Hi-fi, hi-def audio solutions could find their way into future laptops following the introduction of a new family of high-fidelity high-definition (HD) audio codecs.
David Richards
Tens Of Thousands Of Australian Adulterers Face Being Exposed After Hack
Tens of Thousands of Australian adulterers are waking up today to discover that the confidential details they gave to infidelity website AshleyMadison.com have been hacked.
Overnight it was revealed that digital extortionists are holding the sexual profiles of potentially 37 million adulterer’s hostage including tens of thousands of Australians.
On the front page of their Australian site they say ‘As seen on A Current Affair, Sydney Morning, Herald, Kerrie-Anne, Herald Sun, and The Australian.
Ashley Madison is the world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters
According to Company sources the UK based website has over one million registered subscribers in Australia. 30% of those are believed to be females.
With a slogan like “Life Is Short. Have an Affair” and 37 million users, observers are claiming that it was only time before the web site was hacked.
The culprits are calling themselves “the Impact Team” and say that if Avid Life Media, which owns Ashley Madison, doesn’t take the site down, they’ll leak all of the data they collected on the service’s servers.
The Impact Team hackers assert that Ashley Madison’s “Full Delete” feature, which claims to remove all identifying data from company servers for $19, doesn’t actually work.
Krebs reports that the Impact Team wrote in a manifesto, “Full Delete netted ALM $1.7mm in revenue in 2014. It’s also a complete lie.
Users almost always pay with credit card; their purchase details are not removed as promised, and include real name and address, which is of course the most important information the users want removed.”
Not that the hackers are exactly on the side of Ashley Madison’s users. “Too bad for those men, they’re cheating dirtbags and deserve no such discretion,” the group wrote.
In a statement, Avid Life Media said:
We apologize for this unprovoked and criminal intrusion into our customers’ information. … We have always had the confidentiality of our customers’ information foremost in our minds, and have had stringent security measures in place … At this time, we have been able to secure our sites, and close the unauthorized access points.
They added, we are working with law enforcement agencies, which are investigating this criminal act. Any and all parties responsible for this act of cyber-terrorism will be held responsible.
Bloomberg said ‘In this case, millions of people who were stepping out on their spouses-and hoping and praying today that the hackers don’t dump their philandering secrets online-are discovering a serious breakdown in their operational security: They used personal credit cards to pay for the service.
Most people don’t think about it when they swipe a credit card or give the number to an online retailer, but the transaction actually reveals quite a bit about you.
First and foremost: your name. In the AshleyMadison hack, those responsible are threatening to expose data that include payment information linked to painfully sensitive details from users’ profiles.
Those profiles contain the findings of an extensive survey given to new AshleyMadison users asking them to outline their reasons for being on the site and their most secret sexual fantasies.
AshleyMadison boasts on its homepage that it is has more than 37.6 million anonymous members. It also touts that it is the leading dating service for “discreet” sexual encounters for married people.
Yet while it offers methods for paying fees anonymously, many people apparently didn’t use them. And despite the site’s assurances about privacy and discretion-including about how charges will show up on customers’ bills-it’s of little use if the data are linked on the backend in a way that hackers or malicious insiders can steal and leverage.
After Dropping $4.4 Billion, Microsoft Is Having Another At Trying To Sell Windows 10 smartphones.
After dropping $4.4 Billion, trying to prop up their struggling smartphone business by buying Nokia, an already dying phone brand, Microsoft is set to have another crack at trying to get traction in the mobile market with two new Windows 10 smartphones.
This is despite the fact that consumers have overwhelmingly rejected a Windows OS based devise in favour of Android and Apple iOS devices.
Currently Microsoft has less than 5% share of the smartphone market.
The new models that Microsoft is set to launch in Australia include the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL these models will ship with Windows 10 natively, they are tipped to be launch at the same time as Microsoft open their new store in Australia.
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Microsoft officials told ChannelNews that new Lumia models running Windows 10 would be ready for the Australian market by around “October”.
Juniper Research analyst Sam Smith said late last week that the new 950 device will probably run a 64-bit Snapdragon 808 processor, with the 950XL running the more powerful 64-bit Snapdragon 810 processor.
“We expect a short-term uptake of Windows Phones, based on the new features that Windows 10 offers,” Smith told the US edition of Computerworld via an email.
“However, any increase in Windows phones overall will be slow, as it will take time for the app ecosystem to accelerate for developers to incorporate another OS on top of the Android/iOS duopoly.”
Without that ecosystem, he added, “consumer adoption will be reluctant.” In other words, universal apps will “hasten any migration of consumers from iOS and Android,” he said. “But if the main body of Windows Phone are simply iOS/Android ports, there is little software-based incentive to switch. If universal apps for Windows on mobile have unique capabilities, then they will have stronger appeal.”
The new devices will not support the new Continuum feature of Windows 10 which several analysts claim is “plain dumb”.
Continuum delivers the ability to plug a device into a keyboard and use it as you would a desktop.
Not providing Continuum support in the Lumia 950 “would be a monumental misstep for the new OS, to have a flagship device unable to run one of the OS’s headline features,” Smith added.
Chinese technology website IT Home, uses the codename “Talkman” for the 950 and “Cityman” for the 950 XL.
The 950 according to manufacturing sources in Asia will have a 5.2-in. display, 3GB of memory, 32GB of internal storage with a microSD slot for storage expansion, a 3,000mAh removable battery and support for LTE wireless.
The 950XL will have many of the same features as the 950, but with a larger 5.7-in display and 3,300mAh removable battery.
There are also rumours that Microsoft will release a high-end smartphone with a front-facing LED flash.
Overall, smartphone makers shipped 338 million smartphones globally to retailers in the second quarter, an increase of 16%. Apple continued its record-breaking streak with 47.5 million iPhone sales in the quarter.
Other Chinese smartphone makers generally saw shipments rise, with Huawei seeing 50% growth and Xiaomi increasing 33%. LG, based in South Korea, however, saw a 3% decline Computerworld reported recently.
LG Refuses To Say Which “Advanced Component” In Their Urbane Smartwatch Has Failed.
LG’s Urbane 2nd Edition smartwatch recall is shrouded in mystery with LG Electronics claiming that the problem relates to “image quality” but they refuse to elaborate on the precise issue.
The South Korean tech giant has revealed that the issue which appears to have gone undetected during what LG claims was “months of testing” was only discovered after the product went on sale.
Last week, LTE pulled the world’s first LTE-capable Android Wear smartwatch from store shelves, citing hardware issues.
However, the company has now released a statement, which reads as follows:
“For competitive and supplier relations reasons, we are not in a position to communication the specifics of the issue that led to this decision.”
 Click to enlarge |
It continues: “However, what we can share is that the hardware issue was related to a new advanced component that we had incorporated in the device that had never been used in an LG wearable device before.”
LG refuses to explain what the “advanced component” is or what it does.
LG added: “During aggressive testing over thousands of hours under severe conditions, it was revealed that this component failed to meet LG’s quality standards and could potentially impact our image quality over the life of the device.”
“It is, simply, an issue that might affect the user experience of the LG Watch urbane 2nd Edition over the long term,” LG’s statement said.
COMMENT: Are Kogan’s Numbers Kosher? Because Some Of Them Don’t Stack Up
Ruslan Kogan the CEO of Kogan.com brags about “micromanagement” and getting things “just right”, so why is it that he has not corrected a lot of past claims about his wealth and revenues.
During an interview before a live audience for Startgrind.com Kogan some years ago he said “I cannot have the wrong message go out”.
He said that he had an anal attitude to “getting things right”.
However, a search of the internet reveals hundreds of stories about the alter ego Ruslan Kogan including several one on one interviews, where his so called wealth and revenue claims for Kogan.com don’t stack up where compared to the latest figures released to potential investors.
This is the same guy who claims that he often has to” corrects his own staff” over content issues on his own web site via emails at 3.00am in the morning.
Now Kogan is running around investment Companies, in the hope that he can raise capital for an IPO, he believes that his online Company has a bright future, hover some savvy investors don’t agree.
Dean Fergie a Director Cyan Investment Management said Kogan.com was a well-known website, but he passed because “on the financial metrics it didn’t stack up”.
“The bottom line profit in 2016 is going to be less than $1 million or $2 million, so it’s on a 150 times trailing PE,” Mr Fergie said.
“We think the valuation is quite excessive given the business doesn’t have a great history of profitability and we think the online landscape is becoming increasingly competitive.
Kogan had revenues of $200 million in the 2015 financial year (FY15) and is forecasting sales of $201 million in FY16 and $241 million in FY17. That’s a big jump in sales from FY16 to FY17 – often called a ‘hockey-stick’ forecast.
By comparison, JB Hi-Fi had sales of $3.7 billion in FY15 and expects FY16 sales to be around $3.9 billion. JB Hi Fi online sales were 2.4% of total sales, or $89 million.
Online sales at JB Hi Fi are rapidly growing and were 3% of total sales for FY16 up to the end of March 2016.
At that rate, online sales should be circa $117 million in FY16. So Kogan has higher online sales than JB Hi-Fi, but JB Hi-Fi’s online sales are growing faster (32%).
Harvey Norman had sales of just over $6 billion in FY15.
According to a recent prospectus put out by Kogan advisors, Kogan.com made a loss of $300,000 last year while this year he is forecasting a $400,000 profit.
There was also no mention of why Kogan had been forced to close down their UK web site after bragging about it’s success in the past.
Magically revenue is forecast to increase to $241.2 million for the 2017 financial year despite expected pressure from Aldi, JB Hi Fi, Winnings Appliances Online, Harvey Norman and The Good Guys, in that same period Amazon could launch in Australia in a move that some observers claim “could smash Kogan sales”.
EBITDA is forecast to jump 138 per cent to $6.9 million in 2017 and net profits are expected to rise six-fold to $2.5 million.
The prospectus also claims that Kogan.com has recorded positive earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for 10 years, with EBITDA forecast to come in at $6.9 million for the 2017 financial year.
Kogan.com will be selling approximately 28 million shares at a price of $1.80 each, with offers opening on the June 17.
The retailer plans to list on the Australian Securities Exchange by July with an expected market capitalisation of $168 million.
What is also not disclosed is whether the numbers in the prospectus are based on documents filed with the Australian tax office or the Australian Companies and Securities Commission.
Kogan and his business partner David Shafer will initially pocket around $15M from the inital capital raising.
Unlike Kogan, the 30-year-old, David Shafer has almost no public profile.
He rarely gives interviews and shows few tell-tale signs of extreme wealth. Despite this, BRW estimates his personal fortune at $75 million.
The big question that potential investors in Ruslan Kogan’s and David Shafer’s kogan.com business are now asking is ‘what information is actually right”.
Ruslan Kogan, the front man for the business suffers from verbal diarrhoea and loves to brag about his poor down trodden start in life and his sudden fame and wealth.
In 2010 Career Confessions did a one on one interview with Kogan who said that back then he had sold over 550,000 products directly to Australian and international customers through its websites, www.kogan.com and www.kogan.co.uk.
They also said that Kogan was set to record $150m+ in sales in 2011-2012 and remains one of Australia’s fastest growing companies.
This means that between 2012 and 2015 Kogan only managed to grow revenues by $50M or at best by $16M a year.
This is despite Kogan bragging to several journalists that he was already achieving $1M a day” revenues.
In October 2010 Ruslan Kogan appeared on the Channel 7 Sunrise show where the interviewer said that he was already worth $30M. Kogan made no attempt to correct the journalist.
In another interview with the ABC TV program Business Today, Kogan claims that “all” of his products are designed in Australia and then manufactured in China with components sourced by him.
Investigations by ChannelNews reveals that Kogan is buying off the shelf TV’s from two factories, Konka and MTC.
According to sources both these Chineae Companies that Kogan is buying TV’s from design and manufacture their “own TV’s” for house brand labelling.
Kogan who loves telling anyone who will listen that he founded kogan.com in 2006 in his parents’ garage, selling private-label televisions sourced directly from Chinese factories and smartphones and tablets sourced from grey markets has told StartGrind during his video interview that he deals with over 300 Chinese factories.
Tempo who supply Aldi and several leading retailers including Harvey Norman, Bunnings, JB Hi Fi with thousands of consumer electronics goods, as well as house brand goods and appliances, deals with less than 30 Chinese Companies and they have revenues of over $500M.
In an interview with Bloomberg in March 2016 the publication claims that Kogan had estimated this year’s revenue, 2016, would top $356 million which is $156M short of what his prospectus issued three months later revealed.
None of the claims made by Kogan have been corrected by publishers or by the micromanaging Ruslan Kogan who appears to be anal about “accuracy”.
Bloomberg also claimed that Kogan holds 80 percent of his private company and has a net worth north of $250 million, ranking him among Australia’s wealthiest young entrepreneurs.
David Shafer his CFO actually holds 30% of the shares in Kogan.com and after the float he and Kogan will own 69.2% of the Company.
Kogan and Shafer, who is the chief operating officer and chief financial officer, will be entitled to sell part of their combined 69 per cent stake 14 months after the IPO, and 50 per cent two years after the float.
But the big question is where did all of Kogan’s so called personal wealth come from and how did he let so many journalists report the wrong revenues for Kogan.com.
Kogan use to own a Company called Milan Direct but he sold out of this business last year to a Company called Temple & Webster who agreed to pay under $20 million in cash.
Milan Direct was established by Dean Rambler and Kogan. Kogan is believed to have pocketed less than $10M out of the deal and even then he may have had to pay Capital Gains Tax of over $1M.
The Company is believed to have only been making a “marginal” profit when sold to Temple & Webster.
In recent years kogan.com has expanded into general merchandise and services such as mobile and travel. It now claims to be the largest pure-play online retailer in Australia, with 52 million visitors to its website a year and 621,300 unique customers.
During an interview with Peter Munro at ExecutiveStyle, on Apr 8, 2012 Kogan claimed that his net worth back then was $62M, he reckoned that he had tried about 20 businesses – including web design and mobile phone repairs – before starting his namesake company in 2006.
Only 12 months earlier 2011, BRW reported that Kogan had a personal worth of $29 million, they even added him to their annual Young Rich List.
So where did the margin jump in worth come from as Kogan’s value is out of proportion to his personal wealth.
In its first full year of operation, Kogan turned over $250,000. The next year (2007-08) revenue had reached $3.7 million. In 2008-09, it climbed to $8 million and in 2009-10 topped $12 million.
Kogan’s partner David Shafer a lawyer told a banking publication that Kogan’s first quarter 2010-11 revenue was up 48 per cent.
Then in 2013 Ruslan Kogan told the AFR that he was fielding formal approaches for a potential stake in the business, in a bid to reach $2 billion turnover by 2017.
Kogan bragged that he planned to surpass the slowing consumer electronics business of Harvey Norman’s Gerry Harvey who privately described Kogan in terms I cannot describe in this story.
Kogan at the time said that the value of his Kogan business was more than $400 million.
By this stage his personal wealth had climbed to an estimated $145 million according to BRW’s 2012 Young Rich List.
What BRW did not disclose is where this sudden wealth came from or how they had calculated Kogan’s wealth as his business only managed $1.8M profit in the 2012-2013 financial year.
Priced at $1.80 a share, Kogan.com will have a market capitalisation of $168m on listing not the $400M that Kogan was bragging about back in 2013 to the AFR.
Kogan will retain about 50 per cent of the public company and Mr Shafer just under 20 per cent worth about $32m.
It’s also been revealed that investor funds will go towards paying down $4m in debt the company accrued over recent years.
Shafer who has played a key role in establishing Kogan’s unusual product financing model, whereby the money customers pay for some products is used to fund their manufacture and distribution.
“That is the reason we have been able to grow so substantially,” he says.
Shafer, claims that his wealth is tied up in the business, meaning his $75 million fortune remains in “paper form”.
He claims profits are consistently reinvested in the business and neither Kogan nor Shafer takes a wage. Shafer describes their remuneration arrangements as being on an “as needs” basis.
This means that in two years’ time that if Kogan.com fails to achieve growth and the shares tank as they have done with SurfStitch and Temple+Webster and as they did with Dick Smith, Kogan and Shafer’s personal wealth will also go in the same direction.
In the interests of full disclosure what ChannelNews would like to know is what is Mr Kogan’s actual worth is today. He loves throwing out challenges so I have one for him.
Why did you close down your UK operation?
What calculations are used to calculate his “Net Worth”?
How much property do you own?
What shareholdings do you own?
Do you operate any of your businesses via a Hong Kong or any other tax haven?
How much money do you and Mr Shafer expect to take out of the floated Company if any as salaries in 2017?
Did BRW get your personal wealth right in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and if so what were the numbers based on and what proof is there to support your personal wealth.
Samsung Fuel Cell Breakthrough
Samsung claims it has achieved a fuel cell breakthrough that delivers them a significant performance advantage over Japanese rivals Toshiba and NEC.
Samsung claims that it has developed a notebook fuel cell which lasts twice as long as rival systems from Toshiba and NEC. They also It’s lighter and slimmer too.
Samsung claims that their fuel the cell squeezes 200 Watt hours of energy out of each litre of fuel it consumes. This they say beats the 100-130Wh per litre energy densities claimed by the likes of Toshiba and NEC – both Japanese companies – for their own notebook fuel-cell prototypes. The problem for Samsung according to the latest IDC figures due to be released later this week is that their notebooks are failing to sell with the manufacturer slipping from where they were last quarter.
The Samsung cell measures 23 x 8.2 x 5.3cm and weighs under 1kg, the company said. But while it’s more compact that rival fuel cells, according to Samsung, it still represents quite a chunky addition to the back of anyone’s notebook. The cell contains around 200 cubic centimetres of methanol fuel. Samsung said it yields up to 50W, with an average output of 20W. It can run for 15 hours. The company hopes to put the fuel cell into commercial production in 2007.
Like other methanol fuel cells, the Samsung system uses a catalyst to react methanol and water at the positive electrode. This produces Hydrogen and electrons, which combine at the negative electrode with oxygen to create water. The cell has to transfer some of the water back to the anode to continue the reaction and suck the Hydrogen across to the cathode to enter into the water-producing reaction. The cell also produces carbon-dioxide.
Acer On A Roll
Acer is tipped to snare the #3 notebook slot in the world foillowing record global sales. In Australia Acer is powering ahead with stock availability the only issue that will slow it.
Acer has reported record monthly consolidated revenues of $2.2 billion for September, with industry sources now predicting that the company stands a good chance of becoming the world’s number four notebook vendor this year and number three next year. In Australia they are #1 in notebooks with GFK figures showing that Acer may have snared the #1 slot for LCD TVs in the last quarter.
Acer said its September consolidated revenues increased almost 50% from the $1.3 billion it reported for the same period one year earlier due to strong sales in Europe, the US, the Asia-Pacific region, and Greater China. The latest company record represents a 20% rise from August’s $1.07billion.
Accumulated consolidated revenues for the first three quarters reached $8.43 billion, which represents a 38.3% rise from one year-earlier, and the company has achieved 75% of its revenue goal for this year.
Compared to its September revenues last year, Acer said its revenues in Europe grew 55%, while sales grew 157% in the US, 65% in the Asia-Pacific region and 56% in Greater China.
Sources with Taiwan’s notebook makers estimated that Acer will ship 6.2-6.5 million notebooks this year, taking the world’s number four position from Lenovo, which is expected to ship about six million units.
Although Toshiba will remain third this year with shipments of 7-7.5 million units, the sources said the Japan vendor is expected to lose its position to Acer next year. Judging from orders that the two vendors have placed for next year, Acer and Toshiba are expected to ship 9-9.5 million and 8-8.5 million units in 2006, respectively, the sources added.
HP OZ Reports Record $58M Loss After Being Hit With $3M For Misleading Consumers
EXCLUSIVE: Hewlett Packard Australia, which was ordered by a Federal Court judge on Friday to pay a $3M fine and $200,000 in legal costs for misleading consumers, has reported a massive $58,238,000 loss for 2012.
What is not known at this stage is whether HP’s consumer PC division, which the US company was looking to sell 12 months ago, was a significant contributor to the losses. IDC reported that their PC market fell over 20 percent last year in Australia.
Also unknown is which Australian executives made the decision to engage in misleading consumers and whether there will be any personnel fallout from the Federal Court decision.
According to documents filed with the Australian Securities & Investment Commission, HP Australia went from a profit in 2011 of $134M to a loss of $58M in 2012. A contributor to the loss was a $30M tax liability.
Sale of goods revenue in 2012 slumped from $2.58 billion in 2011 to $2.18 billion.
Also slumping was finance revenue, which fell from $6.3M to $5.16M.
Despite losses and a fall in revenue, wages and salaries at the company rose by 80 percent, from $440M to $754M.
Marketing costs also fell from $38M to $32M. It is not known how much of this expenditure was co-op dollars attributed to retailers selling HP products.
The Federal Court slapped Hewlett-Packard with the $3 million fine after a lengthy investigation by the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, which concluded that HP management engaged in a “widespread and systemic” process that resulted in hundreds of consumers being misled by the Australian subsidiary.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims said it was an important case. “The misconduct was widespread and systemic from a very large multinational firm.”
Rather than face court, where evidence would have been presented in an open court, HP Australia chose to negotiate a settlement. The court found that HP gave clients misleading advice on their consumer guarantee rights.
According to ACCC sources, HP management involved in marketing HP PC products in Australia instructed HP call centre personnel to tell customers that products purchased online could only be returned to the company at its sole discretion, which was also how it determined product remedies.
HP retailers have also been implicated in the companies’ misleading conduct.
Consumers were told that they were required to have their product repaired multiple times, before being entitled to a replacement.
Another false claim was that the warranty period for HP products was limited to a specified express warranty period.
The ACCC initially instituted proceedings against HP on October 16, 2012.
The year 2013 is not looking any better for HP, after research group IDC reported that the Australian PC market had declined 21 percent in the first quarter of 2013, compared to the same time last year.
HP took the top slot in the Australian PC market in the first quarter of 2013, with a 19 percent share.
IDC is forecasting a further decline of 15 percent across the Australia and New Zealand markets.
The announcement that HP had deliberately engaged in a process of misleading consumers and had been fined $3M after a series of discussions with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission was made late on Friday afternoon.
It is not known whether HP proposed a Friday afternoon announcement to the ACCC in an effort to minimise the PR fallout from the Federal Court decision.
Late on Friday, neither HP, nor their PR company, refused to supply a spokesperson for the company.
Shortly after calling HP and PR company Burson Marsteller, SmartHouse got a spin statement from Biana Harkovskaya, Acting Media Relations Manager HP Enterprise Business, South Pacific.
Receptionists at both HP and Burson Marsteller said they had been instructed to take the names of media personnel.
JB Hi Fi PC Sales Up As PC Market Tanks
PC manufacturers in Australia are concerned that the new Microsoft 10 OS will not give them the lift that the industry needs after PC sales fell somewhere between 9.5% and 11% in the last quarter.
Beating the downturn is JB Hi Fi who before their “quiet” period reported strong PC growth especially for Lenovo and Acer PC’s.
PC sales in the second quarter suffered their sharpest decline in two years, according to data released by research firms Gartner and IDC.
Manufacturers shipped 68.4 million PCs in the second quarter, a 9.5% drop from the same quarter in 2014, according to Gartner. Based on IDC’s data, the market saw a 11.8% year-over-year decline in the second quarter of 2015, with worldwide PC shipments of 66.1 million. IDC doesn’t count tablets in its figures.
Analysts attributed three factors to this decline: companies reducing PC inventory in anticipation of Windows 10; weak exchange rates effectively making PCs more expensive; and unusually high PC sales last year because of Microsoft phasing out support for the Windows XP operating system.
Over the weekend Toshiba teamed up with Harvey Norman to offer several cheap notebook deals with the big retailer using TV and catalogues to promote the notebooks due to poor Toshiba notebook sales across their network.
Lenovo maintains a strong lead in the latest numbers with a market share of nearly 20%, selling 13.5 million units in the second quarter, based on Gartner’s numbers.
But the Chinese company also experienced a 6.8% shipment decline over the same quarter last year – its first decline since the second quarter of 2013.
At both Harvey Norman and JB Hi Fi Fi Lenovo has increased their share of the consumer notebook market.
Apple saw the biggest growth out of any PC vendor. Worldwide shipments for its Mac computers jumped 16.1% to 5.1 million units in the second quarter over the same quarter last year, according to IDC. The research firm said Apple may be benefitting from uncertainties surrounding Microsoft’s Windows 10 with tens of thousands of consumers switching to the iOS from Apple as opposed to a free Windows 10 upgrade.
Globally Acer PC shipments declined by 20% in the second quarter from the previous year, according to Gartner – and by 27%, according to IDC’s count.
Many in the PC industry are expecting the impending release of Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system to help spur sales in the second half of this year. But even though Windows 10 is coming out on July 29, analysts don’t expect the new operating system will be enough to bring growth back to the industry this year. Gartner expects shipments to decline 4.4% overall in 2015. Because Windows 10 is a free upgrade for existing Windows users, IDC expects many of these users will stick with their current PCs rather than buying a new one.
Analysts expect the PC market to stabilize in 2016.
Big W Sale On The Cards As Investors Look At Rebranding + New Categories
A leading fund manager has said that Woolworths should ditch its struggling Masters and Big W brands, the recommendation comes as at least two funds approach Woolworth’s management about the acquisition of the Big W department stores.
ChannelNews was told earlier this week in London, that one well known Sydney fund recently met with financiers in London to discuss the raising of capital for a tilt at the Big W chain of stores.
As part of the discussion the concept of rebranding the stores and expanding the categories was discussed.
Hamish Douglass, the founder of Magellan Financial Group has said that Woolworths will struggle for “some time” as the big supermarket group brings in a new management team, he recommends that Woolworths sell their struggling Bi W stores.
ChannelNews understands that one finance group believes that they can turn the Bi W business around by expanding home wares, consumer electronics and appliances while also selling budget clothing and toys.
Earlier this week Woolworths home improvement partner Lowe’s Companies injected another $90 million into their loss-making Masters joint venture – the fourth capital injection this year.
Documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission this week show that the Hydrox Holdings joint venture issued 90 million new shares at $1 each – 60 million to Woolworths and 30 million to Lowe’s – on August 28, the same day that Woolworths revealed that losses from home improvement jumped 33 per cent to $224.7 million in 2015.
Big W has been labelled an ‘albatross’ on Woolworths by leading fund manager Hamish Douglass.
Fairfax Media reported that losses at Masters blew out from $176 million to $245 million, while profits at Home Timber and Hardware rebounded 198 per cent to $20.9 million, boosted by recent acquisitions.
“In the long term, we don’t see Big W fitting part of the Woolworths’ portfolio,” says Magellan’s Hamish Douglass.
“Hopefully over the next 18 months, they will get those albatrosses off their plate.”
Woolworths and Lowe’s have invested $3.22 billion into the joint venture, up from $2.9 billion last year, but the pair are not expected to see a return on their investment for many years.
Most analysts believe the business will not break even until 2020 at the earliest.
Masters is generating sales of less than $20 million a store, compared with estimated operating costs of $26 million a store, so losses have increased as more stores have opened.
Earlier this week hardware consultant Geoff Dart, a director of DGC Advisory, said accumulated losses could reach $1.3 billion by 2020 unless Masters changed its format to focus on the home decoration and lifestyle market.