sure not all the developers are full time but developer App store payments not telling the full story,
often the actual apps are given away with ancillary revenues/subscriptions paying the bills.
BTW The FT’s iPad Webapp written in HTML5 is great, cutting the App store out of the loop too
Since the app store launched i.e. 4 years ago.
I’d expect the distribution of that $4bn to be extremely uneven, most likely the vast majority of those 466k have not made much money from paid apps.
Ad supported apps might be a different story though. You’d have to plough through the various popular ad networks to see what they’re paying out.
My place is looking to hire QA and Dev resources. Unix/SQL/C++/Erlang Automation etc.#
PM me for details if yer interested
2 interesting articles
Google, Amazon, and Microsoft Swarm China for Network Gear
wired.com/wiredenterprise/20 … n=Previous
Amazon now 1% of the interweb
wired.com/wiredenterprise/20 … zon-cloud/
Apple to create five hundred jobs in cork. I visited the superb glass box in fifth ave n.y. Two weeks ago, and it was booming.
Any concerns that Bord Pleanala will block it due to the impact on the Knocka skyline and cityscape?
Worryingly for the chin strokers in the Bord it’s not clear if it will block the view of the halting estate or council water reservoir.
I believe the halting site is on Apple-owned land- mind you they have come to regret their altruism with stones and bricks being lobbed into their car park (onto employee cars…)!
What’s the bet they’ll have to pay “disturbance money” or whatever to get the residents (can you be a resident in a halting site??) to move.
As the Autonomy takeover story appeared earlier on in the thread and the takeover has now blown up…
Autonomy - Redux.
Lynch is gone, as are a large chunk of the management team, and even though HP is currently a profoundly dysfunctional company some of Megs comments the last few days are startling, even by dot com standards. She is preparing the stockholders for some brutal Autonomy related write downs over the next few quarters. Quite separate from the HP disaster area.
Evidence for the prosecution…
ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2012/05/25/1016901/autonomy-a-postscript/
The sales graph is particular interesting in light of what I wrote at the time…
https://av.r.ftdata.co.uk/files/2012/05/au_turnover.jpg
My guess is that when HP moved in and applied their accounting practices to Autonomy’s financials they found a situation regarding booking sales (and realizing income) that was somewhere between Lucent under Fiorina in the late 90’s (marginally to fully illegal) and Computer Associates under Kumar (absolutely fraudulent). In strict accounting terms Autonomy sales revenue had been at best greatly overstated at worst technically non existent. Booking potential future revenue cash flow in full as actual income in this quarter…etc.etc.
What usually happens when a big guy buys a stinking heap of shit like Autonomy is that those divisions that are straight fraudulent regarding booking sales are shutdown and sold off. So the Interwoven and Vertity product lines will most likely be sold off as they do not fit in to any HP survival strategy and the UK division will be shutdown. In these circumstances the UK division will probably be bought out by former management and will potter along as a small company, $30M plus. Pretty much what it was before it started its debt driven US acquisitions spree.
If the overstating of sales was really as bad as the graph indicates then final HP losses on the deal will be the full sale price. Because Autonomy was never worth (at best) more than revenue. Autonomy will prove to have been the second most expensive high tech acquisition accounting fraud loss. But AOL is still the king. Yeah, sure, marketing expenses can be capitalized. AOL never made a cent profit during its whole existence. That little accounting fraud cost Time Warner somewhere north of $40 billion. So HP’s $10 billion loss on Autonomy is still small change.
In a long running series of missteps and infighting by the board. I suppose while they have the ink to fall back on they can go on another while.
Wow. I was extremely wrong on Autonomy. Would you advise the average investor to avoid the high tech sector altogether, go with an industry index fund or what?
Indeed. Especially if they get rid of the expensive people (who are not management, of course) and replace them by graduates. And then wonder why their services revenues have collapsed as clients avoid their inexperienced idiots like the plague.
Wow 
, Epic fuckup !
The Register has a nice summary, if I were in KPMG or Deloitte’s legal dept I’d be clearing my calender of the next decade or so, because while you might get away with missing a $1B hole in a $10B company’s finances; it’s hard to believe you could miss a $5B hole. Especially when at the time everyone was saying that HP were paying way, way over the odds for the company in the first place.
It amazes me how poor the quality of most acquisitions made by a lot of large IT companies can be.
Seems to be a trend of buying it to stop someone else buying it, but the acquisition often being a big pile of crap that was likely to fold without the buyout.
See. What did I tell you at the time. It was all a fraud…(where is the slightly smug smiley?)
My favorite quote from a HP V.P during the quarterly call recently was that Autonomy income revenue was not “scalable”. Those of you familiar with take overs during the dot com bubble will know exactly what that means. When we got to see the real books it turns out we were had.
It seems my first guess at the eventual write down was pretty much on the mark…
thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?p=533678#p533678
The fact that the loss has been front loaded must mean that there are even bigger write downs from other divisions in the works. They are now living on cash flow and cheap bonds as the company has been negative net worth for some time.
This has been a real tragedy. HP really is the heart of the Valley. A far bigger influence over the decades than all the Apples, Intels etc combined. The local oems are already being badly hit by the implosion of HP. I can see another whole sector of the local economy disappearing over the next few years as HP sells off / shuts down product lines and all the local upstream suppliers disappear.
Apple and Intel are fairly irrelevant locally but HP is vital. Its a bit like Boeing and Microsoft in Seattle. They may have the same orders of magnitude revenue but Boeing is at least two orders of magnitude more important to the local economy when it comes to employment (direct and indirect) and to local economic impact. If Microsoft shutdown in the morning its main effect would be a collapse of high end property prices. If Boeing shutdown, there would be no local economy to speak of. HP is not quite that important locally but its is the single most important company in the Valley.
This is far far worse than the early 90’s when David Packard had to step in to save the company the last time the company almost died from self inflicted wounds. By this stage I think only a Gerstner could save HP from the oncoming train-wreck.
That was precisely my first reaction too. 
Excuse my language folks, but honestly, how the fuck did HP’s auditors/accountants fail to spot this ?
Is it in any way possible they issued warnings or concerns, but HP decided to proceed nonetheless ?