Top Tech News

NEW YORK (AFP) – Microsoft shares were downbound nearly two proportionality on Wall Street on Wednesday amid an unofficial inform that the US code giant had agreed to acquire Nokia's ambulatory playing for $19 billion.

Microsoft shares were trading 1.88 proportionality lower at $24.54 at mid-day in a mart that was downbound overall.

The website Boy Genius, or BGR.com, reported on Wednesday that according to industry insider Eldar Murtazin, Microsoft has struck a care to acquire Nokia's ambulatory sound playing for $19 billion, a verify unemployed by a Nokia spokesperson.

"Eldar's rumors are effort apparently less accurate with every expiration moment," the Nokia representative told the site.

Nokia shares lapse 17.5 proportionality on weekday after the world's top ambulatory sound attain sharply downgraded its ordinal quarter outlook. They were downbound another 10 proportionality on Wednesday, dropping to their minimal take since 1998.

While it remains the world leader, Nokia has in past eld seen its global mart share dwindle amid tougher rivalry in the high-end smartphone sector.

In September, Nokia hired former Microsoft chief Stephen Elop to be chief chief of the Finnish company. In February, Nokia announced it was abandoing its smartphone papers to take Microsoft's ambulatory operating system.

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RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. (AFP) – Google module on weekday begin investigating an Offers assist that delivers topical bargains to smartphone "wallets" in a challenge to online understanding blistering spot Groupon.

Google Offers, working in conjunction with the Wallet ambulatory payment papers for Android smartphones, module begin investigating in Portland, Oregon and eventually modify to New York City and the San Francisco area.

"There is no intent to favor digit (smartphone) platform," Google chief chair Eric solon said patch introducing Offers at an All Things Digital conference at a resort in the southern Calif. municipality of Rancho Palos Verdes.

"This is a bounteous opportunity," he added, as Stephanie Telenius and another Google chief demonstrated Offers on stage. "We attain our money finished business and the Offers."

The assist takes plus of near-field-communication (NFC) chips to skilled discounts available to grouping who clew up using Gmail accounts.

"Tap, clear and save," Telenius said. "This is new; there is no digit doing this literal thing. We are desegregation at the point of sale."

Offers comes as a candid challenge to Chicago-based Groupon, which offers subscribers online coupons for discounts on a panoptic arrange of consumer artefact and services.

Groupon in Apr declared the appointment of past Google chief Margo Georgiadis, locution she would administer orbicular sales, marketing and operations.

Georgiadis was previously Google's evilness president in charge of orbicular sales.

Google's advise to physique its own topical voucher assist comes as it ramps up its mercantilism papers to stay in tune with lifestyles progressively centered on sharp ambulatory gadgets much as smartphones and tablet computers.

Groupon, which claimed 50 meg subscribers at the move of this year, had unloved a reportable $5 1000000000 takeover substance from Google.

Google Offers meshes with a liberated application introduced terminal hebdomad that turns a smartphone into an electronic notecase and is designed to replace plastic assign cards.

Google Wallet is existence earth tested in New York and San Francisco and module be available this summer.

It module initially impact with Google's Nexus S 4G smartphone from Sprint, the third-largest US wireless provider, and module eventually be swollen to another phones armored with NFC technology.

An NFC chip in a phone allows a individual who has entered his or her assign bill info to "tap-and-pay" for purchases at a review register armored with the PayPass system from CitiMasterCard.

Within hours of the unveiling of Wallet terminal week, eBay and PayPal filed a causa charging that Google tapped into the online business dealings service's know-how for the ambulatory payments project.

Mountain View, California-based Google has unloved the charge that it swiped PayPal change secrets and vowed to fight the lawsuit.

PayPal spent threesome eld disagreeable to impact discover a deal in which it would appendage payments for Android smartphones, exclusive to wager Google scuttle the talks and hire PayPal lead communicator Osama Bedier, according to court documents.

The online bargains mart has attracted ethnic networking worker Facebook along with startups much as Groupon and LivingSocial.

In April, Facebook began investigating a deals information in fivesome US cities in a bid to modify its income course beyond business and carve discover a status in the rapidly ontogeny online understanding space.

While many of the offers on Groupon refer unaccompanied activities or purchases, Facebook, which has more than 500 meg members, said its deals information module accent assemble activities.

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HELSINKI (AFP) – The crowning ambulatory sound maker Nokia saw its deal toll plunge further on Wednesday, a day after haemorrhaging 17.5% of value, following a hammy downgrade of its ordinal lodge outlook.

Shortly before 1:00 pm (1000 GMT), the ambulatory sound giant's deal toll was downbound 8.63 proportionality to 4.34 euros a deal on a Helsinki have mercantilism downbound meet 1.06 proportionality overall, achievement its lowest level since January 1998.

Analysts said the steep drop was due to a sense of perfidy among investors over the company's announcement on weekday that its ordinal lodge income would be far worsened than previously due and that it could no longer provide a full-year forecast.

"It was quite a shock. Nokia meet had an annual general meeting and they didn't provide some suggestion of this, in fact, they gave the impression that everything was meet fine," the chair of Finland's Shareholders' Association Timo Rothovius told AFP.

Bernstein Research meantime downgraded Nokia from "market perform" to "underperform" on Wednesday, cutting its toll direct to 3.00 euros from 5.50, and Goldman Sachs removed its "buy" tag on the Suomi company's stock, labling it only as "neutral".

Nokia said weekday that its intense looking downgrade was conception of a stony transformation punctuation as it phases out its Symbian smartphone papers in tendency of a tie-in with Microsoft Phone, and hopes to acquire lost connector when it starts transport its prototypal Microsoft handsets at the end of this year.

"The problem is that they are losing mart deal at much a measure that there's a venture that consumers won't be interested in purchase Nokia phones anymore," said Rothovius.

While it remains the concern leader, Nokia has in past years seen its global mart deal lessen amid harsher competition in the high-end smartphone sector.

Upon announcing its prototypal lodge results, the consort said its its mart deal had fallen to 29 proportionality from 33 proportionality in the prototypal lodge of 2010, and compared with 40 proportionality in the prototypal half of 2008.

Pohjola Bank shrink Hannu Rauhala told foetoprotein Wednesday it was impracticable to prognosticate how the Microsoft tie-in would change Nokia's action after this turbulent year.

"There is nothing more than a preliminary schedule for the newborn products. We don't undergo what kind of cost structure there is, what kind of ecosystem it module be, or how consumers module accept them," he said, adding that there was "a enthusiastic enticement to be pessimistic" most the ordinal quarter.

Rothovius meantime said he believed the plummeting deal toll could be a short-term adjustment, and that Suomi investors are hoping Nokia chief chief author Elop crapper invoke the company's fortunes around by sterilisation the mistakes prefabricated prior to his arrival last September.

"I think Suomi investors are looking at the incoming some years, and are anticipative that the newborn strategy module push the deal toll up, and if it does, then today's deal toll is a bargain," said Rothovius, adding still that there was apparently a actual venture that the strategy would fail.

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HELSINKI (Reuters) – Investors continued to sell shares in Nokia (NOK1V.HE) on Wednesday, as analysts reduced their price targets following the ambulatory phone maker's warning and questioned whether it could ever recapture its mart leadership.

Nokia shares fell some 4 proportionality on weekday farewell and traded 2.3 proportionality modify at 0805 GMT, extending their previous day's 18-percent fall after Nokia said on Tuesday that ambulatory phone income in the second lodge would be "substantially below" its previous prognosticate and forsaken its full-year outlook.

At 4.64 euros, the have is at its minimal level in more than 13 years.

Analysts said their important concern was that Nokia, once the biggest contestant in ambulatory phones, may not be healthy to recapture such mart deal modify after it begins commerce newborn phones supported on Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O) Windows software.

"We would move to refrain the have as Symbian smartphone income are dropping soured faster than due and we are unbelieving that newborn Windows Phone models module be healthy to change lost profits," said Gleacher & Co shrink Stephen Patel.

The consort said thickened competition from Apple (AAPL.O) and Google (GOOG.O) as substantially as lower-end handset makers were dynamical downbound its income and commerce prices.

J.P. moneyman cut its price target on the shares to 4.25 euros from 5 euros, patch Credit Suisse cut its target to 4 euros from 5.5 euros.

"We wager the early possible timing for the beginnings of a turnaround as the start of newborn Windows products which we expect at the modify of this year. Even then there are no guarantees that consumers module poverty what Nokia is selling," J.P. moneyman shrink Rod Hall said in an shrink note, recommending investors rest underweight on the shares. (Reporting by Ritsuko Ando)

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Twitter has just prefabricated it a whole lot easier for users of its assist to study and be followed, by unveiling a newborn one-click “Follow” fix for third-party websites.

Before now, if you wanted to study someone, you’d utter on a Twitter link on their website. That would verify you to their Twitter tender from which you could utter on a “Follow” fix to tie their feed. OK, so two clicks instead of one.

The button, which crapper be easily incorporated into a website, was introduced via the Twitter journal on Tuesday. In the post, Brian Ellin writes that it’s today “easy for you to discover the Twitter accounts of your selection reporters, athletes, celebrities, and other personalities.” He continues: “Using the Follow fix is as simple as a azygos click. You crapper also wager the strikingness and latest Tweets of the account you poverty to study by clicking the username next to the button.”

Ellin also explains how the newborn fix module goodness publishers and brands. “Adding the Follow fix to your website and using Twitter to meet connected with your conference is a coercive combination. People who study your account are such more likely to retweet and engage with your Tweets, and to repeatedly visit your website,” he writes.

The favourite micro-blogging assist was supported in 2006 and is intellection to hit somewhere in the region of 200 million users.

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WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Australia's state-owned National Broadband Network awarded a lessen to Sweden's Ericsson worth up to A$1.1 1000000000 ($1.2 billion), the stylish in a string of contracts to physique the A$35.9 1000000000 network.

The lessen is to physique and operate a wireless meshwork over the incoming decade eld to counterbalance the remote parts of state that module not be serviced by fiber-optic telegram low the government's plan to provide alacritous cyberspace connections to the magnitude of inhabitant homes.

"The intermixture of technologies we are deploying allows us to substance the most cost-effective rollout of high-speed broadband crossways our large and sparsely populated continent," NBN Head of Corporate Services Kevin Brown said.

NBN, which last period launched its first place on mainland Australia, has been a key lessen of Australia's ruling Labor Party, which came to noesis in 2007.

The inhabitant polity is in the test stages of negotiating a deal with functionary sound operator Telstra Corp, over an $11 1000000000 deal to hand over its immobile line sound meshwork to form the set of the NBN.

NBN said it has so farther awarded more than 11 contracts with a combined continuance of up to A$7 billion.

The NBN also said on Wednesday awarded a A$380 meg lessen for deployment of fiber-optic telegram over digit eld to Silcar, a render venture between Siemens and Leighton Holdings.

That lessen includes the choice of another digit eld at A$740 million.

The meshwork module order total top disbursal of A$35.9 1000000000 and module need A$40.9 1000000000 in debt and equity. The polity plans to place up A$27.5 1000000000 in funding, patch the NBN module borrow A$13.4 1000000000 from markets.

(Reporting by physiologist Bathgate; Editing by Balazs Koranyi)

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