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Silicon Valley to Internet Valley:
High Tech Trends, News & Events

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American Top 10 IT Companies
 

IT Rank	Company	Market Cap 12 February 2012
1	Apple	458.59B
2	Microsoft Corporation	256.53B
3	International Business Machines Corporation	226.79B
4	Google	196.25B
5	AT&T	176.83B
6	Oracle Corporation	143.75B
7	Intel Corporation	135.93B
8	Cisco Systems	106.74B
9	Verizon Communications	106.70B
10	QUALCOMM	104.11B

Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 than Macs in 28 Years.. By Michelle Maisto
Since the April 2010 introduction of the iPad, Apple has sold 55 million of the tablets, Cook shared. Put in context, it took Apple three years to sell as many iPhones, five years to sell as many iPods and 22 years to sell as many Macs. Asymconf's Horace Dediu, plotting these numbers, put things still a different way in a Feb. 16 blog post: "The iOS platform as a whole reached 316 million cumulative units at the end of last year," wrote Dediu. "The iOS platform overtook the OS X platform in under four years and more iOS devices were sold in 2011 (156 million) than all the Macs ever sold (122 million).

Facebook May Be More Expensive Than Google By Lee Spears and Brian Womack.
[Facebook] may be valued at as much as $100 billion in the sale, ... At that level, the company would trade at 26.9 times 2011 sales, ... [can be compared with ] Groupon Inc... went public at a valuation of $12.8 billion, or about 10 times sales in the 12 months through Sept. 30. ... LinkedIn Corp., ...at $4.25 billion, or 14.5 times trailing 12-month sales. Google,... raised $1.9 billion in its IPO [August 19, 2004], ...giving Google a market value of about $23 billion, or about 10 times sales in the 12 months through June 30, 2004.

Facebook IPO filing reveals first look at company's finances By Mike Swift, Peter Delevett, Brandon Bailey and Troy Wolverton.
... The projected $5 billion initial public offering was only half the size many analysts had been expecting, ... Facebook in its IPO filing revealed that it now has 845 million users, nearly half the world's Internet users. And it reported $1 billion in profits on $3.7 billion in revenue last year, making a company once derided for having no business plan one of the Valley's top profit machines. Industry sources expect the stock offering will set Facebook's overall value at $75 billion to $100 billion... The S-1 filing also revealed how dominant founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's control of the company is, with Facebook's structure of two classes of stock ownership and a highly unusual arrangement that gives Zuckerberg 57 percent of the voting power of Facebook stock... acebook first turned a profit in 2009, when it earned $229 million on $777 million in sales, according to the filing. And the company is not hurting for cash. At the end of 2011, Facebook had $3.9 billion in cash and marketable securities, up from $1.8 billion at the end of 2010. The bulk of Facebook's revenue -- 85 percent -- comes from advertising, but a growing portion of it comes from fees through "Facebook Credits," largely those related to processing payments for virtual and other goods purchased on the site... while some 425 million people use Facebook on a mobile device each month, ... Facebook generates virtually no revenue from mobile now, and mobile ads are less lucrative per ad than desktop ads... The number of Facebook employees increased by 50 percent last year, as the company ended the year with 3,200 employees ...

If Silicon Valley Costs a Lot Now, Wait Until the Facebook Update. By Michael Cooper.
Facebook millionaires might drive up real estate prices in the already expensive area of Silicon Valley, some fear.

See also: Home Prices in the US Leading High Tech  Centers:

Source: 2011 Silicon Valley Information and Communications Technologies Study

Why Isn't Silicon Valley in New England?. By Josh Rothman
Writing at his website, Economic Principles, David Warsh offers this surprising explanation:"When MIT declined to tenure him [Robert Noyce, an MIT-trained physicist], Noyce decamped, first to Philadelphia, then to the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, in Mountain View, California. Silicon leadership went with him -- to Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, each of which he co-founded, And eventually to Silicon Valley, centered around San Jose, which the two firms spawned. " / Does this article raise more questions than answers? If so try the following instead: ... From the Gold Mines of El Dorado to the 'Golden' Startups of Silicon Valley

Indian Government aims to create 28 Million Jobs In Electronics By 2020. By Diksha P Gupta
The proposed National Policy on Electronics aims at creating a globally competitive Electronics Systems and Design Manufacturing (ESDM) industry including nano-electronics to meet the country's needs and serve the international market. Commenting on the policy, [Kapil Sibal, union minister for communications and information technology] said, "Information Communication Technologies and Electronics have been contributing significantly to the economic growth of the country and have the potential to script India's future across the economy, society and government. This would epitomise what modern, resurgent and young India is capable of accomplishing. Achievements in the recent past in the IT and telecom sectors have been spectacular and unprecedented in India's history. Yet, it is the future that holds even more breathtaking possibilities." The policy also proposes setting up of over 200 electronic manufacturing clusters. Another important objective of the policy is to significantly upscale high-end human resource creation to 2,500 PhDs annually by 2020 in the sector. / See also: 21st century, hi-tech India: the smartest country on the planet

But maybe a revolving door... could be the new symbol of Silicon Valley. By Mike Cassidy
... over at Hewlett-Packard, Leo Apotheker was shown the door, just about the time he found the executive washroom. He started his tenure in November 2010 dogged by questions of why he wouldn't appear in public and in the end, it turns out, he never really showed up. Meg Whitman is now leading the company, the third CEO in just over a year [Mark Hurd, Léo Apotheker, Meg Whitman]. And no, it's not true that the HP operations folks have installed a revolving door on the CEO suite. But maybe a revolving door spinning at the speed of light could be the new symbol of Silicon Valley. / See also:
NDA Experiment Set up by Mark Hurd.
... Can't Find Apotheker

[New York City] Sizing up that dream to surpass Silicon Valley. By Al Barbarino
New York State had a total of 101,280 architectural and engineering jobs as of last May. (Architects accounted for less than 10% of the total.) The figure is only about a third of the 299,280 such jobs in California, according to data from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total number of architectural and engineering jobs in the New York metropolitan area came in at 28,200 in the first quarter of 2011. San Jose, the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley, boasted 49,090 positions, and San Francisco had 43,360. Venture capital New York edged past Boston in terms of venture-capital funding in 2010 when the city received $896 million, compared with Boston's $866 million. For the first nine months of 2011, New York companies, primarily media, entertainment and software startups, attracted $2.2 billion, more than double the figure for all of last year. It's good to be No. 2, but overtaking No. 1 is years away. The nine-month total for Silicon Valley? Just under $8 billion... / See also: New York wants to steal Silicon Valley's innovation crown?

The Chinese want to buy Yahoo!
Alibaba Group, the Hangzhou-based computer company, has retained former Reagan administration Secretary of Staff Kenneth Duberstein's lobbying firm, Duberstein Group Inc., to help ink out a deal between the Chinese e-commerce corporation and the search engine giants. Silicon Valley's Yahoo! owns a 40 percent stake in Alibaba, but the Chinese firm's CEO, Jack Ma, has discussed not just buying out their stake but absorbing Yahoo! as a whole... Washington's relationship with Beijing has been on better terms in the past than it has in recent months, so the move to install Duberstein into the equation could certainly be considered a smart move to make the deal, which is estimated to come at a cost of around $18 billion. The Financial Times reports that major Chinese tech companies have tried to absorb American IT corporations in the past, only to be blocked. Duberstein's pull in Washington could make this deal a done one in a matter of weeks, however.

The next Silicon Valleys? How French, UK govts stimulate the startup scene. By Nur Bremmen
Most countries outside the US want to mirror the success of Silicon Valley, the undisputed king of tech innovation... Nicolas Princen is French President Nicolas Sarkozy's 'digital man'. He has spoken about the ways the French government is stimulating its local startup scene and 'helping startups grow'. The internet economy contributes about 6% to French GDP, he estimates, but affects and enhances more than 80% of the economy. 1) Tax cuts for startups: No taxes are paid for the first four years of a startup's life. 2) The government has created specific tax cuts for innovation and R&D. 3) Launched an open data platform: www.data.gouv.fr. In the UK, the government has invested 9-billion pounds into TechCity, a tech hub for startups... The other things the UK government is doing to boost entrepreneurship is: 1)Created an 'Entrepreneurs Visa' -- an entrepreneur can move to the UK with just 50 000 pounds of investment from an accredited VC or incubation accelerator. 2)The first 10-million pounds of capital gains from a startup gets a tax rebate. 3) There are tax credits for R&D for startups. 4) On the investor side, UK tax payers who put money into early stage companies get tax breaks

IT skills gap prevents UK competing with Silicon Valley...
The IT recruitment website conducted research among 1,300 UK IT pros, which highlighted the extent to which UK IT jobseekers need to skill-up if the Silicon Roundabout is to successfully take on 'The Valley'... Three key steps needed to tackle skills shortage in the UK:

• Encourage more businesses to offer IT apprenticeships (28%)
• Get the Government to invest more in IT degrees and training courses (18%)
• Improve the quality of secondary and further IT education (20%)

For Foreign Entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley on a Boat
Can't get a visa to work in the US? ... [Sunnyvale-based Blueseed Co.] is floating an idea to dock a vessel off the coast of California to give foreign entrepreneurs a chance to start a company on Silicon Valley -- on a ship... This one would accommodate about 1,000 people and be docked 12 miles southwest of San Francisco Bay, in international waters. It would be registered in a country with a reputable legal system, maybe the Bahamas or the Marshall Islands... Residents would be subject to the laws of that nation... Residents would be ferried ashore with temporary business or tourist visas, which are easier to get, to meet with investors, collaborators, partners and others. ... Maritime experts say such an idea is feasible, but very costly. "A good single point mooring costs in the millions of dollars but it could restrain a ship-shape vessel in quite severe storms and in deep water," said Bil Stewart, CEO of Houston-based Stewart Technology Associates, an engineering consultancy specializing in offshore and marine structures. "But it would be prudent if the vessel had its own propulsion if you had a Pacific hurricane come along," Stewart added. [Meanwhile] idea has started gaining steam. Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, announced he would lead Blueseed's financing search... Blueseed wants to raise $10 million to $30 million over the next year and a half. The goal would be to launch in late 2013.

Why Developers Still Target [Apple] iOS Ahead Of [Google] Android By Ed Hansberry
...even though Android out-sells and out-activates iOS phones every day, the total number of iOS devices in the wild still outnumbers Android... [because] it isn't just the number of users, but the type of customers those users are. For the most part, developers are business people. As such, the goal is to maximize revenues while minimizing effort. Targeting iOS today as well as tomorrow is good business sense. Those users tend to be more likely to fork over money for an app, which is why Apple has been able to turn over $3.5 billion dollars back over to developers. Let that number roll around in your head for just a minute... 1.3% of Android apps are paid for, whereas 13.5% of iOS apps are. Assuming that trend holds, it means Android would have to have over 10 times as many devices in use for the developers to be able to look at the market as equal.

New York wants to steal Silicon Valley's innovation crown? ... By Chris O'Brien
... while startups in the New York metro area raised $2.2 billion in venture capital during the first nine months of 2011, Silicon Valley startups raised $8.4 billion. And Silicon Valley had 17 tech and biotech IPOs in 2011, compared to one for New York... New York certainly has some momentum. The number of patent filings by New York City companies has jumped 50 percent in the past decade. Silicon Valley companies like Google, Zynga and Twitter have opened outposts there. And it has a growing startup and venture capital scene. Indeed, in the third quarter of this year, New York eclipsed the Boston area in terms of venture funding... Now the city has plans for nine tech incubators with more to come along, a host of programs to turn those displaced bankers into entrepreneurs and millions of square feet of lab space to encourage the bioscience researchers at its universities to turn its work into startups... [New York City Economic Development Corporation] offer to provide free land and $100 million in infrastructure to convince a major university to build a science and engineering campus in town.

Technology Civil War? South's Tech Sector Thrives By Sasha Bogursky
A growing tech startup scene in the South threatens to unseat the traditional tech meccas of Boston, New York and San Francisco. ... From telecom to Internet security to digital media, Georgia plays a bigger role in technology than most Americans know. Atlanta in particular is a tech mecca, a place where companies launch with starkly different ideologies than their Northern competition. Atlanta's technology community numbers more than 13,000 companies.., employing tens of thousands of Georgians. That stretches from startups to big businesses like AT&T, IBM, Siemens, Cisco and more. The absence of the get-rich-quick venture capital mentality has created a very different culture, born both from necessity and a Southern sense of prudence... Southern businesses look to build companies that provide their employees with healthy lifestyles, something they say stands in stark contrast to Silicon Valley's mentality. "Silicon Valley has more of a culture of working 24/7, where Atlanta is a little more laid back, ... If Silicon Valley isn't for you, Atlanta still provides the infrastructure." Pardot CEO David Cummings told FoxNews.com ... Cummings doesn't see Atlanta as a competitor to Silicon Valley but rather as a different but equally fruitful option for people who want to break into the tech scene.

It's Always Sunny in Silicon Valley By Brad Stone
It was never clearer than in 2011 that Silicon Valley exists in an alternate reality -- a bubble of prosperity. Restaurants are booked, freeways are packed, and companies are flush with cash. The prosperity bubble isn't just a state of mind: Times are as good as they've been in recent memory. The region gets 40 percent of the country's venture capital haul, up from 31 percent a decade ago, according to the National Venture Capital Assn. And the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that growth of the area's job market led the nation, jumping 3.2 percent, triple the national rate... It's tempting to view this latest Golden Age with skepticism, a boom as fleeting and disappointing as the one in the late 1990s, before the dot-com crash. But the strengths underlying the Valley's optimism appear more solid this time around. Google, Facebook, and Twitter each have hundreds of millions of users around the world and, at least in the first two cases, solid revenues. Valley companies that went public this year, such as LinkedIn (LNKD) and Pandora Media (P), have actual profits...

Asia cannot be the next Silicon Valley  By Eileen Yu
In a radio interview with BBC this week, the Apple co-founder [ Steve Wozniak ] dissed Singapore for its lack of creative people because the city-state doesn't tolerate bad behavior. "When you're very structured almost like a religion... Look at structured societies like Singapore where bad behavior is not tolerated [and] you are extremely punished. Where are the creative people? Where are the great artists? Where are the great musicians? Where are the great singers? Where are the great writers? Where are the great athletes?" Wozniak said. "All the creative elements seem to disappear."

Top Ten Reasons Why Large Companies Fail To Keep Their Best Talent
1. Big Company Bureaucracy... 2. Failing to Find a Project for the Talent that Ignites Their Passion... 3. Poor Annual Performance Reviews... 4. No Discussion around Career Development... 5. Shifting Whims/Strategic Priorities... 6. Lack of Accountability and/or telling them how to do their Jobs... 7. Top Talent likes other Top Talent... 8. The Missing Vision Thing... 9. Lack of Open-Mindedness... 10. Who's the Boss?... It's never a one-way street. Top talent has to assume some responsibility as much as the organization. However, with the scarcity of talent -- which will only increase in the next 5 years -- Smart Organizations are ones who get out in front of these ten things, rather than wait for their people to come to them, asking to implement this list.

...European high tech startup scene has improved.
As American venture capital slows, interest in European tech startups remains strong and countries continue to ramp up incentives that benefits researchers and entrepreneurs... Michael Noonan Irish finance minister, announced that the first 100,000 euro of spending on research and development (R&D) would now be allowed to qualify for the existing R&D tax credit. Firms will also be allowed to use some of the R&D tax credit to reward key employees involved in research. Free-floating optimism is a feature of the global fetish for high tech startups but what where can this optimism lead?

Yahoo Battles Brain Drain. By AMIR EFRATI
... Some of Yahoo's 14,000 employees are considering other opportunities as morale declines at the company ... Mr. Cohn joined Yahoo six years ago as a business strategist, ... "If you're not growing, if you're not giving people challenging things to work on, if you're not holding out the promise of creating some personal wealth during one of the frothiest technology markets in modern history, and if your people don't ultimately believe in your ability to deliver across that whole spectrum, you're toast," Mr. Cohn said of Yahoo's challenge in retaining workers ... company executives are bracing for a jump in departures following the holidays and the bonus season, which typically occurs early in the year ..."If you call nine people at Yahoo, you'll get nine calls back," said Ed Zschau, a Silicon Valley recruiter. /  See also: Carol Bartz calls Yahoo board 'doofuses'...

11 things Microsoft should be thankful for in 2011 By Joe Wilcox
... 6. Nokia deal. In February, Microsoft and Nokia announced a distribution deal making Windows Phone primary operating system for the Finnish manufacturer's handsets.... Microsoft's biggest problem developing a mobile operating system is licensing it and in doing so losing control over hardware integration. The Nokia deal gives Microsoft the closest thing to Apple's vertical integrated hardware, software and services approach without making a phone. By letting Nokia take some responsibility for Windows Phone development, Microsoft can assure that at least one handset manufacturer's devices will tightly integrate with its software and services.Then there is Bing. The future of search is mobile. Nokia may be declining, but it's still the world's largest handset manufacturer -- and it will bring Bing everywhere. The first Nokia Windows Phones, the Lumia 710 and 800, hit the streets in November. Nokia would have ranked higher on the list, if the new handsets had shipped in the United States... 4. Android patent licensing. Perhaps Microsoft's strangest business activity of the year is about Google's mobile OS. The company has successfully convinced more than half of Android licensees to pay Microsoft patent fees. The tactic is sheer brilliance. Microsoft essentially attaches a licensing fee to an operating system otherwise with none and collects, too. Meanwhile, related cross-licensing deals protect Microsoft from patent lawsuits in arguably the most important tech category of the decade -- mobile devices.

Watch out, Silicon Valley...  By Dan Crow
Hi-tech companies are springing up every week in London but more must be done to make the UK a powerhouse of innovation... Instead of the British attitude of "avoid failure at all costs", on the west coast [California, USA] you are encouraged to take risks and try new ideas. If you fail, you get up and try again. Failure is recognised as the greatest tool for learning; until you've got a couple of spectacular failures under your belt, people tend not to take you seriously. Winston Churchill said: "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm." That attitude is at the heart of the Silicon Valley culture... Working at a startup company is exciting and nerve-wracking. You don't know whether the company will find success -- indeed most startups fail... When it goes well, it's one of the most invigorating, challenging and exciting things you can do. When it goes badly, it's a lot less pleasant. Closing down a failed company and laying off the people you've worked with is a hard lesson and you come away determined never to let that happen again.

Sean Parker thinks Silicon Valley is in trouble. By Paul Sloan
Sean Parker, a big reason for Facebook's success ... and a now a partner with Founders Fund, thinks Silicon Valley is in big trouble. His beef: Too many angel investors are throwing way too much money--albeit in little drips--at aspiring entrepreneurs who aren't up to the task of building a company... "I don't know how many more years of this we have--maybe it's a year a year or two, max. But eventually this graveyard of dead young companies is going to dramatically exceed the number of companies that Google and Faceook want to buy, at which point that gravy train is over".

Dell Opens Silicon Valley R&D Center
The Silicon Valley site complements Dell's Israel Research and Development Center in Ra'anana and development work done at the company's headquarters in Round Rock, TX. Dell is also investing in new jobs elsewhere across the U.S., in Atlanta; Minneapolis; Nashua, N.H.; Nashville; Oklahoma City; and Round Rock -- communities well known for their highly educated workforces and stable business environments.

New HP Way left bad taste .... By Diana Samuels
Hewlett-Packard Co getting out of the personal computer business would be like McDonald's getting out of hamburgers... Mickey D's is still flipping burgers and HP has flipped its CEO.

Source: Robert Half Technology 2012 Salary Guide

 
Is There Room In Silicon Valley For Another Apple? Yes. By Brian Caulfield
Marketing guru Regis McKenna: "About every 10 years there is a new industry that arises here in Silicon Valley. Of the top 15 companies [in the region], 12 of those companies were formed in the past 15 years, they generate $600 billion of revenues, and employ about three-quarters of the people in Silicon Valley, and they were all entrepreneurial companies 15 years ago. So we continue to see this sort of churning and creating of new industries."

A European Silicon Valley? Careful what you wish for. By  Juliet Mann
London (CNN) -- ... Growing this sector may be painful... Internet entrepreneur Ilya Laurs - whose company Getjar.com has become one of the biggest apps supplier in the world - tells ... "The European set of values in general is pretty much incompatible with innovation. When you think about innovation it is all about trial and error ...  if I hire fast and it doesn't work I will have to fire fast. Try that in France, ... Facebook was not built working nine-to-five, with government regulations of six weeks vacation. Europe needs social security, creativity, family, hobbies and work itself is not in the top set of values for Europeans. It is in America."

Top 10:  Tech's highest-paid executives

Mark Hurd, Oracle: $78.4 million
Larry Ellison, Oracle: $77.6 million
Tim Cook, Apple: $59.1 million
Safra Catz, Oracle: $42.1 million
Thomas Kurian, Oracle: $33.7 million
Peter Oppenheimer, Apple: $29.8 million
Ronald Johnson, Apple: $29.8 million
Bruce Sewell, Apple: $29.7 million
Chuck Phillips, Oracle: $26 million
Sam Palmisano, IBM: $25.2 million

See also:  Hurd tops Ellison on Apple, Oracle-dominated top paid tech execs list,
 NDA Experiment Set up by Mark Hurd.

Microsoft  Smartphone Share Down to 1,5%
Microsoft  Smartphone  closed Q3 2011 with 1.5 percent market share, down from 2.7 percent in Q3 2010.

Apple After Jobs:

Day First:

Apple announces iPhone event for Oct 04 - iPhone 5 launch expected

Apple unveils the iPhone 4S not the expected iPhone 5

iPhone 4S: the joke's on us

With iPhone 4S Hiccup, Apple Opens Windows of Opportunity ...   Apple's lack of news this week may encourage competition. We're already seeing the beginnings of a technology battle in handsets similar to the PC wars of the '80s, which led to faster computers and lower prices. Here's hoping the same thing happens in the smartphone market.

... Second:

iPhone 4S Release Draws Long Lines, ...

iPhone 4S release draws sleepy fans to Apple stores

iPhone 5 release date countdown begins: 4S now past, matter of months ... The iPhone 4S went out the door this weekend. Now the countdown to the release date of the iPhone 5, or whatever Apple ends up calling the sixth generation iPhone, begins.

Smartphones and Tablets Drive Nearly 7 Percent of Total U.S. Digital Traffic
iOS Accounts for Largest Share of U.S. Smartphone and Tablet Devices while Driving the Majority of Non-Computer Traffic... In August 2011, iPads delivered 97.2 percent of all tablet traffic in the U.S. iPads have also begun to account for a higher share of Internet traffic than iPhones (46.8 percent vs. 42.6 percent of all iOS device traffic)... Nearly half (45.9 percent) of tablet owners belonged to households earning $100K and more. 58 percent of tablet owners consumed world, national or local news on their devices, with 1 in 4 consuming this content on a near-daily basis on their tablets.

Social, mobile start-ups lure Silicon Valley capital By Seema Mody
According to business intelligence software company Quid, 2,942 start-ups have raised Series A/Seed Funding so far in 2011, up 25% from the same period last year, 2,942 start-ups have raised Series A/Seed Funding so far in 2011, up 25% from the same period last year.

An Apple without Steve Jobs By Josh Lowensohn
When Apple co-founder Steve Jobs stepped down from his role as CEO two months ago, the immediate question "was what happens to Apple next?" With Jobs' passing yesterday, the company now faces that scenario. From an outsider's perspective, the near-term seems clear. The company says it has a succession plan, which it enacted in August at Jobs' request, installing Tim Cook as CEO... But what people wonder about is what happens years from now, or maybe sooner...

After Steve Jobs, an empty pedestal By Levi Sumagaysay
Jobs was not perfect. He was routinely called a genius, but he also was criticized for being a demanding, sometimes harsh leader. Not all consumers and people in the tech world are enamored with Apple's products or policies. But many will probably agree with this: With Jobs gone, it's hard to imagine any company leader who will be the next to stand on a pedestal so high and for so long.

Steve Jobs's Role in Three IT Revolutions