Special Technology Report By: Scott Riley

Techonologies Uprising Market. End Quote

(1888PressRelease) April 14, 2011 - Groupon Inc., owner of the biggest coupon website, said it started an online group-buying service in China as consumers in the world's fastest-growing major economy increase spending over the Internet.

The Gaopeng.com website will initially cover Beijing and Shanghai before expanding to other major Chinese cities, according to the Chicago-based Groupon .

Groupon's Gaopeng.com will face competition in attracting Internet shoppers from Chinese group-buying services including Lashou.com and Meituan.com. Online retail sales in China almost doubled last year to 513.1 billion yuan ($78 billion) and will probably double again in the next two years to 1 trillion yuan.

Groupon, which rejected a $6 billion takeover bid from Google Inc. in December, plans to increase the number of employees at its China venture to 1,000 in three months from 120 staff.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is in talks to acquire a 10 percent stake in Twitter for $450 million.
The Verizon iPhone is available ending AT&T Inc.'s exclusive rights on the device in the U.S.
"The Verizon iPhone 4 closely resembles the original AT&T iPhone 4 in many positive respects, including offering great multimedia functionality, a sharp screen, and the best MP3 player we've seen on a phone."

The iPhone, which first hit stores in 2007, has become Apple's best-selling product. It accounted for 39 percent of $26.7 billion in total sales in the most recent quarter.

"IPhone 4 has a great antenna that allows it to have an amazingly thin design, great battery life and reception," Apple, based in Cupertino, California, rose $5.28, or 1.5 percent, to close at $348.16 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have climbed 72 percent in 12 months.

Google Inc. has stated that it has changed the way the company carries out Web searches to feature more "high- quality" sites, following criticism that its results favored information of little value to users.

The change to Google's algorithms, which it relies on to discern what users want when they search the Web, affects 12 percent of queries, the company said. Google made the change this week, aiming to give higher rankings to sites with original content, in-depth reports or "thoughtful" analysis. "This update is designed to reduce rankings for low- quality sites, sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful." The company has made other changes in recent months aimed at quelling concerns over so-called content farms, which tailor information in such a way that it takes precedence in results.

Google also faces more competition from Microsoft Corp.'s Bing search engine. Google's market share of U.S. queries dropped to 65.6 percent in January from 66.6 percent the previous month.

Earlier this month, Google announced a feature for its Chrome Web browser that lets users block unwanted sites from search results.

Beginning this year, people will be able to point their phones at everyday items like washers and bring them to life on screen, such as in games, advertisements and how-to guides, says Jay Wright, director of business development at Qualcomm.

Qualcomm Inc., the biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, said that cereal boxes, washing machines and children's books will help drive demand for powerful processors for mobile devices.

The market for these specialized apps is projected to grow to $3 billion by 2016 from $21 million last year, according to ABI Research. As demand for augmented-reality surges, so will the need for processors that can handle demanding computing tasks at higher speeds, Qualcomm says. "It's tremendously computational intensive." 'This is something that wasn't possible until we had gigahertz-class processors."

Augmented reality in a phone works by scanning each frame from the camera, looking for a known image by comparing it against a database on the device, then drawing graphics on top of that image, all at 30 frames per second, he said.

The player becomes a virtual photographer who has to take photos before the celebrity gets agitated and attacks. The game's two Lithuanian developers received $125,000, Qualcomm said last week.

While most phones that run Google Inc.'s Android software are capable of running some form of augmented reality software, they aren't powerful enough to deal with programs that recognize more than one object at a time, limiting the uptake of the software until more capable chips come to market.

By making the software free and open to other chipmakers' products, Qualcomm also risks helping its competitors if its processors can't establish a lead in performance.

While games will lead the augmented-reality apps market for now -- because they are the fastest-growing type of mobile apps, eventually the technology will expand to more functions, driven by the advertising industry.

In the future, a shopper might walk down a supermarket aisle and point a phone at items on the shelf. The phone would then display discounts, related ads or product information, he said. Pointing the phone at a children's cartoon book could make an animated character come to life.

Augmented reality will also return to its roots as an instructional tool. The technology was developed for aircraft maintenance, where mechanics would wear special glasses with wiring diagrams projected onto the lenses.

A consumer application of the technology will come in the form of an onscreen guide to everyday devices such as a washing machine. By pointing the phone at the controls, the user would be shown step-by-step-instructions on setting different wash cycles.
"There are some very practical applications for the technology." "We are going to see those commercially available this year."

Telefonica today forecast that sales will grow as much as 2 percent this year.
Telefonica SA, Europe's second- largest phone company, said fourth-quarter profit declined 45 percent because of costs to cut jobs and as domestic wireless revenue slumped amid Spain's economic crisis.

Net income dropped to 1.33 billion euros ($1.84 billion) from 2.44 billion euros a year earlier. Earnings were hurt by a one-time charge of 1.1 billion euros stemming from job cuts, investments in the company's foundation and the re-evaluation of a pension fund in Colombia. Latin America propelled sales up 9.9 percent to 16.46 billion euros, beating analysts' estimates for 16.3 billion euros.

The company today forecast that sales will grow as much as 2 percent this year as it targets a profit margin, based on operating income before depreciation and amortization, or Oibda, in the "upper" 30 percent range. Fourth-quarter Oibda dropped 9.5 percent to 5.41 billion euros.

Atento's fourth-quarter sales rose 29 percent to 454 million euros while Oibda climbed 23 percent to 64 million euros. Atento may be valued at between 1.5 billion euros and 1.7 billion euros, provided that the current level of profitability and revenue growth continues.

Telefonica's fourth-quarter sales in Latin America climbed 20 percent to 7.61 billion euros, while revenue in Spain declined 8 percent to 4.67 billion euros.

Telefonica's 2010 net income climbed 30.8 percent to 10.17 billion euros boosted by a gain related to its 7.5 billion-euro purchase of control of Vivo Participacoes SA, Brazil's largest wireless operator. "Even though Telefonica is more diversified than its peers, it can't get away from the fact that Spain is its main market." "Spain is Telefonica's biggest concern as it'll take a few years until the economy recovers and it's facing increasing competition. This is very difficult to change."

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