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Cop That, Visa: Oz Court Imposes $18 Million Penalty

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Australia’s Federal Court has ordered Visa Worldwide to pay an $18 million fine for having engaged in anti-competitive conduct, in proceedings brought by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. It must also pay the ACCC’s costs, estimated at S2 million

Visa Worldwide is a subsidiary of Visa Inc., which contracts in Australia with financial institutions to supply access to, and participation in, the Visa network, the ACCC says.

It notes that, for international travellers to Australia wishing to use a Visa card to make purchases, Visa has always supplied currency conversion services to allow the Australian merchant to be paid in Aussie dollars and the purchases to be billed to the cardholder in their home currency.

Visa earns substantial revenue from the provision of these services, both in the form of foreign currency trading revenue and fees, the ACCC has pointed out.

It says Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) is a service which competes with Visa’s currency conversion services, giving travellers a choice to complete a transaction in their home currency rather than in the local currency of the merchant.

However, between May 1 and October 6, 2010, Visa Worldwide changed its rules, prohibiting expansion of the supply of DCC services on oint-of-sale transactions on the Visa network by rival suppliers of currency conversion services

This meant that retail stores, hotels and restaurants that were not already offering DCC to their customers as at April 30, 2010, could not choose to offer DCC, ACCC says.

The Federal Court has now declared that this conduct by Visa was illegal – and it has imposed the $18 million fine.

“The substantial penalty imposed against Visa Worldwide reflects the serious nature of the conduct, which hindered the competitive process and restricted an emerging technology and service from developing under otherwise competitive market conditions,” said ACCC chairman Rod Sims.

HP Knew We Were Dodgy: Lynch

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The founder of UK company Autonomy, Mike Lynch, has told a British court that Hewlett-Packard was made aware of dodgy practices at hardware maker before it bought the company for US$11 billion.

Lynch told the court H-P was informed that hardware sales and growth rates had been boosted by different accounting rules.

H-P is suing Lynch, and former Autonomy finance director Sushovan Hussain for damages of about US$5.1 billion for their management of Autonomy.

The case comes as revelations emerged that, just days before H-P announced its disastrous acquisition, chairman Ray Lane mounted a last-ditch effort to get H-P’s then-CEO Leo Apotheker to quash the deal.

The information came to light in an analysis of the acquisition commissioned by H-P and written by the company’s legal firm, Proskauer Rose, in early 2014.

After the deal went through, Lane emailed Apotheker to say he was concerned Autonomy was a so-called “roll-up”: ie, a company whose growth was dependent on acquisitions rather than organic growth.

Kmart Oz Hacked

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SYDNEY – Customers of Kmart’s online operations have been exposed to a security breach according to the company.Kmart said that on September 30 an online customer was informed via e-mail that her account had been compromised during an “external privacy breach” according to Fairfax Media.

The e-mail said the data stolen was limited to “name, email address, delivery and billing address, telephone number and product purchase details”. No credit card data was stolen in the breach, Kmart stressed.

A statement from the company said the breach “only impacts a selection of customers who have shopped online with Kmart Australia,” and that all customers that had been affected had been contacted directly.

It also says the company has contacted the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the Australian Federal Police for help with the investigation.

Tech Firms Set To Vanish: IDC

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SAN FRANCISCO – Changes in the technology sector are moving so quickly, research firm IDC says, that by 2020 more than 30 percent of today’s tech suppliers will not exist as we know them, having been acquired or failed.The latest IDC Outlook Report says the pace of digital innovation is accelerating and broadening. with digital technologies changing the economics and practices of traditional business.

The report says cloud computing, mobile devices, advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence are better, cheaper and more widely available.

But many companies aren’t moving fast enough and IDC predicts a third of the top 20 in most industries will be disrupted over the next three years, leading to a deterioration of revenue, profits and market position

Corporations pursuing digital transformation strategies will more than double the size of their software development teams which augurs well for the job market for software engineers with cloud and Web development skills as well as digital scientists.

IDC predicts that by 2018 the number of Internet of Things devices will more than double, prompting the development of 200,000 new apps.

Companies likely to survive include Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, IBM and two Chinese companies, Alibaba and Tencent.

Nine Exits Online News Venture

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Nine Entertainment has quit its 50 percent stake in Daily Mail Australia, an online tabloid launched two years ago.

The local online edition of the Daily Mail will henceforth be wholly owned by its British parent company, the Daily Mail and General Trust.

“Both companies felt that in a changing media landscape the needs of the Web site were best served by sole ownership going forward,” Global MailOnline chief executive Martin Clarke said in a media statement. 
 “We are now planning for even more investment in our editorial and commercial offerings.”

The AAP newswire notes that Nine’s Ninemsn news Web site and Daily Mail Australia have struggled in competition with each other.

Research Giants Reveal Huge Drop In PC Shipments

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The two biggest market research companies have each reported that personal computer shipments during the first quarter of 2016 fell dramatically. Both Gartner and IDC estimated sharp declines in Q1 versus the year earlier period – a 9.5 percent slump by Gartner’s estimates, an 11.5pc plunge by IDC’s figures.Gartner called it the lowest quarterly shipment level

in nine years. IDC however, said shipments were in line with expectations of an

11.3 percent decline, amid an anticipated “relatively weak environment

during the first half of 2016, as Windows 10 enterprise upgrades largely

remained in pilot phase, while consumer demand remains weak”.

Gartner reported worldwide PC shipments totalling 64.8 million units in the

first quarter, a 9.6 percent decline from the first quarter of 2015.

This was the sixth consecutive quarter of PC shipment declines, and the first

time since 2007 that shipment volume fell below 65 million units.

“The deterioration of local currencies against the US dollar continued to

play a major role in PC shipment declines. Our early results also show there

was an inventory build-up from holiday sales in the fourth quarter of

2015,” said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner.

IDC estimated worldwide PC shipments in the quarter at 60.6 million units, a

year-on-year decline of 11.5 percent. The company claims Apple toppled Asus for

fourth place in global PC shipments, with 7.4 percent share, up from 6.7

percent a year earlier.

Gartner, however, put Apple in fifth place behind Asus, which by Gartner’s

estimate saw a 1.5 percent rise in shipments, and holding onto fourth place

with 8.3 percent.

Lenovo maintained the number one position in worldwide PC shipments in the

first quarter of 2016 despite a 7.2 percent decline in shipments.

Yet More Datacentres: UK Co’s Moving Down Under

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SYDNEY – The boom in building datacentres in Australia continues with UK-based Global Switch beginning construction of the first stage of its $300 million second Australian datacentre, and cloud provider Elastichosts – another Brit – opening a new datacentre in Sydney along with four others around the world.
This closely follows the recent opening of US-based Digital Realty’s Digital datacentre in Erskine Park, Sydney.

Global Switch’s Sydney-based datacentre will occupy 24,000 square metres and be called Sydney East.

It will be built on Global Switch’s campus next to its existing Sydney West datacentre, close to the CBD.The first stage, about a third of the total project, is expected to be completed by Q1 next year.

Some 50 per cent of anchor tenants for stage one have been secured, Global Switch says, with the remaining capacity expected to be sold before Sydney East goes live.

The company has datacentres in London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Paris and Madrid but is increasingly looking for business aimed at Asia.

“With the Asia-Pacific region at the centre of global growth, Australia is in a unique position as a safe and reliable location from which to service that market,” said executive chairman John Corcoran.

He has also recently announced plans to build new datacentres in Singapore and Hong Kong.- Meanwhile Elastichosts has opened a datacentre in Sydney, with CEO Richard Davies characterising the region as an “obvious choice” for the cloud provider.

“It is developed, has a strong business sector, a mature IT infrastructure, as well as the fact that we share the same language, so we see great opportunities here,” he said.

“As businesses expand, they need scalable solutions that can support this which is creating a growing appetite for cloud-based services.”

London-based Elastichosts also has installations in the UK, Amsterdam and the USA’s Silicon Valley, along with a new datacentre in Hong Kong.

NBN Satellites Set To Fly

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NBN says it will launch the first of its long-awaited two new satellites into orbit in October, with Comms Minister Malcolm Turnbull describing the announcement as a “game changer”.

The first of the two satellites, dubbed Sky Muster, will be launched from French Guiana on October 1. Turnbull said this would prove “a huge step forward for those living in regional and remote Australia”.

More than 200,000 homes and businesses are set to be covered by the 6400kg satellite. Current NBN services delivered via aging Optus satellites have been severely limited and sometimes troublesome.

The second NBN satellite will be launched later next year to boost capacity to service users in regional and remote areas.

The ka-band satellites will deliver NBN services at peak speeds of up to 25 megabits per second, regardless of where people live.

Google Paid Motorola $2.6bn For Good Will

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Google is said to have paid a total of US$12.4 billion in its deal to acquire Motorola Mobility – considerably more than the US phonemaker was worth, according to some financial pundits.

In regulatory filings Google says that $2.9 billion of the purchase price accounted for Motorola’s cash, while $730 million went to customer relationships and $670 million to other net assets.

The largest percentage of Motorola’s value, according to Google, was the $5.5 billion in “patents and developed technology.”

The remaining $2.6 billion went to goodwill.

Dell XPS Takes On MacBook Air

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Dell Australia has whipped the veil from its latest – and possibly snazziest – ultrabook model, dubbed the XPS 13, and aimed at consumers.
Plainly designed – like most ultrabooks – after a long, close look at Apple’s hot-selling MacBook Air, the Dell machine manages to cram its 13-inch screen into a frame that is claimed to be about the size of some 11-inch ultrabooks, thanks to what it describes as a “razor-thin” bezel”. (At 31 by 20.5cm, it is however slightly larger than the MacBook Air at 30 by 19.2cm).


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In basic trim the XPS weighs 1.36kg, has an Intel Core i5 processor, a 128GB solid-state drive and 4GB of memory.


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Image: Mobiletechreview

In Australia it will sell for a recommended $1199, $300 less than a similarly equipped 13-inch MacBook Air. (There’s also an 11-inch MacBook Air for $1099).

Dell is also offering an XPS with a more powerful i7 processor at $1499.