It has been a busy week for technology, and here are some of the highlights:- Groupon IPO: Light at the End of the Tunnel
Groupon is in the final pricing stages of its IPO process and plans to open on the NASDAQ on Friday, making it one of the largest Tech IPOs of 2011. The road has been rough, and Groupon has been accused of stretching its revenues and using shifty accounting techniques by the SEC, resulting in a -$400 million revision in 2010 revenue. Critics have also pointed out that the founders have already cashed out before the IPO. In the Series 1 Round of $946M over $800M went to buying out shares from the owners, several of which have left the company since. Despite the negative press however, Groupon is poised to open above price range at $19-20 given investor demand and popularity. These numbers value the company at $12-13 billion. [Reuters]
- Modern Warfare Leak: A Spy Among Us
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, a sequel to the widely popular series and one of the most anticipated games of the year, is due to be released November 8. As is expected with these large releases (think Black Ops and Battlefield 3), one of the discs has been stolen and its contents posted online. Despite the effort, however, the leaked copy did not appear playable, until recently when a full working copy for Xbox 360 was posted online. Activision expects to sell more than 20 million copies in 2011 alone, in direct competition with EA’s Battlefield 3 which sold 5 million copies in its first week. [VentureBeat]
- iPhone Troubles: Déjà vu
Apple’s newly released iPhone 4S stunned naysayers when it sold a remarkable 4 million devices in its opening weekend, breaking previous records. It wasn’t too long before the complaints started rolling in though, this time about the less-than-expected battery life in the new devices. Apple has finally addressed these claims, saying that this is a result of bugs in iOS 5 and will release a fix soon. Sound familiar? Its antennagate all over again. The iPhone’s secret weapon Siri has also been shown to nibble at a user’s data plan if used too much. [CNN]
- HP and the Future of Servers
Coming off its recent about-face on its retail PC business, HP is looking forward into creating servers with specialty chips from portable devices that drain less power. Dubbed Project Moonshot, these new servers are significantly more efficient and smaller than their counterparts. [NYT]
- Sony and Panasonic: Falling Giants
Sony recently posted a 27 billion yen quarterly loss, and changed its annual forecast to a 90 billion yen ($1.2B) loss, a huge swing from the 60 billion yen annual profit it was before. It cited changing market conditions and new competition in its TV business as major reasons for the loss. Panasonic, one if its close competitors also had a hard quarter as it revised its annual estimates down from a profit of 30 billion yen to a 420 billion yen ($5.5B) loss. While this largely reflects higher-than-expected restructuring costs, Panasonic has also has had to deal with lesser demand for TVs and layoffs. Could it be the end for one of these titans? [WSJ / BusinessWeek]
- Amazon’s Lending Library: Kindle is on Fire
Amazon is launching a new service that allows its Kindle users with Amazon Prime to lend out books from a newly created 5,000+ book library. Users can check out one book a month, and one at a time. When they are done, they can check out another one, but the first disappears. Netflix for books anyone? While it seems to be an interesting idea, its growth is stalled at the moment because none of the six major publishers are participating. Still, it’s exciting to see Amazon push the normal boundaries of a publisher. [WSJ]
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