Articles about Business

Microsoft reported its Q4 earnings for the year, and the company posted extremely strong results helped in large parts by the performance of its cloud services and Surface business. The company far-exceeded analysts' predictions for this quarter, with revenue of $30.1 billion, net income of $8.8 billion and earnings per share of $1.14.

Microsoft's continued move to the cloud is paying off. Revenue in Intelligent Cloud increased by 23 percent to $9.6 billion, while Azure revenue growth rocketed by 89 percent, and Surface revenue went up by 25 percent as talk turns to the possibility of a Surface Phone.

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Chinese telecoms hardware manufacturer ZTE has had something of a rough ride in the US recently, but having agreed to comply with all of the demands made by authorities, the ban on its US operations has been lifted.

The US had banned American companies from supplying goods to ZTE, effectively crippling its business. Now, having paid $400 million into an escrow account -- on top of its $1 billion fine last month -- the company is operating again, and its Hong Kong-listed shares jumped 12 percent as a result. But the lifting of the ban is far from being the end of this saga for ZTE

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Today Samsung is opening what it describes as the world's biggest mobile phone manufacturing facility. The factory is opening in India as the South Korean giant looks to take advantage of the fastest-growing mobile market.

Located in Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi, the new facility will give Samsung the ability to output handsets at an unprecedented rate -- said to be up to 120 million smartphones a year.

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British firm Micro Focus International is selling its open source SUSE software to the Swedish group EQT Partners. The $2.535 billion deal boosted shares by 6 percent.

SUSE Linux has been in the hands of Micro Focus International since 2014 and it has been running it as a largely independent division, competing directly with the likes of Ubuntu and Red Hat. The acquisition by EQT Partners means that more developers and engineers will be hired to work on the product.

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A report by the Wall Street Journal suggests that Dell could be on the verge of becoming a public company once again.

The deal could be announced as soon as later today and -- if the cited sources close to Dell are correct -- it would see the company swapping the "trading stock" it created when it bought EMC a couple of years ago. It would simplify Dell's current structure, seen by many as overly complicated, and make use of the stock that tracks VMware Inc.

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Brian Krzanich, the CEO of Intel, has resigned after it came to light that he was in a relationship with an employee. Shares in the company dropped 1.3 percent at the news.

Although the relationship was entirely consensual, it was deemed to be a violation of Intel's non-fraternization policy which managers must abide by, and it has been brought to light in the context of the #MeToo movement. The current chief financial officer, Robert Swan, is to become interim CEO until a full-time replacement can be found.

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Logitech makes great hardware for home consumers, including mice, keyboards, and more. The company even sells respected gaming peripherals under its "Logitech G" branding.

Home aside, Logitech also makes excellent business hardware, such as presentation remotes and video conference cameras. Speaking of the latter, today the company unveils its latest such product. Called "Rally," it is a high-end 4K USB cam designed for meeting rooms. It is compatible with many popular services, such as Google Hangouts Meet, Microsoft Skype for Business, and Zoom.

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Following months of talks and rumors, Microsoft has finally officially revealed that it has agreed to acquire GitHub. The agreement sees the company acquiring the code repository for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock.

Microsoft says that GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

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PayPal has announced that it is to buy the mobile payment company iZettle. The announcement came as something of a surprise, as less than two weeks ago iZettle had said that it planned to go public.

iZettle is a Swedish fintech company whose mobile card readers have proved popular with small businesses, as has its ecommerce platform. The $2.2 billion purchase is PayPal's biggest acquisition to date.

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Rumors have circulated for a number of weeks, but now it's official: Walmart has just said it will spend $16 billion buying a controlling sharing in Flipkart, the Indian ecommerce site. The American retail giant fought off a last-minute bid from Amazon.

The deal values Flipkart at $20.8 billion, and will see Walmart taking an initial stake of 77 percent of the company. The remainder of Flipkart ownership is shared between Tencent, Tiger Global and Microsoft, as well as its co-founder Binny Bansal.

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Digg used to carry some major clout on the internet, but this all changed back in 2012 when the site was bought by Betaworks. Now the site has been sold again, this time to an ad-tech company.

Boston-based BuySellAds has just bought Digg's assets and its editorial and revenue teams for an undisclosed amount. The company says that it "plans to streamline Digg and build up its ad stack", which will come as sad news for those who still cling onto a nostalgic image of what Digg used to be.

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