Photographer: Pau Barrena/Bloomberg One Tiny Number Can Reveal Big Problems at a Global Smartphone Maker

Tucked away in a corporate earnings report—past the data on profit margins and revenue growth, hidden deep inside a balance sheet—is a number that can tell you a lot about a mobile phone maker's health. In the global smartphone war, brands are routinely measured by market share, revenue, profit, and the coolness of their ads. But one line item called finished goods inventory, which refers to the percentage of materials that were manufactured into phones but went unsold, can give insight into whether a company's fortunes are changing.

The latest company to let phones pile up in warehouses and on store shelves is HTC. The Taiwanese company's stock just fell to its lowest point in a decade after lowering its sales forecast on June 5 and announcing a NT$2.9 billion ($93 million) writedown, though it's recovered some of that loss amid speculation the decline could make it a buyout target. HTC's finished goods inventory had climbed to a record high 2.35 percent of total assets at the end of last quarter. During the company's heyday, that figure rarely nudged above 1 percent.

“The rise in finished goods inventory could be a sign that HTC's latest high-end phone, the M9, is not selling as well as expected,” says John Butler, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “The phone has received rather negative reviews from tech critics and may not be faring well against some very competitive, feature-rich phones on the market from rivals like Samsung with the S6 and Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.”

Inventory, sometimes used by data divers to peek into the bowels of a company, is generally divided into three types: raw materials, which are the bits and pieces that get fed into the production line; unfinished goods, the stuff still in production; and finished goods, the devices sitting in warehouses, on trucks, or even on store shelves. The distinctions are important. Having a ton of materials or unfinished goods isn't necessarily a disaster. Many materials can be switched around between products, so even if one incarnation of a smartphone faces low demand, the components can be swapped into another product pretty easily.

Leaving unsold products lying around, however, is an especially bad sin in the consumer electronics industry. Once a smartphone is assembled and leaves the production line, the clock starts ticking. In the high-paced technology business, consumer devices lose their luster fast, which makes the chance of actually selling the product decline with each passing day as newer models come onto the market. Steve Jobs saw this when he returned to Apple in 1997—at a time, he had said, when it was near bankruptcy—to find that finished goods inventory had climbed to 7.7 percent of assets. Jobs hired an operations guru from IBM named Tim Cook to clean up the mess. A year later, in June 1998, the number had dropped to 1.7 percent—and hasn't crossed 0.9 percent in the past few years.

When Motorola got into trouble at the end of 2008, its finished goods inventory peaked at 6.1 percent. That same quarter, it posted a record $3.6 billion loss that precipitated large-scale layoffs and the eventual breakup of the 80-year-old company. Having lots of unsold stock isn’t always a bad sign, though. Nokia's figure climbed above 14 percent in 1995 before it kicked off a decade of exploding sales—creating, for a time, the world's biggest mobile phone maker. But HTC isn't seeing explosive growth, which makes its record inventory figure a red flag for investors. HTC declined to comment.

Too low a stockpile, coupled with insufficient production capacity, can also be a problem. Qualcomm ran into this three years ago, forcing various smartphone makers to push back their product launches due to a lack of available chips. HTC faced a shortage of components in 2011—when it was topping even Apple in the U.S.—prompting the company to sign long-term supply contracts to secure supply and favorable pricing. In an expensive display of irony, this month's writedown was a response to some of those 2011 supply contracts. None of it was for unfinished goods. Yet.

Amazon embraces "long-form" mobile gaming

Amazon embraces "long-form" mobile gaming

Online retailer's Til Morning's Light looks to crack mobile market with a $7 price tag, finite narrative, lack of multiplayer

Last month, Amazon Game Studios launched Til Morning's Light, a mobile game for iOS and Amazon Fire devices that eschews much of the conventional wisdom shaping the market right now. First of all, it carries a premium price of $7, with no in-app purchases available. It's also single-player, skipping the usual mobile game's social integration and attendant virality.

Amazon Games Studio executive producer David Holmes told GamesIndustry.biz the company's strategy isn't to deliberately go against the grain so much as it is to give customers what they want.

"One of the things we noticed is that in the mobile space, there were a lot of really good experiences that were free-to-play or pretty bite-sized, but not a lot of experiences in games that were deep and immersive," Holmes said. "We like to use the phrase 'long form,' if you think of novels versus short stories or newspaper. All those forms of the written word are entertaining and interesting, but they also serve and meet different needs. So we were interested in creating long-form mobile experiences that were closer in spirit to what you would find on PC or a game console--maybe a DS or a Vita--than you would typically find on a phone or a tablet."

It makes sense then that Amazon Game Studios found a partner in Til Morning's Light developer WayForward Technologies. For well over a decade, WayForward has specialized in handheld platforms, both with its own original series (Shantae, Mighty Switch Force) and with highly regarded licensed fare (Contra 4, Aliens: Infestation). So even though Til Morning's Light marked the first time director and designer Adam Tierney has helmed a mobile project, he said it still felt like a familiar experience.

"It helps with a game like this because we didn't need to tear the concept down into something that wouldn't hold up to the original idea just to get it on mobile," Tierney said. "We were able to do a game that was substantially longer, had huge areas, a lot of depth, a lot of story content, voice over, and stuff like that. It was fantastic because we could have a very robust game that I don't think you see that much on mobile. But I do get the sense the pendulum is, to a degree, swinging in this direction. People are getting excited about seeing larger, deeper games on mobile."

On the one hand, Amazon's long-form philosophy suggests that there's still a market for the type of games WayForward has specialized in for years. On the other, Wayforward's expansion into mobile speaks to the struggles the dedicated handheld space has faced in recent years.

"I'm not sure if it's really dying as much as maybe developers are choosing to focus on iOS," Tierney said of the portable market. "At the end of the day, you're probably always going to have a Nintendo handheld. You're probably always going to have a Sony handheld. As long as these things are being created by these massive gaming companies, they're going to want content for it. So I don't think it will ever go away entirely, and as long as that stuff is around, WayForward is probably going to continue to be interested in it because it's so nostalgic for us and we just love that experience. But at the same time, we're obviously dipping our toe much more into mobile gaming now."

Holmes likewise acknowledged that the handheld market he identified as the closest analog for these long-form experiences has been soft. However, he sees that less as a challenge for games like Til Morning's Light, and more as an opportunity, reflective simply of changing play habits among the core gamer crowd.

"I actually think of it as an opportunity because I think that audience is still interested in playing deep, immersive, long-form games when they're not tethered," Holmes said. "And I think that the place they're gaming in general when they're not tethered is getting more and more to be on their touch devices rather than on dedicated gaming devices."

Though WayForward has worked with plenty of other partners in the past, Tierney said the experience 

"I wouldn't say anything negative about any other publishers we've worked with, but I would say by comparison, everything Amazon Game Studios did, every decision they made--and I don't even remember any mandates but if there were any--everything that came along was very thought out and very much under the understanding of what would make the best game," Tierney said. "There were really never any curve balls. There was never a moment where we had to throw this in there now, or we had to support this thing which made no sense for the game."

Tierney was particularly impressed with the Amazon team's familiarity with the project. Regardless of who he dealt with at Amazon and what discipline they focused on, Tierney said it seemed like everyone at Amazon had read and understood every document the development team sent over. That understanding also helped keep the development process on track, since they weren't being sidetracked with requests to stuff in new features for the sake of new features.

"It's easy sometimes to be working on a game and get caught up with requests," Tierney said. "Maybe the brand wants something or the publisher wants something and you're always kind of racing against the clock. I think what happens on some games is you get caught up with the bureaucracy of stuff, or maybe the management of production that you lose some of your momentum. And momentum is the greatest thing we had on this game. Amazon was really careful to make sure they were never putting up walls, that they were only popping in to discuss things when they warranted a discussion and things could be tweaked to help them realize their potential. We just had such momentum on this game that we were able to get so much done."

Even though Holmes said he liked WayForward's vision for the game and it fit with what Amazon Game Studios had wanted to do, that wasn't necessarily the primary reason for the partnership.

"The order of importance in a published project is partner first, and project second, in the sense that picking a great partner who's passionate about an idea is in some ways more important than trying to slot a particular project into a particular need," Holmes said. "At the end of the day, a great game is going to stand out and be successful; trying to over-engineer it from the beginning to be a very specific thing is really challenging... It was pretty obvious that it was something they'd been thinking about and trying to get done for a while. The amount of pre-investment they'd made into the project because it was kind of a passion project for them made it appealing as well."

Now the question is how to get the word out about the game. Amazon doesn't reveal sales information as a matter of policy, but Til Morning's Light's premium price and lack of social features already eliminate some of the more obvious routes of discovery for mobile games.

"We believe that if we make great games, games that are appealing to both our audience but also the media that speaks to that audience or that partners like Apple can get excited about as well, there's a whole lot of outreach that happens just based on that," Holmes said.

Holmes has been pleasantly surprised at the support Til Morning's Light has gotten not just from Apple (arguably a competing platform holder to Amazon), but from the traditional gaming media as well. Oddly enough, he was particularly encouraged by one unforgiving review on a gaming site, because it meant the game was being held to the same standards as traditional games.

"Having these places, these sites, these partners measure us against what we're trying to achieve is exactly what we're looking for," Holmes said. "And being able to leverage all the places these core gaming audiences pay attention to, listen to, and use as decision-making vehicles has been great for us so far."

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Apple unveils iOS 9 at WWDC, with a 'proactive' Siri and smarter Maps

Apple launched iOS 9, the latest major update to its wildly popular mobile operating system, Monday at the company's annual Worldwide Developer Conference, or WWDC.

The refreshed OS brings powerful changes to Siri, the native mapping app, and tablet productivity that pull iOS 9 more in line with some features found in certain Android and Windows phones and tablets. Here's what you're getting, and when.

A stronger, more 'proactive' Siri

Siri, the personal assistant first pioneered by Apple, had started to lag behind Google's Android counterpart (especially the updated Google Now in Android M). Not for long. Code-named Proactive, Apple's new Siri service promises to serve up timely, relevant information when you need it.

Here's what you'll look forward to with the new Siri. First, we get a new UI and responsiveness to very specific requests. For example, you can ask: "Show me photos from Utah last August," or "Remind me to grab my coffee from the roof of the car when I get in." (The latter emulates a feature from Microsoft's Cortana.)

When it comes to search itself, you can seek out sports scores and video from a wealth of sites like Vimeo, where clips play directly from the search result. Apple's new search API handles all of this behind the scenes, pulling info from the application and linking you back to the app itself (to which you're already signed in. Shortcut!)

Oh, and every time you call up search, Siri offers something called Suggestions, which could contain anything from people, apps to discover, or apps you usually use this time of day. (The jury's out on whether this will be truly helpful or just add clutter.)

Siri also hooks into Apple's Beats Music acquisition (called Apple Music), playing not just titles to songs you specifically request, but also knowing how to find songs. So you can say: "Play the song from "Selma", or "Top 10 songs of the 1980s."

Maps

Ever since Apple launched its own Maps app with no transit directions, it has limped along under the weakness of this Achille's heel. Now with iOS 9, Maps chases down some of Google's most-used features. For example, Apple Maps introduces directions for walking and transit.

The app also includes a discovery feature, called Explore mode. This will surface suggestions for new topics and channels, based on what you're reading. You can favorite any article you like to refer back to later on. Apple emphasizes that News is private, and that Apple won't share what you read with other Apple devices or third-party companies.

Now, there's already ton of newsreaders in the App Store, but Apple is hoping that you'll use its native app instead, just because it's already there.

Apple will roll out its News app in the US, UK and Australia.

New keyboard, multitasking (especially for iPad)

iOS 9 for the iPad gets multitasking features that include a split screen view and a ton of gestures for getting around. For example, placing two fingers on the keyboard turns it into a track pad, similar to what you'd see on a Mac.

Double-tapping the home button invokes the task-switcher (for phones and tablets). You see large, full-screen previews of all your apps, and swiping down calls up other applications as well.

Multitasking works similarly to how it does on other mobile platforms, with apps you can "pin" to the side of the screen, and a split ratio you can adjust to make one screen larger than the other. Of course, both screens are fully active. It isn't clear which apps will be compatible when iOS 9 launches, but third-party developers will likely need to program their apps to comply.

You can slide from the right (called slideover) to access more apps for split view.

In another new feature, videos will play as a pop-up window -- called picture-in-picture -- that you can drag around the screen. (We've seen both split-screen and picture-in-picture before in certain Android phones.)

Split view will work only on the iPad Air 2, but the slideover feature works for the iPad Air, Air 2, and later versions of the iPad Mini.

Apple Pay and Wallet

In conjunction with the iOS 9 announcement, Apple revealed that its mobile payment service will soon work with loyalty and rewards cards.

Also new: it'll launch for the first time in the UK with a ton of brands and banks. In the US, Discover Card will also support Apple Pay, along with a few new brands, like Trader Joe's.

Remember Passbook? Well now it's called Wallet. This is a very small change, since all your boarding passes and cards remain there, but one of the big themes Apple was going for when they announced Apple pay was a way to eliminate the wallet. Changing Passbook's name to wallet is another step in that direction.

More sophisticated note-taking

Apple's Notes app has remained static for a long time. With iOS 9, Notes gets a toolbar for formatting text, and now lets you create checklists. (Hallelujah.) Apple demonstrated on stage how you can take a regular list and instantly change it to a checklist with radio buttons so you can tick each of them off. You also can drop photos into your notes now, draw doodles on the screen, and link a Web page to a note.

Power-saving and more

Apples says that is latest OS will optimize battery life to give you a full extra hour of juice, and it also harnesses a new low-power mode that boosts your battery life by an extra three hours when you turn it on. (Echoes of certain Android handsets once more.)

Support for two-factor authentication will add an extra layer of security.

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Dropped iPhone 5 films its watery descent to the ocean floor

An iPhone 5 user from San Diego almost lost his Apple handset after accidentally dropping it into the sea.

“My brother tried throwing my phone to me,” Gregory Papadin told British newspaper The Mirror. “It ended up going straight under water and sank to bottom of the ocean floor.”

Papadin says the underwater pressure proved too much for him and his brother to swim down and retrieve the phone, but the captain of the ship he was renting was able to dive in and get it — to discover that the phone had not only managed to survive the episode, but actually film its own watery descent.

Check out the video below:

The iPhone 5 in question was protected by a LifeProof case, described by its manufacturers as being capable of surviving “anything you throw at [it].”

The company claims its waterproof cases will protect the iPhone down to depths of around 6.6 feet, but judging by this video it may have been selling itself a bit short.

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Apple, Google said to refine their mobile wallet offerings

Google expected to revamp Google Pay as peer-to-peer payments system, while Apple tinkers with rewards program, according to the New York Times.

Apple and Google are getting ready to up their ante in the mobile wallet market, going head-to-head for dominance of a sector expected to explode in consumer popularity in coming years.

Google will unveil an overhaul of its mobile-payments products Thursday during its annual I/O developer conference in San Francisco, according to the New York Times. The search giant is said to have revamped its Google Wallet as a peer-to-peer payments app that will allow users to send each other money through their bank accounts. The company is also expected to offer more details about Android Pay, the payment platform for retailers it unveiled in March.

Apple, meanwhile, is expected to unveil enhancements to Apple Pay next month at its Worldwide Developers Conference, including a rewards program for users of its mobile wallet, according to the Times.

Apple and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The moves highlight the intensifying competition for mobile payments, the ability to pay for goods and services with a smartphone. In addition to deeper entrenchment in the financial services industry, the efforts are seen as an avenue to attract more consumers to the tech giants' products and services.

Gaining consumer loyalty early may mark the difference in the mobile-payments market, which is expected to grow next year to $27.5 billion in US transactions from last year's $3.5 billion, according to market research firm eMarketer. The number of mobile payment users in the US is expected to hit 36.2 million next year, more than twice the number using digital wallets in 2014, the researcher said. That pace is expected to continue into 2018, when eMarketer foresees 57 million consumers using their smartphones to checkout at store registers.

While a handful of mobile-payments efforts have been around for the past couple of years, Apple jump-started interest last fall with the introduction of Apple Pay, which allows consumers to make credit card purchases with an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus. Less than 72 hours after its debut, 1 million credit cards had been used on the service.

Like Apple Pay, Android Pay will use near-field communications, or NFC, a technology that uses an embedded chip to talk with compatible registers. But unlike Apple's services, Android Pay will not be a standalone app, serving instead as the platform for third-party store and payment apps.

In addition to competing against each other, the two companies also face stiff competition from other companies that offer similar mobile payments services. Samsung offers its new Samsung Pay feature on the new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge and has unveiled a mobile payments service called Android Pay. PayPal, the digital payments unit being spun off from eBay later this year, plans to acquire Paydiant, a startup that helps companies such as Subway and Capitol One build mobile payments options.

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Yahoo! Inks Amended Search Deal With Microsoft Corporation For Bing Ads, Mobile Platforms

Yahoo and Microsoft to have more search flexibility along with reallocated ad revenue in new agreement

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) executives have updated a long-term search partnership today for an agreement drafted in 2009 when predecessors, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer and Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz entered a search partnership to rival the seismic Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG), in an agreement that would be revisited mid-way through its inception. The revised partnership arrived after a month of negotiations in two core areas: aiming to allow more flexibility in how search results are displayed as the influence of mobile devices grow and alter the way advertising teams are managed between the two tech giants.

The original agreement left Microsoft in charge of providing Yahoo search services on computers by controlling the technology sustaining search algorithms for both companies across the gargantuan website universe. Yahoo on the other hand, was left with the task of handling revenues from search ads for both companies. In recent times, however, Yahoo has scraped off elements responsible for generating 37% of its ad revenue owing to dwindling traffic. Moreover, the profit-sharing scheme also obliged Microsoft to pay Yahoo 88% of search revenue generated from its site during the initial five years of the agreement.

Current Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer commented on the partnership that was left to be negotiated between her and current Microsoft Executive Satya Nadella: “Over the past few months, Satya and I have worked closely together to establish a revised search agreement that allows us to enhance our user experience and innovate more in our search business.” As the halfway point of the agreement arrived, the friction between said search partners reached a tipping point as Microsoft shares slipped by 17 cents in morning trading and Yahoo added 4 cents to its share capital of $45.7. “This renewed agreement opens up significant opportunities in our partnership that I’m very excited to explore,” she also stated.

The amended pact permits Yahoo greater control over how search results are presented on mobile and desktop platforms under the condition Yahoo continues using Bing to process the majority of search traffic arriving on the website. Furthermore, Yahoo will resume normal service in handling its own Gemini ads whereas Microsoft will take exclusive control of selling ads delivered by Bing, the search engine website unveiled by Microsoft in late-March 2009.

Our global partnership with Yahoo has benefited our shared customers over the past five years and I look forward to building on what we’ve already accomplished together,” said current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Our partnership with Yahoo is one example of the diverse partnerships we’ll continue to cultivate in order to have the greatest impact for our customers.”

Former Google search executive Ms Mayer was vocal of her dissatisfaction with the amended terms and has been busy bulking Yahoo search technology and ad revenue in areas Microsoft has no jurisdiction in. Her personal analysis argued the revenue per search for Yahoo has been worse under the Microsoft pact than when it handled web searches and advertisement schedules on its own. However, before the companies went into an agreement, their aggregate searches totaled 28%. Interestingly, their combined market share has notably increased to 32.6% for desktop searches in the US since February.

Microsoft and Yahoo plan to begin the transition of reallocating advertiser sales this summer. The process will be carried out by integrating sales lineup with the engineering team to “allow both companies to service advertisers more efficiently."

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