Eric Schmidt leaving Google’s management to Larry Page, Facebook’s 600 million users and more news from IT and social media events worldwide

PanARMENIAN.Net - Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs broke the news announcing about taking a leave absence for medical reasons, for an unknown period. In 2009 too, Jobs spent the first half of the year out of Apple recovering from a liver transplant surgery. The news got Apple’s stock prices drop by 2%. This decrease was temporary and was counted to be compensated by the Q1 earnings announcement to follow.

The Apple’s Q1 (that includes holiday period) was massive in term of earnings. According to the report, Apple had revenue worth $26.74 billion, which was much more than their own projection. The net quarterly profit, meanwhile, was $6 billion. In terms of actual products, Apple sold 16.24 million iPhones, setting a new record for the company. Over 7.33 million iPads were sold, about 3 million more than last quarter. Apple’s next big announcement was the start of Verizon’s iPhones’ sales. Until now, AT&T was the sole iPhone carrier in the US. Verizon, which is US largest telecommunications network is using the CDMA technology, different from GSM (the handsets are linked to one carrier only and are not SIM card-enabled), thus the Verizon iPhones are slightly different than AT&T carrier’s models. The first Verizon iPhone commercial was presented this week with the tagline “Two is better than one”.

On January 22, the Apple’ app store hit 10 billion downloads. It’s a huge milestone in the life of the App Store, which lets people downloads games and software programs for their iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads. On this occasion the promotional page on their website included the message: “Thank You. Ten Billion Times”.

Facebook hit 600 000 000 users this week - passing another major milestone. Roughly 10% of the Earth’s total population are registered in the social network. This news followed an announcement about Facebook raising a 1,5 billion funding at a 50 billion valuation. It was also uncovered that Facebook had expected to pass 500 shareholders at some point in 2011, and therefore expects to start filing public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012 which is the likely date for the IPO.

Major changes were announced at Google. The CEO Eric Schmidt will be stepping down from his position on April 4, 2011. Larry Page, the co-founder of Google, who is currently the President of Products, will replace Schmidt. It was announced that the decision was made during the holidays and that Schmidt will take the role of “Executive Chairman” and will focus on “deals, partnerships, customers and broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership”. Schmidt clarified that the “decision was made in order to simplify the management structure and speed up decision making”.

The critically acclaimed movie “The Social Network” which was based on the Facebook’s founding story had been nominated for a number of awards at this year’s Golden Globe awards. The movie received the four awards in the most significant categories including Best Picture in the drama category, Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin), Score (Trent Reznor) and Director (David Fincher).

The once popular social network MySpace.com is up for sale now. It has already announced a 47% staff reduction and now the company is looking for someone to buy the failing property before it’s too late.

Groupon, a group-buying service that has declined Google’s 6 billion acquisition offer will likely file for IPO this year at a 15 billion valuation. Meanwhile it was uncovered that Google is now building a Groupon competitor named Google Offers. Groupon’s current rival LivingSocial set up a big record with its Amazon deal. The website that trades coupons and daily deals, sold more than 1,3 million Amazon Gift Cards worth $20 for $10 in 2 days.

Starbucks announced that it has started accepting mobile payments nationwide in US. Customers using the Starbucks Card Mobile app on their iPhone, iPod touch or BlackBerry will be able to use those devices for payments in Starbucks stores.

The most discussed topics on Twitter were the Golden Globe Awards, Martin Luther King Day, Astrology (Astrologers are speculating that there is actually a 13th zodiac sign, Ophiuchus, because Earth has changed its alignment, and the stars are no longer in the same place as they were when the zodiac signs were originally calculated.)