK) funding vehicle that is the part of the Department of Media, Culture & Sport (DCMS) tasked with spending the up to £930m of funding put aside (which is supplemented by local government and European funding also).

Ahead of the session Barron wrote a letter to The Guardian (full transcript here) where he noted that BT (via their Openreach access division) are the only player rolling out faster broadband in many places outside Virgin's cable footprint (especially those rural areas where only government funding will ever deliver faster broadband speeds):

"The noble ambition of locally procured rural broadband networks is protracted and likely to favour the incumbent, freezing out new entrants.

The outcome of current government policy, is likely to be the subsidy of already dominant infrastructure in areas where we are not, to the sum of hundreds of millions of pounds of public money."

Barron says that the only true areas of competition for faster broadband are those where both BT and Virgin have their network footprint and has called on legislation to promote funding for alternatives such as 4G faster mobile technology:

"If we agree competition is the best way to encourage further sustainable investment, and that embedding dominance in markets is bad for consumers, we must also accept that providing the vast majority of available public funding to an incumbent is not in the UK's best interests."

In response BT said via a spokesman:

"BT would be more than happy to compete directly with Virgin for BDUK funds but we doubt that will happen. That is because Virgin have steadfastly refused to provide open wholesale access to their network – a key BDUK requirement – and because they have shown no interest to date in supplying rural areas with broadband.

This is in contrast to BT who offer broadband services on a wholesale basis to 99% of UK premises. Fujitsu have announced their intention to bid for funds and so there will be a competitive process. We are already seeing this in several part of the UK."

Barron gave evidence at the committee hearing alongside Labour's communications spokesperson and Steve Robertson, the former chief executive of Openreach.

Chrome becomes world's number one browser

Google Chrome has finally surpassed its rivals Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox to become the world's most popular web browser according to the latest data from StatCounter - although Chrome still has some way to catch up in the kye US market.

The web measurement firm say that the landmark of Chrome passing IE in terms of global browser market share happened at the weekend when they hit nearly 32% market share (compared to 31.4% for IE - Firefox coming in third place at 25%):

[Click on the image for a larger version]

While much of the tech press coverage (understandable given where many sites are based) was around the US market where IE still holds the lead, the UK market is also measured by StatCounter - and, like the US, corporate installations of IE means that it maintains the regional market share lead (IE 38%, Chrome 28%, Firefox 20%):

[Click on the image for a larger version]

IE's market share is trickling away globally, even though it is still the dominant browser in many markets in South America and Asia.

Sky's aggressive marketing push

With the broadband and telecoms market becoming all the more competitive, Sky have gone a step further than they ever have before as they enter the final quarter of their financial year by offering 3 really deeply discounted marketing offers - and letting new joiners take all three upon signing up with the satellite giant.

The three 6 month deals - half price TV , free HD TV and free broadband & calls - are being heavily promoted in the media using the following campaigns:

All up if a new customer takes all three they theoretically save £240.75 on current subscription prices (versus what they would have paid otherwise) and continues from their heavily marketing led performance in Q1 as they seek to post excellent full year results, something that the company would be thankful for given the controversy around it over the last 12 months.

Quite what is being made available to their existing customers is unclear, but as they are in a highly competitive market there's no doubt an element of offer matching going on for those who are threatening to leave and go elsewhere at the very least.

Spotify launches in Australia. Cobber.

Spotify have announced the launch of their streaming music service (yes, I know they do downloads as well but most people only use it for streaming) in Australia (and New Zealand in fact), and one development that will be interesting to see is what levels of adoption it gets in a market renowned for its stingy broadband capping.

The launch debuts their usual tiers of service - Free (advertising funded), Unlimited (advertising free - and costing AUD$6.99/NZD$7.49 per month) and Premium (with mobile and tablet access for AUD$11.99/NZD$12.99 per month) - and they celebrated the launch by putting together their own local playlist:

Click on the image for a larger version if you're keen to see what cheese filled 'classics' they have come up with.

Social media customer care: 'VIP' treatment?

Mail Online has an interesting take on social media customer service (thankfully way more interesting than the clueless approach of their sister-title, the Mail on Sunday), in which they report that the phenomenon is full of consumers getting 'VIP' treatment as brands try to prevent the impact of bad perceptions about them in what are one to many online interactions.

They report on a study undertaken by PR firm Fishburn Hedges along with Echo Research that found 65% of consumers to believe that social media is a better way to communicate with firms than call centres, with more than a third of them having already used social media to communicate with brands and 40% saying that social media has improved customer service.

The site called out the following as being some of the companies that are using Twitter for customer service as best practice:

Disappointingly though the study also found that 70% of complaints being made on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are going ignored, largely because marketing focused social media presences of firms are not being integrated with customer service functions.

Android did not violate Java patents, court rules

A Californian court has ruled in Google's favour over a claim from Oracle that the company's Android mobile operating system infringed their Java programming language patents, which they acquired when they purchased Sun Microsystems - the original developers of Java.

Oracle had alleged that Google violated the "fair use" provisions of the Open Source software in its commercial use within Android and were seeking a whopping USD$1bn in damages.

The ruling in Google's favour comes a fortnight after the jury in the same case ruled that Google had in fact violated Oracle's copyright, but this week ruled that Google had demonstrated that they were led to believe that they did not need a license for the use of Java.

The jury did not buy Oracle's claim (as outlined by spokeswoman Deborah Hellinger) that they had "presented overwhelming evidence at trial that Google knew it would fragment and damage Java."

The patent wars soldier on.

Controversy abounds as Facebook shares slide

There's probably been more 'mass' (i.e. non-tech) media coverage over Facebook's public listing (news of the listing here) in the last few days than for any other tech news story I've seen.

Much of the coverage has been the financial and other media outlets mocking the firm over their IPO as their share price continues to slide below the USD$38 per share listing price:

The latest controversy over what many believe to be an overvalued biggest tech IPO in history is claims that the firm "selectively disclosed" information pertinent to their valuation with "certain preferred investors" according to a lawsuit that has been filed against the social network and the investment banks that backed their IPO in a US federal district court by disgruntled shareholders.

The filing goes on to allege:

"The (Facebook) registration statement and prospectus contained untrue statements of material facts."

Strong stuff indeed, and the kind of statement that resulted in much discussion on Newsnight last night.

The deal's lead underwriter, Morgan Stanley, strenuously denied the allegations saying that they were "in compliance with all applicable regulations" and had "followed the same procedures for the Facebook offering that it follows for all initial public offerings".

This morning's Matt cartoon in The Daily Telegraph is also quite funny on the matter:

Google closes Motorola Mobility deal

With final approval from the Chinese government having been received, Google have finally closed their USD$12.5bn acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the handset division of the Illinois based firm.

The acquisition, Google's biggest to date, was cleared earlier in the week by Chinese regulators - the last in a lengthy process of approvals around the world - and will result in Google being able to manufacture smartphones and tablets for the first time, a segment that they will no doubt be looking to take on Apple in.

In a blog posting Google's chief executive Larry Page was gushing about the deal:

"The phones in our pockets have become supercomputers that are changing the way we live. It's now possible to do things we used to think were magic, or only possible on Star Trek- like get directions right from where we are standing; watch a video on YouTube; or take a picture and share the moment instantly with friends.

Motorola is a great American tech company that has driven the mobile revolution, with a track record of over 80 years of innovation, including the creation of the first cell phone."

Page added that the new business will produce "the next generation of mobile devices that will improve lives for years to come".

The deal also brings Google a swathe of additional patents - 17,000 of them come with the deal - which is an important defensive mechanism in the patent wars going on in the tech industry at present.

HP to cut 27,000 jobs

Hewlett Packard (HP) are to cut a massive 27.000 jobs worldwide by the end of 2014, the number making up around 8% of their global workforce.

The cuts were announced by chief executive Meg Whitman alongside the company's financial results yesterday and come after weeks of speculation that they were to cut anything up to 30k roles as a cost cutting measure in what is a very competitive market sector.

USD$3.5bn is set to be saved from the job losses according to the company, who has not made it clear how many roles in the UK will be going.

A spokesman said:

"We have not yet announced specific plans with regards to specific locations. We do expect the workforce reduction to impact just about every business and region."

HP employs around 20,000 of their global 350,000 workforce in the UK, and added that the losses will boost the company's growth, with the savings to be re-invested into the firm.

The most high profile of the job losses is the departure of Mike Lynch, the head of the company's Autonomy division, something that their own PR team have been less than sympathetic about given what the BBC reported this morning:

Guinness launches best QR code yet

I'm no great fan of QR codes, but Irish brewers Guinness have come up with the best one I have seen yet - the latest in what is a characteristically brilliant use of marketing from the firm's famed marketing organisation.

Taking advantage of the compulsory black background needed for QR codes, the company has come up with a pint glass with a code integrated to the side of it - that only works if the glass is filled with their own black beer, and nor does it work when the glass is empty:

When scanned the code integrates with social networks and exclusive Guinness content, and there's no doubt that it is hence very, very clever indeed.

Google denies European competition claims

Google have denied claims that they are breaking European antitrust (competition) rules in response to a letter from European competition commissioner Joaquín Almunia that highlighted areas "where Google business practices may be considered as abused of dominance".

The concerns of the European authorities are largely centred around search, a market in which the company has around 90% market share across EU member countries - with the specific concerns having been summarised well by The Guardian:

Almunia's letter said the EC is concerned about Google's promotion of its own products over rivals' in searches for items such as shopping, over its copying and re-display of content from restaurant sites, over its restrictions on competitors' ads appearing alongside its own, and the portability of advertising campaigns from Google's Adwords system.

Theoretically the EC has the power to fine Google 10% of their global revenues if they find them to have abused a dominant market position, but Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that "the letter is all we've heard from them" and refused to speculate on what they will be discussing with the regulators when they meet with them in a few weeks.

Schmidt added:

"We disagree that we are in violation [of antitrust laws]. Until they are precise about what areas of the law we have violated, it will be very difficult for me to speculate."

TalkTalk Q1 Results

TalkTalk have also released their first quarter financial results and in them they continue their theme over recent times of focusing on monetising their existing base as opposed to aggressive market share growth, although they do continue to target the 'value' (i.e. cheap) end of the broadband market in what acquisition activity they do undertake.

In the quarter their (net) broadband base declined by 13k to a total of 4.066m, but in fact this was their best result for 15 months!  From their investor slides:

The company's drive for profitable growth has led to 92% of their customer base (3.755m) - an all time high - now being on their LLU unbundled network, to which they added (net) a further 77k customers in the first quarter of the year:

In the quarter TalkTalk unbundled a further 170 exchanges to take their total LLU network coverage to 2,508 BT exchanges.  They plan to have 93% coverage (2,700 exchanges) by the end of next year.

Key marketing messages TalkTalk used in the quarter included their headline offer of £3.25 (12 months half price, not including compulsory line rental of course!) for their lower tier broadband package and the continued promotion of their controversial free 'HomeSafe' network based parental control and content filtering offer, which is a unique selling point in the market at a time when there is plenty of talk about the matter.

320k customers are now using the HomeSafe offering, which makes up less than 8% of the company's customer base - and just one in three are electing to have the content filter applied to their connection.  The main reason TalkTalk deployed HomeSafe is, of course, the network expenditure savings from preventing their customers being infected with malware and eating up network resources as their machines spew out traffic.

25% of TalkTalk customers are now on their 'Plus' higher tier broadband package and they are reporting that demand for their fibre (FTTC, based on the BT Openreach network) 'boost' faster broadband service remains very low - just 9,000 customers were on this service at the end of the quarter (up from 5k the previous quarter), which is indicative of their highly price sensitive customer base.

The company also updated on their customer service improvements, stating key figures:

• 31% call reduction within a year
• 36% reduction in complaints to Ofcom
• 76% of customer queries now resolved first time
• >70% of total customer contacts now online - compared to around 65% last year

In other interesting snippets the company revealed an average of 7 devices are connected to their customers' home networks each month, showing a future where the performance and reliability of wireless networks will be even more vital than they are today.

TalkTalk also revealed that the YouView connected TV service will launch in Q3 this year (a big 'above the line' marketing push will come from September) and that it will gradually ramp up to ensure a good customer experience.

TalkTalk's press release can be found here and their accompanying investor slides here [both PDFs].

Pirate Bay adds new IP address to circumvent ISP blocks

As expected when UK ISPs were required to start blocking torrent tracker The Pirate Bay under a court order, a number of countermeasures have been deployed to enable users to get around the piracy censorship filter - the latest of which is making the site available on a new IP address, which makes the site accessible here despite my ISP being one of those who have blocked the site's domain name.

The operators of the site - which has also been banned by courts in Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium - have made the site available on the new location, with the site's operators telling TorrentFreak:

"In most countries where The Pirate Bay is blocked, it's done by a domain and IP address filter.

But since TPB added a new IP address at 194.71.107.80, blocked subscribers can access the site again without problems. At least for now, that is, since in some cases, the copyright holders have the power to add new domains and addresses upon request."

I can confirm that when I try to access that IP address in a browser I see the usual splash page rather than any blocking message:

Presumably the blocking filters will be subsequently updated, but this could yet prove to be a game of cat and mouse between the site and the rights holders who have been taking court action against the site's continued availability to broadband subscribers.