Samsung's talks with Apple on a possible joint investment to produce NAND flash memory chips -- a key component of Apple's newest portable music players -- have broken down.
The Korea Times reported that the potential $3.8 billion joint investment deal collapsed because Apple pulled out after hearing that South Korea's Fair Trade Commission could investigate Samsung over its supply of flash memory to Apple.
Samsung is supplying the chips, used in MP3 players and digital cameras, to the company for use in its new, pencil-thin iPod Nano music player.
Earlier this month, local media quoted Fair Trade Commission chairman Kang Chul-kyu as saying on a radio program that the antitrust regulator could investigate Samsung if necessary on whether the company sold chips to Apple at below-market prices.
South Korean media have reported that Samsung is supplying the chips to Apple at half their market value, a claim Samsung executives deny. The Korea Times reported that South Korean MP3 manufacturers claim their sales are being hurt by the low price of the iPod Nano.
Last week, U.S. officials said Samsung will pay a $300 million fine to settle accusations it secretly conspired with industry rivals to fix prices of dynamic random access chips and force consumers to pay higher prices.
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Power to the writer: If Apple's new video iPod is as successful as expected in delivering paid programing over the internet, Hollywood's unions want their share and are worried about being shortchanged on residuals.
Writers Guild of America West president Patric Verrone was the latest to voice these fears, issuing a letter to members that said WGAW and its sister guilds are unwilling to accept the DVD residuals formula, which takes most of the money off the table before sharing a set percentage of gross revenue.
Verrone said he was particularly concerned after an ABC executive suggested that, indeed, the DVD model might be the most appropriate.
WGAW continues to believe that the proper formula is the existing one covering pay television. That entitles writers to 1.2 percent of the entire producers' gross. DGA has an identical formula, while SAG gets 3.6 percent and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees gets 5.4 percent.
The DVD formula, by contrast, is much less lucrative for all of these guilds because it pays a slightly higher percentage based on only 20 percent of the wholesale receipts. The remaining 80 percent is withheld by the studios to cover manufacturing, distribution and marketing costs.
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Dorky archeology: The Computer History Museum, the world's largest institution dedicated to preserving Information Age artifacts, is getting a hefty financial boost from one of the biggest names in the computing industry.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged a $15 million gift -- the museum's largest donation yet. The gift means the museum needs only about $50 million more to reach its $125 million goal of creating a full range of educational programs and exhibits and establishing a long-term endowment.
"The impact on our society of the computing revolution is simply breathtaking -- it has changed the way we work, play, learn, and communicate," said Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp. and the world's wealthiest man. "It's our responsibility to collect the artifacts and stories today that will explain this incredible change to future generations."
The museum opened in Mountain View in 1996.
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Business over politics: Sony expects China's fast-expanding market for both entertainment and electronics to be a main source of growth in years to come -- despite the occasional political tension between Japan and China, chief executive Howard Stringer said.
Stringer sidestepped questions about the potential repercussions from a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to a war shrine that drew immediate protests from both China and South Korea.
In the spring, Chinese resentment over Japanese atrocities during World War II swelled into violent protests and calls for boycotts of Japanese brand products. Those antagonisms died down as diplomats sought to restore calm, but are bound to resurface in the future.
During anti-Japanese protests earlier in the year, Sony's China webpage was attacked by hackers. But the Tokyo-based electronics maker said its sales and other business in China were unaffected. Six months on, Japanese products appear just as popular among Chinese as ever.
Sony products now reach only 10 percent to 20 percent of the population, leaving huge room for growth, he said.
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I was just spamming!: A man described as one of the nation's leading senders of spam says an FBI raid on his home office has halted his e-mail operation.
Warrants unsealed last week show that a September raid on Alan Ralsky's home in a Detroit suburb included the seizure of financial records, computers and disks.
Terry Berg, the top deputy in the Detroit U.S. attorney's office, declined to comment.
Ralsky, 60, has said that he has 150 million or more e-mail addresses, and he has been a target of anti-spam efforts for years.
Verizon Communications sued him in 2001, saying he shut down its networks with millions of e-mail solicitations. He settled, promising not to send spam on its networks.
A federal law that took effect last year bans use of misleading subject lines and the sending of commercial e-mail messages that appear to be from friends. It also bans use of multiple e-mail addresses or domain names to hide senders' identities.
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Pay pals: Palm and Research In Motion have set aside their fierce rivalry with a deal to offer RIM's BlackBerry wireless e-mail service over Palm's Treo 650 smartphone.
Palm (PALM) and RIM (RIMM), whose BlackBerry handset competes with the Treo, said they expect U.S. and international phone companies to begin offering the combined product starting in early 2006.
The deal is being done through RIM's BlackBerry Connect licensing program, which is designed to expand its subscriber base while turning potential competitors into allies.
RIM had about 3.65 million subscribers to its e-mail service at the end of its most recent quarter.
Almost all of those subscribers access the service through RIM's own thumb-operated BlackBerry, which helped popularize wireless e-mailing when it was launched in 1999.
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Compiled by Keith Axline. AP and Reuters contributed to this report.
