Roundup: Yahoo acquires Summly, Foxconn posts record profit

Yahoo acquires Summly

Yahoo announces to acquire Summly and makes its 17 years old founder a millionaire. Summly mobile app is delivering snapshots of stories, giving simple and elegant way to find the news consumers want, faster than ever before. Summly is closed down and all the team members are joining Yahoo — with founder Nick D’Aloisio to join for 18 months stint. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in Q2 2013.

Foxconn (Hon Hai) posts record profit

Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (usually known as Foxconn), the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics, posted record quarterly profit after it boosted production efficiency and output of Apple’s iPhones and iPads. Fourth-quarter net income climbed 5.6 percent to NT$37 billion ($1.2 billion). Hon Hai solved production problems that had crimped output of the iPhone 5 in the prior quarter, helping it raise revenue and margins.

China makes another media attack to Apple

China ruling party’s newspaper People Daily throws front-page article accusing electronics maker of declining journalists’ requests for interviews and issuing an “empty and self-praising” response to a recent critical report by China’s national television broadcaster. The article was accompanied by a cartoon with a figure representing the company, saying, “Apple statement: empty.” The article cited a student who complained about Apple’s “double standards” because the company repairs broken phones for consumers in China but gives customers new phones in other countries, including the U.S. and Australia.

HTC to take bolder plan to promote flagship products

Singapore’s Benjamin Ho is the third HTC’s Marketing Chief in two years and he’s kind enough to ensure HTC to spend more on marketing strategy. The new approach is part of HTC’s efforts to reassure investors and customers that it is turning around. Its sales were down 41% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, as it lost ground to rivals like Apple and Samsung. Ho outlined other marketing changes for HTC, such as increasing the digital marketing budget for the company by 250% this year compared with 2012, and increasing traditional media marketing spending by 100%.

Google+ gets updates, including photo editing

Today, Google has announced a mobile refresh for Google+ for Android and iOS that includes some of the functionality that has come out for the desktop over the past few months. Both versions will be available later in the day. Some of the changes are things that we’ve expected, thanks to acquisitions like Nik Software and features like Communities that were introduced on the desktop last year. The upcoming I/O conference should also be an interesting time for Google+, as that’s when we got its last major product edition, Events, along with numbers.