Krzanich became Intel’s chief operating officer in January 2012, so just over a year of being at that position, he’s been promoted to take over the company and lead its roughly 50,000 employees to success. Otellini will continue to serve as an advisor to Intel’s management staff, although his future plans aren’t set in stone.

The appointment of a new CEO comes shortly after Intel reported not-so-greaet quarterly financial results for Q1 2013. The company brought in a revenue of $12.6 billion and a net income of $2 billion, which missed analysts estimates. Revenue for the quarter was down 7% from the previous quarter, with operating income down a staggering 20%.

Krzanich has been with the company for over 30 years now, with Otellini serving nearly 40 years. This will be Intel’s sixth CEO, and Krzanich comes at a time when Intel is getting even more fierce with its mobile strategy, and even plans to get into the set-top box market at some point in the future.

Last year, Zuckerberg made about half a million dollars, and with his bonus, he made about 3/4 of a million dollars. But Zuckerberg isn’t working pretty much for free for no reason. He has an incentive to do so. He currently holds 60 million stock options that are currently worth 6 cents a piece. By only being paid a buck, he has more incentive to work and build up Facebook’s financial value.

Many other CEOs have reduced their salaries to a single dollar before. While they only get a dollar in the form of a salary, they are rewarded in other ways, including bonuses and stock options. Steve Jobs reduced his salary to a dollar back when he rejoined Apple in 1998, but he received stock grants in return (which he stopped taking after 2003). Google’s Larry page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt all reduced their salaries to $1 back in 2005.

Other notable figures include Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, Capital One’s Richard Fairbank, Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, and HP’s Meg Whitman. Most of these CEOs obtain bonuses or stock options (which could be exempt from a portion of payroll taxes). By being paid through stock options, its believed that these CEOs would increase their work performance, because how much they get paid is equal to how well their companies do.

[via Business Insider]

The stock rewards, however, will be stretched over a vesting period of 5 years, but due to regulatory reporting rules, Activision has to report the compensation the year that it was granted. So in reality, Kotick was really paid $8.33 million last year, as well as in 2011. Kotick’s base salary was $2,006,127 last year, and he received a bonus of $2.5 million. The other half of his earnings came from other forms of compensation. According to Reuters, Kotick’s compensation is now 3 times as much as Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldsman Sachs, and twice as much as Robert Iger, CEO of Walt Disney.

While Kotick’s compensation was phenomenal, Activision didn’t experience the same type of success. Activision’s revenue and net income only increased in the single digits last year, making its growth much slower than the year prior. Activision had to lay off a total of 70 of its full-time employees in order to cut costs. 40 employees were laid off after they completed development on Activision’s upcoming Dead Pool game, and 30 employees were laid off after the company announced that it would be pulling away from licensed games.

Kotick has been placed as the second most paid public-company CEO of 2012, right behind Oracle’s CEO and founder Larry Ellison. Ellison takes the lead with $96.2 million in compensation. However, according to Bloomberg, Kotick could receive another $16 million this year if he is able to meet the highest performance targets this year for Activision Blizzard. While that’ll still put him behind Ellison, it’s still a hefty bonus.

UPDATE: Updated post to reflect Kotick’s actual compensation for 2012.

[via Reuters]

Kovacs joined Mozilla in October of 2010 and he has helped the company make its way towards the mobile landscape, and he’s even credited with being the leader behind the development of Firefox OS, which was just recently unveiled this year. The next CEO for Mozilla, which is currently being searched for as we speak, certainly has some big shoes to fill.

Kovacs says that he’s proud of the company, and now that Mozilla has a “solid foundation and a strong team in place,” Kovacs decided that this is “the right time” for him to hand the role to someone else willing lead Mozilla even further. However, Kovacs still plans to “guide Mozilla’s impact on the future of mobile,” so this certainly won’t be the end for Kovacs.

The company’s next big project is partnering up with Samsung to develop a whole new web browsing engine for Android, called Servo. The engine would be written using an in-house programming language, and the companies are hoping that Servo will be a revolutionary new product that Android will greatly benefit from.

Wada has been the CEO of Square Enix for over 12 years, starting the role in 2000, but he’ll be officially stepping down in June, and will receive a 60% pay cut starting next month due to the company’s poor performance. Yousuke Matsuda, who joined the company in 2001, will take over as CEO. It’s not yet said if Wada will take on a new role at Square Enix, nor if Matsuda is just a temporary replacement.

The company’s expected net sales were reduced overall, and they now expect net income to fall from 3.5 billion yen ($37 million) to 13 billion yen ($138 million). Square Enix has blamed its poor performance on “slow sales of major console game titles in North American and European markets.” The company recently released Sleeping Dogs, Final Fantasy XIII-2, and Hitman: Absolution, which apparently aren’t doing so hot.

While Wada is receiving a 60% pay cut, Matsuda will also be receiving a pay cut, but only 40%. It seems that the publisher has a long road ahead of itself, and if the newly-appointed CEO is getting a huge pay cut, that can only mean that other employees will be getting pay cuts as well, and it could possibly lead to lay offs at some point.

[via The Next Web]

The F-1 engines, as they’re called, came off of the famous Saturn V rocket that took Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon. It was the mission that allowed humans to step foot on the moon for the first time on July 20, 1969. The rockets have been lying on the bottom of the ocean for more than 40 years, and Bezos and his team have recovered two out of the five engines.

However, Bezos is not 100% sure that the engines are, in fact, from Apollo 11, since the corrosion of the serial numbers will make it difficult to verify, but there’s certainly confidence that the recovered engines are from Apollo 11. Bezos wants to display the engines at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, although NASA may be involved in the decision on where they will ultimately be displayed.

The Saturn V is still the largest and most powerful rocket that was ever built in the US, and each engine is almost 20 feet tall and 13 feet wide. Each engine also weighs over 17,500 pounds. The massive size of the engines produced quite the thrust — around 7.7 million pounds of thrust to be exact, and it had a top speed of over 6,000 mph.

Riccitiello says he takes full responsibility for EA’s less-than-stellar financial results as of late, and says that the company “will come in at the low end of, or slightly below, the financial guidance [EA] issued in January.” He also notes that the company has “fallen short of the internal operating plan” that was implemented a year ago.

Riccitiello says that “EA’s shareholders and employees expect better,” and he is “accountable for the miss.” Larry Probst will assume the day-to-day role as “Executive Chairman” in order to make sure that there’s a “smooth transition.” Probst was actually EA’s CEO from 1991 to 2007, and has served as Chairman of the Board since 1994.

Riccitiello joined EA in October 1997 as president and COO at the time, but he left the company in 2004 to spearhead a couple of projects, including becoming a co-founder and managing director of Elevation Partners, as well as chairman and CEO of VG Holdings. However, Riccitiello returned to EA in 2007 to take on the CEO role. Riccitiello’s full resignation letter can be read below.

March 17, 2013
Mr. Larry Probst
Chairman Electronic Arts

Dear Larry,

I hereby offer my resignation as CEO of Electronic Arts effective with the end of our Fiscal Year 13 on March 30, 2013.

This is a tough decision, but it all comes down to accountability. The progress EA has made on transitioning to digital games and services is something I’m extremely proud of. However, it currently looks like we will come in at the low end of, or slightly below, the financial guidance we issued in January, and we have fallen short of the internal operating plan we set one year ago. EA’s shareholders and employees expect better and I am accountable for the miss.

I have been at the helm as EA’s CEO for six years and served as COO for nearly seven years starting in 1997. I know this company well, and I care deeply about its future success. I leave knowing EA is a great company, with an enormously talented group of leaders and the strongest slate of games in the industry. I could not be more proud of our company’s games, from Battlefield and FIFA, to The Simpsons: Tapped Out and Real Racing 3. We have built many great franchises that will serve the company well in FY14 and beyond. In particular, I am confident that the investments we have made in games for next-generation consoles will put EA in a strong leadership position for many years ahead.

In offering my resignation, my goal is to allow the talented leaders at EA a clean start on FY14. I look forward to working with you in the coming weeks on an effective leadership transition. I’m extremely honored to have led this company and proud to have worked with all the great people at Electronic Arts.

Sincerely,
John Riccitiello

Of course, a 93% approval rating is still pretty darn good if you ask us, and 18th place is still highly respectable, considering that the list is based on over 500,000 company surveys submitted through Glassdoor within the past year. Other companies that made the top of the list include Qualcomm, Google, NVIDIA, and Amazon.

Glassdoor’s CEO rankings come from the employees themselves at the respective companies, and they vote on whether or not they’re happy with the person leading the company. A 99% approval rating for Facebook’s Zuckerberg isn’t too shabby at all, and a 14% jump from last year should provide a sign that something changed for the better within the past year over in Palo Alto.

One interesting note, however, is that there’s only one female CEO on the list of 50 total bosses, and Yahoo and HP CEOs Marissa Mayer and Meg Whitman didn’t make the cut. Victoria’s Secret CEO Sharen Turney was the only woman to make the list, with an 82% approval rating. However Mayer did score an 87% approval rating, but since not enough Yahoo employees voted in the survey, she wasn’t eligible for the list, which would have her at 32 in the ranks. Whitman was on the list last year, but was bumped off this year.

[via VentureBeat]

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote granted the DoJ its request today. The Justice Department believes that Tim Cook has relevant information to the case, as he is a high level executive. It believes that Tim Cook’s position and his close relations with the late Steve Jobs entitled him to private conversations and information about the eBook situation. Lawrence Buterman, the DoJ’s lawyer, stated Tim Cook “is the only potential source of information.”

Apple had tried to fight Judge Cote’s request, saying that Cook’s testimony would just be a reiteration of all of the other testimonies provided by 11 other Apple executives. Orin Snyder, a lawyer from Apple’s law firm, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, stated that “This effort to depose Mr. Cook, Apple’s CEO, reflect the fact the government cannot meet its burden of proof in this case.” She has called this request a “fishing expedition.”

The trial will be taking place in June. The government made it clear that it will not be seeking damages from Apple. It wants to find out if Apple had violated antitrust laws, and if it had fixed prices on eBooks, the government would bar Apple from being able to engage in any similar kind of conduct in the future. Things most certainly do not look good for Apple, especially since most of the companies immediately settled after being hit with the lawsuit. We’ll keep you posted on this case.

[via Reuters]

Houston mostly spoke in general terms, but he specifically called out Apple’s iCloud service and said that iCloud users can only share files across iOS devices and not over Android devices. In other words, a lot of cloud storage services that companies and manufacturers roll out are not cross-platform compatible.

Houston says that “you shouldn’t have to care about the logo on the back of your phone or computer, it should just work with everything you have.” He certainly has a point there, and it’s that kind of limitation that Dropbox wants “to help remove for people.” Dropbox is compatible on almost all platforms, and you can share files across different mobile operating systems without any trouble.

Of course, Dropbox has scored partnerships with Samsung and HTC in the past, noting that these companies are the smart ones by not rolling out their own proprietary cloud service, but rather using Dropbox, which is more widely used anyway, with other 100 million users and over one billion files being uploaded every day across 500 million mobile devices.

[via Macworld]

Dropbox first launched in 2007, just when smartphones were beginning to take off, and the service was only able to sync files between different computers, but eventually the company added support for a smartphones and tablets. As for the future, Dropbox is constantly looking to expand and offer more features to its users. Just earlier this month, Dropbox introduced a new admin panel for businesses.

Houston also was trying to passive-aggressively get mobile carriers and manufacturers in on the Dropbox fun. He says that there’s “untapped opportunity” for carriers that could partner up with Dropbox, using a possible family plan as an example. Houston says that Dropbox could “tie a family together in a way that’s broader than just a billing relationship.”

Houston also mentioned the great partnership opportunities with handset manufacturers, and used Samsung and HTC as an example, where users who log in or sign up with a Samsung or HTC phone get a certain amount of extra storage for free. Of course, manufacturers who have their own cloud service are a little nervous to jump ship — as Samsung was — but Houston mentions that by using Dropbox, manufacturers can build the cloud storage service “onto all these core features on the phone.”

[via CNET]

In December of 2012 Cook confirmed that Apple would be bringing Apple product manufacturing back to the USA in 2013. One of the earlier mentions of this move was made in May of 2012 where Cook made mention of “things we can do” in the future – and here it is. Parts of the newest iMac have already bore the “Assembled in USA” mark and the Mac Mini has been tipped to be coming to the USA for manufacturing as well.

The State of the Union address spoken by President Obama noted that “after shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.” He went on to list groups like Caterpillar, Ford, and Intel who have moved (or will move soon) sets of jobs to the USA from overseas. Obama made the final mention appear most important: “And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.”

According to MacRumors, the Apple CEO was seated just one seat away diagonally from the First Lady Michelle Obama and one seat behind the Second Lady Jill Biden. UPDATE: maybe he moved seats? See image 7 of the box. You can also see the full list of seats in the box at The White House website – note also that Bobak Ferdowsi was there: you’ll remember him from the NASA Mars landing last year without a doubt!

Of course, it’s rare to have Cook speak at non-Apple events, and he only recently made his first television interview appearance after being at the CEO helm for over a year. Of course, this year’s talk at the Goldman Sachs conference could be a bit more interesting than last year’s appearance, considering that he’s been CEO for much longer this time around.

Obviously, we’re not expecting any product announcements during the session, but Cook may offer some insight into Apple and what products it has lined up for the future. He might not address all of the wild rumors going around, but he may be asked about them and could provide an answer that may stir up even more speculation.

Either way, Cook’s discussion should be fairly interesting, and this’ll be his first appearance since his television interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. That is, if you don’t count Apple’s quarterly earnings call last month, in which Cook rattled off numbers and statistics from the past quarter.

[via AppleInsider]

That Dell and Apple’s paths – and Michael Dell and Steve Jobs – paths have diverged is arguably not surprising. Apple’s position in the market is very different to that of Dell, with the Mac and iOS ecosystems both paragons of control and self-determination; in contrast, Dell’s business is far more reliant on other pieces of the computing puzzle – Microsoft and its Windows OS being a significant component of that – and buffeted by other big names in the PC industry, like HP.

It’s easy to say that Dell’s strategy fell between the cracks between shifting with the marketplace and short-term investor demand. Certainly, the company’s lackluster attempts at the smartphone and tablet segments would seem to show signs of that; it takes time, effort, and investment, and even then you’re not guaranteed of success (look at HP’s webOS attempts for evidence of that). That’s not a juggling act that works well when you have shareholders watching over your shoulders, baying for profit, but it’s also something that’s incredibly necessary if you want to be successful in today’s market.

Dell’s original disruptive strategy in the PC business – back when we all had towers on our desktops, not laptops on our laps – was to make the computer ordering process a smorgasbord. Now, with spec flexibility less fashionable, and simplicity of range more prized by consumers and manufacturers alike, the time is ripe for another disruption in Dell’s business.

That disruption may not be so publicly visible, but it’s no less important. Wresting back control and taking Dell private means Michael Dell and his new business partners can play the long game that the consumer tech industry has become. There’s plenty to be said for a supply-chain that can shave margins to a minimum, and – as Windows Phone, Surface RT, and Surface Pro have begun to demonstrate – there are areas in which Microsoft’s platforms have potential as part of a joined-up ecosystem.

For Michael Dell, though, there’s much to be said for casting off the shackles of the peanut gallery. Steve Jobs had shareholders, but their demands were met with stoney resolution in the face of his unflinching vision for Apple. If Dell has a similarly sweeping vision for the company that bears his name, it’s been mired in board squabbles and the demand to answer the call for “more money now!” and to swiftly scythe away at anything that looks remotely like bad business.

That may well go hand in hand with a refreshed legacy: ending his tenure on a high point would be a fitting way to close out Dell’s position at the helm, something – despite the extra financial involvement – every party involved must at least be considering now. Still, raising capital is the easy part. Dell, both man and company, has a limited window for recreation, lest it go out with a whimper not a bang.

Over the course of the 30-minute interview, Mayer talked about Yahoo’s mobile strategy, the company’s culture, and the future of technology. When asked how a company like Yahoo competes in a technology industry where mobile reigns, Mayer said that, since Yahoo doesn’t make mobile hardware, a mobile OS, a browser, or a social network, it allows the company more opportunities “for strong partnerships.” Mayer says that Yahoo will be mainly focused on building relationships and creating partnerships with other companies.

She also discussed the impact that Yahoo is making in the mobile realm, and said that the company is also focused on pushing out content to mobile users. Yahoo already has apps for iOS and Android, and Mayer thinks that Yahoo can become part of users’ “daily habits,” which can “provide a lot of value to the end user,” while also providing value to the company.

Mayer also talked about company culture, and while she shook things up by cleaning house, she was adamant about “building the right team.” As for the future of the company, Mayer is really interested in personalization, such as image recognition, voice recognition, and translation. She says that it’s all about “being able to take personalized notions,” such as likes on Facebook, tweets, articles, etc., “and taking all those signals and mapping those to understand, for example, I like clean energy on Facebook and I tweet out something about green energy, that is in fact the same interest as mine.”

[via Business Insider]

During a hearing earlier today, US District Judge Lucy Koh ordered the three CEOs to four hours of questioning each, pertaining to the pacts that the three companies entered in to not recruit one another’s employees. Currently, the three tech companies are trying to avoid a class action lawsuit by employees, and Koh’s job is to decide whether the lawsuit is worthy enough to proceed as such as lawsuit.

If the case is escalated to class action status, the damages could be high for the three companies — possibly around hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the attorneys of the plaintiffs, and it’s said that the employees have some killer evidence that the three companies wouldn’t have a chance of fighting.

Originally, the lawsuit was settled in 2010, and it accused the three companies — along with Intuit, Pixar, and Genentech — of creating non-poaching pacts with one another. However, a civil lawsuit was filed by several employees right afterward, who claim that their salaries were wrongly lowered because of the agreements, and Judge Koh is currently in the process of deciding whether or not to escalate the lawsuit. Stay tuned, as we’ll no doubt see a lot of action come out of this.

[via AllThingsD]

Image via Flickr

Kilar doesn’t mention a reason for departing, but he says that his decision was “one of the toughest” that he’s ever made, and he’s “very thankful” for the entire team at Hulu. As of now, neither Kilar or Tom have solid dates for stepping down from their helms, but Kilar says that he’ll “be here as we get off to a very strong start in 2013.”

While we could speculate all day on the reasons for both Kilar and Tom stepping down from their respective roles at Hulu, you certainly blame the company’s finances as a reason. Hulu saw almost $700 million in revenue in 2012, which was quite the jump from where they were the year before, and they saw a doubling in their subscriber base in 2012 compared to 2011.

From reading Kilar’s farewell letter, you can easily tell that Hulu meant a lot to him, and we certainly can’t blame him for saying that it was one of the toughest decisions he’s ever made, but perhaps he’s moving on to better things and teaming up with his colleague, Rich Tom? Either way, the best of luck to both of them.

Tim Cook took over as CEO for Apple late last year after former CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer. Cook has only been at the helm for just over a year, but he’s been a part of and released new versions of the iPhone, iPad, and iMac, as well the completely new iPad Mini.

In total TIME Magazine chose four runner-ups. The first runner-up was Malala Yousafzai, the student activist from Pakistan who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban. Third runner-up was Egypt president Mohamed Morsi, and the fourth and final runner-up was Italian physicist Fabiola Giannati.

Other finalists for Person of the Year included “Undocumented Americans”, former President Bill Clinton, and his wife and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. As for TIME readers’ Person of the Year, that award went to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who received more votes than other candidates such as comedian Jon Stewart, Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas, Burmese leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

Other finalists for Person of the Year include Mohammed Morsi (president of Egypt), “Undocumented Americans”, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, and Malala Yousafzai, the student activist from Pakistan who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban. As for TIME readers’ Person of the Year, that award has been given to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Tim Cook took over Apple last year after former CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs passed away from cancer. After being at the helm for only a year, Cook has outed new versions of the iPhone, iPad, and iMac, as well the completely new iPad Mini. Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo as president and CEO back in July and has since been looking to make some big changes to the company. She’s also the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Fabiola Giannati is in charge of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland, and back in July, she announced that the team at CERN had discovered a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson.

TIME Magazine will announce their winner for Person of the Year on Wednesday. As for the reader poll, other finalists included comedian Jon Stewart, Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas, Burmese leaders Aung San Suu Kyi and Thein Sein, and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but Kim Jong Un of North Korea took home the prize.

[via MSN]

The privately-held Scottsdale, Arizona-based company said that Irving will also join the company’s board of directors on top of his CEO role. He is replacing Scott Wagner, who served as interim CEO since the summer, after Warren Adelman stepped down after only eight months on the job. Adelman replaced GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons in December 2011.

Irving spent 15 years at Microsoft, where he appeared in many hats, but his most notable and most recent role at the Redmond-based company was corporate vice president of the Windows Live platform. He also spent time at Yahoo as the company’s chief product officer, where he developed and rolled out a unified product vision and strategy, which grew Yahoo to nearly one billion active PC and mobile users.

Irving currently serves on the board of GolfLogix, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based mobile web company, and in the past, he has served as a professor at Pepperdine University located outside of Los Angeles. He is also a graduate of San Diego State University and received an MBA degree from Pepperdine University.

Image via Flickr

One of the most interesting aspects of the list is that the top three CEOs on the list have ties to Apple in some fashion. It turns out that both Larry Ellison and Ron Johnson are closely tied to the company. Ellison was a friend of Steve Jobs, while Johnson was the company’s vice president of retail for nearly eight years before he left for JC Penney.

Overall, there’s a wide variety of companies and their respective CEOs that made it on the list. You have your unsurprising CEOs like Cook and News Corp. boss Rupert Murdoch, but you also have big wigs from unlikely companies like Abercrombie & Fitch, Abbott Laboratories, and Honeywell International.

Tim Cook took over for Apple in October 2011 when co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs passed away due to his fight with cancer. It’s now been around 18 months since Cook took the helm, and the company has been raging on so far, with new products like the iPhone 5, iPad mini, and the all-new Lightning connector.

[via CNBC]

This update has Eddy Cue taking on additional responsibilities inside the universes of Siri and Maps. This change has all of Apple’s online services put in one group, a group that’s overseen items such as iCloud, the Apple Store, and the iTunes Store. Jony Ive will be adding Human Interface to his plate, this added to his giant role of leader of Industrial Design which he’s held for some time. As Apple says, “His incredible design aesthetic has been the driving force behind the look and feel of Apple’s products for more than a decade.”

Mister Craig Federighi will be taking charge of both OS X and iOS at once. This will have both systems – mobile and desktop – seeing more integration than ever, making one user experience key for those that work with both. Bob Mansfield will be leading a brand new group called Technologies. This Technologies group will be covering Apple’s wireless teams across the entire company into one organization.

Technologies will also include the semiconductor teams and will be “fostering innovation in this area at an even higher level” than ever before. Expect big things to continue to come from Apple, but that this change of the guard in a couple of yet areas to have a real effect on the innards of the company. Now we must wait to see what’s next for Browett and Forstall – or who will be lucky enough to attain their talents!

[via Apple]

Whitman spoke at HP’s annual investor meeting and mentioned that it will take until 2014 for the company to become profitable again. Along with that, HP’s stock price dropped 10% and is almost at a nine-year low point. The CEO blamed a lack of focus around the company’s strategy, as well as heavy executive turnover.

Whitman says, “the single biggest challenge facing Hewlett-Packard has been changes in CEOs and executive leadership, which has caused multiple inconsistent strategic choices, and frankly some significant executional miscues.” That’s certainly understandable. When a company brings in any new big wig, things are bound to be shaken up and changed around.

Former HP CEO Mark Hurd resigned in August of 2010 in light of a sexual harassment scandal, so the company hired Leo Apotheker to take Hurd’s position. However, barely a year into it and no forward progress, the company fired Apotheker. Hopefully Whitman, who was CEO at eBay before coming to HP, will lead the company into the black once again.

[via Reuters]

Cook posted up an open letter on Apple’s website mentioning how the new iOS 6 maps app “fell short” of the company’s high standard. Surprisingly, a good portion of Cook’s letter discusses different third-party suggestions for iOS 6 users to use instead. He suggests using maps from Bing, Mapquest, and Waze, as well as web apps from Nokia and Google. Cook says to use these alternatives while Apple works to improve their maps app in the meantime.

Tim Cook’s full apology letter is below:

To our customers,

At Apple, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. With the launch of our new Maps last week, we fell short on this commitment. We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make Maps better.

We launched Maps initially with the first version of iOS. As time progressed, we wanted to provide our customers with even better Maps including features such as turn-by-turn directions, voice integration, Flyover and vector-based maps. In order to do this, we had to create a new version of Maps from the ground up.

There are already more than 100 million iOS devices using the new Apple Maps, with more and more joining us every day. In just over a week, iOS users with the new Maps have already searched for nearly half a billion locations. The more our customers use our Maps the better it will get and we greatly appreciate all of the feedback we have received from you.

While we’re improving Maps, you can try alternatives by downloading map apps from the App Store like Bing, MapQuest and Waze, or use Google or Nokia maps by going to their websites and creating an icon on your home screen to their web app.

Everything we do at Apple is aimed at making our products the best in the world. We know that you expect that from us, and we will keep working non-stop until Maps lives up to the same incredibly high standard.

Tim Cook

Apple’s CEO

It’s certainly surprising to see Cook suggest other maps apps over their in-house option. That’s definitely something you don’t see everyday, but it shows that Apple realizes it screwed up a bit and that they’re being the bigger man by telling users to take advantage of other strong map solutions while they work on improving theirs. It shows that they want their users to have the best user experience possible whether or not that involves using Apple’s own app catalog.

[via Phone Scoop]

Earlier this year back in June T-Mobile’s CEO Philipp Humm suddenly resigned from his position, then the very next day reports surfaced that he’d signed with Vodafone. Between the failed merger with AT&T, a slowing network, and far behind the rest of the USA crowd to 4G LTE T-Mobile’s been looking to make a change — and John Legere is just that.

T-Mobile made the announcement earlier today in an official blog post, and have stated that “John is a talented and proven executive who brings a successful track record of leading and operating consumer- and business-focused telecommunications and technology companies.” The video above shows both René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, and John Legere, the newly announced USA branches CEO talking about their future together. Here’s what Legere had to say:

I am thrilled to join T-Mobile and lead the Company at such a pivotal time,” T-Mobile is taking a number of significant steps to revitalize the business and I look forward to leading our team and partners to accelerate these efforts to become a force in our industry.”

John Legere is the former CEO of Global Crossing, and spent plenty of time with Dell on duties outside of the US. We’re assuming one of the main tasks at hand is to revitalize their market share, keep the customers happy, and of course lead the charge in T-Mobile’s 2013 4G LTE plans.

[via TmoNews]

Reuters suggests that the two heavy hitters were conducting phone conversations last week and that it won’t be the last one either. These talks have covered a range of intellectual property matters, including the ongoing mobile patent disputes between Apple and Android OEM’s. Most recently they won a huge battle vs Samsung and I’m sure you’re all well aware of that money draining outcome.

Discussion and friendly talks have also been being conducted on lower levels instead of just the CEOs, hinting that both companies could possibly be looking to end these tiresome lawsuits and patent issues. Hopefully we can all just get along and agree to a “truce” as Reuters puts it – although that is unlikely.

Apple’s late Steve Jobs has openly denounced Google’s Android as a “stolen product,” and went as far as saying he’d use every penny of Apple’s cashcow to “destroy Android” and even followed that by stating he was willing to “go thermonuclear war on this.” Apple and Google’s relationship with apps like YouTube and Google Maps have been growing further and further apart in iOS, so the current state of the relationship is unclear. The next phone call between the two CEOs was scheduled for this Friday but was apparently canceled for unknown reasons. Hopefully something positive comes from these talks but we’ll just have to wait and see.

This news has also been accompanied by a note from Levinsohn which read “it has been an incredible journey for me and I could not be prouder of what we accomplished over the past few years helping define Yahoo as a leader in digital media and advertising.” He had been with Yahoo in various positions since the year 2010. Positions held by Levinsohn at Yahoo include heading their ad sales and other units in Yahoo’s Americas region.

Another position held by Levinsohn at Yahoo was their head of media websites – this included entertainment, sports, and news for Yahoo. While Levinsohn had been interim CEO for Yahoo since earlier this year, the board sought out a leader with experience in the creation and execution of products for our current internet-loving world of youth consumers. Mayer replaced Levinsohn who earlier this year replaced then-CEO Scott Thompson who was fired due to misstated credentials.

Levinsohn previously worked for News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media group, HBO, and everyone’s favorite company of the past, AltaVista. Stay tuned as Levinsohn more than likely pops up at another giant of a company in the very near future. For those of you wanting more information about Yahoo’s recent past, head to the timeline below!

[via WSJ]

The bonus Yuanqing received here in the summer of 2012 was the result of the company having no less than its very best fiscal year of all time ending in March. Note – fiscal years, unlike a normal years, are started and ended differently for every company – some companies can be in Q2 while others are in Q4 and so forth. At the end of Lenovo’s fiscal year, again ending in March, they had a 73% bump in net profit compared to the fiscal year before.

This year was of course a “record-setting year for Lenovo” as Yuanqing was more than ready to affirm to the press this week. Yang himself ended up earning $5.2 million in bonuses for the fiscal year, this just part of his full salary, incentives, and other benefits which end up coming out to $14 million in all.

Sound like a good move to you? How many CEOs do you know that’d do the same?

[via CNN]

Of course that $1 million a year is not without bonuses which have been outline as between $2 million and $4 million a year for the new head of Yahoo. Mayer has been given $14 million in equity for the business, and she’s received several one-time payments for joining Yahoo as well. For compensation on the stock options Mayer left behind at Google, Yahoo is paying $14 million, while Mayer’s retention cost is noted at $30 million.

The stock Mayer will be receiving will be made up of 50% of their Restricted Stock Units and 50% Common Stock, and all incentive bonuses payed to Mayer will be made according to Yahoo’s financial performance. In addition, Yahoo’s Compensation Committee will be reviewing Mayer’s performance each period to decide on her EIP payout.

EIP stands for Executive Incentive Plan and works as follows, per Yahoo:

“Incentive Compensation. You also will be eligible to participate in the annual Executive Incentive Plan (“EIP”), with a target incentive of 200% of your annual base salary (the “Target Award”), and a 2012 maximum of 400% of your annual base salary if you exceed your targets, pro-rated based on the period of time you are employed at Yahoo! in an EIP eligible position during the relevant Company fiscal year, less applicable taxes, deductions, and withholdings. Target incentives do not constitute a promise of payment. To qualify for the EIP” – Yahoo Employment Offer to Marissa Mayer

According to the math of the Wall Street Journal, Mayer will likely be making around $5.4 million USD from Yahoo for the remainder of this year. She’ll also likely make approximately $20 million per year after that, depending of course on performance targets and bonuses.

In a report from Capital IQ posted earlier this week on Wall Street analysis for this quarter’s earnings, Yahoo was projected to be at 20 cents a share and having revenue of $1.1 billion USD. Instead they’ve posted, again, $1.22 billion for revenue and a per-share net income of 27 cents a share. Non-GAAP earnings per share pushed forward with several partnerships announced throughout the quarter, and re-stated today by Yahoo’s chief financial officer Tim Morse:

“We also moved aggressively with new strategic agreements with Alibaba and Facebook and announced several new partnerships including CNBC, Clear Channel and Spotify.” – Morse

This of course was all slightly less than engaging in the face of the real news, that being Yahoo’s expectations for Mayer. After bringing the heat to Google for 13 years, starting as an engineer and working her up to 20th position from the top, Mayer has a lot to live up to. She very well may be beginning in getting Yahoo’s advertising business back on its feed, with Facebook beating the market at 16.8 percent alongside Google with 16.5 percent while Yahoo sits a bit lower at 9.1 percent. Yahoo’s share in 2008 of the online advertising market was 18.4 percent.

[via NYTimes]

Mayer had been up until this week a part of Google for many years, starting as an engineer and working her way up to the head of several departments in the past several years. She oversaw the changing of Gmail and the main search user interfaces for the modern age of Google, and was up until recently part of the Google inner circle working with its top heads. It was only very recently that Mayer must have found herself out of favor with Google – back in 2011 she spoke at the Computer History Museum on why she joined the team originally:

Having been added to the Wal-Mart board of appointees just this April, Mayer certainly got a taste of what it means to have a seat at a public company. Her combined knowledge from both her high rank at Google and her relatively short time at Wal-Mart have set her up for a Yahoo win in the very near future. As those responsible for this hire at Yahoo certainly understand a turnaround of Yahoo’s fortunes will require Mayer to act swiftly in regards not only to reinvigorating the support the web-based company has in its users, but in cutting programs left and right as well.

Check out the timeline below to get further insight on how Marissa Mayer will be changing Yahoo in her new seat as CEO.

Mayer up until recently sat in the circle of senior executives near Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and has let it be known that “it was a reasonably easy decision” to leave Google and take a position of CEO with Yahoo, “one of the best brands on the Internet.” She also let it be known that she’s hoping “to get focused on creating a really great user experience” and that to make sure Yahoo continues to attract top talent, as “talent is what drives technology companies,” after all.

Below: Marissa Mayer speaks for the 2011 Computer History Museum on why she joined Google in the first place:

Just this April, Mayer was also tapped to join the board of Wal-Mart, a board which is made up of 16 appointees and representing Mayer’s first seat at a public company. Mayer also previously headed up Google’s search business. Mayer has stated that she “had an amazing time at Google” but that after 13 years she’s ready to move on up. Stay tuned as Mayer’s career continues to blow up.

[via NYTimes]

Page will be missing next week’s Google I/O, which is the company’s annual developer conference, as well as the company’s quarterly earnings call next month. Schmidt says that Page will continue to run the company despite his condition and absence from the next few several events.

Google did not further elaborate on Page’s condition, although it seems serious enough that he’d have to cancel his appearance at such a major event as I/O. Some analysts wonder if there’s more to his condition than having lost his voice. After the news, Google shares dipped 2 percent.

[via NY Times]

Kwon Oh-hyun will reportedly still oversee the component side of the business, but also handle “corporate-wide affairs” as the new CEO. Choi Gee-sung, meanwhile, will retain his position on Samsung’s board, and will assume a new position as the head of Samsung’s Group Corporate Strategy Office. That division is said to focus on future growth for the company as a whole.

In other news, the company will be investing $1.9 billion in a new chip production line. Samsung’s aim is to produce 20nm and 14nm chips in the future. That’s even smaller than chips being used right now, with the current quad-core Exynos chip found in the Galaxy S III utilizing a 32nm process, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chips using 28nm. The new fabrication process will allow more efficient chips to be used in smartphones and tablets going forward, and Samsung say that the new production line should be completed by the end of 2013.

[via Reuters]

Both Facebook and Apple are now notorious, especially recently, for purchasing the entirety of companies smaller than themselves. Facebook’s relatively recent $1 billion dollar purchase of Instagram made headlines for a week while Apple’s still relatively secret purchase of Redmatica was leaked just this morning.

“We continue to buy companies. They are not ones we seek to make public.” – Cook

Pushed by Swisher to speak on how Apple would have to let it be known which companies they’ve acquired or not “eventually”, Cook responded:

“It depends on the amount. If I don’t have to, I won’t.” – Cook

Asked whether or not Apple had looked into purchasing Instagram before Facebook made their infamous grab, Cook was blunt: “We didn’t look at Instagram.” Responding then to a question on Apple’s future with purchasing other “big” companies, Cook let it be known:

“I wouldn’t rule it out. We’re not looking at a big one right now, but I wouldn’t rule it out. We haven’t [ever] bought a company for revenue stream. It’s not how we are wired.” – Cook

Check out the rest of our D10 coverage of this Tim Cook interview via the timeline you see below, and stay tuned as WWDC 2012 approaches quickly – we’ll be there with bells on!

Here’s a hint on how much Cook reveals on future products: zip, zilch, nada. The closest the CEO of Apple gets to telling the next steps in hardware is a confirmation that the company will indeed be opening new doors very, very soon. The video you see here is comprised of several highlighted areas throughout the talk.

As for the expanded view of the interview, you can head to our big Tim Cook D10 appearance wrap-up or to one of our many fine posts along the way. We’ve got a push for USA manufacturing as well as a reaffirmation of no hybrid Apple products. We’ve got a confirmation that Apple’s sharing protocol should be copied as well as some Siri bashing. And of course there’s some Steve Jobs rememberance as well. Check em all out!

Even though critics are relatively silent as of the past few weeks on working conditions in China, Cook took the opportunity to assure the public that they were indeed doing everything in their power to ensure positive outcomes. Cook added several comments on the conditions provided in China plants across the country:

“[Apple] has been working to reduce overtime. That is tricky. Some people want to work a lot. They want to move and work for a year or two and then move back to their village and bring back as much money as they can.” – Cook

Cook noted that, regardless of that, Apple can confirm that plants working on their products have a 95 percent compliance with overtime laws and that they are currently tracking 700,000 workers in China. “I don’t know anyone else is doing this, we’re micromanaging this.”

Mossberg asked Cook if he envisioned factories popping up in the USA and noted that Apple at one point did, in fact, have several factories making Apple products across the country. Cook replied:

“I want there to be. This is not well known, but the engine for the iPhone and the iPad are build in the U.S. in Austin, Texas. The glass is made in a plant in Kentucky.” – Cook

Cook went on to note that while there’s an intense focus on the final assembly, a lot of value is still placed by Apple in the different materials. Cook went on to comment on a question of whether the assembly of Apple products could once again take place in the USA:

“I hope so, someday. … There are things we can do and that’s what we are working on. We should do more semiconductor things in the U.S.” – Cook

Check out our timeline below to keep up with the whole interview from D10 and stick around as this talk continues to be mined for gems!

Speaking in response to Mossberg’s simple “what’s wrong with that?”, Cook spoke up: “In my view the tablet and the PC are different. You can do things with the tablet if you are not encumbered by the legacy of the PC.” Without a doubt, this pair of sentences alone should let you know that no touch-screen MacBooks will be popping up at this year’s WWDC. That said, Cook wasn’t letting any clues slip as to what WOULD be there. When asked what was “on tap” for Apple’s developer conference, Cook replied simply:

“That’s a great question. I’m not going to answer it.” – Cook

He did, on the other hand, let it be known that “people will like it” of course. Cook noted that he used his iPad a lot more than he used his notebook, but that he also loved his Mac at the same time. He noted that there “[isn't just] one way to do tablets” but that Apple’s approach “doesn’t require all that.”

“We didn’t invent the tablet market. It was there. We invented the modern tablet.” – Cook

Cook continued that Microsoft’s merger of a tablet and a notebook is something like merging a toaster and a refridgerator and a tablet. Cook went on to say that even though Windows 8 is being promised by Microsoft to be a “no-compromise” operating system, that if you merge a PC and a tablet, “the PC isn’t as good as it can be, nor is the tablet.”

He also confirmed that such a hybrid product would not be presented by Apple ever, much less next week. Stay tuned as we report on what Apple WILL reveal next week right here on SlashGear.

Cook had just moved from speaking specifically about the late Steve Jobs, saying that the former CEO of Apple had told him to “do what’s right” in all things. This was instead of simply doing what Jobs would have done. Cook noted this week that he was following this maxim as best he could:

“I’m doing that. Does that mean something would be different Of course. But he was the best person at doing that.” – Cook

Cook went on to say that if Apple employees had cash to spare, they should spare it: “we’ve got a little bit left over and we should share it.” The current CEO of Apple noted that Jobs “was for” the employee charity donation matching program and certainly knew that it would be in place before he died. When asked if sharing also meant that Apple would be less secret in the future, Cook was quite clear in his reply.

““We’re going to double down on secrecy on products. But in other things Apple will be the most transparent company. Supplier responsibility, environmental issues … In this area I want people to copy us.” – Cook

Check the timeline below to see all the D10 gold left by Tim Cook in the wake of this opening interview. Siri, Steve Jobs, Foxconn, and more on the way!

[via All Things D]

Noting that he learned focus from Jobs first and formost, he let the audience know that it was at some point late last year that some one shook him and told him “it’s time to get on. It was at that point that “the sadness was replaced by his intense determination to continue the journey.” Continuing on with what he’d learned from Jobs also has Cook continuing on with tenants that include keeping to a steady stream of just a few great things at once:

“You can only do so many things great and you should cast aside everything else. …That’s embedded in Apple.” – Cook

Cook noted that he would not witness nor would he permit that bit of wisdom to leave Apple at any point. He noted that Jobs also taught him to take joy in the journey, moving towards ownership of the key underlying technologies of the products he works with, and to keep moving forward. For example, Cook notes that moving on is certainly important:

“I love museums but I don’t want to live in one.” – Cook

Noting that Steve told him not to ask what he would do, but instead:

“He looked at me with those intense eyes that only he had and said: just do what’s right.” – Cook

Stay tuned as we continue to cover this fabulous interview throughout the night!

[via AllThingsD]