Not too long ago, Nintendo was printing money every month after landing two hardware smash hits in a row, the Wii and the DS. But these times are now over, it seems. The company posted their financial report [PDF] for the first six months of their fiscal year (which ends in March 2012) today, and it has registered a loss of US$923 million.
To put things into perspective, the minus for the same time frame in last fiscal was just US$26 million, but the number is at least better than the US$1.3 billion The Nikkei yesterday predicted for Nintendo’s earnings call. Revenue dropped by 41% to US$2.83 billion. → Read More
Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to the BlackBerry Porsche P’9981 — the ugliest BlackBerry I’ve seen in years.
Unveiled at RIM and Porsche Design’s Dubai event, the new BlackBerry Porsche is clad in equal parts stainless steel and leather. While the device’s shell has gotten quite the facelift, the internals aren’t a far cry from the standard: it sports a 1GHz processor, a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video, and an NFC chip. → Read More
Whether it be for advertising, targeting messages, or just for general knowledge, knowing who your Twitter followers are is information that is useful to any company, or brand. Today, Schmap is launching its automated freemium service that gives any individual, company or brand immediate access to aggregate in-depth demographic analysis of their Twitter followers.
Schmap will breakdown Twitter followers at a basic level, segmenting followers by gender, marital status, profession, likes and interests, plus location by country and US state. The paid version of the service breaks down followers by same categories, plus location by city, breakdowns of technology usage, Twitter influence/activity and more.
Can’t get your Angry Birds done on just one iPad? Are you what would be commonly termed “a Bluetooth-toting dbag?” Do you think you’re more important than most people? Do your co-workers (or employees) hate you? Here’s the double iPad case of your dreams.
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Voting in The Europas Awards has gone live. Held annually, The Europas are the main European Awards for early stage Internet and Mobile technology startups. The are selected by a combination of an expert Advisory Board (which changes every year) and voting by the industry itself. The whole thing comes together on a special awards night in London, on November 17.
Of course, out of the sheer need to filter the thousands of people in tech startups across Europe, the Awards can’t cover every single startup and entrepreneur. But what you see below are the ones this year’s Board – chaired by myself – picked out as representing the best new early stage startups in Europe, and the people making it all happen. → Read More
It’s all about the data. The just-announced Garmin FR70 Fitness Watch doesn’t care where you’ve been or where you’re going. It only cares about your body while you’re wearing it. Despite coming from Garmin, the FR70 doesn’t have GPS. It only tracks and monitors the body’s vitals and then presents this info in a coherent fashion through Garmin’s online service making this a fine watch for indoor or outdoor training. → Read More
Y Combinator alum ReadyForZero is rolling out an upgrade to its debt management service today, with new features that will now allow its users to centralize and manage more of their debt using its online application. Previously, the company was focused only on reducing consumers’ credit card debt. Now it’s adding support for mortgages, auto loans and student loans, too.
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This morning the Droid RAZR — the world’s thinnest smartphone according to Motorola — is now available for pre-order from Verizon. The phone is still listed as available on Verizon’s website, but it’ll surely go fast. So if this is what you’ve been waiting for then we recommend moving fast. → Read More
MicroVentures, an online p2p investment service that aims to give accredited investors access to funding deals they might otherwise never see, has raised a $300,000 fund to invest in Facebook through the purchase of private company shares on secondary markets.
Bill Clark, founder and CEO of MicroVentures, says it took about 10 minutes for investors to commit $40,000 to the fund in the first ten minutes after the investment was made available on the crowdfunding site, which speaks volumes about how eager people still are for grabbing hold of a (albeit super tiny) slice of the Facebook pie prior to its IPO. → Read More
Russian online search and advertising juggernaut Yandex this morning reported solid quarterly earnings, showing off increases in both revenues and net income, compared to 2010.
The company, which raised over $1.4 billion in a NASDAQ IPO earlier this year, reported revenues of RUR 5.2 billion ($161.9 million), up 65 percent compared with Q3 2010. → Read More
Behind the lasers and mirrors, Prysm is turning from a scrappy start-up to a major player. The company is announcing today an additional $100 million in equity funding, bringing their total raised financing to $135M. This latest round of funding comes Partech International and Artiman Ventures along with several global unnamed investors that wish to remain anonymous due to the innovative nature of Prysm’s technology.
The large round allows Prysm to start volume production of its displays as well as build a 150 member global support team. Amit Jain, founder and CEO of Prysm indicated in a released statement today that the funds will be used in part to train personal and support Prysm operations in 11 major worldwide markets. → Read More
Livestream is unveiling a major upgrade to its live video service today. It won’t be fully rolled out until December, but you can see a preview of it here or watch the video below. The new player brings a few firsts to live video: an adaptive bitrate which can adjust dynamically based on the viewers bandwidth up to HD quality (720p); an instant playback DVR feature; a live blogging platform to add text, photos, and video clips underneath the main video; and social networking features.
One of the most noticeable changes is the DVR functionality. “Viewers can rewind while it is live,” says CEO Max Haot. One of the big issues with live video online is that it takes a while for an archive to be viewable. At the very least, you have to wait for the live event to be finished before an archive can be produced. But Livestream’s new platform allows for viewers to jump back to earlier parts of the live video while it is still being streamed. This feature will also allow producers to cut clips and embed them in the feed below the video stream.
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Michael DeGusta has done an amazing job charting the fragmentation of Android by visualizing the history of operating system updates on Android smartphones for sale in the United States. → Read More
We hear Radionomy, which provides a platform for creating and broadcasting online radio stations here in Europe, is out raising a $15 million round of funding with the help of French investment bank Bryan Garnier.
The financing round is expected to close later this year. → Read More
Social media analytics firm Socialbakers has acquired Social RSS, a popular feed reader app for Facebook. The deal follows on the heels of the company’s earlier acquisition of Checkfacebook.com, which was completed last month. Looks like they’re putting that $2 million they just raised to work.
The company, which says it’s already profitable, is also announcing support for the Google+ service (in addition to previously supported social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). → Read More
Here are some of yesterday’s posts on TechCrunch Gadgets: → Read More
Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz is raising a third fund to the tune of $900 million, an unpaid blogger by the name of Michael Arrington reports. If the information checks out, the firm’s Fund III will be triple the size of its first fund, raised a little over two years ago.
Andreessen Horowitz has been very busy for such a young firm, but it’s hard to imagine that they didn’t see a heck of lot of deal-flow from day one, considering the networks and clout of its founding partners ( MarcAndreessen and Ben Horowitz). → Read More
Sony Corp. has just announced that it will pay $1.47 billion for Ericsson’s 50% stake in a joint mobile handset venture. → Read More
Remember that time that astrologers decided that they had gotten all the zodiac signs off by one, and everyone was so bewildered because all of a sudden you were NO LONGER AN ARIES BUT A PISCES and it seemed like everything you had believed for so long was untrue.
Well the social media equivalent happened today for startup Klout and its “scores,” which purportedly give you and others an idea of your social media influence on various topics. → Read More
Today, Discovr, the awesome tool that allows users to discover new apps for iOS (by way of interactive graphs) is announcing that it has passed the one million downloads milestone and has closed a $1.1M seed round led by Australia’s leading VC firm Yuuwa Capital. Of course, there’s no better way to celebrate these achievements than launch a new version of your app for Apple desktops, right? Today, the startup is also announcing the release of its Discovr Music app, which is available for $5 now on those Mac App Stores near you. Discovr Music, put simply, makes it easy to discover new music from the comfort of your laptops and desktops. → Read More
