Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is planning to step down from the position, CNBC reports. It's not yet clear who will take his place as chief executive of the company if he does leave. Engadget has contacted Twitter for comment.
Over the last six years, Dorsey has been in the unusual situation of running two notable tech companies: Twitter and Square. His first stint as Twitter CEO, which he co-founded, ended in 2008 when he was pushed out. He returned in 2015 when Dick Costolo departed.
Last year, activist investment firm Elliott Management called for Dorsey to leave his position at Twitter. The firm's founder, Paul Singer, suggested Dorsey's dual CEO role meant he wasn't able to focus enough on the social media platform. Twitter reached a deal with Elliott Management, which included a $2 billion stock buyback, to keep Dorsey in place, despite a shaky outlook for the company when the COVID-19 pandemic was starting to take hold.
LG has appointed a new CEO to lead its electronics business. Starting December 1st, current Chief Strategy Officer William Cho will take over for Bong-seok Kwon as the CEO of LG Electronics. Meanwhile, according to The Korea Herald, Kwon will head up LG’s main holding company. Cho has been with LG Electronics since 1987. Prior to his most recent role, he served as the president of LG Canada, and later had the same role at LG Australia and LG USA.
Cho is about to take the reins of LG Electronics at an inflection point for the company. It recently shut down its mobile division in July after the unit failed to make a profit in 23 consecutive quarters. At this point, LG Electronics is probably best known for its TVs and monitors, but there too it faces tough competition from Samsung and a variety of Chinese competitors.
However, Cho will have help from a handful of executives the company has shuffled into new positions. Most notably, there’s Ik-hwan Jang who’s about to take up the top position at the company’s Business Solutions unit. Jang was most recently responsible for overseeing LG’s IT business portfolio where he helped LG become a powerhouse in the monitor space.
Spotify could soon be home to a lot more audiobooks. The streaming service has acquired audiobook platform Findaway, the companies announced. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition suggests Spotify is looking to build out its own library of audiobook titles.
Findaway is an Ohio-based company that boasts a catalog of more than 325,000 titles, according to its website. The company has partnerships with Apple, Amazon and other retail heavyweights, and also makes tools for audiobook creators. While it’s not yet clear how Spotify might integrate Findaway’s catalog into its own service, the company said in a statement that the deal would help it “quickly scale its audiobook catalog” and create new opportunities for authors and publishers.
The acquisition isn’t Spotify’s first foray into audiobooks. The company has previously experimented with a handful of celebrity-narrated public domain classics, and a Harry Potter audiobook at the start of coronavirus lockdowns in 2020. But the acquisition signals the streaming platform now has much greater ambitions in the space. The move also echoes Spotify’s approach to podcasts, as the company used a number ofacquisitions to build out its catalog and creation tools. So while it’s so far unclear what exactly Findaway means for Spotify subscribers and would-be audiobook listeners, it seems there are a lot more audiobooks in the company’s future.
Nintendo has cut its Switch sales forecast due to ongoing semiconductor shortages, the company announced in its earnings report. It now expects to ship 24 million Switch units for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022 instead of the 25.5 million units it had originally predicted.
The issue came into focus this quarter, as Nintendo managed to ship just 3.83 million Switch consoles compared to 6.86 million during the same quarter last year. So far, its net sales for the year are down 18.9 percent to 624.2 billion yen ($5.46 billion) year-over-year. That's not a huge surprise, however, as Switch and software sales exploded during the COVID-19 lockdown and following that has proved to be impossible — particularly as chips and components have since become more scarce.
Despite the revised sales expectations, Nintendo expects to match total revenue of 1,600 billion yen ($14 billion) from the previous fiscal year, thanks in part to games. It aims to sell 200 million software units, 10 million more than last year, which would help offset the console sales drop. Upcoming titles include Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl plus a Zelda-themed Game & Watch.
The most popular games so far this fiscal year include Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (3.6 million units sold), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (3.34 million units) and Animal Crossing: New Horizons (2.22 million units).
Despite the reduced expectations and tepid console sales this quarter, Nintendo has now sold 92.87 million Switch units to date. That's still short of the Wii, which has the current home console sales record of 101.63 million units shipped. However, if Nintendo comes close to matching the 11.57 million units sold during last year's holiday period, the Switch — aided by the new Switch OLED model — could finally top that mark by the end of the year.
On Friday, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Two Hat, a company best known for its AI content moderation tools. Financial details have not been disclosed, but Microsoft did share its vision for how they’ll work together moving forward. Over the years, the two companies have frequently collaborated to make Xbox Live and other gaming communities safer, and by the sounds of it, that will be the focus of Two Hat moving forward.
“We have partnered with Xbox and the Microsoft team for several years and share the passion and drive to make meaningful change in the advancement of online civility and citizenship,” said Two Hat founder Chris Priebe and CEO Steve Parkis in a joint statement. “We are committed to ensuring safety, inclusion and online health and wellness are always at the forefront of our work and through joining Microsoft, we can provide the greatest concentration of talent, resources and insight necessary to further this vision.”
Before today’s announcement, Microsoft was only one of Two Hat’s customers, and that won’t change following the acquisition. “This is a deep investment in assisting and serving Two Hat’s existing customers, prospective new customers and multiple product and service experiences here at Microsoft,” the company said. “With this acquisition, we will help global online communities to be safer and inclusive for everyone to participate, positively contribute and thrive.”
Since 2019, Microsoft has placed an emphasis on combating toxicity and abuse. "Gaming is for everyone," Xbox chief Phil Spencer said at the time. This acquisition should tie in nicely with that goal.
While Facebook the social network is still Facebook, the overarching company that it created is now called Meta. Facebook Inc. is changing its name in order to distinguish its myriad parts from the social network, which has an increasingly poor reputation pretty much everywhere. Particularly in the last few weeks.
While the company hopes it’ll offer some degree of distraction from current sentiment (and political focus), it’s not going to stop people talking about Facebook Meta.
Mark Zuckerberg announced the new name during his keynote for the company’s Connect event. He said: "From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first."
The change appears very similar to how Google, the search and tech part, was bundled inside Alphabet — a bigger company to contain all the other parts.
The timing is, perhaps, even odder. The Facebook Papers — internal documents detailing the social network’s major failings and issues — encompassing misinformation, hate speech and censorship, are now public knowledge. Is this a distraction or Facebook wilfully forcing its own transformation at a time when most of us are more interested in how it’s going to fix its current state.
If I don’t want to use Facebook — why would I want to use its take on VR and the metaverse?
Facebook Portal will also be known as Meta Portal moving forward.
Following the above announcement, a Facebook post from incoming CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth revealed that Meta is retiring the Oculus brand. Beginning in early 2022, the Oculus Quest will instead be known as the Meta Quest. Similarly, the Oculus App will be called Meta Quest App. According to Bosworth, the intention is "to make clear" to consumers Quest is a Meta product. "We all have a strong attachment to the Oculus brand, and this was a very difficult decision to make," Bosworth said. The name is trickling down to other physical products. Facebook Portal will also become Meta Portal.
Teenage Engineering is best known for its synths, but it likes to explore other avenues, from designing wireless buds to games consoles and even an IKEA collaboration. It has announced an ITX PC case it’s calling the Computer-1. The company says it has been working on the design since 2014. “It’s not a ground-breaking PC case, but we like it, and use it every day,” TE says on its website. Alas, iIt’s currently sold out, but you can sign up to get a notification once it is available — which is what I just did.
The company just reported its results for the quarter ending on September 30th, and Apple made 29 percent more revenue than a year ago — that's $83.4 billion, for those keeping track. While iPhone sales made up almost 47 percent of Apple's total revenue. While Mac revenue was only up two percent, that was just enough for Apple to say it was a new all-time high for the Mac.
A boost in third-party games helped offset a drop in first-party sales.
Sony's PlayStation 5 sales remain relatively steady and strong, despite widespread supply shortages, with 3.3 million units sold in fiscal Q2 compared to 2.2 million last quarter. That brought total sales up to 13.4 million units, Sony announced. Game sales were also up significantly at 76.4 million units compared to 63.6 million in the previous quarter. The company has already stated that it has enough components for 22.6 million units to be sold by March 2022. That would be enough to meet its sales projections, but if sales really explode during the holidays, that could mean shortages could continue.
Bloomberg has published an image showing a Facebook/Meta smartwatch with rounded corners. It also has a notch with a front-facing camera. App developer Steve Moser found the image inside the company's app used to control its Ray-Ban Stories AR sunglasses, hinting that it could also be used to control the watch in the future.
While Amazon had a huge revenue surge over the past year thanks to lockdown and the resulting rise of online shopping, the company’s recent earnings report shows that it might be slowing. Net sales increased 15 percent to $110.8 billion in the third quarter, which is a step down from the previous quarter’s 27 percent growth rate.
At the same time, Amazon also warns that global supply chain issues, labor shortages and increased shipping costs could incur “several billion dollars of additional costs” in the next quarter. Amazon shares dropped 3.8 percent in extended trading as a result.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the company wanted to minimize the impact of these issues on the customers and selling partners this holiday season. “It’ll be expensive for us in the short term, but it’s the right prioritization for our customers and partners,” he said in a press release. This also marks Jassy’s first quarter as Amazon’s CEO since Jeff Bezos stepped down earlier this year.
Of course, Amazon is still making a lot of money; it’s the fourth consecutive quarter it’s earned over $100 billion. Even if online sales have dipped, Amazon Web Services continues to be a huge money maker for the company, with a 39 percent revenue increase to $16.1 billion.
Facebook, the social network, will no longer define the future of Facebook, the company that will now be known as Meta. Facebook Inc. is changing the name in order to distinguish its beleaguered social network, which has an increasingly poor reputation around the globe, from the company that is pinning its future on the promise of a “metaverse.”
"Our brand is so tightly linked to one product that it can't possibly represent everything that we're doing today, let alone in the future," Zuckerberg said. "From now on, we're going to be metaverse-first, not Facebook first."
Zuckerberg announced the new name during a virtual (meta-virtual?) keynote for the company’s Facebook Connect conference. Under its new arrangement, Facebook and its “family of apps” will be a division of the larger Meta company.
The restructuring bears some similarities to when Google restructured itself into Alphabet, the holding company that now operates Google, along with its “other bets” like DeepMind and Nest. Facebook has already said it plans to separate Facebook Reality Labs, its AR and VR group, from the rest of the company when reporting its financial performance.
Facebook
Facebook is positioning the name as more reflective of its future ambitions to evolve from social network to metaverse company. Zuckerberg still has yet to clearly define exactly what being a “metaverse company” means for its main platform and users, but augmented and virtual reality are central to the vision. The company has already shown off an early version of one project, called Horizon Workrooms, that allows people to conduct meetings in VR. The company also previewed new "Horizon Home" and "Horizon Venues" experiences. And, earlier this month, the company announced plans to hire 10,000 new workers in Europe in order to build out its metaverse.
The name change also comes at one of the most precarious moments in the company’s history. The social network is reeling from the fallout of the “Facebook Papers,” a trove of internal documents collected by a former employee turned whistleblower. The documents have been the basis for a series of complaints to the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the source of more than a dozen reports about the company’s failings to stem the tide of misinformation, hate speech and other harms caused by the platform.
Sony's PlayStation 5 sales remain relatively steady and strong, with 3.3 million units sold in fiscal Q2 compared to 2.2 million last quarter, bringing total sales to 13.4 million units, Sony announced. Game sales were also up significantly at 76.4 million units compared to 63.6 million in the previous quarter, due in large part to third-party sales.
All told, this amounted to a healthy 27 percent boost in gaming revenue to 645.4 billion yen ($5.68 billion). However, operating income of 82.7 billion yen ($728 million) was down compared to last quarter by 3.4 billion yen ($29 million). Sony's fiscal year ends on March 31, 2022.
So how can profit be lower when sales and revenue are up? While Sony did sell more games last quarter, first-party titles dropped very significantly, from 10.5 million last quarter to 7.6 million in Q2. That was offset in numbers by third-party games, but those don't tend to be as profitable. Both Microsoft and Sony have acquired gaming studios to boost their Xbox/PS first-party titles, but Microsoft has been more prolific in that regard.
And while PS5 sales were up, PS4 units dropped considerably, down to just 200,000 from a half a million the quarter before. Other factors that Sony mentioned are a "loss resulting from strategic price points for PS5 hardware that were set lower than manufacturing costs." That means that Sony may have sold the PS5 with minimal or negative profits this quarter, although in August, the company said it was no longer selling the PS5 at a loss.
Despite the drop in quarterly income, Sony's gaming division appears to be on pretty solid footing. In its August earnings call, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki told investors that the company believes it will eclipse the 14.8 million unit sales achieved by the PlayStation 4 in its first year. PS5 sales are tracking close to that figure.
The company also said at the time that it had secured enough components for 22.6 million units sold by March 2022. That would be enough to meet its sales projections, but if sales really explode during the holidays, it may not have a lot of margin for error — meaning shortages could continue through next year.
The third quarter of 2021 was a record breaker for Samsung, which posted a revenue of 73.98 trillion Korean won or US$63.1 billion. That's 10 percent higher from the same period last year. It also reported an operating profit of 15.82 trillion Korean won or U$13.5 billion, which is 26 percent higher than the previous quarter's.
Despite the pandemic, the tech giant's semiconductor business posted 26.4 trillion won or US$22.6 billion in revenue, thanks to a strong demand for computers due to companies implementing work-from-home arrangements. Its DRAM sales, mainly for servers, continue to grow and is the leading factor for the division's stellar performance. Samsung says it was able to do business as usual despite the global shortage in chip components "by flexibly operating its product mix."
In addition to its chip business, Samsung's mobile division also contributed greatly to its record-breaking third quarter. It saw an improvement from the previous quarter, with its 28.42 trillion won or U$24.2 billion in revenue, thanks to strong sales of its mass-market lineup and its flagship models. The latter includes its new foldable devices, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3, though the company admitted that the bigger marketing investments for its foldables affected the division's total profits.
It's also thanks to the high demand for its phones that Samsung's display business was able to post 8.86 trillion won or US$7.5 billion in revenue. Display earnings were up from the previous quarter primarily due to the higher demand for small to medium OLED panels despite a sluggish demand for bigger panels.
Samsung remains optimistic for the fourth quarter, as well as for next year, but it didn't provide specific guidance for its chip business due to the ongoing component supply issue affecting various industries. It expects continued high demand for PCs and servers, nonetheless. For the fourth quarter specifically, it's expecting even higher earnings "due to expanded supply of SoCs and related products for launches of new 5G smartphones in 2022."
