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Nokia shareholders approve mobile phone sale to Microsoft
by Staff Writers
Helsinki (AFP) Nov 19, 2013


Taiwan firm sues Samsung for patent infringement
Taipei (AFP) Nov 20, 2013 - A Taiwanese electronics company said Wednesday it has filed a lawsuit against South Korean tech giant Samsung for allegedly infringing on its optics technology patents.

Largan Precision Co. is a leading designer and manufacturer for plastic aspherical lenses used in mobile phones, notebook computers, automobiles and digital cameras, and is reportedly a part supplier for Samsung and Apple's iPhone 5s.

The lawsuit has been filed to the US District Court for the Southern District of California over "several" Samsung products that allegedly infringed on its lens design patents, Largan said in a statement.

Largan did not identify the Samsung products in question. Taiwan's Commercial Times cited unnamed sources as saying that the company accused Samsung of violating six of its optics lens patents to be used in the Galaxy Note II phablet smartphones.

Technology giants have taken to routinely pounding one another with patent lawsuits. Samsung and Apple have been locked in several cases around the world.

Bloomberg to downsize news staff
New York City (AFP) Nov 19, 2013 - The Bloomberg news agency said Tuesday it was cutting staff as it scales back its arts and culture coverage, saying it was seeking to position itself for "significant growth."

The cuts are expected to affect fewer than 40 positions out of more than 2,000 staff, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg also confirmed that Hong Kong-based reporter Mike Forsythe had "left the company," but denied it killed an article he had written because it could have been embarrassing to Chinese leaders.

Bloomberg editor-in-chief Matthew Winkler said in a memo to staff that the agency was in the middle of a reorganization and that "we evaluated everything we're doing to determine what's working and what isn't."

"It's against this backdrop that we had to make some difficult decisions today. We were able to reassign a number of people to new positions, and we are grateful for the contributions of those who no longer can be part of our organization.

"We are convinced that the changes will help us take Bloomberg News to another level of influence."

The cuts will affect the agency's Muse arts and cultural news coverage. Winkler said some of this will be integrated in the Pursuits leisure reporting.

Bloomberg will also consolidate its special projects team in Washington "and no longer have editors dispersed around the world," the memo said.

"We also decided to concentrate our sports coverage on the nexus with business and no longer do match reports," it added.

"The changes today are a precursor for significant growth in 2014.... We also have high ambitions for beat and investigative reporting, and Bloomberg News will be bigger next year than it was at the end of October."

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that Forsythe was placed on leave after management decided to scrap an article about a Chinese tycoon and his ties to families of Communist Party leaders, amid fears that it could lead to Bloomberg's expulsion from China.

Forsythe said in a tweet Tuesday: "I can confirm that I have left Bloomberg News. That's all I'm going to say for now."

Bloomberg said Forsythe "has left the company" and also said there was no basis to the Times report.

"As we were very clear with the Times, it is absolutely false that we postponed these stories due to external pressure. We are disappointed that they chose to publish a piece that claims otherwise," the Bloomberg statement said.

Nokia shareholders voted overwhelmingly Tuesday in favour of selling the company's mobile business to US software giant Microsoft in an attempt to reinvent the once-proud Finnish telecoms titan.

According to Nokia -- which will now become a telecom equipment and services company -- the deal was almost unanimously approved with 99.52 percent support from shareholders at an extraordinary meeting in Helsinki.

The "yes" vote was expected. Analysts judge the deal as positive for the ailing Finnish firm.

"It was expected that the decision of selling the mobile phone division would arouse strong emotions," Nokia board chairman and interim chief executive Risto Siilasmaa said during the meeting.

"We are certain that if we had continued with the old strategy, we would have most likely put Nokia, its shareholders and its employees in serious difficulties."

Nokia's share price has doubled since the plan was announced in early September with Microsoft agreeing to pay 5.44 billion euros ($7.35 billion) for the loss-making company's mobile phone division.

'Excellent deal'

"It's an excellent deal. It's hard to imagine a better price for a division experiencing structural losses," Pierre Ferragu, an analyst at the brokers Sanford Bernstein, told AFP.

The sale of the assets, which include the Lumia smartphone trademark and technology, must take place in early 2014.

Once the world leader in mobile phones, Nokia lost its top place to South Korea's Samsung in 2012.

Although still number two in the overall mobile phone market with a 13.8 percent market share in the third quarter of the year -- ahead of US giant Apple (6.7 percent) -- Nokia is still far behind Samsung (25.7 percent) and ranks eighth in the fast-growing smartphone market, according to technology consultancy Gartner.

The deal spells the end of the once iconic Nokia branded mobile handsets, which have experienced a spectacular fall in sales since the arrival of Apple's touchscreen iPhone in 2007.

"For Nokia shareholders it's a good price because this business is loss-making and Nokia was too small to relaunch," said Eric Beaudet, an analyst at Natixis bank.

"Nokia has good products but that's not enough. Their problem is their fixed costs are too high, which means they need 10 percent of the world smartphone market to be profitable. At the moment they have less than half that."

Tuesday was also an opportunity for shareholders to discuss the string of failures that brought the Finnish group to its knees.

Previous Microsoft partnership failed

It's a long story, as detailed in former CEO Jorma Ollila's autobiography, which was published in October.

According to Olilla, Nokia was positioned well on the smartphone market at the time of the technology's infancy in 2004 and 2005. But when it took off in 2007-2008, the company's products were not up to par.

In 2011, a general manager headhunted from Microsoft, Stephen Elop, chose to partner with the American group, embracing its Windows operating system.

The move did not pay off. Nokia's profits fell precipitously under Elop, who resigned on the same day in September that the sale to Microsoft was announced.

Elop's role in Nokia's fall is still questioned in the company.

"How can you be sure that Mr Elop didn't leak confidential information to the buyers?" stakeholder Markus Magnfors asked during the meeting.

Nokia shareholders who voted for the sale hope for a return to profits and a new start in the fast-changing technology sector following a series of losses: 1.2 billion euros in 2011, 3.1 billion euros in 2012 and 590 million euros in the first nine months of 2013.

Microsoft will be left with the challenge of making the Lumia smartphone profitable but with $80 billion (59 billion euros) in reserves to fall back on it has some scope to invest.

rt-hh/ts/ph/efb/rmb

NOKIA

MICROSOFT

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