Yandex has raised $1.3 Billion in its IPO, pricing at $25 per share. It has sold 52.2 million shares and above the average range of $20 to $22 per share.

Yandex is popularly known as the New Google.

“Yandex has good growth to date, and I think they will in the future,” said IPOdesktop.com President Francis Gaskins. “Investors are hungry for growth wherever they can get it, whether it is Russia or elsewhere.”

“Google is a great company, but we are better,” Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Ilya Segalovich told Reuters. “We are very focused on what we are doing and the focus is technology and search.”

Yandex has certainly made an impressive debut in the United States.

With the recent success of LinkedIn and now Yandex, it becomes evidently visible that internet companies are the best investment options.

Investors have already started saving some extra money for bigger names like Facebook and Twitter.

It is still a secret that how Yandex is going to utilize the amount made in the IPO here. There have been no formal announcements made by any of the officials. “All our competitors have piles of cash, huge piles, and we must be prepared for all kinds of things,” said Segalovich.

The company has an advantage over Google in terms of grammatical complexities of the Russian language. Ilya Segalovich and co-founder Arkady Volozh have come up prepared and all cylinders blazing. They have 65% of the local market share in comparison to Google’s 22%.

HP reported a 23 percent fall in its sales of desktops and consumer notebooks.  Suffering similar setbacks is Dell; the brand accounted a 7 percent dip in its sales of computers.  Acer, on the other hand nose-dived in its losses up to 16 percent. Amidst this gloom, the sale of Tablets is seeing its silver-lining. The range of  Tablets, the i-Pad in particular – is selling like hot cakes in the markets. Market gurus are already out with their predictions for the leading brands.

Trade pundits believe Apple will sell nearly 47 million Tablets out of the 70 million Tablets available world over – in the year 2011 alone. And this craze will give rise and surge the manufacturing of tablets to 108 million by next year itself.

The numbers are a easy graphic to conclude that Tablets are overshadowing and to an extent also endangering the existence of PC computers in the markets. However, on the reverse side an interesting statistic states that people who purchase a tablet have in all likelihood have bought a computer in the last two years.

A deeper look in the trend shows that most consumers already own a computer and see the purchase of a tablet as a fit substitute today. In the long-run however, analysts believe Tablets cannot compete with PCs in terms of longevity and does not give access or accomplish all tasks required by its user.

Research conducted shows, out of the 1430 Tablet users interviews, 77 percent still use their PC – the reliability has not completely diminished.

At that point (ten years ago) all the trade analysts and pundits were against it. They were unable to see or predict what the management at Apple long knew about the hidden potential. The difference is about finding a ‘way of doing it’.

And haven’t they hit the jackpot! There are more than 300 Apple retail stores all across the world. The rising number suggests that people like to see Apple products being displayed at Apple retail stores than anywhere else. Isn’t it great?

There are 317 total Apple retail stores in total. In United Sates, there are 233 stores to count and the rest of 84 in Europe, Asia and other parts of the world.

The good part is that like every other Apple product, these stores have everything that you usually expect from it. The financial figures suggest that Apple retail stores have counted for 13% of the total sales (3.2 Billion).

Some Apple stores are becoming design institutions in itself. The flagship New York City store on Fifth Avenue is a real visual treat. It is a 32-foot glass tube.

These stores are a product of excellent business strategy and planning. Every store is developed with a view to focus on providing technical solutions to its customers. We all know that people are curious to find that what exactly they can do with their Apple products.

The popularity factor can be measured after coming across something like this “People would invent any reason to visit an Apple store”.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 14, 2011
COMMERCE TRADE OFFICIAL RELEASES ETHICS CODES PRINCIPLES
DESIGNED TO IMPROVE MEDICAL DEVICE EXPORTS

Assistant Secretary Camuñez Presents Results from APEC Medical Devices Working Group BIG SKY, Mont. – Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Market Access and Compliance Michael Camuñez today announced the development of new voluntary principles for a code of ethics within the medical device industry that will improve the quality of healthcare, encourage innovation, and promote small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Camuñez presented “The Kuala Lumpur (KL) Principles for Medical Device Sector Codes of Business Ethics” at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation’s (APEC) SME Ministerial Meeting in Big Sky. The KL Principles represent the first time in APEC history that voluntary ethical principles have been developed for a specific industry. The principles will be submitted for endorsement by SME Ministers at their ministerial on May 21.

“Once implemented, the KL Principles will help APEC member economies develop codes of ethics for their respective medical device sectors,” Camuñez said. “The codes will help eliminate corruption, one of
the most insidious trade barriers facing SMEs throughout the APEC region.”

These principles were developed in response to a call last year by APEC’s SME Ministers to facilitate open and transparent SME business environments free from the high costs of corruption in sectors of
export interest. Officials from 18 APEC economies, and leading U.S. medical device manufacturers represented by their national trade association, AdvaMed, contributed to their development. Use of these
principles will drive improvements in the quality of healthcare education and innovation.

“Ethical practices ensure health care decisions are based on the best interests of patients and promote patient access to life-saving medical technologies and the appropriate training of healthcare professionals,” Camuñez said. “This is done by providing companies with clear parameters to guide conduct, as detailed in the five basic tenets of the KL Principles: integrity, independence, appropriateness,
transparency and advancement.”

Corruption diverts scarce resources away from critical investments in research and development and innovation. The innovation and SME growth resulting from these principles will promote the development of safer and more effective medical devices.

“Innovation in this sector is not an accident. Investment in research and development represents 12 percent of the sector’s revenue—four times the manufacturer average,” Camuñez said. “With more
resources freed up to invest in R&D and innovation, the sector will benefit from even greater growth.”

The KL Principles will be used as a model to develop APEC code of ethics principles in additional sectors of export interest, such as construction.

The APEC SME Ministerial is held annually by the APEC host economy to encourage the development of small and medium enterprises and to build their capacity to engage in international trade.

Follow all the updates, videos and press releases this week here at The-explorer.com – one of the your prime sources of coverage of the Big Sky, Montana APEC and with continued continued coverage of the November APEC in Honolulu Hawaii.

The United States Federal Communications Commission and Federal Emergency Management Agency on Monday revealed about the system and said that the system will send the emergency alert messages to the people, which will warn them of the terror attacks, natural calamities and other emergency situations. Throwing more light on the proposed project the officials said that starting next year all the new cell phones will be required to have a chip embedded in it which will be capable of receiving the emergency alerts. Many smart phones which are currently used in the market already have the new technological feature in it.

The officials also said that apart from the very important emergency alerts which are mandatory for everyone people can also opt for amber alerts which include the alerts of missing children. Mentioning about the features of the new technology it was said that the technology is designed in such a way that even if the other cell phone is not working i.e., the text messages and voice services are not working; the alerts will be delivered to the phone. Talking about the implementation of the plan it was said that it is expected the new technology will be covering the whole country by the end of next year.

The famous Japanese electronics company, Sony, unveiled two of its tablet computers which run on Google’s Android operating system. These tablet computers have come as a delayed but direct challenge to Apple’s iPad. The two tablets code named as S1 and S2 were launched in India and several other countries. They will be launched globally later this year. The S1 model has 9.4 inches touch screen display while the S2 one has two 5.5 inches display. S1 is easier to hold as it is thick from one end and tapers off to the other end.

The new Sony tablets are flooded with new features and hence can definitely be considered as a must wait computer in the global market. These tablets have been designed carefully to ease portability of the device. The technologies used in the touch-screen operations are very efficient and they enhance the speed with which one can work and access computers. With large touch keypads, speed of using mails and other services will also be fast. It can also work as a device to control audio-video equipments. With the help of it many content can also be send to television screens and also to many other devices. Apart from these it uses various network services and hence provides a complete entertainment experience.

There was no indication about the price of the tablets by the company. By presenting the features of the tablets in an efficient way the company looks to challenge the Apple’s iPad.

This is great news for US technology companies as Apple is the second company in as many days to report profits that was unexpected by the industry gurus. Earlier Intel had announced record three year high profits for the quarter as compared to the same period in the previous years. Intel was big surprise for even insiders in the company as the profits were unexpected due to a design error in a semiconductor chip which was called back.

Apple’s net income for quarter from January to March jumped 85% compared to the same period last year. iPhone sales has rocketed with a 113% increase with 18.65m units sold.

Computer sales of the company were strongly higher and up by 28%. The computer sales were mainly boosted by the sale of MacBook Pro.

Apple reported quarterly net profits of $5.99bn (£3.6bn), 95% up on the $3bn it made a year ago. Revenue was $24.67bn, a rise of 83%.

But there are areas of concern for the bosses at Apple as the one-time star, the iPod, has failed to generate the sales expected. It only sold 93 units of iPod which was 17% down as compared to the sales in the same period last year. The sale of its iPad tablet computers was also below expectations.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive said: “With quarterly revenue growth of 83% and profit growth of 95% we’re firing on all cylinders. We will continue to innovate on all fronts throughout the remainder of the year.”

US computer chip giant has surpassed expectations with record rise of 29 percent in net profit revenue in the first quarter. Majority of the revenue was accounted by the sale of PCs. With this Intel has dismissed all forecasts of a dip in the sales of personal computers due to the popularity of tablets and iPads.

Paul Otellini, Intel president and chief executive, on Tuesday said: “The first-quarter revenue was an all-time record for Intel fueled by double digit annual revenue growth in every major product segment and across all geographies.”

“These outstanding results, combined with our guidance for the second quarter, position us to achieve greater than 20 percent annual revenue growth”, he added.

The company’s revenue remains unaffected by the March 11 Japan earthquake and Tsunami. Intel’s revenue in Japan has also risen by 11 percent.

IBM has said that it expects the sale of personal computers to grow by more than 10 percent this year and next year too.

This was a pleasant surprise to Intel’s investors and shareholders as the company was expecting a hit in the first quarter revenue due to a failure in design of one of the support chips. Intel according to its latest reports was expecting the error in design to cut down the revenue by $300 million to fix it.

Volkswagen Passenger Cars Director, Neeraj Garg said that the IPL edition of Vento comes with IPL decals, plush leatherette seats, specially crafted door sill garnish with an IPL logo and most importantly the state-of-the-art multimedia player with a color touch screen which has a navigation system included in it. Also the buyer will get a cricket as a gift. The Vento has a 1.6 litre petrol engine.

The various other 4-wheelers that are rolling out of Volkswagen factories in India are hatchback Polo, premium SUV Touareg, Beetle, Vento, Jetta and Passat.

Mr. Grag introduced the premium luxury sedan Passat which costs Rs. 20.80 lakh (Ex-Showroom price Chennai). Mr. Garg said they have already received bookings for 100 units of Passat within 2 days. Premium luxury sedan Passat was the first car that was introduced with the Blue Motion technology in India.

Volkswagen has sold around 51,608 units in the last year and plans to repeat the performance with its new launches. The second half of this year will see the launch of new model of luxury sedan Jetta by Volkswagen. Volkswagen introduced Jetta in 2008 and around 2500 units have been sold so far.

The Indian automobile market has become hot with we every major automobile company entering the market with new models. Ford Figo was the most awarded car by a big margin and this success has inspired Ford to replicate the model and success in Europe.

There are numerous smart cars that all customers to remotely unlock the car, make calls and receive direction, etc. Toyota and Microsoft plan to take this to the next level. They propose to develop an energy management services system. Their system will make it possible for the cars to communicate with the eclectic grid and then schedule to charge themselves in the cost efficient and environment friendly manner. The foresight here is that as electric plug-in cars grow in number, the load or demand on the electric grid also increases. The telematic system proposed will ensure that not all cars are charged simultaneously but arranged an efficient manner to reduce the load on the grid.

An embedded connectivity technology will be used that will allow the cars not just to communicate with the electric grid but also communicate with each other (other cars).

also plan to integrate smart phones to car’s system. This will make monitor of electric cars through the smart phone. Users will be able to check battery life, driving range, control various components of cars such as windows, music, air conditioning, etc and also track the nearest charging station.