Microsoft to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

 

Microsoft Corp. MSFT +1.02% Chief Executive Satya Nadella recently pledged to be "bold and ambitious" to remake the company and its culture. The first task, he signaled in a memo on Thursday, would be cleaning up some of his predecessors' messes.

The recently named Microsoft chief is cutting up to 18,000 jobs in the next year, or about 14% of the company's workforce, the largest layoffs in its history. About two-thirds of the cuts would come from its phone and tablet staff, which bulged after former CEO Steve Ballmer agreed to buy Nokia Corp.'s NOK1V.HE +2.27% handset business last fall.

Microsoft said it plans to eliminate as many as 18,000 jobs, or 14% of its workforce, over the next year, part of a sweeping plan to streamline its operations following the recent acquisition of Nokia's devices and services business. Scott Thurm joins MoneyBeat.

The shape of the job cuts reflect a tough reality for Mr. Nadella: He must repair parts of the company he inherited from former CEOs Bill Gates and Mr. Ballmer before he can reshape Microsoft as he wants. Outside of staff overlap with Nokia, the cuts amount to about 5,500 people, or about 5% of the company's staff before the Nokia deal pushed it to 127,000 people.

Microsoft declined to make Messrs. Gates and Ballmer available to comment.

The company said the job cuts and undisclosed "asset-related" charges would cut pretax earnings by up to $1.6 billion over the next four quarters. Investors sent shares up 1% to $44.53 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Mr. Nadella also showed glimpses of his blueprint. He plans to revamp the way Microsoft organizes its engineers and will close a high-profile project that Mr. Ballmer launched to create television-like programming for its Xbox videogame game console. Mr. Nadella also halted work on a line of Nokia smartphones powered by the Android operating system, which had put Microsoft in the position of supporting the software of rival Google Inc.

"Steve Ballmer threw a massive house party for a decade, and now Nadella is there the morning after cleaning up," said FBR Capital Markets analyst Daniel Ives. "He's using this opportunity to clear the decks so they enter the next fiscal year in a position to put good money into the strategic areas they want to focus on."

One an advantage for Mr. Nadella is that, unlike many companies that carry out large layoffs, Microsoft is financially healthy.

Revenue is growing, and analysts project the company generated $22.5 billion of net inco

me in the year ended June 30. The company's stock has outperformed market indexes since Mr. Nadella took over, and a recent turnaround in personal-computer sales is likely to prove a financial windfall for the company.

His challenge is making Microsoft relevant in fast-growing technology areas including mobile computing. Executives fear the company's empire in corporate software could be at risk if it doesn't act decisively.

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Western Digital My Passport Slim 1TB review: A sleek drive with good build quality

Price

₹6,895

Western Digital has been coming out with My Passport drives for a while now. We have seen the drive getting cosmetic changes over the years. But with the My Passport Slim, WD is concentrating on making slimmer drives, which employs WD’s Slim series of internal HDDs. We had last seen the WD My Passport Ultra which didn’t impress us much. Let us see how it fares.

Build and Design

WD My Passport Slim comes in 1TB and 2TB variants

With the My Passport Slim, WD has not just gone for a slim profile, but the build quality has also improved. We move from the older plastic bodies to an aluminium enclosure. WD has stuck with simple dual-tone finish on the My Passport Slim with silver colour on top and dark blue on the rear side. It has rounded edges and is portable enough to fit into your jeans’ back pocket. It is just 12.3mm thick which puts it in the same segment as the Seagate Backup Plus Slim drive, which is 12.1mm thick on the sides.

Features

WD My Passport Slim 1TB is 12.3mm thick, placed above the Seagate Backup Plus 1TB which is 12.1mm thick

The My Passport Slim comes in two variants – 1TB and 2TB. In the 1TB variant – code named WDBGMT0010BAL – gives 931GB of unformatted space. The drive is powered by the USB 3.0 interface. It houses a drive with a rotational speed of 5400 RPM and an 8MB cache. WD also bundles in its proprietary software along with the drive.

The WD My Passport Slim has a USB 3.0 interface

The bundled utilities are divided into three main segments such as WD Drive Utilities, WD Security and WD SmartWare. Under the SmartWare utility you can backup data from your system to the WD Ultra or even to Dropbox. You will need to activate the Dropbox access via the activation code which you will be prompted to enter. You will have to register your email ID and the utility will get upgraded to SmartWare Pro which is a paid utility. You can even schedule backups or have category-wise backups. WD Security allows you to password protect and encrypt your drive.The final utility named WD Drive Utilities, allows you to run diagnostic tests, set sleep timers for the drive when not in use and secure erasing of the drive.

Test Setup

Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K

Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4

RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX

OS Drive: Intel SSD, 80GB

Source Drive: Corsair Neutron GTX, 240GB SSD

PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold

OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

Performance

We used the native USB 3.0 ports on the ASRock Z87M Extreme4 to test the hard drive. We start off with the synthetic testing using Crystal Disk Mark 3.0 and ATTO benchmark. ATTO gave 105.94 for sequential reads and 106.52 for sequential writes. Crystal Disk Mark scores are as below.

For the real world performance test, we transferred a 10GB single RAR file and a 10GB assorted file to get real life sequential and random file transfer speeds. To simulate a file write we transferred files from the Corsair source drive to the target Seagate Backup Plus drive and vice versa to simulate a file read. After each read and write operation we restarted the system to clear out any cache. Finally we performed the intra-drive test. The results are as follows.

Verdict and Price in India

Western Digital has a good looking drive which performs decently as compared to its competitors. In terms of raw performance, it is slower than the Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB drive, but the difference isn’t that great. The thing going for WD is the presence of its utilities which is lacking with Seagate drives. But then, the Seagate drive has social media backup, which is not there in the My Passport Slim. It all comes down to the pricing in the end.

At Rs 6,895, the WD My Passport Slim offers a cost/GB of Rs 7.4 which is higher than Seagate Backup Plus’s Rs 6.44 (based on Rs 6000 MRP). Pricing for the WD is on the higher side considering Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB comes for around Rs 5,100 now. Sure, the My Passport Slim has better build quality. It all depends on what you are looking for. If WD’s security and backup utilities are more dearer to you than the Seagate Backup Plus’s social media backup, then go for the My Passport Slim. But if you just want a regular 1TB external drive with USB 3.0 interface, there are drives which start from Rs 4,800 for the 1TB variant with both WD and Seagate.

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Aircel launches 4G services in Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Odisha

Telecom services provider Aircel  today launched its 4G services across Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar and Odisha. With this launch, Aircel will now offer services under all the three existing technologies of 2G, 3G and 4G LTE.
Aircel holds 20MHz of spectrum in the 4G LTE 2300 MHz band across eight circles - Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Odisha, Assam and North East and Jammu and Kashmir.
"The parameters that will differentiate Aircel’s 4G LTE services include customized offerings with a quick turnaround time for deployment of services to Enterprise and Home customer," said Anupam Vasudev, Chief Marketing Officer, Aircel.
Aircel’s enterprise customers will experience a 4G LTE high-speed network to receive dedicated internet and secure VPN (Virtual Private Network) services whereas its home customers will experience various infotainment services on high-speed broadband that will help connect any WiFi device to support services such as faster internet access, Smart TVs, Virtual Home Solutions, Home Security and online gaming.

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HP launches Windows 8 hybrid, Ultrabook

HP became the latest to announce its Windows 8 portfolio by launching the Envy X2 hybrid and the Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 in India. The company has also launched the HP Envy 23 TouchSmart all-in-one.

The Envy X2 is an ultrathin Intel Atom powered Windows 8 notebook. Remove its keyboard and the X2 becomes a 11.6-inch tablet. Docked to the keyboard the device promises up to 14 hours of battery life.

The device comes with Beats Audio, HD webcam, an 8-MP camera and NFC. Without the keyboard, this hybrid weighs just 700 grams.

The Envy Ultrabook is a 14-inch device with a multi-touch screen and 3rd gen Intel Core i5 processor. Though an ultrabook, the device weighs 2.16 kg and promises 8 hours of battery life. Both the X2 and the ultrabook have been priced at Rs 59,990 and will be available from January 2013.

The Envy 23 AiO comes with a Intel Core i5 processor on a 23-inch HD display. There is also a substantial 1TB storage on this slim device. The touchscreen can sense up to 10 fingers at a time and there is also a remote for wireless control. The AiO is priced at Rs 71,990 and will be available in stores this month.

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Angry Birds maker hopes Bad Piggies will help it fly again

Angry Birds-maker Rovio Entertainment will be hoping to prove it's no one-hit wonder when it launches Bad Piggies on Thursday, just as players seem to be tiring of the game they've been addicted to for the past three years.
The new game will feature pigs which strike back at the birds who attacked them with slingshots in Angry Birds. A hit on app stores would give the Finnish company a boost as it looks to a possible stock market flotation next year.
Some analysts put its market value at between $6 billion and $9 billion, nearly on a par with another top Finnish tech name, phone maker Nokia Oyj.
Rovio was founded in 2003 and became a global phenomenon after it launched Angry Birds for Apple Inc's iPhone in late 2009. The highly-addictive game helped Rovio's sales jump 10-fold to $100 million last year, a fraction of the 38.7 billion euros ($50.2 billion) which Nokia chalked up. It has remained at the top of gaming charts, with more than a billion downloads, and had 200 million monthly users at the end of 2011. That compares for instance with the 240 million attracted by offerings from US-based Zynga Inc, such as the Facebook -based Farmville.
But there are signs Rovio is losing its momentum. Amazing Alex, the first non-Angry Birds game in more than two years from Rovio, hit No 1 on download charts in July but has since slumped to outside the top 50, while Angry Birds Space has dropped fast from the top-grossing lists.
"Rovio needs a big hit right now. Over the past two months, Rovio's revenue-generation ability has suddenly slipped badly," said analyst Tero Kuittinen from Finnish mobile analytics firm Alekstra.
Brand power
In Bad Piggies, instead of shooting with a slingshot, players build vehicles that help the characters get the birds' eggs.
The company said it was hoping the new game would breathe additional life into its brand. "We see Bad Piggies as a long-term brand-building exercise. In three years from now we want to see Angry Birds and Bad Piggies as strong vibrant brands out there," Petri Jarvilehto, head of gaming at Rovio, said in an interview.
Rovio is also expanding into merchandising, modelling its long-term strategy on Walt Disney Co by selling a range of stuffed animals and other toys, as well as branded playground equipment which then bolster branding for its games.
If successful, the company says it could go public as soon as next year, offering a possible payday to its backers.
Last year, Rovio raised $42 million from venture capital firms including Accel Partners, which previously backed Facebook and Baidu, and Skype founder Niklas Zennstroem's venture capital firm, Atomico Ventures. Last year some 30% of turnover came from items other than games, but it is the group's on-screen inventiveness which is the crucial factor in its prospects. "Rovio needs to re-establish its reputation for creating hits with legs (staying power)," Kuittinen said. "There is no doubt that the pig game will hit number 1 at launch. But it has to stay in top ten for half a year to erase the doubts that the fast fade of Amazing Alex has created."

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HTC launches 8X, 8S smartphones

Taiwan's HTC unveiled its first smartphones powered by Microsoft's Windows on Wednesday, in a boost for the US software giant's efforts to break into a market dominated by Apple and Google. HTC and Microsoft previewed the 8X and 8S handsets in New York, boasting that they feature "iconic design," studio-quality sound and "incredible camera capabilities."
The companies said the HTC devices would be available from November through more than 150 carriers in at least 50 countries
"We've been inspired by Windows Phone 8 to create new smartphones that give the platform the iconic design and personality it deserves," said Peter Chou, HTC's chief executive.
"Windows Phone has clearly emerged as one of the top mobile ecosystems and is competitive against any other smartphone platform in the world."
Among the carriers participating are US-based AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless, Europe's Orange, O2 Telefonica, MTS, Three UK, T-Mobile and Vodafone and Asia-Pacific carriers Chunghwa Telecom, Optus, Singapore Telecommunications, Smartone, Telstra and Vodafone Australia.
The news comes two weeks after Finland-based Nokia unveiled its smartphones powered by Windows Phone 8, Microsoft's upgraded mobile operating system that aims to compete with Apple's iOS used on the iPhone and a multitude of Google Android handsets.
"Pairing HTC's beautiful new Windows Phone 8X and 8S with our brand is a big milestone for both companies," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft chief executive.
"Together we are offering customers a clear choice and a truly unique experience. I'm thrilled to take our longstanding partnership to the next level."
The HTC devices have a design based on the Windows Phone Live Tiles and will come in colors including "California blue," graphite black, flame red, and "limelight yellow."
HTC will use and ultra-wide angle front-facing camera that allows up to four people and more to be captured at once, which also allows for high-definition video capture.
It said its Beats Audio "provides authentic, studio-quality sound that delivers the spirit of the original recording."
The phones will have displays of at least four inches, matching or exceeding that of the new iPhone 5, and will use the newest version of Corning's lightweight Gorilla Glass.

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