In its unlikely transformation from a regional water utility into Europe’s biggest telecom and media conglomerate, Vivendi has ridden a lot of corporate trends. It may be on the verge of adding another to the list: the spinoff. Vivendi is...
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Photographer: Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg
The logo for SFR, a mobile-phone unit of Vivendi SA, sits on a giant display screen at one of the company's stores in Paris, France.
Vivendi Goes Back to Future With SFR Spinoff Plan
Photograph by Sauce Communications via Bloomberg
A chicken soup dish with accoutrements is served at Naamyaa Cafe in London
Hungry for Photos: OpenTable Buying Foodspotting for $10 Million
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but photos of restaurant food are apparently worth $10 million. OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation company, is announcing today it’s paying that amount to buy Foodspotting, a smartphone application that lets people share...
Read more »Cox Enterprises Invests $250 Million With Board Member Rackley
Cox Enterprises is investing a quarter of a billion dollars with board member Tripp Rackley, betting the serial entrepreneur will be able to profit from emerging trends in media and technology. Cox Enterprises, the closely held company that includes the...
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Courtesy Fingerprint Cards
Fingerprint-authentication sensors are expected to show up in mobile phones this year.
Mobile Phones With Fingerprint ID Coming This Year
Mobile phones will soon know your touch. Fingerprint Cards, a Swedish biometric-security company, said a Japanese electronics maker plans to introduce mobile phones with fingerprint sensors in the third quarter of this year. The technology, which identifies a person’s unique fingerprint...
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Photograph by George Frey/Bloomberg
Mobile carriers now want customers to manage their megabyte usage, but a startup is pushing a different approach.
Coming to a Mobile Plan Near You: Pay Just for E-Mail or Facebook
It sounds like a high-school math problem: You have 250 megabytes of data left on your smartphone plan. For the rest of the month, you plan to spend four hours a day checking Facebook, e-mail and YouTube. At that rate, will...
Read more »Chinese, Indian Companies Land Largest Mobile VC Investments
With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android dominating the market, it’s easy to think of Silicon Valley as the center of the mobile universe. But when it comes to the industry’s largest venture capital investments during the first half of the...
Read more »MobiTV Boosts Product Line, Plans to Revisit IPO Market in 2013
MobiTV, the software maker that pulled its initial public offering last week, is adding technology that lets users record programs on the go and plans to revisit the IPO market early next year. The company cited “unfavorable market conditions” in...
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Founder of Color Still Has Faith, Partners With Verizon on Android
Bill Nguyen, the founder of the photo- and video-sharing application Color, acknowledges his company has so far been better at grabbing the attention of venture capitalists than actual users. After accepting $41 million from investors for an application that failed...
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Courtesy Tap Tap Tap
Twitter executives talked with Tap Tap Tap, maker of the mobile photo app Camera+, about a possible acquisition.
Twitter Said to Have Considered Buying Mobile Photo App Camera+
Soon after Facebook agreed to pay $1 billion for Instagram, social networking rival Twitter considered acquiring a mobile photo-sharing application called Camera+, two people with knowledge of the negotiations said. Twitter executives held several meetings with Camera+ developer Tap Tap...
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Photograph by David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Zynga faces the challenge of keeping the entrepreneurs it brings aboard from leaving.
Zynga’s Acquired Founders: Where Are They Now?
As Zynga uses part of its $1.8 billion to acquire popular mobile apps and the key talent behind them, one challenge it faces is keeping the entrepreneurs it brings aboard. “The most important component of a deal is the human...
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