Techmeme: How Lenovo Built a Chinese Tech Giant (Wall Street Journal)

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January 31, 2014, 12:15 PM

Top News

Bloomberg:

Microsoft's board preparing to make Satya Nadella CEO, may replace Gates as chairman — Microsoft Said to Be Preparing to Make Satya Nadella CEO — Microsoft Corp.'s board is preparing to make Satya Nadella, the company's enterprise and cloud chief, chief executive officer …

More: Washington Post, Re/code, Gigaom, Reuters, InfoWorld, Businessweek, Network World, I4U News, PhoneArena, WinBeta, Bloomberg, GeekWire, TechEye, memeburn, Softpedia News, LiveSide.net, Digital Trends, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, Inquirer, MacDailyNews, NYT Bits, Mashable, Guardian, VG247, SiliconANGLE, Forbes, Business Insider, The Register, AppleInsider, CNET, NPR, ReadWrite, TechnoBuffalo, The Verge and Pocketables

Tweets: @levie, @stevekovach, @raju and @sachinkalbag

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch:

Nest Team Will Become Google's Core Hardware Group — Google today sold Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion. While many speculated that Google would release phones after it bought Motorola in 2011, it didn't happen — Motorola remained a partner like other Android OEMs.

Miguel Helft / Fortune:

Lenovo CEO on Apple, Samsung: ‘Our mission is to surpass them’ — In an interview with Fortune, Yuanqing Yang says that his company seeks to replicate its ThinkPad success with Motorola. — FORTUNE — Fresh from signing a $2.91 billion deal with Larry Page to acquire Google's Motorola unit …

More: Los Angeles Times, BGR, AndroidHeadlines.com, CNET, Digital Trends, ZDNet, InfoWorld, PhoneArena, Tech.pinions, The Mac Observer and applefansite.com. Tweets: @whatthebit

Wall Street Journal:

How Lenovo Built a Chinese Tech Giant — CEO Started Out Delivering PCs on Bicycles, Now ‘We Want to Be a Global Player’ — Google sells handset business to Lenovo for nearly $3 billion. Bryan Ma of IDC tells the WSJ's Aaron Back how Motorola phones will give Lenovo a shortcut into the competitive U.S. Market.

More: Bloomberg

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

Twitter Acquires Over 900 IBM Patents Following Infringement Claim, Enters Cross-Licensing Agreement — Twitter announced today that it has acquired over 900 patents from IBM, and that it has entered into a cross-licensing agreement with the Internet services and software company.

More: IBM, Bloomberg, VentureBeat, Re/code, CNET, Gigaom, Digits, Reuters, Engadget, ZDNet, Inquirer, Mashable, Softpedia News and WebProNews

Tom Warren / The Verge:

Microsoft backpedals: Windows 8.1 update hides tile interface by default — Microsoft is once again planning to alter the way its Start Screen works in Windows 8.1 Update 1. While the software giant originally released Windows 8.1 last year with an option to bypass the “Metro” interface at boot …

CBC News:

Snowden documents reveal Canadian spy agency used airport Wi-Fi to track passengers “for days after they left the terminal” — Canadian spy agency used airport Wi-Fi to track passengers for days after they left the terminal — Electronic snooping was part of a trial run for U.S. NSA and other foreign services

Brad Reed / BGR:

On BlackBerry 10′s 1st anniversary, BlackBerry's U.S. market share hits 0% — BlackBerry has become the Bluto Blutarsky of the American smartphone market because, as Dean Wormer once said to Bluto, its market share is now “zero... point... zero.” Consumer Intelligence Research Partners …

More: Electronista, Cult of Mac, 9to5Mac, iPhone in Canada Blog, CrackBerry.com, PC Magazine, Fortune, Softpedia News, WebProNews and Global Nerdy. Thanks:@_trendspotter

Mark DeCambre / Quartz:

Box has secretly filed for an IPO — Box, the online storage company, has secretly filed paperwork for an initial public offering, according to a source. — That means Box could start trading as a public company before its chief rival, Dropbox. Both are among the most anticipated tech IPOs of this year.

More: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, MacRumors, Forbes, DealBook, Android Police, The Next Web, VatorNews, Mashable, Inc.com, Softpedia News, Business Insider, GeekWire, The Verge, CNET and Gigaom

Tweets: @dmac1, @jguynn and @m_delamerced

Lily Hay Newman / Slate:

Game Developers Are Trolling the Makers of Candy Crush With Other “Candy” Games — What if a game developer was so concerned about protecting its viral iOS hit that it trademarked the word candy in Europe, and then succeeded in getting Apple to enforce the trademark?

More: Engadget, MacRumors, BBC, Pocket-lint, GameSpot, iPhone, SlashGear, PhoneArena, BGR and Boing Boing

Lucian Constantin / PC World:

Tor-enabled malware stole credit card data from PoS systems at dozens of retailers — Payment card data was stolen during the past three months from several dozen retailers that had their point-of-sale systems infected with a memory-scraping malware program called ChewBacca.

More: Speaking of Security, Help Net Security, Financial Post, ZDNet, NBCNews, BBC and SecurityWeek

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Zynga Buys NaturalMotion For $527M, Signaling A New Tack For The Gaming Giant — Zynga has long been famous (or infamous?) for its data-driven approach to game design. The company never focused on building strong character IP, or intellectual property, in favor of releasing games that had been thoroughly funnel-tested.

More: Zynga Company Blog, VentureBeat, GlobeNewswire, Re/code, Inside Mobile Apps, Gotta Be Mobile, MacRumors, Re/code, Wired, Android Police, ZDNet, TechSpot, Digits, Guardian, SlashGear, App Advice, Valleywag, ReadWrite and Bloomberg. Tweets: @dmac1

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Zynga Lays Off 314 Employees, Or 15% Of Its Workforce

More: TUAW and Reuters

Harry McCracken / TIME:

Yahoo to Donna Users: We're Dispensing With Your Indispensable App — Incredible Labs — the company behind smart-calendar app Donna — is being acquired by Yahoo. The app is being shut down, and most of the folks who worked on it will join the Yahoo Mail team.

Tweets: @spencerchen and @harrymccracken

Ryan Lawler / TechCrunch:

Incredible Labs Acquired By Yahoo, Mobile Assistant App Donna To Be Shut Down

More: Donna Blog, Computerworld, TechnoBuffalo, VentureBeat, Softpedia News, Re/code, Half Of What I Say Is …, VatorNews and iPhone Hacks

Brian Fung / The Switch:

The FCC is ‘beta testing’ a next-gen telephone network — Federal regulators have taken their first major step in accelerating the country's move toward high-capacity, fiber optic phone networks. In a unanimous vote Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission approved a program …

More: Reuters, dailywireless.org, SlashGear, Gizmodo, Engadget, Wall Street Journal, The Verge, multichannel.com/rss and toptechnews.com. Tweets: @stoweboyd

Claire Cain Miller / New York Times:

Revenue and Profit Rise at Google, but Mobile Struggles Continue — SAN FRANCISCO — There is no denying that Google has become a mobile company. Now, Google — along with shareholders, industry partners and advertisers — is trying to figure out what that means.

More: Reuters

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Google Q4 '13 Beats With $16.86B Revenue, Misses With EPS Of $12.01 Because Of Motorola Weakness

More: The Verge, International Business Times, eWeek, Mercury News, The Register and internetretailer.com

Michael Crider / Android Police:

Inq Mobile, Facebook-phone maker and app developer, quietly shuts down — UK-Based Inq Mobile Quietly Shuts Down, Remaining Apps Will Not Be Updated — The big news this week was Google selling off Motorola, but there's a smaller company that won't be getting a second chance.

More: TechCrunch, The Next Web and Pocket-lint

Josh Lowensohn / The Verge:

Amazon considering $20 to $40 price hike for Prime service in US — Amazon today said it's “considering” raising the price of its $79 a year Prime service to customers in the US by another $20 to $40. The possible increase, which has not been finalized, was announced during the company's fourth quarter earnings call with analysts.

More: PC World, Gizmodo, LAPTOP Magazine, Digits, Softpedia News, CNET, VentureBeat and Fortune. See also Mediagazer

Mikey Campbell / AppleInsider:

Apple details pressure-sensitive iPhone touchscreen in patent filing — The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Thursday published an Apple patent describing a device with built-in pressure sensors that work in concert with touchscreen input to provide enhanced UI navigation. — Source: USPTO

More: SlashGear, Gizmodo and Gizmodo UK

Kyle Orland / Ars Technica:

Nintendo offers a vague, confusing, unfocused vision for its future — The briefings Nintendo gives following its quarterly earnings results are usually relatively dry affairs, filled with charts of worldwide gaming hardware breakdowns and canned enthusiasm about upcoming game releases.

More: Guardian, Co.Design, TechNewsWorld and The Verge

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