growth

Saverin: Facebook's rapid growth is its 'biggest risk'

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin isn't convinced that the social network's fast-growth strategy is a good one.

Speaking at a conference in Singapore today, Saverin said that while growth is a "huge asset," it can lead to a very real problem that shouldn't be overlooked.

"The biggest risk is growing too fast," he said, according to Bloomberg, who had a reporter at the event. "When you grow too fast, it's hard to iterate, educate."

Facebook is making no secret that it wants to grow as quickly as possible. Last month, CEO … Read more

Skype breaks records, traffic grows by 44 percent

Microsoft's Skype is making some serious headway into the international phone traffic scene. New data (PDF) from telecom market research firm TeleGeography shows that Skype broke records in 2012 by hosting the same amount of calls as one third of the world's phone traffic.

International phone traffic typically grows slowly, for example in 2012 it increased by 5 percent to 490 billion minutes. However, voice and messaging call apps are growing at a breakneck pace. Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent to 167 billion minutes in 2012. This increase is more than twice that of all … Read more

Judge tosses some shareholder suits over Facebook's IPO flop

Things may be looking up for Facebook in the dozens of lawsuits it's facing from peeved shareholders over its botched initial public offering.

U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet ruled in favor of Facebook today and dismissed a group of these cases, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The social network became embroiled in this extensive legal battle shortly after its $16 billion IPO last May. The company's stock opened on the Nasdaq priced at $38 a share and, aside from a slight uptick right at the start, proceeded to plummet in the days and weeks following. Defendants … Read more

Nokia injects $250 million into venture funding

Nokia has committed another $250 million to its venture funding arm, Nokia Growth Partners, the company announced today.

With that sum, Nokia Growth Partners members will be able to invest in "high potential businesses within the mobile ecosystem." The venture capitalists will focus their efforts in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.

China could be an important opportunity for Nokia, so the company has expanded its presence there by appointing former AMD China president David Tang as managing director. Lu Guo, former Keystone Ventures vice president, will act as principal in China.

Nokia's latest fund is its … Read more

Cyber Monday crowned biggest Web shopping day in U.S. history

Cyber Monday this year took the trophy for the biggest online shopping day ever in the U.S.

ComScore reported that U.S. online spending on Cyber Monday 2012 reached $1.465 billion, up 17 percent from a year ago, "representing the heaviest online spending day in [U.S.] history and the second day this season (in addition to Black Friday) to surpass $1 billion in sales."

Breaking the total down, ComScore said that the top category for sales was digital content and subscriptions (up 28 percent), followed by consumer electronics (up 24 percent and "buoyed by … Read more

AT&T: Our iPhone 5 did twice as well as Verizon

AT&T sold twice as many iPhone 5 smartphones as its main competitor, according to mobility chief Ralph de la Vega.

AT&T's closest rival, Verizon Wireless, said last week that it sold 651,000 iPhone 5 units in the third quarter. Based on de la Vega's statement, this means AT&T rang up sales of roughly 1.3 million units. Sprint Nextel reports its results on Thursday.

AT&T further cemented its lead as the preeminent iPhone carrier in the U.S. with 4.7 million iPhones sold in the third quarter. But … Read more

Facebook's user numbers still growing, but how high can it go?

Many people believe Facebook's growth is slowing down, but the raw numbers seem to tell a different story.

The world's largest social network recently celebrated a major milestone: 1 billion monthly active users. It took the company eight years -- or more specifically 105 months -- to reach the historic mark.

The milestone made me curious: is Facebook's growth stalling, or does it still have some fight in it left? Could Facebook reach 1.1 billion users early next year? What about 1.5 billion users in four? Two billion users in eight?

In order to better … Read more

iPhone 5 will drive GDP, chip growth, analysts predict

Just how big is the expected release this Wednesday of the iPhone 5? How about big enough to show up in U.S. GDP growth and account for a sizable chunk of global chip revenues.

Adds to U.S GDP: Let's start with the U.S. economy. "We believe the release of iPhone 5 could potentially add between 1/4 to 1/2 percent-point to fourth quarter annualized [gross domestic product] growth," said JP Morgan in a research note today.

The note continued. "Our equity analysts believe around 8 million iPhone 5's will be sold … Read more

PC growth slowing, and Windows 8 won't fix that soon, says IDC

The traditional PC market is in dire need of some hot new products to drive growth. Too bad that's probably not going to happen soon, according to market researcher IDC.

The worldwide PC market has basically slowed to a crawl this year, IDC says in a report released today. It expects just 0.9 percent growth this year, the second consecutive year of growth below two percent.

While citing the usual macroeconomic culprits -- slowness in Asia and mature markets -- the report said consumers are "considering spending on other products like media tablets and smartphones" while … Read more

Facebook's U.S. growth eases on the brakes

Those days of users spending countless hours on Facebook, poking, posting photos, and updating their statuses seem to be ending. And if not ending, they're definitely slowing.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the social network's growth rate in the U.S. has pretty much stopped in its tracks. However, this must be taken in the context of Facebook's stupendous growth since its inception eight years ago -- up front the numbers don't look that bad, but studied more closely it could look troublesome for the social network.

Unique visitors to the site were up 5 … Read more