U.S. Industrial News

Affiliated Computer Services Inc. officially has adopted the Xerox name.

Xerox Corp. chief executive Ursula Burns on Wednesday morning announced the name change in a conference call about the company’s fourth-quarter earnings.

In early 2010, Xerox bought outsourcer Dallas-based ACS for $6.2 billion, the last of the three big local outsourcing companies (with Electronic Data Systems Corp. and Perot Systems Corp.) to end their independent lives. ACS was founded in 1988.

Xerox and ACS said initially little would change at ACS, but that was two years ago.

Xerox chief marketing officer Christa Carone wrote Wednesday in a company blog post that having one company name will be “simpler” for clients.

“ACS was this big company with a quiet presence,” Carone wrote. “We turned up the volume. During our transformation, we learned that the Xerox brand, known around the world, is a great asset for ACS. We increasingly see the value of going to market as one Xerox, one voice, demonstrating to clients that our services-led, technology-driven strategy offers value through the very strength of our brand.”

So, Xerox decided to retire the ACS brand.

The name change is immediate, but it may take a few weeks for the name to be changed on all ACS buildings, websites, letterhead, etc., said spokesman Kevin Lightfoot.

The former ACS unit employs about 85,000 people, including about 1,950 in Dallas. Overall, Xerox has more than +140,000 employees.

Texas Instruments Inc. on Monday reported lower fourth-quarter revenue and profit from a year earlier but predicted an end to the industry downturn.

The Dallas-based chipmaker also said it plans to close two older semiconductor factories in Houston and Hiji, Japan, which employ about 1,000 people combined.

TI posted revenue of $3.42 billion, down 3 percent from $3.53 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010. Still, revenue beat Wall Street estimates of $3.25 billion.

Net profit fell 68 percent to $298 million, or 25 cents per share, from profit of $942 million, or 78 cents per share, a year earlier. Wall Street consensus was 39 cents per share.

“Higher-than-expected revenue came in all of our major product lines” in the fourth quarter and mostly in December, TI vice president Ron Slaymaker said during a conference call Monday. He expects the slowdown, which began in the third quarter of 2011, to either hit bottom in the fourth quarter or bottom out during the current quarter.

The strength seen in late December has continued on chip orders so far this month, chief financial officer Kevin March said on the conference call.

TI’s analog business was the only unit to show revenue growth in the quarter, up 12 percent.

TI’s OMAP 4 app processor was a bright spot in wireless, with revenue doubling in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. OMAP is included in a number of high-profile smartphones (Samsung’s Nexus), tablets (Amazon Kindle Fire) and e-readers (Barnes & Noble’s Nook).

The factories

Fourth-quarter net profit was affected by charges of $256 million, or 16 cents per share, related to TI’s acquisition of National Semiconductor in September and $112 million, or 7 cents per share, related to the factory shutdowns.

“These are very old factories,” March said. “They’re of such an age and configuration that it’s not economically feasible to renovate them.”

The Houston wafer factory is 45 years old, and the Japanese wafer factory and assembly test site is 32 years old. Production from the two sites will be shifted to newer facilities in Dallas; Sherman; Portland, Maine; the Philippines; and China, March said.

The plant closings and employee layoffs will be spread over 18 months. TI will provide laid-off employees with severance packages based on years of service, and Houston employees will have an opportunity to apply for other jobs, March said.

TI expects to save about $100 million a year from the closings. TI said it will incur total charges for the closings of about $215 million, which will be spread over the next seven quarters.

For all of 2011, TI’s revenue was down 2 percent to $13.7 billion from nearly $14 billion. Net profit fell 31 percent to $2.23 billion, or 1.88 cents per share, from $3.2 billion, or 2.62 cents per share, in 2010.

Read on for 2012 outlook …

U.S. technology professionals saw their average pay increase more than 2 percent to $81,327 last year — the largest annual salary growth since 2008, according to a survey by Dice, a technology and engineering career site.

Not only did pay increase after two straight years of nearly flat wages, but more companies rewarded their top performers. One-third of tech professionals received a bonus in 2011, up from 29 percent in 2010 and 24 percent in 2009. The size of the average bonus also rose — up 8 percent to $8,769.

Overall, U.S. companies are seeing stiffer competition for experienced tech professionals, said Tom Silver, a senior vice president at Dice. However, entry-level salaries continue to be pushed downward.

Austin led the top 20 cities with a 13 percent jump in average tech pay to $89,419. Houston saw a 7 percent increase to $89,307. The Dallas-Fort Worth area saw a 4 percent gain to $84,589.

Still, California’s Silicon Valley topped the list, with average salaries of $104,195. Pay topped six figures for the first time since the Dice survey began a decade ago.

Here’s the full list:

Texas ranked No. 9 nationally, with average tech pay of $83,751. That was up 6.8 percent from 2010.

The jobs that saw the highest salaries last year were:

Dice surveyed 18,325 working tech professionals online from in September through November.

Apple is trying to reinvent the text book and they’ve signed up some heavy-hitting publishing houses to start. iBooks 2 is a free app you’ll need to download to buy the books.

Pearson, McGraw Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt publish 90 percent of all textbooks sold and they’re going to start offering their books on the iPad at prices of $14.99 or less.

Apple also showed off iBooks Author, which is a full-featured program to write and layout iBooks.

iBooks 2 is available today with a handful of titles from each publisher.

I hope you do all your Wikipedia browsing today, because they’re shutting off access to the English-language version of the online encyclopedia for one day to protest SOPA.

If you’re wondering exactly what SOPA is and why you should care, take a look at this entry from Wikipedia:

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.
The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.
Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites. They cite examples such as Google’s $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.
Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment, is Internet censorship, will cripple the Internet, and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions.
Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the next Congressional hearing on the matter.

Click to read Wikipedia’s statement.

Plano-based Navigation Solutions Inc. is at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week with some new Hertz NeverLost navigation products and services for leisure and business travelers — not just Hertz car renters.

It’s demonstrating 16 My Explore mobile companion travel apps to help travelers navigate 16 major U.S. cities across a wide range of interests and categories. (My Explore Hawaii will be the first.) The apps will be available on iTunes early this year.

Navigation Solutions also is introducing a new Online Trip Planning site at www.neverlost.com with live, in-person travel desk support from 6:30 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. The site is expected to go live by the end of March.

The apps and the website will sync wirelessly with Hertz Neverlost Gen 5, a GPS device in Hertz rental cars.

Founded in 1997, Navigation Solutions is majority-owned by Hertz.

I usually don’t throw deals up on this blog, but I’m going to start if they sound good enough.

I got a release today from OfficeMax about their brown bag sale where they give you a bag when you walk in the store and you can get 20% off everything that fits in that bag, including Kindle Fire, Kindle Touch, NOOK Color and NOOK Simple Touch.

Oh, and bags can be found in this Sunday’s Dallas Morning News as well.

The sale is on through Jan. 14.