Citation Index

Nokia will go with Windows Phone 7 as its smartphone operating system. By Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry.   The two companies published an 'open letter' on Nokia's blog which lays out their 'broad strategic partnership'. Here's the key points:
* Windows Phone will be Nokia's 'primary' (doesn't say exclusive) smartphone OS;
* Nokia will use Bing on all its phones from now on;
* Nokia Maps will power many Microsoft services -- this one is interesting; they say Nokia Maps could be used as the maps engine on Bing and be used in AdCenter;
* Nokia will merge its app store with Microsoft's so that Windows Phone has a better developer ecosystem.   111

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Source:Gartner, Inc.

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Nokia considering move to Silicon Valley   By Charles Arthur
Nokia's new chief executive, Stephen Elop, is reported to be considering moving its executives to Silicon Valley, away from their base in Espoo, Finland- yet leaving the research and development arm in its native country.

Update:

• MDe-Finnistration: Nokia to shift HQ to US
Nokia says this year and next will be 'transition years' for the company, whose headquarters will stay in Finland, Elop said, addressing speculation that the company might move to Silicon Valley.

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One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make   By Steve Blank
is not understanding the relationship they have with their investors.  At times they confuse VC's with their friends...Lessons Learned:
* You see one VC, they see 20 CEO's
* Don't confuse your business with your VC's business
* Your interests are aligned if you both see the same path to liquidity
* Don't confuse being friendly with your VC's with VC's as your friend   17

 Russian investor making waves in Silicon Valley  By Chris O'Brien
For the first time in decades, the most influential venture capitalist in Silicon Valley isn't based in Silicon Valley. Yuri Milner, who runs a Moscow-based investing firm called Digital Sky Technologies, has swooped into town and over the past two years rewritten many of the rules of startup investing. DST came out of nowhere to take large stakes in the three hottest Internet startups: Facebook, Groupon and Zynga. But it wasn't just the investments, it was their size, the timing, and their impact that has sent venture capital heads spinning. Then, last month, Milner announced another audacious investment: A partnership to invest in every startup that comes out of Y Combinator, a valley-based startup incubator. Milner, 49, teamed up with local angel investor Ron Conway to launch the Start Fund that will give $150,000 to every one of 43 companies currently at Y Combinator -- without examining their business plans. 'I never even imagined the possibility,' said Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator. 'The idea never occurred to me.'   16

Dice's Tech Salary Survey Results: Silicon Valley 2009-10
(results are for the Silicon Valley area only otherwise noted)

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Facebook is like Google - it wants lots of capital but it doesn't want the oversight that comes with it… By Tom Foremski.

There are some similarities between Google's IPO (Initial Public Offering) and Facebook's attempts at an Initial Private Offering with its recent Goldman deal. The similarity/ is that Google didn't want too much oversight or influence on its management by outsiders, and clearly, Facebook wants the same deal... When Google filed for its IPO in 2004 it raised $1.67 billion, not far off the $1.5 billion Facebook could raise through the Goldman deal. From the beginning it was clear that Google wanted the money but it didn'images/sv_newst want the oversight that comes with being a public company and the influence on management...  Facebook currently holds all the cards and it won't give them up without a fight or without government intervention in the form of new regulations.   14

Apple: The first $1-trillion company? By Tom Petruno
Apple Inc. passed another financial milestone on Monday when its stock market value topped $300 billion for the first time -- at $302 billion, ranking second only to Exxon Mobil  Corp.'s $377-billion capitalization. Now, get ready to hear more predictions that Apple will be the first U.S. company to reach $1 trillion in market value... In March 2000, as the tech mania was reaching its zenith, Cisco's stock market value topped $450 billion, and $1 trillion seemed eminently doable... The tech bubble was bursting, and Cisco was on its way to losing 89% of its market cap by October 2002... Cisco's current capitalization: about $114 billion.  13

Goldman Invests in Facebook at $50 Billion Valuation By SUSANNE CRAIG, ANDREW ROSS SORKIN. The deal makes Facebook now worth more than companies like eBay, Yahoo and Time Warner...For Mr. Zuckerberg, the deal may double his personal fortune, which Forbes estimated at $6.9 billion when Facebook was valued at $23 billion. That would put him in a league with the founders of Google, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are reportedly worth $15 billion apiece. The new money could add pressure on Facebook to go public even as its executives have resisted. The popularity of shares of Microsoft and Google in the private market ultimately pressured them to pursue initial public offerings... people involved in the fund-raising effort suggest that Facebook's board has indicated an intention to consider a public offering in 2012.  12

Hot Trade in Private Shares of Facebook  By PUI-WING TAM And GEOFFREY A. FOWLER
Trading in shares of still-private Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. has surged in recent months, suggesting strong investor interest in some technology start-ups despite a moribund market for initial public offerings... Though the firms remain private, they have shares, and some employees or investors who have received such stock want to cash out. Others want in. The sellers and buyers can be matched through private deals or by exchanges that have sprung up to bring them together... Trading in shares of Facebook has been particularly strong in the past month. The surge began after a big transaction in November, when venture-capital firm Accel Partners, an early backer of the social-networking firm, sold less than 15% of its stake for $517 million, say people familiar with the deal. The deal, some details of which were reported on tech blogs, valued Facebook at around $35 billion, those people say.  11

Local lawmaker makes sure nobody else creates your Facebook page  By Kurtis Alexander
Falsely sourced e-mails, tweets and Web posts have become ubiquitous online, and it's not uncommon for someone to create a Facebook or MySpace account in someone else's name. If this is done to 'harm, intimidate, threaten or defraud,' according to Senate Bill 1411, it will be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. Once just a cruel joke, assuming another person's identity on the Internet and fabricating an e-mail or Facebook account, is no longer a laughing matter.  A state law effective Saturday, authored by Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, makes online impersonation, when it seeks to harm someone, illegal. 'As a Silicon Valley legislator, I'm nothing but enthusiastic about technology. But the question is, is the technology used wisely and appropriately?' Simitian said this week. 'This ('e-personation') is one area where some constraint appeared necessary.'  10

O'Brien: 11 Predictions for 2011
....
3. Hewlett-Packard will buy SAP. This is the deal that has Oracle's Larry Ellison squirming and trying to rip the reputation of HP. Ellison is probably hoping to make HP feel too defensive to try something this astonishing. When I've raised the possibility of this deal, people say, 'Never in a million years.' Ah, but how quickly we forget: SAP got close to the altar with Microsoft just a few years ago. And nobody looks at SAP today and thinks it's a healthier, happier company. Given that HP hired SAP's former CEO, it now has in Léo Apotheker the man who can make this deal happen, and, more important, make it work.... 6. China will have more tech IPOs than the U.S.: While you were sleeping, 41 Chinese companies went public on U.S. stock exchanges this year. Expect to see more China-based tech companies go public in the U.S. than domestic companies....

Silicon Valley Bank to form JV in China
... the company also opened an international subsidiary in Beijing - SVB Business Partners (Beijing) Co Ltd. It also has invested in Chinese companies like Zhejiang Uni-power Guaranty and Zero2IPO Group and other venture capital funds. 3

...  layoffs shrink Silicon Valley total pay, but average pay per job rises  By Pete Carey

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Silicon Valley Venture Investors Lose Taste for Chips By Ari Levy and Ian King
Silicon Valley No Longer Reflects Name... Silicon Valley has lost its appetite for silicon. While venture capitalists are pouring money into social networking, e-commerce and online-game companies, investments in chipmakers are close to a 12-year low... 'There are no lack of ideas, but it's becoming harder and harder to find investors,' said Ken Lawler, a general partner at Battery Ventures in Menlo Park, California, who has invested in chip companies such as MaxLinear Inc. and Calxeda Inc. 'It takes too much money and too much time.' That contrasts with China, whose role as a manufacturing hub for semiconductors is helping it play a bigger role in design and innovation. The country's worldwide share of chip- related patents is expected to rise to 33 percent this year from 22 percent last year, according to a November report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC... First-time venture investments in chip companies accounted for 1.1 percent of total initial funding this year, the smallest category among 16 industry groups tracked by the NVCA.Software companies received the highest amount, with 17 percent.... 1

Tech Revival Lifts Silicon Valley  By PUI-WING TAM
Firms Hire, Expand as Northern California Region Shows Best Signs of Life in State's Ailing Economy