AMD reports net loss of $473 million in Q4 2012

AMD clearly hasn’t had the best of times recently and the company has ended Q4 rather poorly, with the company reporting a net loss of $473 million. AMD has managed to generate revenue of $1.16 billion for the fourth quarter, which is still a 9% decline sequentially and 32% year-over-year.

AMD’s operating loss has been reported at $422 million and the company has lost about $0.63 per share.

The company had to settle down for a GAAP gross margin of 15% for the quarter. AMD’s computing solutions, which is one of the largest divisions of the company played the biggest part in the poor performance, registering a loss of $323 million, a 37% fall year-over-year.

AMD’s Graphics segment didn’t fare all that great either, as the company’s product shipments decreased 15% year-over-year. AMD’s overall revenue of $5.42 billion sounds impressive but nevertheless a 17% fall over the same period of 2011. AMD’s prospects for the current quarter don’t look any brighter, as the company expects its revenues to fall by another 9% in the Q1 2013.

AMD’s marketing strategies have been pretty poor and the company surely needs to get back to its drawing board and work it out, if it is to survive.

Google announces improved Image Search

Google has announced a new version of their Image Search service. The changes are specifically targeted at improving the time required to find and download images.

Previously, clicking on a thumbnail in the Image Search results would load a silly iframe where the selected image was floating on top of the source page. This considerably increased the time required to access the image as the browser would be loading the image as well as the source page simultaneously. What Google has done now with the new Image Search is eliminate the iframe page altogether and display the image directly within the search results.

Now, when you click on a thumbnail, you will get a drop down showing the image along with the metadata for it. On the side you will find links for the original website as well as a direct link to download the image. Because the image loads within the search results, you can continue scrolling for other images without having to go back a page. You can also use keyboard controls to move between the images in the search results.

This new Image Search will begin rolling out to users in the next few days.

Microsoft Dell investment plans look up to $1 to $3 billion

Microsoft plans to invest about $1 to $3 billion in the expansion funding of Dell as the officials are in discussion. Dell intends to go private as reported by Bloomberg and was initially led by Silver Lake Partners and include Dell CEO Michael Dell and a special committee representing Dell shareholders. The company running publicly since 1988 is planning to sell out to private investors and is looking at a stock price of $13 to $14 or a total of $22 billion to $25 billion leveraged layout.

Both Microsoft and Dell have refused to give comments on the matter but the deal is expected to be finalized by the end of the week. Microsoft advancing with an increasing dependency on hardware in 2012 would be quite benefited by the Microsoft Dell investment especially after the launch of its Surface Tablet.