The Latest from TechCrunch |  |
- Got degree envy? No worries, you can still make it big.
- From The 3G Industry Summit In Kunshan, China: 16 Demos From Chinese Mobile Startups
- Sean Parker’s Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google Presentation (Full Slide Deck)
- SGN’s CEO Talks About F.A.S.T. Going Free And The Realities Of A Changing App Store
- Carl Icahn Says His Work Is Done, Resigns From Yahoo’s Board
- The ‘I Automatically Hate The New Facebook Home Page’ Group Gets Some Big Support
- App Store Hypocrisy Update: “Asian Boobs” Fine, Top Seller. Satirical App, Banned.
- Love Vibes iPhone App Ranks How Awesome You Are.. In Bed.
- Google Maps Improves The Ability To See Where The Streets Have No Name
- CrunchBoard Jobs: Yelp, Edelman, Scribd and More!
- Judge Rejects Power.com’s Countersuit Against Facebook
- A Couple iPhone Apps Named “Twitter” Are Tricking Users
- The Japanese Android Market Gets Its First Paid Apps
- Facebook Merges ‘Highlights’ Back Into Your News Feed
- New Video Discovery Site Promises To Make a Rippol In The Stream (1,000 Beta Invites)
- Hold’em Or Fold’em? Looks Like Playfish Is Still In Play
- Microsoft Reports Pre-Windows 7 Declines For Revenues And Profits. No More Excuses.
| Got degree envy? No worries, you can still make it big. Posted: 24 Oct 2009 07:00 AM PDT
An Ivy League degree may get you a job as an investment banker or VC, but it won't increase your odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur. So you couldn't get into Stanford, Berkeley or Harvard, huh? Don't sweat it. You can still make it big. Some people might believe that an Ivy League education provides a huge advantage in entrepreneurship. But after researching this over and over again, I've found no such correlation. To the contrary, it seems that those who are born without the silver spoons in their mouths are more motivated to succeed. And those who aren't members of elite alum societies develop the skills needed to hustle in the rough and tough business world. The Ivy-Leaguers may be able to get their buddies from Sequoia and Kleiner to return emails, but they aren't going to be any more successful at building companies. With my affiliations at three of the greatest universities in the world (Harvard, Berkeley, and Duke), I know I'm going to take a lot of flak for this piece. It's not that I haven't been trying to find the good news. I've done three big research projects on entrepreneurship. Each of these reached the same conclusion about education and entrepreneurship: What makes entrepreneurs successful is the education, not the school. It's the same in India and China. India's IITs and China's Fudan University (their Ivy League schools) don't hold any monopoly on graduating tech stars. In the first research project, we looked at the background of 317 immigrants who started tech companies. We were surprised to learn that Delhi University graduated twice as many Silicon Valley company founders as did IIT Delhi. And that both Osmania and Bombay University trumped nearly all of the IITs. China's Tianjin University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University graduated more founders than Fudan or Tsinghua. These were immigrants, and we weren't sure if it would be the same with American schools. So we looked into the educational background of American tech company founders. We found that the 628 U.S.-born tech founders we surveyed received their education from 287 unique universities. Almost every major U.S. university was represented. The top ten institutions in this group accounted for only 19 percent of the entire sample. In other words, 81% of the tech company founders came from "regular" schools. To make my colleagues at Harvard feel better (and to keep my job), I'll acknowledge that the Ivies represented 8% of the sample even though those schools only graduate 1.6% of American students. Then we broadened our research and looked into the backgrounds of the founders of 549 successful businesses across a set of high-growth industries. The proportion of Ivy-Leaguers was even smaller (about 6% of the sample). We also found that MBA's tended to start companies sooner after graduation (13 years) than bachelors degree holders (17 years). And both these groups were quicker to the startups than PhD's – who typically waited 21 years from the time they graduated to start their ventures. That's right, tech company founders aren't spring chickens. Also, we found that Computer Science/IT grads were faster than MBA's (13 years vs. 15 yrs) and the applied science majors (20 years). The most interesting findings however were the difference between those who had college degrees and those who never even got a sheepskin. The average sales revenue of all startups in one of our samples was around $5.7 million, and these companies employed an average of forty-two workers. Startups established by tech founders with Ivy League degrees had average sales and employment of $6.7 million and fifty-five workers, respectively. The success of these two groups markedly contrasted with startups established by tech founders with only a high school degree. Those founders had average revenues and employees of $2.2 million and eighteen, respectively. (Sorry, Bill and Steve). In other words, it didn't matter so much if you graduated from an Ivy. What made the greatest difference was having a higher degree. Company founders also value their education. In a paper which the Kauffman Foundation will release on Nov 17 (during Global Entrepreneurship Week), we report that 70.3% said their university education was important. Ivy League graduates valued their education even more, with 85.7% indicating this was important. Surprisingly only 18.8% believed that university or alumni networks were important. Of the Ivy graduates, 28.6% ranked these networks as important. To be fair, an Ivy League education does provide other advantages. An Ivy degree makes it much easier to become an investment banker at Goldman Sachs (is that a positive these days?), a venture capitalist (most are elite school grads) or a powerful attorney. It probably makes it easier to become a professor, as well. And, as my research shows, it may confer a slight advantage to entrepreneurs. But not enough of an advantage to make any real difference in the equation. So, Mom and Dad, save your dollars. High school juniors, save your tears. Ivy Leaguers, check your ego at the door. What makes you good is what and how you learn, not the name on your framed diploma. Editor’s note: Guest writer Vivek Wadhwa is an entrepreneur turned academic. He is a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University. Follow him on Twitter at @vwadhwa. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.   |
| From The 3G Industry Summit In Kunshan, China: 16 Demos From Chinese Mobile Startups Posted: 24 Oct 2009 01:22 AM PDT
Just a few stats about China’s online landscape:
The smartphone market and 3G are still in their infancy though. Research firm BDA China says just 17.4 million smartphones were sold in China in 2008 (Nokia commands a 67% market share in this segment), with the total likely to hit 36 million units this year before growing to 56 million in 2010. The iPhone will be released in China next week. The number of China Mobile’s 3G subscribers (who use the company’s homegrown 3G standard) currently stands at just 1.33 million, but the country’s three biggest cell phone carriers (China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom) say they’re ready to invest $66 billion in China’s 3G networks over the next two years. So the 3G Industry Summit in Kunshan probably couldn’t take place at a better time. The program also included a launch pad, which gave a total of 14 companies from China (two were from Japan) the chance to pitch their services onstage to over 200 top-level executives, VCs and entrepreneurs in the country’s mobile tech world. Here’s a thumbnail sketch of all of these companies. The list is by no means representative of China’s mobile startup scene but should serve as a reasonably large and up-to-date cross section of the industry.
CEO Lei Jia said 70% Chinese of consumers download contents from the web to their phone, not over the air. CrossMo looks like a very powerful tool and reminds me of DoubleTwist (concept-wise), so too bad it’s China-only.
Shanghai-based SocoGame itself is a major player in China’s mobile gaming sector. The company produced more than 100 mobile games for a number of different markets so far, i.e. Monkey King (specifically designed for Asia) or Jewel Quest Deluxe (specifically designed for markets in North America and Europe).
Note: MTrend is China Mobile’s main brand for data monitoring so these data points aren’t representative for all of China. Demo 13:
Demo 14:
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Sean Parker’s Rise of Facebook And Twitter, Fall Of Google Presentation (Full Slide Deck) Posted: 23 Oct 2009 05:40 PM PDT
It’s a very interesting idea, to say the least, and obviously you’re interested in it, as about 200 of you commented on it yesterday. So we’ve obtained Parker’s full slide deck from his presentation. Find the full presentation embedded below, definitely worth the read. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| SGN’s CEO Talks About F.A.S.T. Going Free And The Realities Of A Changing App Store Posted: 23 Oct 2009 04:05 PM PDT
Pishevar says that he was estactic when he heard the news — he almost immediately recorded a video sharing his elation that he sent to all of SGN’s 100+ employees worldwide. He explains that this is really the announcement that he’s been waiting for, but that he had no expectation that Apple might do it so soon. Now the company is working at a brisk pace to take advantage of the change: it will soon be releasing a new free version of its smash hit game F.A.S.T., which has done over $1.8 million in sales before Apple’s cut. The new version of F.A.S.T. will feature an extensive array of virtual goods, which users will be able to purchase once they’ve downloaded the core game, which will be free. I also suspect that many (if not all) of SGN’s games will be released for free from here on out.  After discussing the impact on SGN’s apps, the conversation turned toward how this will impact developers in general. The App Store is going to see some major changes, and some of those won’t necessarily be for the better. For one, it will become even harder for premium applications to get noticed — before now they only had to compete against other ‘paid’ apps for a chance to appear on the Top Apps list. Now many of them will be migrating to the much more crowded ‘free’ section, which means they’ll be facing off with the vast array of ‘fun’ apps that are so enticing for impulse downloads. There’s also the possibility that the store will become flooded with applications that you can download for free, but really offer nothing of value until you start paying for features, despite what users may have been led to believe (a so-called ‘bait and switch’). Pishevar agrees that the new market may pose a challenge to new developers, who may have trouble getting noticed and establishing trust with users. But he says that the development houses that can establish a relationship with users will be able to rise to the top, even more so than before. That scenario would obviously put SGN, which has millions of installs across all of its games, in a good position. But Pishevar emphasized that SGN isn’t going to be content to simply rest on its laurels and exploit its large audience by rehashing games that have already been successful (he notes that the the highly derivative nature of many games on Facebook was one of the reasons SGN decided to shift over to the iPhone). Instead, he says he wants to push the limits of the iPhone, and eventually other mobile platforms. And to prove that wasn’t just marketing talk, he gave me a sneak peek at some of the projects that SGN has in the works. I’m sworn to secrecy on those for now, but suffice to say, SGN has some seriously cool things in the pipeline right now that really will take mobile gaming to the next level.  Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| Carl Icahn Says His Work Is Done, Resigns From Yahoo’s Board Posted: 23 Oct 2009 03:07 PM PDT
Billionaire investor Carl Icahn is resigning from Yahoo’s board of directors. According to MarketWatch, he said “there was not a need at this time for an activist investor” at Yahoo anymore and that he’d rather focus on other companies. The subtext there being that either A) he feels that his work is done and he can move on now that the search deal with Microsoft is moving towards government approval, or B) he can make more money by trying to control some other company. Icahn wrestled his way onto Yahoo’s board last year when Jerry Yang was still CEO. Initially, he wanted to try to revive Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Yahoo outright, but when it became clear Microsoft didn’t want to do that deal anymore, he supported the search deal as the best way to move forward. It’s hard to determine whether Icahn is throwing in the towel on Bartz or this is actually a vote of confidence. If he really believes in where Bartz can take the company after the search deal is done, then you’d think he’d keep his board seat to have a stronger influence on the company’s direction. But Icahn has always been a transaction-oriented investor. He tries to push companies to do things that will move the stock in a big way, and then he takes his profits and he leaves. More likely than not, Icahn doesn’t see another big shift he can push the company to take that will affect the stock in any major way. And with the stock price moving in the right direction, he probably doesn’t see the need to keep shaking the boat. It is much easier for him to just keep selling his shares (he sold almost $180 million worth in August alone) and move on. With the stock trading at $17, some of Icahn’s shares are still underwater, but he also bought a bunch at $10 last November. At this point, he’ll probably be happy just to get all of his initial investment back, which he is still far from doing. (Photo by Sam Lustgarten) Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| The ‘I Automatically Hate The New Facebook Home Page’ Group Gets Some Big Support Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:49 PM PDT
It’s inevitable: With Facebook change, comes Facebook backlash. Today’s introduction of the new-style News Feed on Facebook has been garnering quite a bit of positive buzz. But this is Facebook we’re talking about. Anytime they change anything, the backlash starts quickly. Sometime’s it’s justified, but quite often it’s users overreacting from the natural human feeling to dislike change. Not surprisingly, there are already plenty of Facebook groups against new changes. But hands down the best is “I AUTOMATICALLY HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK HOME PAGE,” which of course, pokes fun at what I’m talking about. But the best part? Facebook employees like Ivan Kirigin and Ari Steinberg have already joined it. More notable, so has Mark Zuckerberg. Here’s the group’s description:
It would seem that the group is hardly new, one news post is from March of this year. But newly acquired employee Paul Buchheit shared a nice little screenshot on FriendFeed (his service which Facebook bought) today revealing Zuckerberg and company joining it. The group has some 3,000+ members. Some don’t seem to understand that it’s a joke. Brilliant. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. |
| App Store Hypocrisy Update: “Asian Boobs” Fine, Top Seller. Satirical App, Banned. Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:15 PM PDT
Truth is, it wasn’t hard to find. The app called “Asian Boobs” is a top seller right now in the App Store. So what is it? Well, the title says it all: It’s an app that features the breasts of Asian women. Lots of them. Over 2,500 of them. And actually you can double that, for each breast in each picture. That’s a lot of boobs. The description of the $0.99 app is also classy:
Glad they squeezed the all-important “sexy girls” in there. Again, to be clear: I’m all for Apple allowing apps like this in the App Store assuming they’re appropriately labels as 17+ (which this one is). The girls aren’t nude (Apple still doesn’t allow those except when it accidentally does), but the boobage is everywhere — as are the ass shots and crotch shots. Pure iPhone fun. The problem is that Apple is rejecting apps, like Someecards, which are also labeled 17+ — for satire. Apple didn’t seem to like that the app poked fun at public figures like Roman Polanski and yes, Hitler. It’s just beyond ridiculous that upskirt apps and apps dedicated to boobs are fine, but satire is not. Maybe the majority of app testers are grumpy but creepy old men, I don’t know. Find Asian Boobs here for $0.99. Find Someecards app nowhere. Because Apple is ridiculous with these rules.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Love Vibes iPhone App Ranks How Awesome You Are.. In Bed. Posted: 23 Oct 2009 02:05 PM PDT
Well, friends, to fall back on an almost-stale cliche that I promise we’ll use only a few dozen more times: there’s an app for that. Read the rest of this post on MobileCrunch >> Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| Google Maps Improves The Ability To See Where The Streets Have No Name Posted: 23 Oct 2009 01:00 PM PDT
The reason is that almost all of the changes are very subtle. And unless you spend hours looking at Google Maps everyday, you probably aren’t going to realize when a road outline has been toned down, for example. But looking at the side-by-side images, it’s clear to see that the new look is much nice. Gone is much of the clutter cause by darkened street outlines. In Google’s own words, from their post:
Again, subtle, but much better. (Click on the images below to see more clearly.)
And just for the hell of it, I’ll embed one of the best music videos ever made. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| CrunchBoard Jobs: Yelp, Edelman, Scribd and More! Posted: 23 Oct 2009 12:00 PM PDT
Also, don’t forget that we’re looking for an Account Executive and CrunchBase interns here at TechCrunch! For job hunters in Europe, check out our Europe CrunchBoard. Click here to see all the jobs on CrunchBoard. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Judge Rejects Power.com’s Countersuit Against Facebook Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:57 AM PDT
Power.com is a service that allows users to aggregate all of their social network activity into a central hub, and has done so through methods that Facebook says violate its terms of use. Facebook filed suit against the company at the beginning of this year for scraping data and storing user credentials. A week later there were reports that the two parties were near a settlement, but that clearly didn’t happen. The judge attributes the dismissal to a lack of concrete complaints and factual allegations in Power.com’s countersuit. We’ve embedded the full document below. Update:
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| A Couple iPhone Apps Named “Twitter” Are Tricking Users Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:46 AM PDT
Over the past couple of weeks, we must have been pinged a couple dozen times from people pointing this out. Some of those people were unfortunately tricked into buying these apps, which are not free. Looking at the top paid apps list in the social networking area of the App Store, sure enough, both the app called “Twitter” and the one called “Twitter Pro” are top sellers, at #5 and #9 respectively. Undoubtedly, Twitter, the actual company, would have every right to ask Apple to remove these apps, or force them to change their names. But it would seem they haven’t done that yet. So these apps go right on tricking people, and presumably infringing on Twitter’s name. And that’s too bad. At least one of these apps doesn’t seem that bad either. I downloaded the one called “Twitter” to test it out. It’s not great, but it’s not half bad either. It’s kind of like a Google Reader for tweets, where you can mark all as read. Still, it’s not on the playing field with the best Twitter apps: Tweetie 2, Echofon (which presumably changed its name from TwitterFon because it didn’t want to make Twitter upset), and Birdfeed. Just to be clear: The app listed as “Twitter” is actually called “TwitBird.” But not only is it listed as Twitter in the App Store, it’s listed as that when you install it on your iPhone. Humorously, even the TwitBird name will likely raise concerns from another group: Leo Laporte’s TWiT, which has the rights to that name. Meanwhile, the app known as “Twitter Pro” is really called that, and by all indications seems to be a bad app. For that reason, and the shady naming techniques, I’m not going to link to either of these. But if you want to find them, just do a search in the App Store, both will come up in the immediate results.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. |
| The Japanese Android Market Gets Its First Paid Apps Posted: 23 Oct 2009 11:44 AM PDT  The first Android-powered phone launched in Japan last June. Users were able to access free apps on the Android Market, with paid apps to become available at a later point. Paid apps for U.S. users came to the market in February. Now it appears that paid apps have finally come to Japan. As we wrote in May, the country's largest telecommunications company, NTT, has picked up the rights to distribute the first mobile phone that uses the Android OS in Japan. The first paid apps hit the Android Market today for Japanese users. The apps are listed on the Japanese version of AndroLib, which lists applications and games for Android for various countries. Android stands to be a huge deal in Japan, and we hear that 25 to 30 percent of AndroLib’s visitors are from Japan, which could make the availability of paid apps in Japan a large market opportunity for developers. Of course, the Android market generally pales in comparison to that of the iPhone ecosystem, but it’s safe to say that the Google-OS-powered phone is growing in use. Thanks to AndroLib for the tip. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Facebook Merges ‘Highlights’ Back Into Your News Feed Posted: 23 Oct 2009 10:34 AM PDT  The new design is a compromise between the ‘old’ News Feed, which used algorithms to present stories Facebook thought you’d find interesting, and the feed Facebook rolled out back in March that consisted of a Twitter-like stream of recent updates. Since this year’s redesign Facebook has used the ‘Highlights’ section at the right hand side of the screen to present items you may have missed, but this was never an ideal solution: for one, you couldn’t see your friends’ comments on these posts, and the small space afforded to Highlights made it easy to pass over. Today’s change will make the Highlights section redundant, so it will be removed (everything below it will also be shifted higher on the page, which means the ‘Birthdays’ and ‘Events’ sections will no longer be buried). Facebook’s post also notes that the News Feed will include more events, including when your friends become fans of Pages, add friends, or RSVP to an event. The change has been a long time coming — reports about the merging of Highlights back into the feed emerged as far back as June. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
| New Video Discovery Site Promises To Make a Rippol In The Stream (1,000 Beta Invites) Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:45 AM PDT
The last thing the world needs is another video site, right? Well, that’s not stopping Aaron Crayford, who convinced a bunch of his supercomputer engineer buddies to put together Rippol, a video discovery site that blends hardcore machine learning with social streams. Rippol (not to be confused with rrripple, the media sharing site) is coming out of stealth today into private beta. Be one of the first 1,000 people to try it by signing up here. (If you don’t get an invite, the site will be launching publicly in a month at our next Realtime Crunchup). Rippol is still in raw form (the UI needs more polish, not all the buttons work the way they should), but it is experimenting with some powerful ideas in online video. You can sign in with Facebook Connect, or create your own account (it will also support Twitter and Gmail sign-ins soon). Once you have friends on the system, it lets you discover new videos through your friends. The homepage is an activity stream of the videos you and your friends have watched, favorited, rated, and reviewed. And a global stream in the left column shows what the broader Rippol community is watching. Links to any video can also be shared on Facebook or Tweeted out. You can click on any video mentioned in the stream to watch it, and chat with friends via Facebook Chat, which pops up from the bottom left of the browser window. Displaying videos as a realtime stream of information is a discovery mechanism that we are beginning to see in cutting-edge video sites like Magma (our review). And I suspect it will become adopted more broadly. However, Rippol doesn’t rely solely on your friends’ activities to help you find interesting videos. The site is also a standalone video discovery engine in its own right. You can watch about 500,000 videos right now in the Rippol player, which can be detached like a chat box and moved around in front of the screen, while you search for more videos, check out your stream or chat with friends.
Rippol ingests videos from other sites like Hulu and YouTube and then it runs them through its “Butterfly Network” (see diagram at right, click for larger image). Here is where the machine learning comes in. The Butterfly Network looks at all of your video-related activities in the site, those of your friends, and those of people in your demographic. All of the videos on the site have particularly good metadata (titles, genres, actors, descriptions), which lets Rippol take advantage of data-mining techniques to recommend videos for you. It creates a genre cloud for different categories of videos (TV Shows, Movies, Sports, News),and then generates a list of videos for each genre tag you click on. Depending on what genre of videos you are looking for, Rippol’s realtime ranking servers shows you videos associated with ones you’ve watched or liked in the past, your friends have watched or liked, and people in your demographic have watched or liked. If you click on comedies and martial arts videos, those will rank higher for you in the future. Since Rippol has all the realtime stream data as well, the video results are skewed towards what people are watching right now. Your own actions impact the rankings the most, followed by those of your friends, followed by those of people in your age and gender group. And if you are a 45-year-old male who tends to watch videos more like a 25-year-old male, it adjusts the demo it associates with your actual watching habits. The system is supposed to get smarter the more you use it, and the more your friends use it. So it’s hard to evaluate how effective it will be right now with only a handful of users, but it is a promising approach. Soon users will be able to suggest videos to add to the site. (Crayford says he’s come up with a novel way to filter out inappropriate videos from the broader community by taking into account what is acceptable to different social groups). Crayford’s last company, Vusion, specialized in high-definition video streaming over the Web. It’s patents, intellectual property, and other assets were acquired by the Clarendon Foundation in June, 2009. Craydon learned from that experience that advanced technology can only take you so far, and this time around he is trying to create a complete consumer experience rather than just an enabling technology. Rippol is completely bootstrapped so far. Screenshots:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Hold’em Or Fold’em? Looks Like Playfish Is Still In Play Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:38 AM PDT
In fact, we’ve learned that Playfish is still in play, and in all likelihood EA leaked the $250 million figure as a negotiating tactic. Our sources say that Playfish is holding out for another offer, somewhere between $350m at the low end and $500m at the top end, either from EA or another suitor. Independently, Inside Social Games has uncovered similar chatter. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 |
| Microsoft Reports Pre-Windows 7 Declines For Revenues And Profits. No More Excuses. Posted: 23 Oct 2009 06:44 AM PDT Microsoft announced another down quarter this morning. Revenues in the September quarter were down 14 percent to $12.92 billion, and net profits declined even further to $3.57 billion, or $0.40 a share. The consensus estimate was $0.32, so Wall Street is happy and the shares are rallying (up 10 percent in early-morning trading). Investors will forgive the poor performance coming out of the recession (are we out of that yet?), because they hope that yesterday’s launch of Windows 7 will bring back the shine to the stock. If you look at revenues for the Windows business, it certainly looks like both businesses and consumers have been delaying purchases and upgrades in anticipation of the new operating system. The Windows business saw revenues decline by 37 percent, or $1.7 billion, from last year, to $2.6 billion. The closely-related Business division, which includes Office, was down $500 million in revenues, to $4.4 billion. Microsoft needs to revive these franchises with Windows 7 at a time when it is increasingly under attack by cloud-based productivity apps from Google and others. But Windows 7 should give Microsoft some cover as corporations go through their robotic upgrade exercises. The company recorded $1.5 billion in deferral revenue associated with Windows 7, which pretty much covers the gap from last year. The two businesses which held steady in terms of revenue were Servers and Tools ($3.4 billion) and Entertainment ($1.9 billion). Microsoft sold 2.1 million Xboxes in the quarter, and is no selling an average of 8.7 games per console, more than any other videogame console. Profits nearly doubled to $312 million, and Xbox Live revenues grew more than 50 percent, although Microsoft does not specify the absolute number. Looking at Microsoft’s online business, once again the loss in that business ($480 million) was almost the same as its revenues ($490 million), which implies that it is actually losing twice as much as it is bringing in. We saw the same trend last quarter, as Microsoft continues to invest heavily in this business via Bing and other products. Online advertising revenues were down 3 percent (at least that was better than Yahoo’s 12 percent decline), and search ads from Bing saw a “mid single digit” increase. Below is a table breaking down Microsoft’s revenues by operating division (click to enlarge):
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors |
Yesterday at the 
Last week Apple 
Remember, earlier this month when we wrote about the 
![Screen shot 2009-10-23 at [ October 23 ] 1.23.00 PM](http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/Screen-shot-2009-10-23-at-October-23-1.23.00-PM.png)
Much like everyone thinks they’re the best driver in the world, everyone thinks they’re great in the sack. Maybe you’ve got the Kama Sutra down like the back of your partner’s… hand; maybe you’ve used that internet connection to amass a few external drives full of “training material”. Whatever arts you’re trained in, the question has almost undoubtedly popped into your head during the heat of the moment: “Am I 
Since its inception, 
A judge in the Northern California District Court has thrown out the 
So, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but these iPhone app things are a pretty big deal. With the iPhone continuing to sell in 
Last week 
| You are subscribed to email updates from TechCrunch To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
No comments:
Post a Comment