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Eli Lilly to Conduct Additional Study of Alzheimer’s Drug

December 12, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The newest study is expected to get under way in the third quarter of 2013 and will focus on patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease. It comes after Lilly released results of two clinical trials in August that showed the drug, called solanezumab, did not significantly improve either the cognition or daily functioning of people with mild and moderate forms of the disease. But despite that failure, the results also showed some reason for hope: when patients with mild Alzheimer’s were separated out, the drug was shown to significantly slow their decline in cognition.

In a statement Wednesday, the company said it decided not to pursue approval of the drug based on existing study results after it met with officials from the Food and Drug Administration. However, a Lilly executive said the company was still optimistic.

“We remain encouraged and excited by the solanezumab data,” David Ricks, a senior vice president at Lilly and president of Lilly Bio-Medicines, said in the statement. “We are committed to working with the F.D.A. and other regulatory authorities to bring solanezumab to the millions of patients and caregivers suffering from this devastating disease who urgently need this potential treatment.”

The Lilly drug is the second Alzheimer’s drug to fail in clinical trials this year. Pfizer and Johnson Johnson stopped development of a similar treatment, bapineuzumab, after it also was not shown to work. Both drugs target beta amyloid, a protein in the brain that is found in people with Alzheimer’s disease.

Lilly shares were down about 3 percent, to $49.05, by midmorning.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/business/eli-lilly-to-conduct-additional-study-of-alzheimers-drug.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: mild alzheimer, senior vice president, target

Cyprus Bailout Seen as Near, but Not Yet a Done Deal

November 24, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Seeking to stave off financial collapse, Cyprus said Friday that it had negotiated a multibillion-euro bailout with international lenders, only to have the claim contradicted later by a formal statement from those creditors.

The European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, collectively known as the troika, said there had been “good progress toward agreement on key policies to strengthen public finances, restore the health of the financial system, and strengthen competitiveness.”

It added that “preliminary results of a bank due-diligence exercise, expected in the next few weeks, will inform discussions between official lenders and Cyprus” on the details of a bailout.

Those comments suggest that Cyprus has agreed to the austerity measures that will accompany the loans. But a lack of clarity over how much capital the country’s stricken banks may need is holding up a final agreement.

Cyprus is expected to receive about 16 billion to 17 billion euros ($20.6 billion to $22 billion), a small amount by comparison with other European rescues but a sum roughly equal to the country’s annual gross domestic product.

Talks are continuing on how to unlock a 31.5 billion euro installment of loans for Greece from its international bailout program, money it needs to stave off bankruptcy. Euro zone finance ministers, who failed to reach a deal earlier this week, will resume discussions Monday.

The deterioration of Greece’s finances in the midst of a recession has made the deal elusive; the economic slowdown is preventing the country from hitting its financial targets.

Greece’s finance minister, Yannis Stournaras, said Friday that a compromise was near in which the I.M.F. would agree that Greece’s debt could fall to 124 percent of G.D.P. by 2020 as opposed to a previous target of 120 percent.

Euro zone finance ministers have already agreed on measures that would reduce Greece’s debt to 130 percent of G.D.P. by 2020, Mr. Stournaras said. He said that a further 10 billion euros of savings would need to be found to bring debt down to the level desired by the I.M.F. by 2020.

The austerity measures Greece has undertaken in exchange for its bailouts have pushed Cyprus to seek alternative forms of financial assistance from outside the European Union, including from Russia.

Before the lenders issued their statement Friday contradicting Cyprus, Cypriot officials said that a deadline set by the European Central Bank to recapitalize the country’s banks had forced them to agree to a bailout.

“The bailout deal includes unpleasant measures,” the government spokesman, Stefanos Stefanou, said without elaborating.

The conditions of the bailout have caused friction between government officials and international lenders in recent weeks, though financial markets have been relatively relaxed about the negotiations.

“In other circumstances this issue might have garnered more attention from markets, but it has been swamped by events elsewhere, including in Spain and Greece in particular,” said Kenneth Wattret, co-head of European economics in London for BNP Paribas.

Mr. Wattret said that one reason for the lack of market reaction was that Cyprus seemed to be heading toward an agreement. A failure by politicians to reach a deal would have worried investors more than a bailout, he said, as it would have called into question the effectiveness of Europe’s crisis response.

“Still, once a deal has been struck, one potential source of event risk is removed,” he added.

Fitch Ratings said Friday that it was cutting its credit ratings on three of the island’s banks — Bank of Cyprus, Cyprus Popular Bank and Hellenic Bank — which together have assets of 77.2 billion euros, equal to about 430 percent of G.D.P. The ratings agency said it thought that the failure of Bank of Cyprus and Cyprus Popular Bank was “imminent” and that the two would require “sizable” injections of capital.

The agency pointed out that the precedents set in other euro zone bailouts meant that the investments of senior bank creditors were likely to be protected.

On Wednesday, Fitch downgraded Cyprus’s rating for its long-term sovereign debt to BB- from BB+, adding that the outlook was negative.

If Cyprus does reach a bailout agreement, it will follow in the footsteps of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, all of which had to be rescued by Europe and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, Spain has been offered up to 100 billion euros in aid for its crippled banking sector and may seek more help.

The economic crisis in Greece has spilled over to Cyprus. Cyprus’s economy, particularly its banking sector, is heavily exposed to Greece and Greek institutions.

David Jolly contributed reporting.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/business/global/cyprus-bailout-seen-as-near-but-not-yet-a-done-deal.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: finance minister, finance ministers, target

DealBook: BNP Third-Quarter Profit Doubles to Hit $1.7 Billion

November 8, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Mal Langsdon/ReutersBNP, based in Pairs, said it reached its capital target early.

PARIS — BNP Paribas, the largest French bank, said on Wednesday that its net income more than doubled in the third quarter, lifted by a strong performance in its investment banking unit.

Profit rose to 1.3 billion euros ($1.7 billion) in the three months that ended Sept. 30 from 541 million euros a year earlier. The corporate and investment banking unit posted a pretax profit of 732 million euros, up 7.3 percent, as the fixed-income and equity and advisory segments performed well.

The bank noted that results were flattered by comparison to the year-earlier period, when a sovereign debt crisis in Greece and other countries had a significant effect on results of European banks, as American money market funds reduced loans to the region.

Bits: Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks

January 20, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg News

9:02 p.m. | Updated

Apple wants students to stop lugging around backpacks full of heavy textbooks and to switch to the iPad instead.

On Thursday the company introduced three free pieces of software revolving around education. It released iBooks 2, a new version of its electronic bookstore, where students can now download textbooks; iBooks Author, a Macintosh program for creating textbooks and other books; and iTunes U, an app for instructors to create digital curriculums and share course materials with students.

Digital textbooks made for iBooks can display interactive diagrams, audio and video. The iBooks Author app includes templates made by Apple, which publishers and authors can customize to suit their content.

Apple said electronic high school textbooks from its initial publishing partners, including Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, would cost $15 or less. That is much cheaper than print textbooks, some of which can cost over $100.

“Education is deep in our DNA and it has been from the very beginning,” said Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, at the event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Textbooks are a fat target for the technology industry. Sales of electronic textbooks accounted for only 2.8 percent of the $8 billion domestic textbook market in 2010, according to Forrester Research. For publishers, the new partnerships with Apple were more likely motivated by a desire to experiment with technology than to earn huge profits, said Sarah Rotman-Epps, a Forrester analyst.

Though the possibilities of Apple’s new publishing software and the iPad seemed to excite publishers, even those who are working on iPad textbooks said it would take time for the technology to change how most textbooks are purchased. First, there is the obvious challenge of finding the money for schools to buy iPads, which start at $500 each in stores.

“It’s a very high and expensive hurdle to overcome,” said Josef Blumenfeld, a senior vice president at one publisher working with Apple, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Mr. Blumenfeld said Houghton had seen high engagement levels when students used an educational app for the iPad that it had already published, and that it expected electronic textbooks to have the same effect.

He said, though, that schools would first have to become comfortable with the idea of paying for rights to iPad textbooks for new students every school year, rather than paying a one-time fee of, say, $60 for a printed textbook that lasts five or six years. Publishers, too, will have to get used to the idea of Apple taking a 30 percent commission on sales. But Mr. Blumenfeld predicted that iPad textbooks would not hurt Harcourt’s profits because they would not have printing, shipping and other costs.

By most estimates, Apple has not captured as much of the electronic book market with the iPad and its iBookstore as its chief rival in the business, Amazon, has with the Kindle e-reader. But Amazon has been less successful in the education market.

Amazon in 2009 announced plans to target the textbook publishing industry with the Kindle DX, a larger version of its e-reader. But Amazon failed to make a dent in the market and did not impress students. At Princeton, which offered a Kindle DX pilot program, students complained about the device’s sluggishness and limited interactivity, according to the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Princetonian. Meanwhile Apple has a deep and longstanding connection with the education market.

Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies at Abilene Christian University, led a pilot program where students and teachers used iPhones in the classroom. He called Apple’s new education tools “revolutionary,” because they give users the ability to create and share books easily.

“This is something we’ve been dreaming about for years,” he said. But Jill Ambrose, chief marketing officer at CourseSmart, which offers digital textbooks for the iPad, iPhone and Android devices, said it was a potential problem that Apple’s textbooks would be exclusively available for Apple products.

“Based on the fact that you have to mandate a specific device, that’s going to be difficult for school districts to decide students are going to take their strained budgets to purchase these devices,” she said.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=d0149bbe4bc32a38fb70888dd19d4294

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: electronic bookstore, finding the money, target

DealBook: Bank of America Swings to a Profit, Mostly From One-Time Items

January 20, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg NewsBank of America‘s fourth-quarter gain was overshadowed by continuing weakness on Wall Street.

8:15 p.m. | Updated

For Bank of America, less is more.

Even as the company reported a $2 billion profit in the fourth quarter on Thursday, what was once the country’s largest bank continued to shrink, wiping tens of billions of dollars from its balance sheet and laying off nearly 7,000 employees.

The results are the clearest evidence so far of the chief executive Brian T. Moynihan’s view that bigger isn’t better, and Wall Street seemed to agree — Bank of America shares rose more than 2 percent to just under $7 a share, the highest level since October. The boost was a rare break for long-suffering Bank of America investors, who watched its shares dive by more than 50 percent last year.

While the profit was a turnaround from the fourth quarter of 2010, when Bank of America lost $1.2 billion, it was largely a result of one-time gains. They included $2.9 billion from the sale of a stake in China Construction Bank and $1.2 billion on the exchange of preferred stock for common stock.

The moves helped the company solidify its underlying capital position in the face of huge losses on soured mortgages. The bank has been submerged in red ink stemming from its 2008 acquisition of the subprime specialist Countrywide Financial. That purchase has saddled the bank with over $30 billion in losses.

“We enter 2012 stronger and more efficient after two years of simplifying and streamlining our company,” Mr. Moynihan said in a statement.

The bank has been under pressure from investors and regulators to strengthen its capital position under international rules and catch up to competitors with higher ratios. The company now expects the Tier 1 capital ratio under new Basel regulations to finish the year at between 7.25 and 7.5 percent, up from a previous target of 6.75 to 7 percent. Regulators argue that a bigger buffer of capital makes banks less reliant on borrowed money and enhances the stability of the financial system.

“The earnings were definitely weaker than we expected but their comments on capital were better,” said Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst with Credit Suisse.

Mr. Orenbuch and other analysts noted that the worry now was how the bank was going to cut expenses and expand profits from the core businesses that remain. The banking industry is being buffeted by new rules that cut into once-lucrative fees charged to consumers as well as new restrictions on how much risk banks can employ on Wall Street.

“There is uncertainty about the long-term earnings power of the company, but they’re pursuing the right strategy,” said Chris Kotowski, an analyst with Oppenheimer.

“Everybody wants to see more capital and you don’t want to stick out from the pack,” he added. “They’ve closed a lot of the gap.” Echoing a trend at Citigroup and JPMorgan, which both recently reported fourth-quarter results, Bank of America’s traditional lending businesses were healthier than capital markets activities like stock and bond trading. Revenue dropped by 31 percent in the company’s global banking and markets unit, which includes Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as the unit recorded a net loss of $433 million.

International lending helped propel faster growth in loans from the global banking and markets division, rising 9 percent to $131 billion. “Loan demand globally is stronger than it is in the U.S.,” said Bank of America’s chief financial officer, Bruce R. Thompson. “And with the pullback of European institutions, we’re going to see more opportunities for loan growth.”

For the quarter, Bank of America earned 15 cents, matching analyst estimates. For the full year, it earned just a penny a share, or $1.4 billion, having taken huge charges against earnings because of the mortgage mess. That was better than the full-year result for 2010, when the bank lost $2.2 billion, or 37 cents a share.

Thursday’s report offered clues to how broad the company’s retrenchment has been. Besides the job cuts, which took Bank of America’s head count to 281,791 at the end of the fourth quarter, the bank closed more branches than it opened in 2011. More jobs are expected to disappear as the company’s restructuring eventually reduces its work force by roughly 30,000.

In what was seen as a sign of consumer displeasure with the $5 debit card fee that the bank decided to impose last summer before dropping it in the fall, total deposits shrank in the fourth quarter by just over $5 billion, to $417.1 billion. “We had some impact from the $5 debit card fee. That’s why we decided to reverse it,” Mr. Moynihan said in a conference call with analysts.

Article source: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/bank-of-america-swings-to-a-profit/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Filed Under: Global Business Tagged With: balance sheet, capital ratio, target

Special Report: Business of Green: Carbon Capture and Storage Plans in Europe Face Doubts

January 17, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Two carbon capture and storage projects in Germany and Britain were canceled last quarter, and many of the remaining projects will probably share that fate this year, imperiled by a mix of regulatory objections, a lack of money, public opposition to the possible geological risks and broader uncertainty about strategies to slow climate change.

By 2020, Europe will have at most six, and more probably four, of the 12 demonstration plants that were supposed to be running by 2015, experts and officials say.

“The program will deliver four to six projects, tops, and some say that’s optimistic,” said Eric Drosin, a spokesman of Zero Emissions Platform, an umbrella group representing private and public partners involved in carbon capture and storage, also known as C.C.S.

Christoph Weber, an expert on low-carbon economy and a professor of management sciences and energy economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, said Europe “would have to spend a lot more money than projected initially to get utilities to say that the business is not the best, but worth going for.”

Still, Europe, an early leader in developing the technology for use outside the oil industry — which injects carbon dioxide into aging oil fields to bolster production — remains bound by its climate change targets. Delayed deployment of the technology could make it significantly more expensive to meet a target, agreed on by heads of state in 2009, to cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. It would also increase dependence on nuclear power, a tall order given Germany’s rejection of nuclear energy.

“There is no long-term role for fossil fuels in Europe’s future energy mix unless C.C.S. is deployed,” the European Union’s energy commissioner, Günther Oettinger, warned last month.

Spain could be a case study of failed ambitions. It is one of Europe’s worst laggards in the pursuit of carbon dioxide emission targets, and Spaniards as a whole do not share the concerns voiced in some countries about the geological security of the technology. The country also has mainstream political support for revitalizing its coal industry and a more stable regulatory framework than many of its neighbors.

In 2006 the government set up the Fundación Ciudad de la Energía, known as Ciuden, a research facility in the Bierzo, a mountainous coal mining region of northwestern Spain.

Ciuden was to develop a technology for collecting waste carbon dioxide from the burning of local coal, cooling it to a liquid and pumping it for indefinite storage into underground caves or porous rock formations.

Three years later, along with two private partners, it received a grant for 180 million euros, or $228 million, to build a pilot plant, to be followed by an industrial-scale plant for completion by 2015.

But the demonstration plant is now unofficially mothballed for lack of committed public and private money. Endesa, one of the biggest utilities in Spain, which was to build a 500-megawatt coal-burning power generator integrating Ciuden’s technology, has said it will not make any formal decision on the project until later this year.

An industry ministry spokesman in Spain’s new conservative government said the company had shown little interest in pursuing the program and the government itself had yet to make up its mind what to do.

The former Socialist Party administration, meanwhile, was scarcely more active. Despite the debt crisis, it subsidized the renewable energy industry with nearly 7 billion euros in 2011, most of it directed to solar power, but it provided no more money for the demonstration project.

Adding carbon capture technology to a power plant raises the capital cost by 30 to 100 percent, according to the Global C.C.S. Institute, an Australian government research center created to share global knowledge about the technology. That translates into an average of 1 billion to 2 billion euros, depending on the size of the plant. The technology also makes plants less efficient, reducing power output 20 percent.

Yet the technology continues to enjoy political and financial support in many countries, including Norway, the United States, Australia and Canada, as economies strive to mitigate climate change without sacrificing the reliability and affordability of fossil fuels, especially coal.

The United States has four operational projects, with three more under construction and 18 planned; and Canada has one operational and two under construction, with three awaiting final decisions and three in the planning stage.

The 2050 Energy Roadmap, adopted by the European Commission last month, looks to carbon capture for 19 to 32 percent of total European Union emission cuts by 2050.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0abd7baecbb825e976e2156cdb78c219

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: carbon economy, greenhouse gas emissions, target

Irish Court Rules Ex-Tycoon Sean Quinn Bankrupt

January 17, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Sean Quinn, a businessman who was once one of the richest men in Ireland, was declared bankrupt on Monday by a court in the country, where stiff regulations could prevent him from resuming his business activities for up to 12 years.

Mr. Quinn, 65, who did not appear in the Dublin court where the ruling was made, unexpectedly dropped his opposition to the bankruptcy proceedings. They are connected to more than 2.8 billion euros, or $3.5 billion, that he owes to the former Anglo Irish Bank, now known as the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation.

The bank was at the center of Ireland’s property collapse and was nationalized in early 2009. Last week, it successfully challenged Mr. Quinn’s bankruptcy declaration in Northern Ireland, where more lenient rules would have permitted him a fresh start within 12 months.

“Today Anglo achieved their goal of ensuring that I will never create another job,” Mr. Quinn said in a statement issued after the hearing. “As I have previously stated, Anglo has been pursuing a vendetta against me and my family.”

He added, “The position of the Irish taxpayer could have improved significantly by a more reasonable approach.”

The court declaration does not put an end to the legal strife between the bank and Mr. Quinn. His family is pressing a court in Dublin to challenge the legality of loans that Anglo Irish made to him.

The bank is also pursuing efforts to seize Quinn family properties in Russia, Ukraine and India, where offshore companies have been challenging their takeover.

After the bankruptcy hearing, the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation issued its own statement challenging Mr. Quinn’s accusations that he was a target of the bank’s wrath.

“It is disappointing to note that Mr. Quinn continues to assert that his bankruptcy is a matter of a personal vendetta by I.B.R.C. against him and his family,” the statement said. “This simply is not true.”

“The bank’s singular focus is to recover as much as possible from the remaining assets,” it said.

In April, the bank seized control of the privately held Quinn Group, a conglomerate based in Northern Ireland that operated a mix of insurance companies, luxury hotels, wind farms and radiator factories.

Since then, Quinn properties have been a regular target of vandalism. On Friday evening, a fire broke out at a vacant company office in Derrylin, Northern Ireland. Last month, a truck smashed into the building’s employee cafeteria.

The Quinn family has disavowed the violence, which included the firebombing last summer of a car that belonged to the new chief executive appointed by the bank to run the Quinn Group.

Mr. Quinn’s family farm in Northern Ireland is the site of the Quinn Group’s headquarters. He started the business in the 1970s with a £100 loan to dig a gravel quarry on his father’s land.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=af955be37ab7ab5aea96c0039c6ad8ec

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: collapse, fresh start, target

Retailers Post Sales Gains, but Discounts Hurt

January 5, 2012 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Sales at stores open at least a year at major retail chains rose 3.4 percent compared with December 2010, according to Thomson Reuters data, just slightly above the 3.3 percent that analysts had expected.

But those sales were largely gained by big markdowns that will probably lead to lower profits at retailers, and chains including Target, Kohl’s and J. C. Penney lowered their fourth-quarter profit expectations.

Shoppers seemed inclined to buy only when they saw huge discounts, and that suggested American consumers are still not back on their feet.

“Retailers came in with pretty conservative assumptions and they were hoping to blow them out of the water — they really didn’t,” said David L. Bassuk, managing director and head of the retail practice at AlixPartners, a consulting firm. His store visits over the holidays indicated that many of the promotions were “unplanned,” he said, a tactic retailers resort to in response to slow spending.

“Retailers hope that as they plan some promotions on key items, that will entice the consumer to spend money,” he said. “That didn’t happen — the planned promotions were not as exciting as the consumer today expects, so the retailer has to revert back to things that were unplanned, like ‘50 percent off our whole store,’ ‘60 percent off our whole store,’ which is when you can see times are tough.”

The top five performers all beat analyst estimates by at least 3 percentage points. Those were the teen stores Zumiez and the Buckle; the large discounters Ross and TJX; and Nordstrom.

Apparel stores, which were heavily promotional as the month went on, fared the best as a sector, with sales at stores open at least a year increasing 7.2 percent.

Those figures exclude the Gap Inc. chains, which include Old Navy and Banana Republic, where same-store sales declined 4 percent. The Gap, Wet Seal, Cato, Bon-Ton and Freds reported the worst same-store sales.

Target and Kohl’s, which both do huge promotions around the holidays, came in below analyst estimates, and both reduced their fourth-quarter profit expectations on Thursday.

Target’s same-store sales were up 1.6 percent, versus expectations of a 3.1 percent increase. Target said in a statement that electronics, movies, music and books were particularly weak performers. It reduced its fourth-quarter profit expectations to $1.35 to $1.43 a share; it had earlier estimated $1.43 to $1.53 a share.

Kohl’s same-store sales declined 0.1 percent, while analysts had expected a gain of 2.2 percent. Kohl’s said in a release that low sales of cold-weather gear were partly to blame. It lowered its fourth-quarter profit expectations to $1.70 to $1.73 per share, down from $1.93 to $2.04 a share.

J.C. Penney also lowered its fourth-quarter estimate, saying it now expected to earn 65 to 70 cents a share instead the of $1.05 to $1.15 it had previously expected.

Many stores seemed to be using promotions to get items out the door at the expense of profits. John D. Morris, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets, said in a note to clients that promotional activity at apparel stores was running above last year’s December level. “Promotions were aggressive throughout the month, and particularly in the 10 days before Christmas,” he said.

American Eagle Outfitters said in a release that in the last two weeks of December, “the company made a strategic decision to take a more aggressive promotional stance. While impacting margins, the decision enabled the company to generate strong unit sales.” Same-store sales for November and December together increased 12 percent, it said, although same-store sales slowed significantly in December. (Because it does not regularly report monthly sales, American Eagle is not included in the Thomson Reuters tally.)

J. C. Penney said its average price of an item fell for the month, though transactions were up. There was a “higher level of markdown activity caused by overall softer sales trends,” said Angelika Torres, a Penney spokeswoman, in prepared remarks.

Mr. Bassuk, the retail consultant, said that with consumers still unwilling to buy at full price, 2012 would probably bring “closing of stores and, I think, closing of retailers . It’s a more dire situation than many had anticipated.”

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1f77ff214bd52ba2fb8e1a740589c6a3

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: nordstrom, quarter profit, target

Apple Wins Partial Victory on Patent Claim Over Android Features

December 20, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

The ruling, by the United States International Trade Commission, is one of the most significant so far in a growing array of closely watched patent battles being waged around the globe by nearly all of the major players in the mobile industry. These fights reflect the heated competition among the companies, especially as Android phones gain market share.

At the heart of the disputes are the kind of small but convenient features that would cause many people to complain if they were not in their smartphones. For example, the case decided Monday involves the technology that lets you tap your finger once on the touch screen to call a phone number that is written inside an e-mail or text message. It also involves the technology that allows you to schedule a calendar appointment, again with a single tap of the finger, for a date mentioned in an e-mail.

HTC, the defendant in the case and a Taiwan-based mobile phone maker using the Android system, said in a statement after the ruling that it would adapt its features to comply with the court’s decision. The company called them “small” parts of the user’s experience.

The ruling was only a partial victory for Apple because the commission overruled an earlier decision in Apple’s favor in the case, involving a different, more technical patent related to how software is organized internally on mobile devices. It would have been hard for HTC to adapt its devices to avoid infringing that patent, legal experts said.

The decision could potentially affect far more phones than those made by HTC because the underlying target of the suit is Google, creator of the Android system that now powers more than half of all smartphones sold worldwide. Apple is suing several other makers of Android devices, as is Microsoft, and companies that make Android products are returning the favor in most instances through countersuits.

“It’s an important victory for Apple, but it’s just one of many battles,” said Alexander Poltorak, chief executive of the General Patent Corporation, an intellectual property strategy firm, adding that the ruling will pressure other Android phone makers to license the technology from Apple or make changes to avoid patent infringement issues.

The ruling by the six-member commission, which can take action against unfair trade practices by companies whose products are imported into the United States, will prevent HTC from selling phones in the United States that infringe the patent starting April 19.

To take effect, President Obama’s trade representative must sign the order. He could decide to overrule the commission’s finding, though such actions are rare. It also can be appealed.

Apple has also sued HTC in federal court accusing it of patent infringement, while HTC has filed suits of its own against Apple with the trade commission and in federal court.

The patent battles reflect the intense competition in the smartphone market. In the third quarter of 2011, phones running the Android system accounted for 52.5 percent of devices sold worldwide, up from 25.3 percent in the period of 2010. Apple’s share of this market fell to 15 percent, from 16.6 percent, in the same period.

Apple’s late chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, was outspoken in saying that Google had improperly copied many of the iPhone’s innovations, telling his biographer that he was going to “destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product.”

After the ruling on Monday, Kristin Huguet, an Apple spokeswoman, said, “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Grace Lei, HTC’s general counsel, said in a statement that the company was happy the commission ruled against Apple on other patents involved in the case. “We are very pleased with the determination and we respect it,” Ms. Lei said.

A Google spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

The growing complexity of mobile devices has greatly expanded the range of patents that can be used as weapons in the business, and their robust sales have made them a lucrative target.

Florian Mueller, an intellectual property analyst in Germany and author of a popular blog on patents estimates that the number of patent lawsuits related to the mobile business worldwide is approaching 100.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=8283fa6e6c1308aae624b96909673349

Filed Under: Business News Tagged With: mobile industry, system, target

You’re the Boss Blog: A Small Retailer Tries to Compete With the Big Boys Online

December 13, 2011 by NewsMaker Leave a Comment

Site Analysis

What’s wrong with this Web site?

Little Dudes and Divas is a small business with some very big competition. Started seven years ago by Steve and Susan Karasanti, husband and wife, the company has three employees and sells clothes and accessories for infants and toddlers. Ninety percent of the sales come through the Web site, the rest through a newly opened brick-and-mortar store in Rockaway Park, N.Y., where the company is based.

“Our business model is based on keeping things fresh and selling only items which we feel are of the highest quality,” Steve Karasanti said. “If a new bag or print comes out, we want to be the first to have it on our site. You don’t want your customer to tell you that she saw something on another site from a manufacturer you carry.”

Can a company this small go head-to-head with such powerhouses as Macy’s, Nordstrom, Target, Babies “R” Us, and Diapers.com? It isn’t easy. “When we first started selling diaper bags and diaper bag accessories online, there was much less competition,” Mr. Karasanti said. “It’s extremely challenging to compete with such well-known Web sites that sell the same items as us. It’s very hard to compete with the bigger online companies on price, but we can compete by giving our customers personal attention.”

For example:

“If a customer wants to see a particular bag packed a certain way, we will make a video for them and post it.”
“We will spend time answering all your e-mails and sit on the phone with you until you feel comfortable ordering and all your questions have been answered.”
“We have customers that call us when they had a bad day and need to talk, but they still manage to pick our brains about that diaper bag they had their eye on.”
“We may have a store policy, but we always find a way to make a change to keep our customers happy.”

To get the word out, the Karasantis have increased their e-mail marketing efforts to relay sales and promotions to their customers. They have also invested heavily in search engine optimization. “We did extensive research on S.E.O.,” Mr. Karasanti said. “We only use methods that are considered ethical. Our site is filled with meaningful and unique content.”

The Karasantis say they review their Google Analytics reports constantly. “We started to concentrate more on reports and customer behavior while shopping,” Mr. Karasanti said. “These reports help you understand why a customer may click off a page, or why they abandoned their cart. You can tell things like what page gets the most clicks, what page customers see when they leave the site. If you have a page on the site that gets a lot of clicks, but customers don’t continue to shop and just leave, it’s a good indication that something is wrong. It could be a price error, a missing picture, a bad link, or the page is not loading correctly.”

The Karasantis have also been active in social media, using blogs, forums, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to try to drive more sales. They post frequently and respond quickly to visitor comments. “We use them to keep our customers current and give them reasons to keep coming back,” Mr. Karasanti said.

So why were they interested in having their site reviewed here? “We are hoping to get a different angle on the things that we are doing well and the things that can use improvements,” Mr. Karasanti said. “We are not scared of criticism. We are scared that there might be something that we can do to improve, but we just don’t know about it.”

Please take a look at the site and consider a few questions:

Does it provide enough information to make you want to buy anything?
Does it make it easy to buy?
Does it create a sense of trust?
What do you think of how the company is using social media?
Do you have specific suggestions about the design, navigation or marketing?
Why would you buy from this site instead of one of their bigger competitors?

Next week, in our follow-up, we’ll collect highlights from your comments, and I’ll offer some of my own impressions. And we’ll get Mr. Karasanti’s response, as well.

Would you like to have your business’s Web site or mobile app reviewed? This is an opportunity for companies looking for an honest (and free) appraisal of their online presence and marketing efforts.

To be considered, please tell me about your experiences — why you started your site, what works, what doesn’t and why you would like to have the site reviewed — in an e-mail to youretheboss@bluefountainmedia.com.

Gabriel Shaoolian is the founder and chief executive of Blue Fountain Media, a Web design, development and marketing company based in New York.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=927b30a92444dcc336afda251bfe5344

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: brick and mortar, personal attention, target