Friday, July 29, 2011

Apple holding more cash than USA

Apple now has more cash to spend than the United States government.

Latest figures from the US Treasury Department show that the country has an operating cash balance of $73.7bn (�45.3bn).

Apple's most recent financial results put its reserves at $76.4bn (�46.9bn).

The US House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill to raise the country's debt ceiling, allowing it to borrow more money to cover spending commitments.

If it fails to reach an agreement, the federal government is likely to hit its $14.3 trillion (�8.7tn) dollar limit.

The United States is currently spending around $200bn (�122bn) more than it collects in revenue every month.

Apple, on the other hand, is making money hand over fist, according to its financial results.

In the three months ending 25 June, net income was 125% higher than a year earlier at $7.31bn (�4.6bn).

Spending spree

With more than $75bn (�35.8bn) sitting in the bank, there has been enormous speculation about what the company will do with the money.

"Apple keeps its cards close to its chest," said Daniel Ashdown, an analyst at Juniper Research.

Industry watchers believe that it is building up a war chest to be used for strategic acquisitions of other businesses, and to secure technology patents.

Bookstore Barnes and Noble and the online movie site Netflix have both been tipped as possible targets, said Mr Ashdown.

The company may also have its eye on smaller firms that develop systems Apple might want to add to its devices, such as voice recognition.

Apple dipped into some of its reserves recently when it teamed-up with Microsoft to buy a batch of patents from defunct Canadian firm Nortel.

The bidding consortium shelled out $4.5bn (�2.8bn) for more than 6,000 patents.



Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Whitehall's web habits revealed

Belly dancing, Doctor Who and the Roman Empire are just some of the interests of civil servants as revealed by their web browsing habits.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has disclosed the 1,000 sites visited most often by staff while at work.

The BBC website came top, but employees are also spending time apparently shopping, gambling and house-hunting.

A DfT spokesman said personal internet use by staff should be restricted to official breaks.

The details were published in response to a Freedom of Information request and cover the period from January to May this year.

'Leave reality behind'

Many of the websites come as no surprise - Google is close to the top along with a number of newspapers and news blogs. The BBC homepage is number one with 7.4 million hits.

Facebook comes in at 85th, with more than 130,000 hits. Argos is the most regular online shopping destination, but John Lewis, Next and Debenham feature too.

Plenty of sports fans appear to have been sneaking in a cheeky look or two at scores or fixtures - with goonerweb, chelseaafc and espncricinfo - a cricket stats website - all popular.

"Start Quote

Personal use should not detract from staff's performance of their duties"

End Quote Spokesman Department for Transport

Some may also be having a flutter - hence the popularity of oddschecker and bet365 - which get 25,808 and 7,328 hits respectively.

But there are a number of unusual sites which reveal some more unexpected past-times among civil servants.

Coming in at number 385 - with 27,634 hits - is bearsfaction.org.uk - a website run by the Lorien Trust which organises fantasy role-play festivals.

It invites users to "leave reality behind" and "walk amongst goblins, elves and dwarves".

Even more popular, coming in at 115, is etiquettehell.com which gives frustrated sticklers for good manners a forum in which to vent.

Smallworldbellydance.com - a south London belly dancing studio - gets 3,170 hits, while a website for fans of the Roman Empire attracted nearly 100,000.

Some civil servants also seem to be interested in matters of glamour within Whitehall itself.

Sexymp.co.uk - where users get to rank Members of Parliament in order of attractiveness - got 21,477 hits in the five-month period, making it the 465th most popular site.

Meal breaks

The DfT was asked whether it could reveal the amount of time spent on each website, but it said it did not keep accurate figures.

A spokesman said: "Our internet access policy states that personal use of the internet by staff should be kept as short as possible and should not in any event exceed one hour each day made in their own time, e.g. meal breaks.

"We also have measures in place to prevent the inappropriate use of internet by staff, for example in relation to pornographic web sites.

"Personal use should not place excessive demands on ICT [information and communications technology] facilities and should not detract from staff's performance of their duties."

The DfT said two staff had been disciplined during 2009-10 due to "inappropriate internet usage".



Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials