Flappy Bird’s earnings pale in comparison with these big players February 12, 2014 When Flappy Bird creator Nguyen Ha Dong revealed he was making over $50,000 (£30,250) a day from the game, before he removed it from distribution, pundits were certainly shocked. But the smartphone App Store gold rush, those are rookie numbers compared to some larger game makers. Supercell, behind both Hay Day (the eighth highest grossing [...]
Google overtakes Exxon to become US’ second biggest firm February 10, 2014 Tech giant Google has overtaken the world's No1 oil producer, Exxon, to rank as the US' second largest company by market capitalisation. On Friday Google closed with a cap of $395.42bn (£240.96bn), versus Exxon's $392.66bn, according to FactSet data. The shift marks the changing landscape of the US economy, as more of its capital shifts [...]
Carl Icahn drops $50bn Apple buyback proposal February 10, 2014 News in this afternoon that Carl Icahn has discarded his Apple buyback proposal. Icahn, who is one of Apple’s biggest shareholders, was pushing for the tech giant to repurchase $50bn more of its shares this year. Apple shareholders were due to vote on the non-binding plan on 28 February. But in a letter to fellow shareholders, [...]
Nasty, brutish, short: Why businesses prosper then die at an ever faster pace | City A.M. February 10, 2014 IF THOMAS Hobbes found himself walking down City streets today, he wouldn’t blink an eye. Business life seems to be getting increasingly short and rather nasty. Due to the accelerating rate of technological change, some economists believe we are heading toward a “winner takes all” era of unprecedented competition, enabled by an enormous number of [...]
What the other papers say this morning – 10 February 2014 February 10, 2014 FINANCIAL TIMES Quantum nets Soros $5.5bn George Soros’s Quantum Endowment fund had its second-best year in dollar terms in 2013, adding $5.5bn to the billionaire’s fortune and putting the $28.6bn fund back at the top of the table for the most successful hedge funds of all time. The $5.5bn return was the best for Quantum [...]
Flappy Bird fans all atwitter after creator pulls high-flying game February 10, 2014 FLAPPY Bird creator Nguyen Ha Dong last night pulled the plug on his high-flying and addictive game after announcing, “I cannot take this anymore”. The Vietnam-based games developer, whose deceptively simple free mobile game flew to the top in popularity at the Apple App Store and Google Android Play store, tweeted earlier, “22 hours from [...]
Nasty, brutish, short: Why businesses prosper then die at an ever faster pace February 9, 2014 IF THOMAS Hobbes found himself walking down City streets today, he wouldn’t blink an eye. Business life seems to be getting increasingly short and rather nasty. Due to the accelerating rate of technological change, some economists believe we are heading toward a “winner takes all” era of unprecedented competition, enabled by an enormous number of [...]
Imagination shares lift as Apple extends its iPhone chip contract February 6, 2014 IMAGINATION Technologies saw its shares rocket as much as 20 per cent yesterday after it renewed a multi-year contract with Apple to supply the iPhone-maker with graphics chips for its devices. Since the beginning of 2012 Imagination’s share price has plummeted by over 75 per cent on fears that the chip maker was losing market [...]
London Time: Smart watches, we’re afraid to report, are here to stay February 6, 2014 YOU know how rude it seems when someone checks their wristwatch during a conversation? Well, things are about to get a lot ruder, thanks to 2014 being the year of the smartwatch. Just as the pocket watch proved itself useful enough to migrate to our wrists over the course of the 1930s, we are now [...]
Apple sticks the boot into Bitcoin with Blockchain removal February 6, 2014 Apple has removed the last Bitcoin wallet from its iOS app stores. The tech giant offered no explanation for the removal of UK-based Blockchain other than it was due to an "unresolved issue." The application had been available on the iOS app store for over two years and was downloaded over 120,000 times. Blockchain responded [...]