Weekly Tech Business Recap: Skype Syncs with Mobile Phone Bills, Apple Opens Pandora’s Box

Here’s your Cheat Sheet to this week’s top technology business headlines:

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A jury recently awarded $1.3 billion to Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) in its suit alleging that the SAP AG (NYSE:SAP) division TomorrowNow wrongfully downloaded millions of Oracle files, but a judge subsequently threw that verdict out. Now, the former has brought an appeal of the decision, that basically ignores SAP’s offer of $306 million in damages which was “to save the time and expense of a new trial,” as its attorneys characterized the payment.

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Vringo, Inc. (AMEX:VRNG) shares spiked Tuesday on word that it has applied for a patent that covers “a new format for video group messaging.” Observers wonder if the firm expects to file a lawsuit over Google Hangouts (NASDAQ:GOOG), as it is already suing Google over its AdWords search ad platform.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has sent out invitations for an event at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, for 1:00 PM on September 12th. It is widely anticipated that the soiree will see the release of a new iPhone, and several of those in the know expect that the device will go on sale 9 days later. However, recent leaks suggest that it will be October before the iPad Mini is announced.

The former Apax Partners executive Jacqueline Reses has been recruited at Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) to become its new human resources chief, replacing David Windley, who exited three weeks ago as part of Marissa Mayer’s remake of Yahoo’s HR and talent-acquisition endeavors. On Tuesday it was said Mayer has been personally reviewing each new Yahoo hire. Is she trying to head off another Scott Thompson situation?

Fallout from Nokia Corporation’s (NYSE:NOK) Lumia 920 disappointing debut is sending its shares over the cliff Wednesday, now off their August 27th highs by some 24 percent. The specs of the 920′s PureView camera did not impress, and the fact that Nokia is only promising availability of the phone in “select markets” in the fourth quarter is not helping matters. Not only did the company fail to set a specific sale date for the 920, it also didn’t announce carrier partners, says Wells Fargo, even though most observers had anticipated that the Lumia 900 partner AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) would become the 920′s exclusive domestic seller. On the other hand, The Verge’s hands-on preview is upbeat: it praised the product’s display and design, along with the camera’s image stabilization and low-light capabilities.

Dynamic random access memory providers such as Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU), and Samsung (SSNLF.PK), are feeling the impact of microeconomic effects on that market. Demand for DRAM is becoming more inelastic, according to iSuppli, which means that as prices fall, the quantity of sales do not expand sufficiently to make up for revenue lost (your old econ prof would draw an almost vertical demand curve on the board at this point). To make matters worse, this growing inelasticity is being accompanied by falling PC sales, and the situation could be reinforced when Window 8, which is more memory-efficient than Windows 7, hits the market.

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ:ORCL) is complying with a judge’s order from August, to continue it support of Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ) servers running on Intel Corporation’s (NASDAQ:INTC) Itanium CPUs. Oracle reports that its Itanium software is set to be released according to the same schedule as software for IBM’s high-end Power CPUs. However, H-P’s Business Critical Systems experienced a 16 percent year-over-year sales loss in its fiscal third quarter, mainly due to Itanium’s share declines.

Shares of Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) move up Wednesday on word that Mark Zuckerberg will hang onto his shares for at least a year. Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) shares are also higher, in sympathy. Earlier in the day, the president of Facebook institutional investor CoRise spoke on CNBC in a pep talk for the company’s e-commerce potential, commenting that “If they just got 2 percent of their 500 million people that live on Facebook every single day to buy something through an Amazon store, Facebook would get $1 billion or so in commissions.”

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Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) is sharply reducing the power consumption of its flagship Core line of chips from 17 to 10 watts, as it endeavors to facilitate thinner and lighter mobile computers which can last longer on one battery charge. The analyst Patrick Moorhead believes that Intel should slash energy consumption to 4 watts for tablets without cooling fans, such as the iPad.

A group by the name of AntiSec has claimed that it was able to steal unique ID numbers for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) devices, including iPhones and iPads, when it hacked into an FBI agent’s laptop, but on Tuesday the agency denied the assertion. For its part AntiSec provided a link to a database that contains more than 1 million numbers, and in addition said that it obtained the numbers and personal information of 12 million devices. The FBI has responded that it never possessed such data.

Samsung (SSNLF.PK) claims that LG Display Co., Ltd. (NYSE:LPL) has leaked the tech used in the manufacture of organic light-emitting diode displays, and is thus seeking an injunction over the matter. Eleven former and current researchers at Samsung were indicted in July for allegedly leaking OLED technology to LG. The OLED technology and materials provider Universal Display Corporation (NASDAQ:PANL) could be impacted if Samsung is able to deter the speed at which LG steps up its own OLED manufacturing.

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Synacor (SYNC) says that it will permit the users of TV Everywhere solutions that is powered by its software, to register and login with Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter, and Google+ (NASDAQ:GOOG) accounts. Support from Facebook could allow joining with the Open Graph social sharing platform, which has vastly grown referral traffic of many media sites.

Sales chief Michael Barrett of Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has told Ad Age that he will stay on, even though there has been much chatter that he would not, since he was hired by the departed Ross Levinsohn. Barrett also confirmed talk that his company no longer plans to divest its advertising technology operations, which had been considered, prior to the advent of Marissa Mayer.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) reports that it intends to hire 1,000 workers in China during the next year, according to a company executive. Such an increase will elevate the size of Mister Softee’s Chinese workforce to approximately 5,500, which is almost as large as its 5,800 Indian workforce. Many of the new employees will be tied to research and development facilities or Microsoft’s new Shanghai cloud services data center.

OCZ Technology Group Inc. (NASDAQ:OCZ) has issued a fiscal second quarter warning, which was attributed to a NAND shortage, which some investors are interpreting as an indication of strong demand. Shares of OCZ cratered on Thursday, but NAND flash memory providers Micron Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) and SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK) behaved oppositely. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Samsung (SSNLF.PK) are both said to be amassing large quantities of NAND.

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Skype (NASDAQ:MSFT) is setting up an arrangement with the financial clearing provider MACH that will permit Skype credit purchases to be directly charged to mobile phone bills. This could be yet another phase in the VoIP giant’s emergence as a leading carrier in its own right. TeleGeography calculates that Skype, for which Microsoft paid $8.5 billion, accounted for one-third of all long-distance traffic in 2011.

A Bloomberg tally of the spectrum acquisitions involving AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) arrives at a total of deals worth $2.6 billion, with 24 transactions proposed in the past four months alone. The communications giant is playing catchup with Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) and also trying to process the increasing amount of data that subscribers are downloading.

Micron Technology Inc. (NASDAQ:MU) is said to have had talks with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (NYSE:TSM) along with other Taiwanese chip foundries, about possible formations of partnerships, reports Chief Executive Mark Durcan. Micron provides commodity memory, which implies that outsourcing dynamic random access memory and flash manufacturing is unlikely. However, it is currently thought that Micron could join with another manufacturer to supply solid-state drive controller chips or hybrid memory cubes, or to develop 3D transistor technology.

Intel Corporation’s (NASDAQ:INTC) warning has reverberated in chip stocks with heavy PC exposure on Friday. The company downgraded its guidance for the third quarter, decreasing its revenue estimate by about 7 percent to between $12.9 billion and $13.5 billion, from a range of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion because of “weaker than expected demand in a challenging macroeconomic environment.” Intel foresees customers shrinking the supply chain inventory, along with weakness in the enterprise PC market segment, plus slumping demand in emerging markets.

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Shares of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), and Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) all reached new highs Friday, even as PC-exposed names declined on Intel’s warning. Amazon’s gains came from positive comments on its Kindle refresh as well, pointing to its potential to reinforce the company’s content ecosystem.

Zynga’s (NASDAQ:ZNGA) game-publishing endeavors remain active, as it has introduced four new third-party titles for Zynga.com, along with revealing partnerships with 9 additional game developers for Zynga Platform.

The European Central Bank’s current moves to reinforce bond markets on the Continent have the attention of investors in European tech and telecom stocks that carrying heavy debt loads. Newly-found optimism in the sector lends itself to shares of Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK), Alcatel-Lucent (NYSE:ALU), and Telecom Italia S.P.A. (NYSE:TI) on Friday. In addition, several Asian tech names are also posting impressive gains, linked to both the European situation and also in the wake of a new stimulus plan for China. Youku.com Inc. (NYSE:YOKU) and Spreadtrum Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:SPRD) are among the strongest gainers.

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Pandora Media (NYSE:P) shareholders are absolutely not liking this, but Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is toying with the idea of creating a rival to the popular custom-radio service, according to the Wall Street Journal, and also has recently begun licensing discussions with record labels. While Apple has tentatively moved into the area prior to this, sources say that these movements appear to be more serious than before. If Apple’s new service does become a reality, it will likely feature iAds and only operate on iOS and Mac OS gear. But, (and it could be a big one) Apple is also reportedly interested in providing “a greater degree of interactivity” than Pandora and other Internet radio providers can support, if okayed by the studios.

Apple is said to have reduced its orders from Samsung (SSNLF.PK) for NAND and DRAM memory chips for its new iPhone, with beneficiaries including Toshiba, Elpida, and SK Hynix. On the upside for Samsung, it remains the sole manufacturer of Apple-designed microchips for the handset, along with the iPad.

Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) and AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) have decided upon the date of November 2nd, to initiate selling the just-announced Lumia 920 and 820, according to sources to TechRadar and The Verge. On Thursday, Verizon Wireless confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it will sell Nokia WP8 devices, without providing specifics. Nokia sold off sharply after its phone announcements, and has provided no pricing details nor identification of launch partners.

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