News highlights from Tuesday, July 19
Pokemon Go’s Japan launch delayed
Game maker Niantic has delayed Wednesday’s planned launch of Pokemon Go in Japan. TechCrunch, citing an unnamed source, said there were concerns that the hype generated would overload the game. It added that it wasn’t immediately clear when the game would be released in Japan.

A figure depicting “Mario”, a character in Nintendo’s “Mario Bros.” video games, is displayed at the company showroom in Tokyo, Japan July 14, 2016. REUTERS/Issei Kato/File Photo
Nintendo shares fall despite Pokemon GO craze
Nintendo Co’s shares fell 10 percent in early trade on Wednesday after they more than doubled in value over the past seven sessions powered by the record-breaking success of the Pokemon GO mobile game.
Slower-growing China still holds plenty of opportunities
General Electric still sees plenty of opportunities in a slower-growing China, even as the government’s anti-corruption campaign causes some deals to take longer to get approved, a senior executive said on Wednesday.
Cloud business boosts Microsoft’s quarterly revenue
Sharp growth in its commercial cloud computing business helped lift Microsoft Corp’s quarterly revenue above Wall Street’s expectations, sending the technology company’s shares up more than 4 percent in after-hours trading.
The new and growing cloud business – essentially selling computing services and storage in its data centers to corporate customers – is one of the priorities for Chief Executive Satya Nadella, who took the helm of the world’s largest software company in early 2014.
Ericsson’s main shareholders want a new CEO
Two of Swedish telecom group Ericsson’s main owners have decided Chief Executive Hans Vestberg needs to step down as soon as a replacement can be found, the business newspaper Dagens Industri reported, citing unnamed sources. Ericsson said it would step up its cost-cutting program after its results fell short of market expectations.
IBM’s full-year earnings forecast greeted with skepticism
Big Blue has made solid progress as it shifts into high-growth areas such as cloud-based services, and both profit and revenue beat analysts’ expectations in the second quarter.
But the company may have over-promised by sticking to its full-year adjusted earnings forecast of at least $13.50 per share, analysts said, especially after it indicated that profit in the current quarter would come in below estimates.
Netflix subscriber miss stirs doubts about growth plan
Netflix Inc’s disappointing second-quarter subscriber growth and forecast raised questions about whether the streaming video pioneer can pick up the pace of its global expansion, Wall Street analysts said.
At least 20 brokerages cut their Netflix stock price targets by as much as $30 on Tuesday, a day after the company reported it failed to sign up as many new customers as it expected from April to June. Its shares were down 13.7 percent at $85.28 on Nasdaq.
BlackBerry inks security software deals, shares slip
BlackBerry Ltd sought to bolster its security credentials with a string of small deals on Tuesday but analysts said the jury was still out on the success of its turnaround and push into software.
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