Newswires: Amp&#39;d Mobile Suspends Review Following Chapter 11 Filing
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LOS ANGELES Amp&#39;d Mobile suspended its $65 million creative review last week after the Los Angeles-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the company said.
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SAN DIEGO ---- The credit rating of the city of San Diego was temporarily suspended Monday by Standard &amp; Poor&#39;s, one of the major rating services of municipal finances.
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Samsung Electronics Co., the world&#39;s largest memory chip maker, said yesterday in a regulatory filing that it has set aside $100 million in provisions to deal with a price-fixing investigation in the United States.
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Text of report by Congolese radio station Raga FM on 18 September  High Media Authority yesterday suspended for one month the broadcast Big Issues by Radio Tele Groupe L'Avenir, RTGA.
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Privately held U.S. mobile service  provider Amp'd Mobile has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy  protection with estimated debts of more than $100 million,  according to court documents.
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Shares in US mortgage lender New Century are suspended amid fears the group may be close to bankruptcy.
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Aug. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Andrew Mohl, chief executive of AMP Ltd., speaks at a news conference in Sydney about the company&#39;s first-half profit, plans to reduce customer fees and reduce debt, and second-half outlook. AMP, Australia&#39;s largest life insurer, ...
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(InfoWorld) - BenQ blamed poor product management for racking up losses of over â¬840 million ($1.07 billion) at its mobile division, BenQ Mobile. The poor management led to cost overruns and launch delays, and the losses prompted BenQ to cut off funding from the mobile division last week. The Taiwanese company said it simply is not big enough to sustain such losses, which stretched from the time itÂ took over the German handset divisionÂ from Siemens last October through to the end of last month. BenQ's stock capitalization is only â¬640 million, it said. The company was in talks with Siemens about possible ways to save BenQ Mobile up to two weeks before the decision was made to stop funding it and let itÂ file for bankruptcy protectionÂ in Germany, a decision announced last Thursday. Siemens paid BenQ â¬250 million last year to take the mobile division off its hands. "There have been some reports that said we 'just walked away.' This was a really tough decision, it wasn't at all easy to walk away," said Eric Lei, chief business strategy officer at BenQ, in a group interview on Tuesday with reporters. On Monday, Siemens announced that it had set up a â¬35 million fund toÂ aid BenQ Mobile workersÂ at risk of losing their jobs, and expressed shock at BenQ's decision to "put its people on the street." The Taiwanese company said it believes there is workers' insurance to protect BenQ Mobile's 3,000 employees, and that it currently has no plans to put money into any kind of worker fund. At the heart of the trouble with BenQ Mobile was an inability to turn around product management problems, BenQ said. The Taiwanese company stopped short of laying blame for the failure on any specific group, saying that some German handset projects went awry, as did some on the Taiwanese side, while poor communication between Taipei and Munich hurt other projects. Without the product management issues, BenQ Mobile could have broken even, said Eric Yu, BenQ's chief financial officer. Some news reports have alleged name calling and legal threats from both sides over the fate of BenQ Mobile workers after the bankruptcy filing. BenQ executives said there has been no official contact between the two companies and that the talk is mere speculation. One point of contention that has been widely reported is that Siemens still owes BenQ money as part of the original deal to take over the handset division. Lei said the figure is over â¬150 million, but would not be more specific. He said that BenQ expects that Siemens will honor the contract and pay the figure, some of which goes to BenQ and some which should go to BenQ Mobile. One news report had said Siemens was looking into ways to pay the entire amount to BenQ Mobile so that it could benefit displaced employees. The German electronics giant said its decision to sell the mobile phone division to BenQ provided the greatest possible benefits to employees at the time of the sale, and that closing the business outright would have been a less expensive option. BenQ had presented a credible plan for operating and expanding the mobile phone division at the time of the sale, and Siemens believed it was sincere, it said. Â
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InfoWorld - BlackBerry mobile data services were disrupted Monday afternoon due to a problem with Research In Motion's infrastructure, apparently affecting customers of all major North American mobile operators, an AT&T Wireless spokesman said.
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Dell announced early this morning it has received a notice from the NASDAQ stock exchange threatening the company with a possible de-listing if it continues to delay the filing of its quarterly 10-Q report.  Dell remains the target of an SEC probe, and may have to restate its earnings back several years.
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Marsh &amp; McLennan Companies Inc. said Friday it was suspending its practice of using &quot;market services agreements&quot; with insurance carriers, which the New York attorney general has alleged were used to rig bids, cheating customers.
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Ampâd Mobile, a niche cellphone provider aimed at the young and technologically sophisticated, filed for Chapter 11 with the intention of revamping the business.
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(InfoWorld) - Little-known Texas MP3 TechnologiesÂ is taking on Apple, Samsung Electronics, and Sandisk with a patent-infringement lawsuit. The suit, which came to light over the weekend, was filed on Feb. 16 in Marshall, Texas. The eastern Texas city is fast becoming one of the leading locations of patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. thanks to speedy trials and juries that more often than not find in favor of the plaintiff. In the complaint Texas MP3 Technologies alleges infringement on U.S. patent 7,065,417, which was awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel and covers "an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method." Just over a month later SigmaTel said that it had sold the patent to a Dallas-based patent licensing agency because it believed the agency would be better able to take advantage of its potential value. "Because these are such basic patents to digital music, we believe it will be difficult to design around these patents and have a commercially viable player," SigmaTel said in a statement when it announced the sale of the patent. SigmaTel said it had retained international rights to the patent and has insulated its customers from any legal action associated with the patent. Whether Texas MP3 Technologies is the Dallas-based company that bought the patents from SigmaTel or whether it acquired them from somewhere else is unclear. In its lawsuit Texas MP3 Technologies said it is the "assignee of all rights" of the patent and holds "all rights of recovery." The company listed an address in Marshall, Texas, in the complaint. Texas MP3 Technologies is asking for a jury trial.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. district court has ordered a halt to an operation that allegedly added unauthorized charges to the phone bills of small businesses and nonprofit groups for Web sites services that, in many cases, they didn't know they had and didn't request, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said. Judge Kenneth Hoyt of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has approved a temporary restraining order halting the activity and freezing the assets of a group of businesses and individuals, the FTC announced Thursday. The FTC's complaint named defendants WebSource Media, BizSitePro, Eversites, Telsource Solutions, Telsource International, Marc R. Smith, Kathleen A. Smalley, Keith Hendrick, Steven Kennedy, John O. Ring, and James E. McCubbin, Jr. The defendants illegally billed thousands of customers, according to the FTC. The operation was a maze of interrelated companies directed by the people named as defendants, the FTC said. The operation used telemarketers to make cold calls to small businesses and nonprofits, and offered a âfreeâ 15-day trial of a Web site design. The customers were told there was no charge or obligation and that the Web site would be cancelled automatically if it was not approved by them. Whether the customers agreed or not to be billed after the trial, their phone bills were often charged. When consumers called to dispute the charges, the operators told them they had âverification recordingsâ of an employee authorizing the charges. The FTC said the operation is typical of fraudulent Web cramming operations -- by using sales pitches to employees who frequently lack authority to make commitments for their employers and failing to effectively notify consumers that a Web site has been set up. The operators repeatedly changed the names of their companies to avoid detection by telephone companies they rely on to bill consumers and to evade scrutiny from law enforcers, the FTC said.
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A federal judge has halted the ban on mobile phones containing chips made by Qualcomm that was imposed after a court earlier determined that the chips violated a patent held by Broadcom.
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Dispute temporarily cools after judge halts investigation initiated by Qualcomm with U.S. International Trade Commission.
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XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc.   said on Tuesday that it is suspending the sale of two  products and reviewing others after a U.S. regulator said the  devices exceeded limits for wireless signal strength.