Trainees from different age brackets and all walks of life receive digital literacy training from TESDA. Photo courtesy of TESDA Region VII Facebook page.

The Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) on Tuesday announced a new partnership with software firm Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ: ADSK), a world leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software.

The three-year partnership will offer Philippine students free access to Autodesk education software in TESDA-owned institutions as well as its network of public and private TVET institutions all over the country.

It is seen to advance the learning environment in Philippine technical vocational education and training (TVET) institutions through the use of Autodesk design software.

“TESDA is proud to partner with Autodesk, and supports Autodesk’s vision to help people imagine, design and create a better world,” Secretary Joel Villanueva, director general of TESDA, said in signing the memorandum of understanding with George Abraham, head of education, Emerging Markets at Autodesk.

“This agreement is a testament that leading global software companies such as Autodesk recognize TESDA as a reputable and quality educational institution, and are willing to partner with us for educating and developing future industry leaders in Philippines,” Villanueva added.

For his part, Abrahan said Autodesk is “excited to partner with TESDA.”

“Through this MoU, we look forward to supporting the government initiatives in developing a creative economy in Philippines by giving students access to Autodesk’s latest educational design and engineering software and training programs,” he said.

“The expansion of this program to Philippines demonstrates our continued commitment to supporting the next generation of architects, engineers, designers and digital artists,” Abraham added.

Autodesk learning materials will be made available to TESDA through the Autodesk Education Community portal. Students will have free access to software, a wealth of information and networking opportunities through the portal.

Under the partnership, TESDA institutions are able to download free Autodesk Education licenses via the Autodesk Resource Centre (ARC). The collaboration will enable TESDA to equip its students with professional skills and gain greater industry relevance, as well as create the next generation of digital artists.

Autodesk will also invest in resources for the development of professional skills among TESDA students through curriculum development.

Villanueva said the software would be made available to current TESDA programs using such material, such as design and drafting, animation, engineering and gaming.

“I hope our students will leverage this opportunity to learn Autodesk design software and get inspired to turn their ideas into reality. TESDA is committed to improving TVET in the country and is very optimistic that more of such partnerships will open new and exciting learning avenues for the Filipino workforce,” Villanueva said.

Mayer faces plenty of challenges in her efforts to turn six-year-old Tumblr into a money-spinner, not least among them retaining users while devising new types of non-intrusive online ads outside of Yahoo’s traditional area of expertise.

And then there is Tumblr’s hefty price tag: a sum that equates to a fifth of Yahoo’s cash.

But some investors and analysts say that Wall Street is more focused on the rising value of Yahoo’s Asian assets, such as its 24-percent slice of China’s Alibaba, than on actual business operations. That means the 37-year-old executive faces less immediate pressure to prove that Yahoo’s biggest acquisition in years is a profitable one.

“Overall I’m relatively skeptical, but I don’t think it matters much to the stock,” Macquarie Research analyst Ben Schachter said of the deal.

“Say they destroy 100 percent of the value and drive Tumblr into the ground. It’s probably less than a dollar per share in value,” he said.

If Mayer’s bet delivers, however, some investors say it could provide even more upside to a stock already trading at its highest levels in years.

“The core business is the lottery ticket,” said Ryan Jacob, the chief executive of the Jacob Funds, who owns Yahoo shares.

“Investors’ expectations for the core business are very low, so if they’re able to reinvigorate growth, that will move the needle,” said Jacob.

Yahoo’s stock finished Monday’s regular trading session up 6 cents at $26.58. Its shares have surged roughly 70 percent since Mayer became CEO in July, largely due to stock buybacks and the rising value of its Asian investments, which also include Yahoo Japan.

Challenges abound

Yahoo remains one of the Web’s most popular destinations, but has seen its revenue shrink in recent years as consumers and advertisers favor rivals Google Inc and Facebook Inc. By buying Tumblr, Yahoo gets a much-needed platform in social media to reach a younger generation of users less enamored of Yahoo’s traditional Web content and email.

Yahoo is paying a rich premium for Tumblr, whose nascent advertising efforts generated a scant $13 million in revenue last year, according to media reports.

“Tumblr has low revenues and a big multiple, but far-sighted buyers in technology have shown that they can take small properties and put them onto their distribution system and do good things with them,” said Adam Seessel, head of Gravity Capital Management, which owns Yahoo shares.

Take Google’s $1.6 billion acquisition of YouTube. That deal gave the search giant an important video service that boosted interaction with Google’s other online services, he said by way of example.

Facebook’s acquisition of photo-sharing service Instagram for more than $700 million is considered another deft move by technology observers, allowing the social network to scoop up a fast-growing threat to its business – even if the ad-free service hasn’t delivered a financial boost to Facebook yet.

For every YouTube and Instagram there is a MySpace, the once-red-hot social network News Corp acquired for $580 million in 2005 but whose popularity plunged when its new parent plastered ads all over the service in a rush to monetize.

Mayer stressed Yahoo’s commitment to create new so-called native ads that mesh seamlessly into Tumblr’s content and are considered more suited to the service than the traditional online display ads that have long been Yahoo’s bread-and-butter.

“We have gotten more and more focused on providing native ads and designing ads for that experience, so that’s what we’re going to get really focused on,” Mayer, a former Google executive, told Reuters in an interview late on Monday.

But creating a class of ads that works is no simple feat.

“There isn’t a template to do it,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst with research and consulting firm Altimeter Group, who explained that native ads is a catch-all encompassing everything from advertorials to sponsored tweets that appear in Twitter.

While Yahoo recently began experimenting with news stream ads on its redesigned home page, doing native ads on a broad scale could be tricky given the challenge of convincing brands and agencies to experiment with formats, Lieb said.

Yahoo must also hold onto Tumblr’s bloggers, many of whom were already stomping their feet at being assimilated into the decidedly “less cool” Yahoo. Many vented their frustrations on the Tumblr blog entitled “Meltdowns about Yahoo buying Tumblr.”

Defections have begun. As reports of the deal spread on Sunday, the founder of WordPress, a rival blogging platform, said it “imported” 72,000 Tumblr blogs in a one hour period.

Yet for many investors, those questions are secondary to the impending IPO of Alibaba Group, which they say is one of the key factors buoying Yahoo’s stock. Analysts and investors estimate the value of Alibaba to be around $70 billion. But Lawrence Haverty, a fund manager with GAMCO Investors, believes it could be worth $100 billion or more when it goes public.

In the event Alibaba’s IPO does not live up to expectations, the fallout for Yahoo will be far more serious than anything that happens with Tumblr.

Intel Chief Executive Officer Brian Krzanich is seen during an interview with Reuters at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California. Reuters file photo.

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel Corp’s new chief executive, Brian Krzanich, has launched a sweeping company reorganization and created a unit aimed at growing its market share in mobile technology.

The shakeup, announced internally just days after the 30-year veteran took the helm, places most of the main product groups of the world’s top chipmaker directly under the CEO’s supervision and hands its sprawling global manufacturing operation to new president Renee James, said a source close to the company, who declined to be identified.

Details of the reorganization were outlined in an internal memo sent to employees on Monday. It was described to Reuters by a company source and details of the reorganization, which is effective immediately, were confirmed by spokesman Chuck Mulloy on Tuesday.

“As your CEO I am committed to making quick, informed decisions. I am committed to being bolder, moving faster, and accepting that this means changes will be made knowing that we will listen, learn and then make adjustments in order to keep pace with a rapidly changing industry,” Krzanich said in the email, according to the source.

“Our business faces significant challenges, and we simply must continue to execute while finalizing our future strategy,” he reportedly wrote.

Krzanich officially took over as CEO last week and said that under his leadership, the top chipmaker will be more responsive to customers in an intensified focus on the fast-growing smartphone and tablet market where it lags rivals.

The chipmaker’s main product groups – including the PC client group, mobile communications and data center unit that previously reported to Intel Architecture group chief Dadi Perlmutter – now report directly to Krzanich.

After Perlmutter transfers his business groups, he and Krzanich will “define his next significant contribution at Intel,” according to the email described by the source.

Intel has called the shots in the personal computer industry for decades, but it was slow to react to the explosion of smartphones and tablets. The latter two markets are now dominated by competitors like Qualcomm Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, which design their chips using architecture licensed from ARM Holdings Plc.

In his three-decade career at Intel, Krzanich has become known for making fast decisions after consulting with trusted lieutenants.

This week’s reorganization is Krzanich’s first step in a process aimed at making Intel more focused and more agile, Mulloy said.

Looking ahead

Mike Bell will head up Intel’s newly formed “new devices” group,” which Mulloy said will focus on emerging product trends.

“The new devices organization is responsible for rapidly turning brilliant technical and business model innovations into products that shape and lead markets,” Krzanich said in the email, according to the source.

James, formerly head of the software arm, will now also oversee the company’s sprawling global manufacturing operations and all aspects of security technology.

Mulloy said Intel presidents have traditionally been responsible for managing the manufacturing operations.
James will also lead corporate strategy and planning. Her previous job as Intel’s software chief has been taken over by Doug Fisher, a senior executive from that group.

Hermann Eul previously shared responsibility for Intel’s mobile communications group, which makes smartphone chips, with Bell, and he will now take full responsibility for that business.

Senior Intel executives in the past have privately warned against focusing too much on catching up in smartphones and tablets at the expense of missing out on future trends in mobile.

Krzanich’s creation of the “new devices” group signals he is also looking beyond today’s gadgets.

“It’s a matter of what they do with the new division, what can they identify and then deliver that maybe would not have otherwise been something we’d see Intel inside of. It could be very meaningful if they can execute,” said Williams Financial analyst Cody Acree.

Venture capital fund Intel Capital, led by Arvind Sodhani, now reports to Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith instead of to the CEO. Intel’s IT department, which reported to Krzanich before his appointment as CEO, will also now report to Smith.

Shares of Intel were up 0.2 percent at $24.13 on Tuesday afternoon on the Nasdaq.

Reuters file photo

The Xbox One, which will be available later this year at a price to be announced, will also be the first platform to release the next installment in Activision Blizzard Inc’s blockbuster shooter franchise, “Call of Duty”.

Microsoft hopes its third-generation console will attract video game fans who are increasingly sampling games on mobile devices, while also becoming a hub for living room entertainment.

The console took four years to develop and will launch worldwide “later this year,” games unit chief Don Mattrick told reporters at an event at the software company’s campus near Seattle, without providing details on timing or pricing.

The device’s launch came after months of intense speculation on industry blogs about what new features it might sport.

The new device interacts with a television, responds to voice and gesture commands, and includes Skype video calling, 15 exclusive game titles and original programming content.

The Xbox One will chiefly compete with Nintendo Co’s new Wii U and Sony Corp’s forthcoming PlayStation 4 for a bigger slice of the $65 billion-a-year computer game market.

Lion’s share

Console gaming still takes the lion’s share of a growing gaming market – about 42 percent of the $65 billion world market, according to Microsoft. But playing games on smartphones and tablets, or as an offshoot to online social networks, is gaining ground fast.

The world’s largest software company also sees the Xbox One as a broader strategic piece in the battle with Apple Inc, Google Inc and others to control consumer entertainment in the age of tablets and smartphones.

To that end, Microsoft presented the new box as more than just a video game console.

Acclaimed movie maker Steven Spielberg will be executive-producing a television series based on Microsoft’s blockbuster sci-fi game “Halo” for the Xbox One, the company said.

The new console will offer exclusive National Football League content and eight new game franchises, executives said.

Activision Blizzard Inc will launch “Call of Duty: Ghosts” later in 2013, first for the Xbox.

The device will have 8 gigabytes of memory, with an updated controller and new-generation Kinect sensor that communicates a user’s voice and gesture commands to the console. The technology is built on the Xbox operating system and the kernel of Windows software to handle Internet-based content.

Moreover, the device will let users store entertainment content, including movies, games and music, on cloud servers, the company said.

Despite its strong brand and ‘cool’ factor, the Xbox itself is not a key financial factor for the world’s largest software maker. Its Entertainment & Devices unit is set to break $10 billion in sales for the first time this year, but that’s half the sales of its Windows unit, and a lot less profitable, averaging less than 15 percent margin compared to 60 percent or higher for Windows or Office.

The company has more than 46 million members who subscribe to its online gaming and digital entertainment service Xbox Live, but that’s still a fraction of the people who pay for its software.

Microsoft’s stock was up slightly at $35.02 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq.

PLDT and Samsung executives ink a deal that would bundle Samsung's electronics products with PLDT's new DSL plans tailored for Filipino SMEs. InterAksyon.com

MANILA, Philippines — To aid small and medium businesses in growing their enterprises, two powerhouse technology firms — the Philippine Long Distance and Telephone Co. (PLDT) and Samsung Philippines — recently forged a deal that will bundle electronic gadgets with connectivity access and other solutions specifically meant for small and medium enterprises.

Under the new PLDT myDSL Biz plans set to be launched at the end of the month, SMEs will not only get fast access to the Internet and allow their customers to surf the Web in their respective establishments, they will also get to own gadgets by technology giant Samsung as well.

The gadgets that will be bundled with new PLDT DSL plans include netbooks, notebooks, WiFi printers, tablets, and even a Smart WiFi TV. All of the gadgets will be available free of charge when businesses subscribe to a PLDT myDSL Biz plan of their choice.

Eric Alberto, PLDT EVP and head of Enterprise, International and Carrier Business, said the company is targeting the bundles to SME’s because they have the biggest need to grow and that they can benefit the most from these ICT tools.

“SMEs define the well-being of the Philippine economy, because they are comprised of 99 percent of the firms registered with the SEC and employ 70 percent of the domestic labor force,” Alberto explained. “Their long-term strategic survival depends upon ICT, which they can capitalize on to ensure speed and business agility.”

The recent investment-grade rating upgrades, handed to the Philippines by credit rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, are an indication that there are now more opportunities for SMEs to grow, and to even take their businesses global, Alberto added.

According to Amil Azurin, marketing head of PLDT SME Nation, Samsung was tapped for the partnership given its strong leadership in the consumer electronics space, and its growing appreciation of the SME market, which perfectly aligns with the goals of the business unit.

With the new PLDT myDSL Biz plans, every new subscription will come with a bundled Samsung gadget — from a humble netbook at Plan 4000 to as grand as a Samsung Smart TV at Plan 25000.

“We are leaders in our respective industries, and Samsung today has a keen appreciation of the SME market, so this is aligned with our strategies,” Azurin said.

PLDT is currently the leader in providing Internet access to business and their customers across the Philippines, but recent figures supplied by Azurin — where only about 90,000 of over 800,000 SMEs have been tapped by the unit — suggest that there remains a huge opportunity left untapped by PLDT.

InterAksyon.com is the online news portal of TV5, which is part of the PLDT group.

AFP file photo

A tented stage has been set up at the technology giant’s headquarters in the city of Redmond in Washington State for an “Xbox Reveal” event to play out just weeks before a major annual E3 videogame conference in Los Angeles.

The console debut, to be streamed worldwide to Internet-linked Xbox 360 consoles, will spotlight the hardware and platform while Microsoft will show off games at E3.

“We are really going to tell one story across two events,” Aaron Greenberg of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment division said in an interview posted online.

“That’s about revealing the next Xbox platform and our vision for the future of games and the future of entertainment.”

Microsoft has sold approximately 77 million Xbox 360 consoles since they hit the market in late 2005. Console rival Sony has sold about the same number of PlayStation 3 consoles.

Meanwhile, Nintendo sold nearly 100 million Wii consoles that became hits due to innovative motion-sensing controls after their debut in 2006.

Demand for Nintendo’s recently-released Wii U consoles have been disappointing, however.

Sony announced a new generation PlayStation 4 system in February but spoke ambiguously about the device, leaving much to the imagination.

Sony picked the eve of the Xbox Reveal event to release a YouTube video teasing its plans to show off the PS4 in Los Angeles on June 10, the night before E3 officially gets underway.

The PS4 will succeed PlayStation 3 consoles that began their lifespan in late 2006.

Microsoft’s E3 press event will take place in the morning on June 10 but will be competing with an eagerly-anticipated Apple developers conference keynote presentation taking place in San Francisco at the same time.

“If you look at Microsoft, their competition is Apple and Google,” videogame industry analyst Mike Hickey of National Alliance told AFP, noting that the new Xbox will need to deliver a broad range of digital entertainment to be a hit.

“They have to surface content beyond just games to create value for gamers and non-gamers on Xbox Live,” he continued, referring to Microsoft online service connecting consoles to games, movies, music, and more.

“Now, with smartphones and tablets getting more traction they need to have a presence on those as well.”

Low-cost or free games on smartphones or tablet computers are increasing the pressure on videogame companies to deliver experiences worth players’ time and money.

Features being incorporated into new consoles include games relying on connections to servers in the Internet “cloud” and synching play, movie viewing and social networking with tablets, smartphones and other devices.

Last year at E3, Microsoft introduced Smart Glass software to connect Xbox 360 consoles with smartphones or tablets, which could serve as second-screens for viewing or controlling action on televisions.

“The essence of Xbox was to get a lock on the living room,” Hickey said.

About $65 billion was spent worldwide last year on videogames, with 1.2 billion people playing them on devices ranging from smartphones to consoles, according to industry statistics cited by Microsoft.

“More people are playing videogames today than ever before and they are doing it across more devices,” Greenberg said.

The largest portion of revenue was spent on console hardware and software, according to Greenberg.

Game software, not hardware, typically drives profit, he added. Subscription service Xbox Live boasts 46 million members.

Sami Pienimaki, one of the founders of Jolla company, presents the new Jolla smartphone in Helsinki, May 20, 2013 in this photo taken by Lehtikuva. The phone uses Linux-based Sailfish operating system and it is compatible with Android applications. Reuters/Kimmo Mantyla/Lehtikuva

Jolla was founded by Nokia’s former MeeGo software team that was shut down after the company decided to switch to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software in 2011.

With just 70 employees and 11 million euros ($14.11 million)in venture financing, Jolla joins a handful of boutique operating systems such as Ubuntu which together have less than a one-percent presence in the mobile phone market.

Start-ups such as Jolla face a tough task breaking into the smartphone market. Google’s Android operating system and Apple’s iOS together account for 92 percent of all shipments, according to data from industry research firm IDC.

Even Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS trail far behind the top two with a mere 3 percent share each.

Jolla chairman Antti Saarnio said the Jolla’s openness in allowing users to download Android apps would differentiate it from others. He said the dominance of the top two players wasn’t necessarily permanent.

“In the long run, if someone brings fresh and new ideas, eventually, the market changes.”

The new Jolla phone, priced at 399 euros ($510), runs on the MeeGo-based Sailfish operating system and will also be compatible with Google’s Android applications in a clear break from Nokia.

The phone comes with a 4.5-inch display and 8-megapixel camera. It will also be 4G-capable, depending on market. The Jolla will go on sale in the fourth quarter, the company said.

The company said it planned to focus on the Asian market, as a rapid growth in the region’s middle class is fuelling demand for smartphones. It also plans to raise 30 million euros via convertible bonds in June.

Reuters file photo

But while the government tolerates such anti-corruption vigilantism, it is also extremely leery of the threat the Internet can pose to Communist Party rule.

The Internet is the new tool in the fight against corruption – a cornerstone policy of new President Xi Jinping, who has pledged to tackle the problem head-on.

But while acknowledging that China’s online world is helpful, authorities have also moved quickly to quash rumors that might fan protests that could escalate out of control, deleting microblog posts or even entire accounts.

The accounts of two people who spread potentially panic-inducing rumors of bird flu breaking out in Guizhou province were erased, according to the China Daily newspaper.

He Bing, vice president of the law school at China University of Political Science and Law, told media that his Twitter-like microblog, or “weibo”, was closed down after he forwarded what turned out to be a rumor of a student killing an Internet enforcement officer who had suspended his account.

Author Murong Xuecun, an outspoken censorship critic, said his four weibo accounts, with 8.5 million combined followers, were deleted after he posted criticism of restrictions on what university teachers can discuss with students.

China unveiled tighter Internet controls in December, legalizing the deletion of posts and accounts, underscoring the government’s desire to muzzle online debate.

Those convicted of spreading rumors and false reports can be jailed for up to 10 years.

China has more than a half-billion Internet users, and the great popularity of weibo has spawned a legion of corruption watchdogs whose posts can circulate among millions.

“Citizens have readily transitioned from being extremely reluctant to voice their views to being extremely competitive about trying to get their views out there and to gain followers,” said Ken Lieberthal of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

Punished for posting

But protests could threaten stability and the disciplinary apparatus has moved quickly to squelch hearsay.

Police this month detained a 28-year-old Beijing woman for posting that another woman, 22, was gang-raped and thrown off a building to her death and that police refused to investigate.

Police said the victim committed suicide, but were alarmed when hundreds protested against her death, demanding an inquiry.

Also this month, four people in Xinjiang province in China’s northwest were given five days’ detention for spreading rumors about a murder that police say never happened.

The latest bureaucrat to fall from grace thanks to the Internet was Liu Tienan, sacked last week as deputy chief of the National Development and Reform Commission.

Liu was accused by a journalist in microblog posts of helping to defraud banks of $200 million and of threatening to kill his mistress who reportedly balked at the scheme.

Media fanfare about Liu’s downfall “suggested the ruling party welcomes netizens to join the anti-corruption campaign”, Zhou Shuzhen, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing told the state news agency Xinhua.

The Internet has snared numerous victims.

An official in Shanxi province was dubbed “watch brother” after cybersleuths posted photos of him wearing luxury timepieces. A deputy bank manager became known online as “house sister” for buying 20 properties in northwest China worth some $160 million and more than 40 in Beijing.

One of the most notorious cases burst into public view last November, with video posted online of Lei Zhengfu, a squat and now-former apparatchik in Chongqing, having sex with an 18-year-old mistress.

Yet another official, ex-chief of the Central Compilation and Translation Bureau, Yi Junqing, was sacked in January when his mistress posted details of their affair.

“These days the government can’t ignore this kind of social pressure because it faces increasing questions of its own legitimacy,” says Li Datong, a former journalist who lost his job for challenging censorship.

But while Xi has pledged to hunt down corrupt “flies” as well as “tigers”, referring to low- and high-ranking officials, the public is still waiting for a big catch.

“We have some pretty large-size flies, but no small tigers,” said Minxin Pei of Claremont McKenna College in the United States. “The next test case will be to see whether the government will allow a minister’s wrong deeds to be exposed, and then to go after him.”

The saga of Bo Xilai, a Politburo member drummed out of the party and arrested for corruption and whose wife was convicted last year of the murder of a British businessman, occurred before Xi became president and party chief.

China’s ultimate rulers, the seven members of the Communist Party Politburo’s Standing Committee, are “off limits” for corruption probes, Pei said.

The government responded with fury when the New York Times reported in October that relatives and associates of then-premier and Standing Committee member Wen Jiabao had secretly accumulated at least $2.7 billion in assets.

The Times’ website has remained blocked in China since then.

Reuters file photo

Gathering data from retail stores in the Philippines from April 2012 to March 2013, GfK said as much as 5.7 million smartphone units were sold in the country, headlined by models that cost anywhere from between P4,000 to P10,000 that have become the sweet spot for phone manufacturers.

The sales volume represents a 146 percent jump in smartphone adoption rates for the Philippines–the highest in the Southeast Asian region for the period.

The research firm likewise singled out the Philippines and Indonesia for having a robust local phone manufacturing industry, which has “resulted in the growing market share of those in the USD 50 – 100 price segment—the budget price range which bridges the transition from basic mobile phones to smartphones.”

“Southeast Asian consumers, especially those in the developing countries are fueling the exponential growth of smartphones as they switchover from their basic feature phone to the latest smartphone technology in their local market,” noted Gerard Tan, Account Director for Digital World at GfK Asia. “In the past one year, one in every three mobile phones sold in this region was a smartphone.”

Brands such as Cherry Mobile, MyPhone, and Starmobile have made a killing with the introduction of Android-powered phones that retail for as low as P4,000, reining in the cash by relying on volume instead of margins.

Such developments have already caught the attention of multinational companies such as Samsung, Huawei, LG, and Sony, which have each placed viable competitors in the category as they begin to be locked in a “price war” with local smartphone vendors.

Though growth in Philippine smartphone adoption has been stellar in the past year, it is still dwarfed by Southeast Asian neighbor Indonesia, which recorded a whopping 15.8 million units sold during the period, accounting for as much as 37 percent of overall smartphone volume in the region.

Growth rates in Thailand and Vietnam, on the other hand, has been at par with 140 percent and 118 percent jump, respectively.

According to GfK, two key smartphone features stand out for Southeast Asian customers: screen size and operating system. GfK expects that smartphones with screens measuring 4.5 inches and above will grow significantly in the next few months, although it only accounts for a fifth of total market sales in the region.

In terms of operating system, the open source nature of Android has also acquired many fans, heightening its dominance with seven in every ten smartphones sold operating on the Android platform.

“Given that there is a substantial two-thirds of the region’s population who have yet to make the switch, there is still a sizeable potential market for manufacturers to capture and convert to smartphones users,” Tan said. “Consumers in the developing regions will continue to be the driving force of the smartphone sector’s strong double or even triple digit growth performance in the coming years.”

Reuters file photo

The deal, announced on Monday, is a bold bet by Yahoo! Chief Executive Marissa Mayer to revitalize the company by co-opting a Web property with strong visitor traffic but little revenue.

The acquisition, which will use up about a fifth of Yahoo!’s $5.4 billion in cash and marketable securities, is the largest by far since Mayer took the reins in July with the goal of reversing a long decline in Yahoo!’s business and Web traffic.

Analysts said Yahoo! appeared to be overpaying for a business that might not contribute to revenue for years, but that it had to do something to plug a hole in its social media efforts.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney called it a “long-shot/long-term investment” but one that fits into Mayer’s turnaround strategy.

“(Yahoo!’s) fundamentals have been subpar for numerous years, in part because of the company’s missing presence in Social and Mobile. Tumblr may help (Yahoo!) develop that presence,” Mahaney said in a note.

Tumblr is one of the Web’s most popular hubs of so-called user-generated content. The deal will help Yahoo! reach a younger generation of users less tied to traditional Web portal and email services.

Though Yahoo! remains one of the Web’s most popular destinations, it has seen its revenue shrink in recent years as consumers and advertisers favor rivals such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc. The deal is expected to increase Yahoo’s audience by 50 percent.

Yahoo! made clear it was sensitive to concerns that it might somehow damage Tumblr by making it less irreverent or more corporate.

“Per the agreement and our promise not to screw it up, Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business,” Yahoo! said in a statement.

Rich premium!

Media reports have pegged Tumblr’s 2012 revenue at $13 million. The privately held company, based in Manhattan, does not disclose its financial results.

“Even if revenue was $100 million, it means Yahoo paid 10 times revenue,” said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis. “Ten times is what you pay to date the belle of the ball. It’s on the outer bands of M&A.”

Yahoo! could quickly boost Tumblr’s revenue by combining the website with its own sales force, said Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser. But loading Tumblr up with banner ads risks alienating its users and probably wouldn’t provide a significant lift to Yahoo!’s overall revenue, he said.

“It’s not clear that this deal will be favorable from a return-on-capital perspective,” Wieser said. “One billion (dollars) for one company is a big bet.”

Gillis and Wieser were contacted on Sunday after the deal was reported by the online publication All Things D.

Mayer, on a conference call with analysts on Monday, described the Tumblr deal as an exception and said Yahoo was not necessarily planning to make lots of similarly sized deals.

Shares of Yahoo rose in early trading on Monday but quickly gave up those gains and were little changed at $26.54. Through Friday’s close, they had risen 70 percent since Mayer became CEO.

Image issues

One question Yahoo! may have to address is Tumblr’s reputation as a home for pornographic blogs. At one point in 2009, about 80 percent of Tumblr’s top sites had something to do with adult content. Today that number is closer to 5 percent, according to Quantcast data, but the perception remains.

Dealing with that issue may fall to David Karp, 26, who founded Tumblr in 2007 and will remain CEO.

Karp, a self-taught programmer who left high school in favor of home schooling, did not take part in Mayer’s conference call. Media reports have suggested his take in the billion-dollar sale would top $200 million.

In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Karp seemed to be less interested in money than in Tumblr’s prominence.

“There are a lot of rich people in the world. There are very few people who have the privilege of getting to invent things that billions of people use,” he said.