After announcing the deal last year, Intel will no longer acquire Tower Semiconductor for $5.4 billion, the company announced in a press release. It was unable to "obtain in a timely manner the regulatory approvals required under the merger agreement" it wrote — specifically in China, according to Bloomberg. Tower produces various types of chips for clients across multiple industries, and Intel made the acquisition to expand its foundry business and better compete with rivals like Taiwanese giant TSMC. 

Tower has seven fabrication facilities (located in Israel, Italy, the US and Japan) that build 6-inch, 8-inch and 12-inch chip wafers. While the company doesn't manufacture cutting edge mobile and other process, its clients don't necessarily need the latest technology. Instead, Tower focuses on reliably manufacturing large volumes of chips for automakers, equipment manufacturers, medical industries and others. 

Before announcing its Tower acquisition, Intel was reported to be in talks to purchase the much larger chip manufacturer and AMD spinoff GlobalFoundries for around $30 billion. Intel launched its foundry services as a separate business unit back in 2021, committing $20 billion to build two Arizona factories. It also revealed plans to build a massive semiconductor facility in Ohio designed to become "the largest silicon manufacturing location on the planet."

Intel said its still executing its roadmap "to retain transistor performance and power performance leadership by 2025," with the aim of becoming the second-largest global external foundry by 2030. "Our respect for Tower has only grown through this process, and we will continue to look for opportunities to work together in the future." As part of its merger agreement, Intel will pay a termination fee of $353 million to Tower. 

Sony has published its earnings report for the first quarter of the year (PDF) ending on June 30th and an adjusted forecast for the fiscal year, and they paint a picture of mixed results for the company. Its overall operating profit for the period was down 31 percent year-over-year, from 364.9 billion yen ($2.54 billion) to 253 billion ($1.76 billion). The company's revenue was up 33 percent, however, thanks to significant increase in sales by its game and network services, music, imaging and financial services businesses.

Sony believes its game and music segments will continue to do well and has raised (PDF) its sales and revenue forecast for the fiscal year ending on March 31st, 2024 by 6.1 percent due to higher-than-expected sales for those businesses. It also expects its net income to be 2.4 percent higher than its previous forecast, from 840 billion yen ($5.86 billion) to 860 billion ($6 billion).

For its game division, in particular, Sony has tweaked its forecast, because it's anticipating an increase in sales for non-first-party PlayStation titles, including add-on content. Several much-awaited games are coming out for PlayStation gamers this year, such as Spider-Man 2, Assassin's Creed Mirage, Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Expansion, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and EA Sports FC. 

This expected increase in sales for non-first-party titles will be aided by a decrease in costs and expenses. That said, they will also offset by a "deterioration in profitability of PlayStation 5 hardware." Sony has dropped the PS5's pricing in several regions around the world recently. While that translates to lower overall earnings from the console, it could also get people on the fence to finally purchase the PS5, which in turn could lead to more game purchases. 

To note, Sony has shipped 3.3 million PS5 units in the first quarter of the year. That's almost half of the previous quarter's sales of 6.3 million units, though that figure was for the holiday season, when businesses typically do better than usual. This is Sony's best-performing first quarter for PS5 sales so far, bringing the total number of units sold to 41.7 million. 

Despite adjusting its outlook with better numbers for the year overall, Sony has lowered its expectations for the sales of mobile sensors due to the continuing downward trend in smartphone sales. Sony Pictures' earnings was also down year-on-year despite the success of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The company doesn't foresee a recovery for the business, as well, and believes it will perform worse than what was predicted last April due to the impact of strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. 

Almost three years after PayPal started supporting cryptocurrency for all US accounts, the fintech company has launched its own stablecoin that's pegged to the US dollar. PayPal USD, the payment processor said, is "100 percent backed by US dollar deposits, short-term US Treasuries and similar cash equivalents." The company first confirmed that it was "exploring a stablecoin" back in January last year after a developer found code and images for a "PayPal Coin" in its app. It said back then that it will work with relevant regulators "if and when [it] seek[s] to move forward."

In its announcement, PayPal explained that its coin is a token issued on the Ethereum blockchain by the Paxos Trust Company, which is subject to the regulatory oversight of the New York State Department of Financial Services. The company also obtained a BitLicense, or a business license of virtual currency activities, from the NYDFS in June 2022. 

Users can buy and sell PayPal USD coins for $1 each. They can send the coins to other users as payment or use them to purchase goods and services by selecting the option during the checkout process. They can also transfer PayPal USD to compatible external wallets or convert other cryptocurrencies in their account to and from the stablecoin. 

As Reuters notes, authorities previously thwarted attempts by major companies to introduce stablecoins of their own. Meta, for instance, spent two years trying to launch a stablecoin, but the project collapsed after repeated delays due to regulators' concerns that it could be used for money laundering and other nefarious purposes. Ian Katz, managing director of Capital Alpha Partners, told Reuters that PayPal USD could soon attract the attention of the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission. For now, PayPal is focusing on rolling out the new currency and all the things people can do with it in the US.

Apple's financials continue to be in an ever-so-slight slump. Just as we saw the last two quarters, the company suffered minor declines in revenue in its fiscal Q3 2023 — but these are minor blips for a company that is still raking in absurd amounts of money every quarter. 

As has often been the case, revenue that Apple made from its Services segment (things like paid iCloud plans, Apple Music, AppleCare, the App Store and numerous other offerings) hit an all-time high of $21.2 billion. That's the company's second-largest product category behind the iPhone, and it grew eight percent year-over-year. But iPhone, Mac and iPad revenue all declined compared to a year ago, the same as it did last quarter.

In the case of the iPhone, that decline was slight: revenue of $39.7 billion in the quarter was down about two percent compared to a year ago. iPad (down 19.8 percent) and Mac (down 7.3 percent) sales declined more significantly. But given the fact that Apple hasn't refreshed any iPad hardware since last fall, it's not too surprising to see a drop there. Wearables (like the Apple Watch and AirPods) and accessories were another bright spot, as revenues grew a little over two percent, the only product category besides Services to do so. 

Overall, revenues of $81.8 billion represented a less than two percent drop year over year, while profits actually increased about two percent to $19.9 billion. 

As usual, Apple is holding a call with CEO Tim Cook at 5PM ET, and there's more to discuss this quarter than usual. Beyond Apple's normal product categories, this is the first earnings since the ambitious Vision Pro headset was announced, so it's likely investors may want to hear about how that new product is progressing. And there's the ever-present talk of potential AI-related projects hanging out in the background, too. We'll be updating this post with any details Cook shares on the call. 

Nintendo just announced its highest first quarter profit ever thanks to sales of its latest Zelda title and the Mario movie. The company earned 185.44 billion yen ($1.3 billion) on sales of 461.34 billion yen ($3.2 billion), easily battering its previous fiscal Q1 record of 144.7 billion set in 2020, the company revealed in its latest earnings report. 

The numbers on those two properties are impressive. Around the world, 168.10 million people watched the The Super Mario Bros. Movie, netting the company $1.349 billion as of July 26th — the highest ever for an original film based on a video game, and the second-highest for an animated film. 

Meanwhile, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has sold 18.51 million since it launched in May, while Mari Kart 8 Deluxe sold 1.67 million last quarter. "Sell-through of this one title [Zelda] constitutes approximately half of the first-party software sold this fiscal year," Nintendo said. 

Switch sales were actually up over the same quarter last year to 3.91 million in the last quarter (compared to 3.43 million units last year), with 2.83 million of those being the more expensive OLED model. That rise might be powered in part by Zelda, as buyers sought either a new or better console to play the game. At the beginning of its fiscal year, Nintendo called its sales forecast of 15 million Switch consoles "a bit of a stretch," but is on track to achieve that number so far. 

It may be tough for Nintendo to maintain that momentum, though. Upcoming games include the sidescroller Super Mario Bros Wonder (October 20th), Detective Pikachu Returns (October 6th), WarioWare: Move It! (November 3rd) and Super Mario RPG with updated graphics on November 17th. There are no marquee games in that list like Zelda, though, and sales of that game (and movie profits) are bound to keep dropping off. 

As for the Switch, it's now six years old, and Nintendo has yet to announce its replacement. Rumors have swirled that a next-gen Switch arrive in 2024, but none have much substance behind them. 

Samsung has reported KRW 0.67 trillion ($527 million) in operating profit for the second quarter of 2023, which is just slightly higher than last quarter's, thanks to its memory business posting a narrower loss. That figure is also, however, much, much smaller than the KRW 14.1 trillion ($10.8 billion) operating profit it posted in July 2022. In its latest earnings report, the tech giant also revealed a consolidated revenue of KRW 60.01 trillion ($47 billion), which represents a 6 percent decline from the previous quarter's and a far cry from last year's record-breaking KRW 77.2 trillion ($59.4 billion).

The company blames the drop in revenue mostly to a decline in smartphone shipments "as the effect of the Galaxy S23 launch" in the first quarter faded. If you'll recall, Samsung's mobile division performed well the previous earning period due to the strong sales of the Galaxy S23 series, specifically the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Now, the division's consolidated revenue has slipped from KRW 31.82 trillion ($23.7 billion) to KRW 25.55 trillion ($20 billion), while its operating profit dropped by $500 billion. 

Samsung expects the overall smartphone market to pick back up in the second half of the year, especially in the premium market. Unsurprisingly, it plans to focus its efforts on the newly launched Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5 series. The Galaxy Z Flip 5 boasts a 3.6-inch external display — the previous model had a 1.9-inch one — while the Galaxy Z Fold 5 has a new hinge that gets rid of the gap between the two screen halves. 

Meanwhile, Samsung's DS Division or memory business experienced a slight recovery in revenue from KRW 13.73 trillion ($10.2 billion) in Q1 to KRW 14.73 trillion ($11.53 billion). Its operating loss, while still massive at KRW 4.58 trillion ($3.4 billion), is at least a bit smaller at KRW 4.36 trillion ($3.4 billion). Going forward, the company plans to focus on the sale of what it calls "high-value-added products," such as DDR5 and LPDDR5x components.

Meta just had its best quarter since 2021, even as it continues to lose massive amounts of money on the metaverse. In fact, the company said it expects to lose even more money on its efforts in the year to come.

Reality Labs, the Meta division overseeing its virtual and augmented reality projects, lost $3.7 billion during the second quarter of 2023 and generated just $276 million in revenue, according to the company’s latest earnings report. And the company, once again, said it expects its metaverse spending to accelerate. CFO Susan Li said that Meta is expecting Reality Labs’ losses to “increase meaningfully” compared with last year, when it lost more than $13 billion on the efforts.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to downplay the significance of the losses. “We remain fully committed to the metaverse vision,” he said during the company's earnings call. When pressed for more details on the company’s metaverse spending, he pointed to the upcoming Quest 3 headset, which he said would launch at Meta’s Connect event in September. “This is going to be the biggest headset that we've released since 2020,” he said. “There are just a lot of expenses related to bring that to market.”

Aside from the metaverse, it was an otherwise a strong quarter for Meta, which reported $32 billion in revenue, an 11 percent increase from last year. Zuckerberg touted Reels, which are now drawing 200 billion views a day across Facebook and Instagram, thanks to the company’s renewed emphasis on AI-driven recommendations. He also highlighted the recent launch of Threads and the company’s Llama 2 large language model.

Though early analytics data has suggested Threads engagement has declined substantially since its launch, Zuckerberg said the company is “seeing more people coming back daily than I'd expected” and that he sees a path for the app to eventually reach “hundreds of millions” of users.

Meta also confirmed that the bulk of its layoffs, which resulted in the company shedding more than 20,000 jobs since last fall, have been “substantially completed.” Zuckerberg previously dubbed 2023 as Meta’s “year of efficiency” as he cut staff and attempted to streamline the company’s management structure. Zuckerberg pointed to Threads’ launch, which he said was overseen by a relatively small team, as proof that “cultural changes” at Meta are working.

Zuckerberg didn’t, however, offer a timeline of when he thought the company’s metaverse spending might start to pay off. “This is a very long term bet,” he said, “You know, on a deep level, I understand the discomfort that a lot of investors have with it. And look, I mean, I can't guarantee you that I'm gonna be right about this bet —I do think that this is the direction that the world is going in.”

In the second quarter of 2023, Spotify saw its million monthly active users (MAU) climb to 551 million after welcoming 36 million new listeners. That represents a 27 percent increase in MAUs and is an all-time high for the streaming giant, which has just published its earnings report. While not all new users signed up for a Premium account, Spotify also had a record-breaking second quarter when it comes to Premium subscriber numbers. It welcomed 10 million paying users — 3 million larger than guidance — and grew its subscriber base by 17 percent year over year. That's not an all-time high, but it's also apparently the best Q2 Spotify has ever had in that regard. 

Despite the massive influx of new users, Spotify still lost a significant amount of money. Its total revenue for the period is $3.5 billion (€3.2 billion), 11 percent larger than last year's. However, it also posted an adjusted operating loss of $123.7 million (€112 million). Spotify blamed those losses on the shutdown of its podcast shows, as well as on excess real estate and severance for employees laid off due to company restructuring. If you'll recall, the audio streaming giant recently made big changes to its podcast strategy and axed several original productions. 

According to The Wall Street Journal, Spotify previously told investors that it would be raising prices in order to turn a profit. Indeed, the company just added $1 on top of the old subscription rate, meaning users in the US now have to pay at least $11 a month. Spotify also plans to implement price hikes across markets, including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. The company anticipates a slowdown in premium subscription signups due to its higher prices for the third quarter of the year. From having 10 million new paying users in the second quarter, it expects to add 4 million Premium subscribers in Q3. Even so, it believes the price increases will "have a minimal impact on total revenue" and is still expecting to earn $3.65 billion (€3.3 billion) this quarter.

The Federal Trade Commission has formally put its administrative trial over Microsoft's pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard on hold. The move, which was first reported by Bloomberg, allows the agency and companies to hold talks over a settlement for the eye-popping $68.7 billion merger.

The FTC's decision to pause its case is another major victory for Microsoft and Activision as they attempt to get the deal over the line. The agency sued to block the deal in December and an evidentiary hearing in the case was set for August 2nd. Last week, it lost a legal bid to prevent the companies from merging before the administrative trial was set to begin in early August. The FTC has appealed its court loss.

“The FTC has not shown it is likely to succeed on its assertion the combined firm will probably pull Call of Duty from Sony PlayStation, or that its ownership of Activision content will substantially lessen competition in the video game library subscription and cloud gaming markets,” Jacqueline Scott Corley wrote in a ruling last week. Microsoft has since signed a deal with Sony to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for 10 years if the merger goes through.

In a motion filed on Tuesday, Microsoft and Activision urged the FTC to withdraw its case. FTC rules stipulate that the agency has to withdraw its case after the companies made the request, since it was denied a preliminary injunction to stop them from merging. Per Bloomberg, Microsoft and Activision can now try to convince the FTC to accept remedies that will resolve the agency's concerns about the deal's impact on competition in the gaming industry. Alternatively, they could persuade the FTC to completely abandon its opposition to the merger.

The FTC still has the option of holding its administrative trial after the merger closes. However, it's rare for the agency to proceed with an in-house case after it loses a federal court battle.

The initial deadline for the acquisition to close was Tuesday, though Microsoft and Activision extended their merger agreement until October 18th to give them "additional time to resolve remaining regulatory concerns." They agreed that Microsoft will be on the hook for a breakup fee of as much as $4.5 billion if the deal falls apart, though both sides are determined to wrap things up. 

Microsoft and Activision still have to gain approval from a UK regulator to close the deal without having to resort to workarounds to continue doing business in the country. The Competition and Markets Authority initially blocked the merger in April, but over the last week or so, it has signaled a willingness to amicably resolve its concerns over the potential impact of the deal on the cloud gaming market. 

Microsoft is poised to submit an updated merger proposal to the CMA. The regulator will make a decision by August 29th, though it aims to do so as soon as possible. In a hearing this week, a CMA lawyer said that both the regulator and Microsoft are confident that the company will be able to resolve its concerns. That's yet another sign that the biggest merger in gaming history is very likely to close in the coming weeks.

Tesla remains the top US EV producer with a new internal record internal record with 479,700 vehicles built and 466,140 of them delivered in Q2, up ~87 percent YoY.

The company made headlines in Q2 after opening its previously-proprietary charging port design to the rest of the industry. Mercedes, Volvo, Rivian, and GM vehicles will use the design for their North American models beginning in the 2024 model year. Texas went so far as to require its state-funded EV charging stations accommodate the standard. Tesla's charging network station capacity has grown by a third from this time last year, with 48,082 chargers in total spread across 5,265 stations, globally.

The first production Cybertruck rolled off the assembly line this quarter as well, though you couldn't see much of the vehicle from its official release photo. The Cybertruck line has entered tooling, according to the company, and is expected to begin steady production sometime next year.

"We are now testing Cybertruck vehicles around the world for final certification and validation," the company wrote in its Q2 investors deck. "This might be the most unique vehicle product in decades; with that comes trialing and testing new technologies."

This past quarter has seen a number of scandals at the company including its executives accused of being overpaid by a cool $735 million dollars since 2017 as well as Elon being suspected of misappropriating company funds to build a glass house. Not a fancy aboratorium, not a metaphor for Twitter, a literal "glass house."

Wednesday's investor deck specifically noted Tesla's "commitment to being at the forefront of AI development" with the start of production for its Dojo training computers, which will be used to help Autopilot developers iterate future designs and features. Details were sparse but we do expect company executives to further discuss this initiative during the Q2 investors call which begins at 5:30pm ET.

Stay tuned to Engadget for up to the minute breaking news from that call, as well as whatever wacky and problematic-for-Legal statements CEO Elon Musk shares.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.