Today’s topics include news that Qualcomm is considering restructuring options, Microsoft signs a huge Office 365 deal with General Electric, revelations on how the Hacking Team compromised cryptocurrency accounts on government order, and new processors from AMD.
The turmoil around mobile chip maker Qualcomm looks likely to continue amid reports that officials this week could announce job cuts and disclose the results of a strategic review that considered various options that included splitting up the company.
Qualcomm executives are scheduled to announce fiscal third-quarter financial numbers July 22 and it could possibly discuss at that time what it plans to do to reduce corporate expenses as part of a restructuring plan.
According to unnamed sources in a report on the Website The Information, company executives are getting ready to lay off “several thousand employees” from their 30,000-person workforce. The move comes following disappointing first-quarter earnings numbers.
Microsoft and General Electric today announced that they have signed an agreement to deploy cloud-based Office 365 productivity apps and services to the latter’s massive global workforce.
Under the deal’s terms, Microsoft will make Office 365 available to GE’s 300,000 employees across 170 countries. The software’s capabilities aside, the deal indicates that Microsoft’s investments in cloud application services are paying off.
Hacking Team, the creator of a digital remote-access and surveillance platform, had specifically targeted Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to allow government officials and law-enforcement agencies to follow the money, according to email messages stolen from the company in a network breach earlier this month.
The messages, posted publicly by Wikileaks, indicated that the company’s platform for compromising and monitoring targets’ computers, known as the Remote Control System, gained new functionality in 2014 to track the use of Bitcoin, LiteCoin, Feathercoin and Namecoin.
Advanced Micro Devices is rolling out the latest addition to its high-end A-Series processors that officials say will deliver plenty of power for computers running Microsoft’s Windows 10 operating system that’s scheduled for release at the end of July.
AMD unveiled the A8-7670K accelerated processing unit July 20, with officials saying the 10-core desktop chip is aimed at mainstream PC workloads, with the quad-core performance for Windows 10 environments and the graphics capabilities for online gaming.