HP’s printer division, long a cash cow, is being folded into its PC division after sales of printers and ink fell this year. Most companies broke out their printer divisions once they realized they could make a lot of money there but now that HP is beating Dell, the company may see a good reason to bring printers and PCs together. → Read More
Panasonic is trying to sweeten the deal on the Sanyo buyout offer it proposed back in November 7th by offering ¥140 per share instead of ¥130. They must really want to settle this. In order to completely take over, Panasonic must buyout the 3 largest shareholders. Goldman Sachs, owner of a 29 percent stake, exited merger talks after seeking at least ¥250 per share. Both other firms, Daiwa… → Read More
Panasonic is looking to lay out more than $5 billion to take a controlling stake in Sanyo. What does the consumer tech giant see in the smaller, less successful company? Diversification. Panasonic has had great success in consumer tech but has no division for solar tech and only a limited stake in electric vehicle batteries. For Sanyo it’s vice versa — they’re each the… → Read More
Oh, these multi-billion dollar companies and their flings! I thought they would have made such a cute match, too. Actually, probably not, but still. Was Samsung’s game just not good enough? Was SanDisk playing a little too hard to get? Romantic conceits aside, it looks like SanDisk just wasn’t willing to give in and give up control of such a strong brand to the beast that is Samsung. → Read More
Best Buy will be acquiring Napster for around $121 million as the two companies have announced they’ve “entered into a definitive merger agreement” for Best Buy to scoop up all of Napster’s outstanding shares at $2.65. The deal will include all 700,000 Napster subscribers, Napster’s web-based platform, and key employees. Best Buy already has a digital music initiative that’s powered by… → Read More
Random Blizzard fan art Activision Blizzard is now really really real. Let’s all celebrate with some non-alcoholic beer and unsalted pretzels. Yeah, so the merger was approved earlier in the week, and now has passed all those shareholder votes and so forth. The new CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick, had these inspiring words for everyone except EA, which is still mired in that… → Read More
Tada, Activision Blizzard! Yup, the merger between Activision, publisher of Call of Duty 4, and Vivendi Games, which owns World of Warcraft and Diablo creator Blizzard, has been approved by both companies’ shareholders. As you know, the new publisher will be called Activision Blizzard, and will be great. The move should be finalized by tomorrow. → Read More
EA still wants to buy Take 2, it’s true, and Take 2 is still playing shy. That, even though EA’s offer of $25.74 per share is now more than what Take 2 is currently trading at, $24.47. But that’s only part of the story, this on-going blah-blah-fest. Apparently Electronic Arts has passed some sort of Federal Trade Commission test, paving the way for a possible merger. → Read More
We’ll all be dead before XM and Sirius merge, but the two companies would like the whole wide world (or whoever reads PR Newswire) to know how they think they’ll end up financially once they’re one company. (What an awfully constructed sentence.) The headline here is the combined company will have positive cash flow in 2009. They did re-state that, technically, Sirius will be… → Read More
Remember MusicGremlin? The WiFi based music player? No? Well, SanDisk bought them for an undisclosed sum. Full release follows. → Read More
Big news out of Japan: JVC and Kenwood are merging their businesses. JVC makes many decent video products, among other things, and Kenwood is noted for its popular car audio lines. The new entity would be a holding company, perhaps called JVC Kenwood. The shares of each company will become shares of the new company. This is good for both companies as it gives them better leverage to take on larger… → Read More
Looks like Best Buy’s got a pretty massive boner for Carphone Warehouse, as it’s just increased its ownership share from 2.9% to 50%, according to IDG News Service. Best Buy has agreed to invest an additional $2.1 billion in the European retailer, likely by the end of August. Carphone Warehouse will be opening stores here in the states this year and Best Buy is planning to open its… → Read More
Just wanted to update everyone on the awkward slow-dance going on between Yahoo! and Microsoft. According to the New York Times, Microsoft apparently upped its offer to buy Yahoo! from the initial $31 per share to an undisclosed amount. Yahoo! believes itself to be worth at least $37 per share and The Times is reporting that “Microsoft suggested it was willing to pay more than $33 a… → Read More
Just an update for those of you keeping score in the Microsoft vs Yahoo! potential merger/buyout/hostile takeover — I’ll keep this as short as possible. Microsoft sent a letter to Yahoo! basically saying “We’ve repeatedly tried to buy your company. You have three weeks to sell. If you don’t, we’ll just buy a bunch of your stock.” Yahoo! sent a letter back… → Read More
The boys are reporting from CTIA that Verizon just announced they’re purchasing AT&T for $25 billion. The news came during the joint Verizon/AT&T luncheon at Piero’s (great pesto) and it means that the flagging CDMA company will now have a GSM presence internationally. The first phone on the new VerizonGSM branded network: the iPhone. More news as we have it. → Read More
Ah, this sounds like when you were a kid and you did something so bad that your parents weren’t mad, they were just “really disappointed.” Looks like Microsoft is laying down a nice little guilt trip for Yahoo! in a recent press release, saying “It is unfortunate that Yahoo! has not embraced our full and fair proposal to combine our companies.” It also appears that… → Read More
Like the kid in Can’t Buy Me Love, now that Microsoft has its eye on Yahoo!, everyone wants to get with the faltering ex-nerd. Good riddance, I say. Let News Corp. or Microsoft or a bunch of hedge fund guys pick up this dog at rock bottom prices and turn Yahoo into what Netscape eventually became — a pet project and then an also ran. This is a small world and mindshare, which fleeting… → Read More
Remember Trolltech? Well, someone just bought them and that someone is Nokia. Trolltech originally made the QTopia AKA Qt operating system, a Linux-based OS for smartphones. If you had a PDA in the early 2000s you probably tried to install it and, unlike me, had a bit of fun with Tux on your iPaq. Well, now they’re owned wholly by Nokia. This doesn’t mean they’ll stop production… → Read More
What is it with these two companies? First, they’re more in love than a CBS soap opera. Next thing you know, they’re splitting up and stock is tanking. What’s the deal here? Seems MetroPCS decided it didn’t want to purchase Leap Wireless anymore because it feels it’s already a big enough player in the wireless market. Really a shame. There could have been more… → Read More
I’ve had a pretty negative opinion of Audiovox’s products since high school when I witnessed a friend jam a piece of cardboard into his car’s Audiovox tape deck to get the player to work. It’s a silly thing I know, but still, it’s there. Another company I have similar feelings about is RCA, a once-great brand reduced to being slapped on seemingly bargain equipment. So… → Read More
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