FB stock closes nearly flat

REUTERS

NEW YORK: Facebook’s stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday. One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note, with Facebook’s stock

closing at USD 38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing. That meant the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about USD 105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco. It also gave 28-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg a stake worth USD 19,252,698,725.50. “Going public is an important milestone in our history,” Zuckerberg said before he pushed a button that rang Nasdaq’s opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, California. “But here’s the thing: Our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission

is to make the world more open and connected.” But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the increase of six-tenths of one per cent was a letdown.

Microsoft wins import ban

NEW YORK: The US International Trade Commission handed Microsoft a victory in one of its patent disputes with Motorola, banning the import of some Motorola phones. The agency found that Motorola violated a Microsoft patent for that software that creates meeting requests and

schedules them on mobile devices. Motorola will likely need to alter the software in the phones before they come into the United States. The ruling is now subject to a 60-day presidential review. Motorola has to post a bond of 33 cents for each phone that has entered the United States. “Microsoft started its ITC investigation asserting nine patents against Motorola Mobility,” Motorola said in a statement. “Although we are disappointed by the Commission’s ruling that

certain Motorola Mobility products violated one patent, we look forward to reading the full opinion to understand its reasoning. We will explore all options including appeal.”

UK agency approves BB 7 OS for govt London: Research In Motion Ltd (RIM) said the UK agency responsible for setting standards for computer security has approved the BlackBerry 7 operating system for government use. This will allow the government employees to use six models of the smartphone including BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Torch 9810 and BlackBerry Torch 9860, RIM said. Ministry of defence, central government employees and more than half of the country’s police force use BlackBerry smart phones, the company said. —