sales

Two California men have been indicted for allegedly hacking point-of-sale terminals at Subway shops to steal at least $40,000.

Prosecutors accused Shahin Abdollahi, aka "Sean Holdt," and Jeffrey Thomas Wilkinson of hacking at least 13 point-of-sale (POS) terminals to install software that fraudulently loaded at least $40,000 onto Subway gift cards, according to an indictment unsealed in Boston on Friday (see below). The pair then allegedly used the cards to make purchases at Subway shops and sold them on eBay and Craigslist.

Abdollahi owned a Subway franchise in Southern California from 2005 to 2008 and later … Read more

Microsoft has sold 400,000 Surface Pros since launch, according to a Bloomberg report.

That's not a bad start for a very pricey tablet -- starting at $899 -- considering that the Windows 8-based Pro launched only about a month ago.

"That's a respectable number and it leads me to believe that Surface Pro will end up outselling Surface RT," Bob O'Donnell, an analyst at IDC, said in a phone interview.

O'Donnell is referring to the RT version of Surface, which is less expensive, starting at $499, but it is not compatible with older … Read more

Apple and Samsung both have to wait a couple more months for the U.S. International Trade Commission to decide whether iPhone and iPad sales should be banned due to patent violations.

One of countless legal disputes between the two companies, this particular case kicked off in August 2011.

Samsung had filed a complaint with the ITC accusing Apple's iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch of violating four of its key patents. As such, the Korean phone maker requested that the products be banned from being sold in the United States.

Last September, a judge for the ITC issued a … Read more

Nintendo's Wii U might be in deep trouble in the U.S.

In a research note to investors today, Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter said that he believes Nintendo sold just 80,000 Wii U units in February -- the same number of original Wii units that sold. What's worse, the Wii U's sales were about half of the 165,000 PlayStation 3 units sold last month and far behind the Xbox 360's 225,000 unit sales, according to Pachter.

Although Pachter is not the final word on game industry sales -- NPD, which plans to release … Read more

Here's something that will make the Motion Picture Association of America happy: movie sales and rentals increased after the feds shuttered cyberlocker MegaUpload last year.

A new study by Carnegie Mellon's Initiative for Digital Entertainment Analytics shows that after MegaUpload's closure online movie revenue increased by between 6 percent and 10 percent, according to the Wall Street Journal. The study researched two major movie studios and the results were measured in 12 different countries, including the U.S.

"We conclude that shutting down MegaUpload and Megavideo caused some customers to shift from cyberlocker-based piracy to purchasing … Read more

It is finally happening. Smartphones are finally overtaking feature phones in worldwide sales, thanks to falling prices on smartphones and 4G networks, market researcher IDC said today.

For years, analysts have been predicting that smartphones would one day supplant basic feature phones in terms of worldwide sales, and that day is expected to finally come in 2013. According to the report, IDC estimates that manufacturers will ship 918.6 million smartphones in 2013, which is about 50.1 percent of the industry's total shipments. This number is expected to grow to 1.5 billion in smartphone shipments by the … Read more

Sony has sold off one of its most prominent buildings in Tokyo.

The company announced today that the Sony City Osaki building in Tokyo was sold off for 111.1 billion yen ($1.2 billion) to the Nippon Building Fund and a Japan-based institutional investor. The company, which currently has 5,000 employees working in the 25-story building, will lease the facility from the new owner for a period of five years.

Sony was reportedly shopping the building last month. The move is part of a broader strategy on Sony's part to offload assets and increase cash flow. Sony … Read more

T-Mobile USA managed to grab more customers last quarter, but that achievement didn't translate into higher revenue.

For the fourth quarter, the company saw a net gain of 61,000 customers, compared with a net loss of 526,000 customers a year earlier. The overall news, however, was mixed.

The number of prepaid customers grew for the sixth quarter in a row, with 166,000 additions last quarter. But the number of contract customers dropped by 515,000, compared with a drop of 492,000 in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Total revenue for the quarter reached $4.9 … Read more

Leap Wireless, which operates Cricket Wireless, told the Wall Street Journal that it's sluggishly behind in its prepaid iPhone sales. In fact, by the time the carrier completes its yearlong contract with Apple in June, it will most likely have sold only half of the iPhones it committed to sell.

This is bad news for both Leap and Apple. For Leap, the company will be in the hole for around $100 million worth of unsold iPhones, according to the Wall Street Journal; and it doesn't bode well for Apple either, as the company partners with prepaid carriers in … Read more