Apple responds to tax criticism by highlighting job creation

Rebuttal comes in the wake of a report claiming the tech giant goes to great lengths to avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes.
by Steven Musil  April 29, 2012 12:25 PM PDT

Apple responded today to criticism that the company goes to great lengths to cut its global tax bill by billions of dollars every year, trumpeting the "incredible number of jobs" it has created.

The statement was in response to an in-depth report published yesterday by The New York Times that depicted Apple as a pioneer in developing ways to sidestep taxes and that claimed companies seeking to do the same have used its methods as templates. "Apple serves as a window on how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill-suited to today's digital economy," the Times reported.

In response, Apple said it was one of the biggest taxpayers in the U.S.

"Apple also pays an enormous amount of taxes which help our local, state and federal governments," the company said in a statement printed by The New York Times. "In the first half of fiscal year 2012 our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax."

Apple also said its focus on innovation has created more than 500,000 jobs in the U.S. -- "from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers."

Apple's full statement:

 Over the past several years, we have created an incredible number of jobs in the United States. The vast majority of our global work force remains in the U.S., with more than 47,000 full-time employees in all 50 states. By focusing on innovation, we've created entirely new products and industries, and more than 500,000 jobs for U.S. workers -- from the people who create components for our products to the people who deliver them to our customers. Apple's international growth is creating jobs domestically since we oversee most of our operations from California. We manufacture parts in the U.S. and export them around the world, and U.S. developers create apps that we sell in over 100 countries. As a result, Apple has been among the top creators of American jobs in the past few years. 

Apple also pays an enormous amount of taxes which help our local, state and federal governments. In the first half of fiscal year 2012 our U.S. operations have generated almost $5 billion in federal and state income taxes, including income taxes withheld on employee stock gains, making us among the top payers of U.S. income tax. 

We have contributed to many charitable causes but have never sought publicity for doing so. Our focus has been on doing the right thing, not getting credit for it. In 2011, we dramatically expanded the number of deserving organizations we support by initiating a matching gift program for our employees. 

Apple has conducted all of its business with the highest of ethical standards, complying with applicable laws and accounting rules. We are incredibly proud of all of Apple's contributions.

 Source:Apple Corporate

Is Apple like Sony?

By Hayley Tsukayama, Updated: Friday, April 27, 12:18 AM

George Colony, chief executive of the Forrester research firm, decided to stir a little trouble this week by publishing a blog post with a provocative headline: Apple = Sony.

The comparison to Sony — the once-great electronics giant faces a projected annual loss of $6.4 billion-- is striking as Apple just announced$39.2 billion in revenue for a quarter in which it nearly doubled its profits.

 

How could Apple be facing the same fate as Sony?

The post essentially argues that Apple is a company that not only revolved around Steve Jobs, but needed Jobs be at the very heart of the company.

Take the sun out of the solar system, he says, and the company is poised to “coast, and then decelerate,” as Sony did after its founder, Akio Morita, stepped down in 1989. Colony said Apple chief executive Tim Cook is a “proven and competent executive” but hardly the man to run an organization based on charisma. Instead, Colony suggests an Apple executive like Jony Ive or Scott Forstall, who he believes have a little more personality.

While Colony makes some compelling arguments, there are points to consider on on the other side.

For one, the Apple-Sony comparison — while interesting — is not entirely apt. Apple and Sony may have had similar leadership models, but Sony suffers from a lack of focus and poor integration of its products. But those are two areas where Apple excels.

As Cook told investors earlier this year, all of Apple’s products could fit on a single table and the energy of the whole company goes into improving them. And there’s no denying that Apple has defined a true ecosystem of products — one ID and password will let you access and link any Apple product or service.

That can’t be said of Sony, which is working now under the leadership of Kazuo Hirai to break down the silos between the company divisions and allow users to sign into multiple services using a single account.

Apple also has an advantage over Sony, Disney and other companies that Colony names in his post, in that the company was prepared for Jobs to step down. Cook had acted as chief executive in the past, and makes it a point to showcase other members of an executive team hand-picked by Jobs, to carry on all aspects of his leadership style.

Colony is also, perhaps, being a bit hard on Cook. Yes, Cook is quieter than Jobs and certainly didn’t have the same pizzazz that the late Apple co-founder did while introducing the latest new iPad. But they’re very different people. And if Cook had tried to pull off a glitzy show, he would have certainly set himself up for more harsh criticism.

It would also be remiss not to credit Cook with a large part of Apple’s success. As The Washington Post reported, Apple’s supply chain has allowed it to hit a sweet spot on pricing and propelled it to high profits. Cook himself is popular at Apple, with at least one survey showing he has a 97 percent approval rating at the company — two percentage points ahead of Steve Jobs. And he’s been coming into his own, showing some more personality on Apple’s latest earnings call.

The company’s fate, really, rests in the performance of its next big innovation, whatever and whenever that may be. Since Jobs’s death, Apple has continued to provide tweaks to its most popular products, and those changes have propelled the company to greater heights. But Apple — fairly or not — can’t afford a big product flop, and so will have to carefully develop whatever is beyond the pipeline that Jobs left behind.

Might Apple fall from the top of the world? Sure; there’s almost nowhere to go but down. But while Steve Jobs may have been Apple’s puppet master, innovation was at the core of his personality. As long as that focus stays at the heart of the company, it should be insulated against a Sony-like decline.

 Source: washingtonpost

Google updates Chrome for Android with added language support, home screen bookmarks

By Donald Melanson   posted Apr 17th 2012 2:28PM

It's still only available for Ice Cream Sandwich, but those not bound by an older OS can now download a fairly significant update to Google's Chrome for Android web browser. In addition to some added language support and broader availability, it brings with it the ability to select desktop versions of websites, save bookmarks to your home screen as a shortcut, and download files to your device, plus options to choose which apps handle certain links. As before, it remains a beta, and it's tailored to suit both Android smartphones and tablets.

Google Chrome Blog, Google Play

Instagram users are young and Facebook users are old

A new study shows that the two social-networking sites serve different age groups. Could this be one of the reasons why more people aren't celebrating the buyout?
by Dara Kerr  April 10, 2012 5:40 PM PDT

Instead of exuberant rejoicing over the announcement of Facebook's mega-acquisition of Instagram yesterday, there's been a lot of woe-is-me chatter among the photo app's users. One of the reasons may be because the two social networks cater to different groups of people.

Instagram's users, on the whole, are quite a bit younger than Facebook's, according to a study done by consumer behavior research group Experian Hitwise.

"The audience for Instagram is relatively young, with over half of the visitors to the Instagram website are under the age of 35," research director at Hitwise Heather Dougherty writes in the study. "This is an interesting contrast to the visitors of Facebook's website, which reflects a more mainstream audience with a higher share of older users."

The study shows that over the last four weeks, the majority of Instagram users were between the ages of 18 and 34, whereas Facebook's two largest user age groups were between 25 and 34 and 55 and over.

When Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion yesterday, the wildly popular 2-year-old startup had roughly 33 million users. User activity on the app takes place within the confines of a smartphone, while Instagram's Web site is secondary. Nevertheless, according to Hitwise, Instagram had more than 10 million U.S. visits in March, which shows a 1000 percent increase in site visits since December.

 (Credit: Experian Hitwise)

 Source:Cnet

 

Facebook宣佈以10億美元收購Instagram

Instagram在手機平台上，被稱為最有人氣的照片分享平台也不為過，現在有Android版本更是勢不可擋。如此有潛力的平台，當然會被其他公司看中，想不到這麼快就有人收購Instagram，收購的還要是Facebook。

Facebook總裁Mark Zuckerberg剛剛就在自己的網誌中宣佈，Facebook將會以10億美元收購Instagram。在收購Instagram之後，兩個平台之間會有更多的合作，對雙方的服務都有幫助。Mark Zuckerberg也承諾，Instagram的品牌和服務開發將會保持獨立，確保正在使用Instagram的用家不會受到影響。吸納了Instagram的Facebook，應該會能在一直不是強項的照片分享功能上有些改進，但實際上會有什麼變化，還需要再作觀察。

來源：Facebook

Google testing heads-up display glasses in public, won't make you look like Robocop

The good news: Google has started testing those augmented reality glasses we heard about earlier in the year. The bad news: if the artsy shots of the test units are to be believed, they won't make you look like some '80s cinematic anti-hero. In fact, the things wouldn't look too out of place in a New York Timesstyle story. The software giant let it be known that, while it hasn't quite got a sale date on the wearables, it's ready to test ProjectGlass amongst the non-augmented public. The company is also looking for feedback on the project, writing in a post today, "we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input." Want some idea of what ProjectGlass might offer the public? Sure, it's not quite as good as strapping a pair on your own eyes, but interested parties can check out a video of Google's vision after the break.

The New York Times

Project Glass

Guess What? Tencent Clones Zynga’s Draw Something [LEAKED PICTURES]

Leaked images suggest that China's Tencent will soon launch this Draw Something clone.

No sooner has the smash-hit social game Draw Something been bought up by Zynga [1] than we hear that China’s Tencent (HKG:0700) has already cloned and localized it. The promo images (above and below) suggest that the crafty remake will be called Guess What and will soon appear in an iPhone version.

Since it might be impractical to use Chinese characters in the Pictionary-style game, it seems that Tencent’s Guess What will rely on the romanization – aka: pinyin – so that all the possible letters can be included as a clue. From this leaked image, it appears to be inevitably integrated with Tencent’s own QQ Games platform:

Tencent is China’s social gaming giant, running the full gamut from the most casual of social games right on up to MMO titles like Crossfire.

However, let’s not forget that Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) isn’t exactly innocent of such light-fingered lifting, having essentially purloined its iconic FarmVille game from the Chinese social network Kaixin.

Quick to the Draw

 

But wait! From browsing the iTunes App Store, I see that even Tencent has been beaten to the draw by a tiny Chinese game studio called MelonZone. Its Draw Something clone is called You Draw I Guess (pictured above) and instead uses Chinese characters, with the apparent main clue being how many characters are involved. It was released on March 31st. Check that out on iTunes.

Tencent PR staff, meanwhile, were not immediately available for comment, perhaps because it’s the first day of a three-day public holiday in China. We’ll update and test out the Tencent game once it goes live.

[Source for Guess What news: Techweb - article in Chinese]

For Generating App Revenue, Amazon Shows Google How to Play

Posted by Peter Farago on Fri, Mar 30, 2012

 The economic boom created by Apple and Google through their iOS and Android platforms has precipitated a renaissance among entrepreneurial developers.  With some of the lowest barriers to entry in the history of software development and distribution, apps are getting built and downloaded at breakneck speeds.  Earlier this month, Apple crossed a record 25 billion downloads from more than 550,000 available apps.  Google announced in December 2011 that it had crossed 10 billion downloads from 400,000 available apps.

As markets mature, rational economic behavior emerges.  Even the most passionate, idealistic software start-ups focus increasingly on markets where revenue generation is highest. In this report, Flurry compares the ability for app developers to generate revenue across the major app stores.  We examine a basket of top-ranked apps that have similar presence across iOS, Amazon and Android.  Their primary business models are in-app purchase, which is the revenue type we compare for this analysis.  Additionally, earlier research by Flurry found that the in-app purchase revenue model generates the majority of revenue for apps.  Combined, these apps average 11 million daily active users (DAUs).  We measured their revenue over a 45-day period, from mid-January through the end of February 2012.

The chart above compares revenue generated per user across iOS, Amazon and Android app stores.  We start by taking the revenue generated per user in the iTunes App Store and setting it to 100%.  We then compare the relative revenue generated from Amazon and Google to the amount of revenue per active user generated by the iTunes App Store.  Doing so, we find that Amazon Appstore revenue per active user is 89% of iTunes App Store revenue, and Google Play revenue per active is 23% of iTunes App Store revenue.  Another way to interpret the results is that for the same number of users per platform, every $1.00 generated in the iTunes App Store, will also fetch $0.89 in the Amazon Appstore and $0.23 in Google Play.  These results mirror those of a similar analysis conducted by Flurry last December, where we found for every $1.00 generated per user in the iTunes App Store, developers generated $0.24 per user in the Android Market.

Amazon's bet to fork Android in order to put consumers into their own shopping experience on Kindle Fire appears to be paying off.  Showing its commerce strength, Amazon already delivers more than three times the revenue in its app store compared to what Google generates for developers.  

For some possible insight, let's consider the DNA of each company. Apple runs the highest revenue-per-square foot generating retail store on the planet as well as the successful iTunes store.  Amazon, who invented the one-click purchase, perfected online shopping with data, efficiency and customer service.  Google’s strength is in scalable online search engine and advertising technology.  Running a store, retail or digital, has not been Google's traditional core competency.

As developers make decisions to support different platforms, the ability to generate revenue will always be a key factor.  Based on revenue potential, we expect to see an increasing number of developers support Amazon.  We also believe that companies such as Samsung, the leading Android-supporting OEM, could also consider emulating Amazon’s move to fork Android.  Google, who recently saw the departure of Eric Chu, the most public-facing proponent of Android Market improvement, will need to reduce commerce friction to maintain strong developer support.  From an ecoystem perspective, the emergence of Amazon as an additional distribution channel appears to be a boon for developers.