Zynga's Valuation In March: $11.15 Billion

Social gaming company Zynga valued itself at $11.15 billion in March, according to a new SEC filing.

Zynga obtained the third-party valuation report one month after it raised $490 million in Series C financing, as pointed out by TechCrunch. That deal sold Series C stock for $14.03 per share. The $11.15 valuation was based on fully-diluted shares outstanding.

Zynga’s IPO could place the company’s valuation much higher, by the time it hits public markets. Zynga filed its S-1 to go public in July. 

What is the status of that IPO with the current market turmoil? Will IPOs slow down? Zynga is closely watched as one of the largest consumer Internet companies on file to IPO.

Observers I talked to think the biggest and best companies will still get out–unless the market turns much worse. We’ll see how things shake out the rest of this month and into September.

With Zynga’s third party analysis, management estimated the probability of an IPO at 80%, a strategic sale at 5% and “continued operations” at 15%.

Zynga has also secured $1 billion in a new credit facility, according to the SEC filing. Zynga paid upfront fees of $2.5 million in the credit deal and is required to pay fees up to $625,000 per quarter.

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Angry Birds maker in talks, could be valued at $1.2 billion

Angry Birds maker Rovio is reportedly in talks with investors that could see the company valued at as much as $1.2 billion.

First it was just a game. A game that involved hurling irate birds at egg-stealing green pigs. To the surprise of many, it became a global hit, and in the space of less than two years has been downloaded onto various devices more than 300 million times.

Rovio, the Finnish-based company that brought the world the Angry Birds game, has followed up its phenomenal success with a range of themed merchandise that includes shoulder bags, flip-flopsand toys. There’s talk of an Angry Birds movie. There’s even a cookbook. Baby blankets are on their way. And according to a report on Friday, a $1.2 billion valuation could also be just around the corner.

The Bloomberg report claims that the game’s creators are currently in talks that could result in Rovio being valued at $1.2 billion. The information was passed on by “two people with knowledge of the discussions.”

The source said that Rovio is thinking about taking a “strategic investment from a company in the entertainment business.”

Michael Pachter, managing director of research at Wedbush Securities, told Bloomberg that the potential investors could be game developers like Electronic Arts and Zynga, which could help the Angry Birds maker reach new audiences. Given the game’s success, reaching new audiences would be no mean feat. It’s not hard to believe that there might be undiscovered tribes in the depths of the Amazon rainforest going about discussing the game.

Pachter even raised the prospect of the game’s characters turning up at Disneyland. “I can see how Disney would take Angry Birds and turn them into a theme-park ride and a movie,” he told Bloomberg.

One thing is for sure. Rovio is keen to capitalize on the success of its global game. It has plans, for example, to sell Angry Birds merchandise in 200 retail stores across China.

The company received $42 million in funding back in March from Accel Partners, Atomico and Felicis Ventures. At that time Rovio board chairman Kaj Hed said, “We’re building this [into] a big company. Our goal is to become number one in the world.” We can’t help thinking those furious feathered creatures might just help make it happen.

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Facebook Answers Google+ Games with New Gaming Features

Google fired the first salvo, adding a dozen games to Google+ on Friday, but Facebook seems to have fired right back with new features that expand its own existing brand of social gameplay.

Facebook's user base of some 750 million dwarfs Google's nascent Google+ social platform, which has about 25 million in the early going of this battle between tech giants. But Facebook has given signals that it takes its new challenger seriously, and while Friday's roll-out of new Facebook gaming features may have been in the works for some time, it was certainly timed in such a way as to take some of the wind out Google's social gaming sails.

The new Facebook gaming features include a larger gaming screen and a ticker that appears to the right of the screen which shows friends' gaming activity, scores, and achievements, according to Facebook's Jared Morgenstern, who announced the additions on the company's official blog late Friday.

Facebook is calling the individual updates on the new ticker stream "stories," which users can click on to start playing games like Sims, PacMan, and Words With Friends themselves.

"You can now control who can see these stories for each individual app in your Settings," Mergenstern wrote on The Facebook Blog post. "If you want friends to see you're playing one game but not another, you can change that. You're also able to limit visibility directly from the ticker by clicking 'X' on a story to remove it."

Games that will soon feature a full screen option include CityVille, Zoo World, Monster World, and Mystery Manor, according to Facebook.

Facebook games are also now able to add apps and games to the top of their bookmarks on their homepages.

"To add a new favorite, click the menu next to the bookmark. You can also rearrange, remove, and edit settings from the same menu," the blog post said.

While Google is just entering the social gaming fray with its new Google+ Games service, which kicks off with such popular titles as Angry Birds and Zynga Poker, Facebook is of course the platform that launched the social gaming explosion in the first place.

But if Facebook still has to squint to make out Google+ in its rearview mirror, it's clear from news like Friday's that the social networking leader feels it needs to keep moving forward with key features like gaming to stay in first place.

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BlackBerry bug puts corporate users at risk

If you receive an email on your corporate BlackBerry that contains a picture, be careful — the image may be a cover for a sneaky online attack.

BlackBerry issued an advisory warning of a flaw in its BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) that an attacker, using a rigged image, could exploit to remotely take control of BlackBerry devices linked to that company's server.

(While private BlackBerry consumers receive emails directly from Research in Motion's servers, corporate consumers receive emails from their company's BES.)

The vulnerabilities exist in the way the BES processes PNG and TIFF images for display on BlackBerry smartphones.

To exploit them, BlackBerry said an attacker "would need to create a specially crafted Web page and then persuade the BlackBerry smartphone user to click a link to that Web page. The attacker could provide the link to the user in an email or instant message."

With the arsenal of weapons cybercriminals' have to choose from, including spear phishing and social engineering attacks, persuading BlackBerry users to open an image in an email could, unfortunately, be quite easy.

BlackBerry has issued a patch for the vulnerability, but it's each company's responsibility to update its server. In the meantime, to avoid becoming a victim of these attacks, BlackBerry is urging corporate smartphone users to disable images and rich content for smartphones.

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Intel $300m Ultrabook Fund will encourage MacBook Air rivals

Intel has announced that its Intel Capital investment arm will be using a $300m Ultrabook Fund to encourage the development of innovative technologies that will improve the MacBook Air rivaling ultraportable segment. Expected to be dolled out within the next 3-4 years, the cash will go to “companies building hardware and software technologies focused on enhancing how people interact with Ultrabooks, achieving all-day usage through longer battery life, enabling innovative physical designs and improved storage capacity.”

Intel launched the ultrabook segment back at Computex 2011, though many felt it was more of a branding exercise than a truly new category. The differentiation from ultraportable notebooks as we already know them is still one of boundaries rather than anything else – ultrabooks must use Intel’s processors and tick various other categories that the company has established – but at least with some financial backing there’s the possibility that it’s more than just a marketing-speak label.

That investment is much needed, according to sources in the manufacturing and supply chains, which have accused Intel of potentially undermining the ultrabook concept with its own greed. The chip company’s own components amount to roughly a third of a bill-of-materials (BOM), which on its own – without actual production costs or any profit margins factored in – is expected to reach as high as $710. The knock-on effect could be pricing that exceeds Intel’s targeted $1,000 ceiling.

Subsidies from Intel have been tipped before, though this particular investment round looks to be more of a development fund than outright greenback encouragement. Meanwhile, Intel itself will be working on Haswell, its planned 2013 silicon products, which will supposedly use half the power of current chips.

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HTC: To Launch Phones With Beats' Sound Technology In 4Q

TAIPEI (Dow Jones)--HTC Corp. (2498.TW) said Thursday it plans to roll out smartphones in the fourth quarter that will incorporate Beats Electronics LLC's internal sound profiling technology and come with Beats' headphones.

HTC is planning to pay about $300 million for a 51% stake in Beats, which makes high-end headphones bearing the name of superstar music producer Dr. Dre.

Beats is a venture involving Dr. Dre, whose given name is Andre Young, Interscope records and its chairman, Jimmy Iovine. Interscope is part of Vivendi SA's (VIVEF) Universal Music Group. The headphones are built for Beats by electronics company Monster LLC.

HTC said Beats will not be allowed to cooperate with other smartphone makers after the stake sale is completed.

The Taiwanese smartphone maker said Beats is already profitable and its gross profit margin is higher than HTC's. It didn't disclose the profit margins of either company.

Beats' revenue will likely total US$350 million this year, it said.

HTC said its valuation of Beats is about US$600 million. The deal is funded by HTC's own cash, which will likely be around NT$70 billion (US$2.42 billion) in the third quarter, it said.

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WhiteMagic: Sony Shows Next-Generation LCD For Cameras And Phones

Sony announced WhiteMagic today, a “next-generation”, 3-inch TFT LCD screen that boasts 1.23M-dot full VGA resolution. What’s special about the display is that it has two distinct modes: if switched to “low power mode”, power consumption of the backlight is pushed down by over 50% to 125mW, with Sony saying brightness in this mode is still comparable to that of conventional LCDs.

When choosing “outdoors mode”, WhiteMagic’s brightness can be boosted from 470 cd/m² to an impressive 1,000 cd/m², while power consumption of the backlight in this mode (300mW) stays about as high as that of conventional screens. By way of comparison: the iPhone 4 reaches a maximum brightness of 500 cd/m².

Sony achieved this by adding a white pixel to the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) pixels and developing an algorithm to correct picture distortion (“RGBW method”).

The company plans to start shipping the first samples as early as October (price: $65 each). It expects WhiteMagic to be used in mobile devices, for example cameras and smartphones (even though it’s not a touchscreen apparently).

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No 3D glasses needed for this phone

A new three-dimensional (3D) phone will be hitting the market soon.

And guess what, you won't be needing 3D glasses for it,

HTC Corporation unveiled today the HTC EVO 3D, which allows the user to capture and view movies and photos in 3D without wearing 3D glasses.

The device features HTC's first qHD 3D 4.3-inch display and is built with the Gingerbread (2.3) version of Android.

It also uses a powerful 1.2 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor.

President of HTC South Asia Pacific Lennard Hoornik said the company was looking forward to delivering the HTC EVO 3D to our customers this year.

"At HTC, we believe in offering a wide portfolio of beautifully designed, powerful and highly customizable devices for our customers, and the HTC EVO 3D does just that," he said.

HTC also drew out different ways in which the phone could be used. For instance, real estate agents could create and share 3D virtual tours of homes for prospective buyers.

Hikers could also make use of the 3D technology to navigate terrain and get a better idea of the landscape around them.

Lastly, families could relive their vacations while viewing their 3D photos and videos.

Videos are captured with 720p integrated 3D HD (720p) and the results can be posted easily on social networking or video sharing sites like Facebook and Youtube, or shared in real time over the Internet.

The phone can also be coupled with other Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA)-capable devices such as high-definition televisions or printers to share stored music, pictures and user-generated HD video wirelessly.

Users can also share their 3D videos to 3D TVs with a HDMI cable.

Other features of the phone include a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for video chat, 3G Mobile Hotspot capability that supports up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices simultaneously and access to the Android Market for more than 200,000 applications, widgets and games.

Users will also be able to access Google mobile services such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Calendar, Voice Actions, and YouTube.

Corporate and personal e-mail services such as Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync can also be accessed, together with instant messaging.

The phone boasts one gigabyte of usable memory and has a microSD slot which can support 32GB memory cards.

It uses a lithium-ion battery and has integrated GPS. It measures 126 mm by 65 mm and is 12.05 mm thick. It weighs 170g including the battery.

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Amazon hits back at Apple with Kindle Cloud Reader

The web app, called Kindle Cloud Reader, uses HTML 5 to replicate the features of Amazon’s Kindle ebook reader app for mobile devices. For now it is available in Safari and Google Chrome and works on the iPadbut not the iPhone.
“We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser,” said Dorothy Nicholls, director of Amazon Kindle. “The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS.”
The web app allows books to be saved for offline access and, as with all of Amazon’s Kindle products, syncs between a reader’s other Kindle products.
Last month Amazon updated it’s Kindle app for Apple’s iOS devices - the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch - and removed the direct link to the Kindle ebook store. The change, which was made to comply with Apple’s new iOS purchasing policy, left many customers confused and angry. They left negative reviews on the Kindle app in iTunes.
The web app, which contains a link to the Kindle ebook store, appears to be designed to encourage users away from the Kindle iOS app. One of the first things it suggests to a new user is that the add a link to the app on their home screen.
Dave Addey, MD of app development company Agant, said: “The store integration is substantially better than it could ever be in an app.”
“There are things which this app can’t do as well as in a native app,” Mr Addey said but he added that most of the features Amazon needs can be accomplished in web app form.
Kobo, another ebook seller, recently removed the store from its app. Last month Kobo announced that it was working on a web app of its own.
Amazon’s only public comment on the Kindle app was to say that it had removed the Kindle store link “in order to reply with recent policy changes by Apple”.
The two companies have recently tangled in court over the rights to the term “App Store”, which Apple claims to have trademarked. Apple was denied a preliminary injunction in the US against Amazon using the term but succeeded in a European lawsuit which has forced Amazon to stop accepting app submissions from developers in Germany.

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New Nokia WP7 Phone Appears In A Leaked Video

The first Nokia WP7 phone was recently revealed by the company's CEO Stephen Elop. The handset, codenamed Sea Ray, garnered much attention from the public, though it was more of a leak rather than a formal announcement. The leak has greatly helped Nokia's cause. However, it was well known that this was only a slice of the cake and a bunch of other WP7 Nokia devices were on the horizon. Now, a new video has leaked, which shows off alleged Nokia WP7 handsets which are relatively unknown to us.

The video seems to have been sent alleged by a Microsoft \ Nokia employee (with an ovi.com email address) to an unofficial Nokia blog. It starts off in a typical Nokia way with a bunch of messages, followed by the three handsets. We remember seeing the handsets since one of them is pretty reminiscent of the handset that we saw during the MS \ Nokia deal. The first handset shown in the video has some action going on with the dedicated Maps, Ovi, and the Nokia Clock tile, which looks pretty slick.

On first look, the video appears to be authentic. Towards the end of the video, we are treated to a Microsoft dual screen concept phone, which was leaked a month ago. However, the possibility exists that the video is doctored. Either way, an announcement regarding the handsets by Nokia or Microsoft should be very helpful. As of now though, the video has been taken down by the uploader due to copyright reasons. Thankfully, we have been able to save screenshots of the handsets from the video.

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