Nintendo’s Wii U problems turn into a crisis






In just a week, the problems Nintendo’s (NTDOY) new home console is facing have cascaded into something sinister. The traditional post-New Year slump hit Nintendo’s home market in the week ending January 12 and exposed cruelly how weak the consumer interest in Wii U truly is. According to Famitsu, Wii U sales slumped from a pace of 70,000 per week to just 21,000. The ancient PlayStation 3 sold the exact same number of units, which is nothing short of a debacle for Nintendo. The hot portable console 3DS saw its sales slow down from 305,000 units to 106,000 units.  This means that Nintendo’s portable machine is now outselling the brand new home console by a 5-to-1 margin in Japan.


[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]






No matter how weak the Wii U sales are now, they are likely to get worse. The launch dates of key games seem to be slipping from March quarter to June quarter, including the important Pikmin, Wario and Wii Fit franchises. The Wii U now must depend on Rayman and Lego City in coming months.


[More from BGR: Paid apps are history]


This is a scary prospect, because it now seems that Sony (SNE) is planning to unveil the PlayStation 4 in May and Microsoft (MSFT) is expected to announce the Xbox 720 in June. Nintendo rushed its console out in late 2012 to get a running start before the big guns of the home console industry grab the consumer interest with their new machines. That gambit may now be about to backfire in a spectacular manner. As demand for Wii U is already fizzling in Japan and key games slip from the first quarter of 2013, Wii U faces a very hard January-March period. Sony and Microsoft are then inevitably going to start leaking information about their new consoles in April-May time frame in the run-up to their big unveilings in the second half of the spring quarter.


The clock is ticking for Wii U. If consumers start smelling the scent of the grave emanating from the console just when Sony and Microsoft roll out their new gear, Wii U could face a sudden rejection in the market place by early summer. Nintendo needs some big new titles to revive its home machine very soon.


This article was originally published on BGR.com


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Buzzmakers: Golden Globes Glamour and Jennifer Lawrence's Butt

1. Jennifer Lawrence: That's Not My Flabby Butt!

Jennifer Lawrence has been silent long enough! The Silver Linings Playbook actress showed up on the Late Show With David Letterman this week to both clarify her Meryl Streep comments during her Golden Globes acceptance speech, and set the record straight on a photoshopped pic of her bikini backside.

The actress is convinced that the paparazzi put a much older butt on her body while she was in Hawaii, telling Letterman as he held up the photo, "It's not my butt and I will not take responsibility for it. It's a 90-year-old butt that's been photoshopped onto my body, and is posing as my butt."

Causing roars of laughter in the audience, The Hunger Games beauty, 22, admits she's not the most photogenic person and she does have some "bloat" at times, but wants everyone to take away from her Late Show appearance Tuesday night that this is not her butt.

Lawrence also felt the need to address her Streep joke while at the Globes. The actress revealed that she was merely quoting Bette Midler in First Wives Club when she said Sunday night, "Look what it says, 'I beat Meryl.'"

"I had no idea Lindsay Lohan would take to the Twitterverse," she joked with Letterman. "Well, first of all it's Meryl Streep. You can't offend Meryl Streep."

2. Golden Globes Fashion Tops & Flops

Which star at the Golden Globes had the best dress, and which ones just looked like a hot mess? You decide!

Click through our gallery and vote here!

3. LeAnn Rimes Talks Infidelity & Her Ex

No topic was off limits when LeAnn Rimes sat down exclusively with ET's Nancy O'Dell.

The country superstar, whose controversial relationship with husband Eddie Cibrian has become both a blessing and a curse, tells Nancy her upcoming album Spitfire was born unexpectedly during her extra-marital affair with Eddie. In fact, a handful of infidelity themed tracks included in the album were initially written about a friend of hers while LeAnn was married to her ex, Dean Sheremet.

"What Have I Done is one of the first songs that I wrote for the record, before anything was actually starting to happen," said LeAnn. "It was written about a friend of mine, but I didn't realize I was writing it for myself at the time... It was my subconscious talking and I didn't know yet."

Speaking on the feelings that sparked her and Eddie's infamous affair, LeAnn acknowledged that her then husband had heard the troubling track and perhaps knew she would soon be led astray.

"He actually heard the song when I wrote it and, actually, he knew what it was about before I did," she reveals. "He knew I was feeling feelings. I'm not sure what those were that he knew."

Sighed LeAnn, "It's a very complicated situation."

When asked if she ever worries whether her husband Eddie would ever cheat on her, LeAnn admits that she does.

"I would be ignorant to say, and everyone else would think I am a liar if I didn't say yes, and I have at times," said LeAnn, going on to reveal that Eddie has had the same concerns about her.

"Speaking for him, I would actually say that's creeped into his [mind]…I think we've been very honest and open with that to each other and our conversations about it have only made me understand how much he actually cares, as much as I do, about being faithful to each other."

4. Mindy McCready's Boyfriend Dies from Self-Inflicted Gunshot Wound

More details into the death of Mindy McCready's boyfriend and father of her child David Wilson, who was found dead on January 13 at his Arkansas home, have surfaced.

McCready's rep, Kat Atwood, told People.com that Wilson suffered "a self-inflicted gunshot wound," adding, "Now they're working on funeral arrangements and figuring out where to go from here."

Following the news of her boyfriend's death, the country crooner was reportedly alone for the first 24 hours with her children. "Her family drove up from Florida," Atwood told the website. "I'm not exactly sure when they got there, but her personal friends arrived late last night."

"David was my soulmate," McCready, 37, said in a statement about the late singer-songwriter. "He was a precious gift from God to all of us and, yesterday, he returned home and is now with his mother and father. David loved and was loved. Those who knew and loved him will miss him; those who did know David missed the opportunity to know a truly loving and gifted man."

McCready and Wilson had been together for about two years, and share a 9-month-old son named Zayne (McCready has an older son Zander with country singer Billy McKnight).

5. Jessica Simpson on New Pregnancy: Eric Keeps Knocking Me Up!

Jessica Simpson told Jay Leno on Tuesday night's Tonight Show that she "needs to keep her legs closed" after getting pregnant twice and missing two planned wedding dates.

Wearing a leopard minidress that showed off her growing baby bump, the mommy-to-be admitted that she and her fiancé of two years Eric Johnson are planning to get married if they can quit having children. "We've had two different wedding dates, but he keeps knocking me up," Simpson, 32, joked. "We're doing it very backwards, I know. ... I'll just keep my legs crossed, I guess, this time."

The Weight Watchers spokeswoman, who reportedly lost 60 pounds after giving birth to daughter Maxwell this past year, revealed that this was not a planned pregnancy, telling Leno, "Apparently it was a part of God's plan for my life. I was extremely shocked because I was going through a lot of hormonal changes, trying to get back to the old, vibrant Jessica. You know, it was kind of like a one-night stand. And it happened, all over again!"

Simpson spilled the news on Tuesday that she'll be starring in a NBC show inspired by her life. The once Newlywed reality star quipped that the show will be about "a girl who keeps getting pregnant."

"We don't have a name yet," she confessed to Leno. "We're just now in the process of casting everyone, doing the pilot. I will be playing myself but we'll have actors playing Eric and my dad. That'll be funny."

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Lady Gaga to perform at inaugural ball








WASHINGTON — Watch out Beyonce and Katy Perry. There's another diva set to perform during the inauguration festivities — Lady Gaga.

A person familiar with the inauguration tells The Associated Press that the pop star will perform at Tuesday's ball for White House staffers. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because that person wasn't authorized to publicly reveal the information.

The staff ball is typically a private affair. During the last inauguration festivities, Jay-Z reportedly performed at it.

According to one attendee, Jay-Z rapped a riff on one of his hit songs, "99 Problems but George Bush Ain't One," to the delight of the throngs of young staffers who worked to elect Obama in 2008.





AP



Lady Gaga













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Miami-Dade considering support for Dolphins’ tax plan




















The issue of tax-funded sports stadiums will soon be back on the Miami-Dade County Commission’s agenda.

Commissioner Barbara Jordan is slated to introduce a resolution Wednesday backing the Miami Dolphins’ plan to use a state subsidy and local hotel taxes to fund about half of a $400 million renovation of Sun Life Stadium. The resolution urges Florida lawmakers to pass a bill allowing the funding, and cites the upgrades’ ability to attract Super Bowl and other major events to the stadium.

The discussion comes roughly three years after a divided Miami-Dade commission backed borrowing about $360 million to build the Marlins a new $640 million baseball park in Little Havana. (The Marlins contributed $155 million, and Miami paid $120 million toward the complex, including a garage.)





The vote is widely credited with helping fuel the 2011 recall of then-mayor Carlos Alvarez. Dolphins insiders cite Marlins backlash as a major obstacle to winning tax dollars for the Sun Life renovation.

“If you give everything a little time, hopefully it heals a little bit,’’ said Rep. Erik Fresen, the original sponsor of the Dolphins’ stadium bill during the 2011 bid for a tax-funded renovation. “Last time, it was literally on the heels of the recall and everything that was so specific to the Marlins’ stadium.”

Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has pledged private dollars would fund the majority of the $400 million upgrade of the privately owned stadium. The bill would qualify Sun Life for $90 million in state tax dollars over 30 years, and allow Miami-Dade to increase mainland hotel taxes to 7 percent from 6 percent for the renovations. The tax increase would generate about $10 million a year under the current market conditions.

In recent days, the Dolphins have released endorsements from large hotels in the area, including the Fontainebleau, Intercontinental, Trump Doral and, most recently, a string of Marriotts owned by the MDM development firm.

The baseball debate continues to hover over local politics. Last fall, Jordan was targeted by an anti-Marlins group for defeat in a reelection campaign supported by the Dolphins. She was not immediately available for comment Friday evening.

Norman Braman, the auto magnate who tried to block the Marlins plan and targeted Jordan and other baseball supporters for defeat, said he expected the commission to back public dollars for the Dolphins, too.

“I think they’ve got all the chutzpah you can imagine,’’ he said of incumbent commissioners. “I would be shocked if the commission didn’t do this.”

Fresen, a Miami Republican and co-sponsor in the House of the new Dolphins bill, said he needs the commission to endorse the legislation before he pushes it will fellow lawmakers. Rep. Eddy Gonzalez, a Republican from Hialeah and co-sponsor of the bill, said he gives the Dolphins plan a 50 percent chance of passing the House.

“The entire delegation is not on board. We need a product everyone can live with,’’ he said.

The bill would create a special $3 million yearly stadium subsidy designed for Sun Life. The Dolphins currently receive $2 million a year from Florida under the current stadium subsidy program, tied to retrofitting the Miami Gardens facility to house the Marlins in the 1990s. The team moved out in 2011, and the Dolphins $2 million payments end in 2023.

While the bill opens up the subsidy to any renovation project where public dollars make up a minority of the funding, the language also restricts Florida from paying it to more than one stadium. Ron Book, the Dolphins’ lobbyist, said limiting the bill to one $3 million payout a year should make the proposal more palatable amid Florida’s continuing budget squeeze.

“You have to manage the economic impact to the state,’’ he said.





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Gov. Rick Scott's staff ordered to testify in Carletha Cole trial




















Several current and former employees in the administration of Gov. Rick Scott are being ordered by a judge to testify in a sensational criminal case that centers on allegations of illegal taping.

It is still unclear whether Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll will be forced to answer questions in the criminal case against her former aide that has also included allegations of improper relationships in Carroll’s office.

Carletha Cole, who was fired last year, was arrested in 2011 and accused of giving a reporter a secret recording containing a conversation between Cole and Carroll’s chief of staff. Cole has not been charged with making the recording — nor have prosecutors said exactly when the recording was made.





Circuit Judge Frank Sheffield initially ruled that Carroll must answer questions from lawyers representing Cole. But then he changed his mind at the urging of Scott’s top lawyer. Sheffield said Carroll would be questioned last and only if Cole’s lawyers could show her testimony was needed.

Sheffield, however, made it clear that questions of Scott administration employees will be limited to illegal taping and whether or not top officials working for the governor had ordered widespread taping as alleged by Cole.

The judge said lawyers could not ask Carroll or anyone else about the lieutenant governor’s sexual preference or whether or not the her office was the "absolute worst place in the world to work."

"We are not going to try the lieutenant governor’s office," Sheffield said.

Cole’s attorneys have asserted that their client was being set up because she witnessed unprofessional behavior by Carroll and other employees, including walking in on Carroll and a female aide in a "compromising position." Carroll, who is a former Navy officer and married, has called the allegations "false and absurd."

Attorney Stephen Webster in court on Friday suggested other employees in Carroll’s office placed recordings on Cole’s computer and she assumed they were public records. A spokesman for the governor’s office has previously denied that there was a widespread policy of taping people.

It is against Florida law to record someone without consent, but there have been legal questions about recordings made in public buildings. Cole is charged with a third-degree felony and could face up to five years in prison.

The current and former employees who were ordered to answer questions include Carroll’s travel aide Beatriz Ramos, former chief of staff Steve MacNamara, and former chief of staff Mike Prendergast.

The Scott administration last year had tried to get the judge to shield both Ramos and Carroll from answering any questions but Sheffield denied the request.

Pete Antonacci, a former prosecutor and now general counsel for Scott, repeated the request on Friday and said that as an elected official that Carroll was "special" and she should not be subjected to questioning.

"It’s very clear from what the prosecutors said that she had no role," Antonacci told the judge.

Sheffield shot back that she "is not special" and that she and anyone else should be subject to questioning since the criminal case could result in Cole going to prison. But the judge then agreed to Antonacci’s request that Carroll’s deposition be delayed.

Sheffield on Friday also turned down requests for a long list of records and documents sought by Cole’s attorneys, including surveillance tapes, emails, calendars and phone logs of various administration employees. He did agree to allow some travel records and calendars of Carroll’s chief of staff to be turned over.

The tape recording at the center of the criminal case was placed on the website of The Florida Times-Union. On it John Konkus, the chief of staff for Carroll, can be heard saying that MacNamara, is afraid of Carroll. Konkus also complained that Scott "is not leading."





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With an air kiss or empty hug, Te’oing is Twitter craze






NEW YORK (Reuters) – Manti Te’o, the Notre Dame linebacker entangled in a girlfriend hoax that gives a whole new meaning to the term “air kiss,” is inspiring a new fad racing through social media: Te’oing.


An avalanche of pictures of people hugging empty chairs or puckering up to an otherwise empty room were posted to Twitter with the hashtag #Te’oing days after the college football star’s story about his girlfriend’s cancer death was exposed as a fraud. Not only did she never have leukemia, she never existed.






Notre Dame officials said Te’o told them he had been duped into believing he had an online relationship with the fictitious woman.


“Te’oing – Mile High Club edition” read one tweet with a photo of a man hugging the air in an airplane bathroom, an apparent reference to the whispered practice of having sex in mid-flight.


Clint Eastwood was hailed in several tweets as a “Te’oing” pioneer for the actor’s interlude with an empty chair at the 2012 Republican Convention. Other tweets showed Ronald McDonald Te’oing on his cozy bench and President Barack Obama spending quality time Te’oing with a vacant seat.


“Just some afternoon bubbly with my baby” said one Te’oing tweet with a photo of a man clinking his champagne flute against another that appeared to be suspended in mid-air.


The snarky social media frenzy recalled another similar trend called the “Tebowing,” named for New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, who frequently kneeled for on-field prayers and inspired copy-cat poses by people whose pictures flooded social media last year.


In its own riff on emptiness and romance, a Kentucky minor league baseball team, the Florence Freedom, has announced it will give away Manti Te’o Girlfriend Bobblehead dolls – actually empty boxes – to the first 1,000 fans at the May 23 game.


One section of the Florence, Kentucky, stadium has been reserved “for fans to sit with their imaginary friends, girlfriends/boyfriends or spouses” who may be caught on the “pretend kiss cam” and are invited to compete in an air guitar contest or an imaginary food fight.


(Writing by Barbara Goldberg; Editing by Paul Thomasch and Vicki Allen)


Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Sneak Peek of The Wanted's I Found You Music Video

ET has been rolling out sneak peeks of The Wanted's highly anticipated music video for I Found You all week, and this brand new exclusive clip features the one and only Siva Kaneswaran!

Video: Max George Smolders in The Wanted's New Video

Click the video to check out the handsome 24-year-old showing off both his singing and guitar skills, with his outspoken band mate Jay McGuiness banging on the drums.

Video: The Wanted Teases 'I Found You' Music Video

The catchy jam is off their upcoming album Third Strike, out later this year. ET will premiere the full music video for I Found You Tuesday, January 22nd, and you can catch the video on Vevo.com and ETonline.com Tuesday night.

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2007 transcripts show Fed officials underestimated approaching financial crisis








WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve officials in 2007 underestimated the scope of the approaching financial crisis and how it would tip the U.S. economy into the worst recession since the Great Depression, transcripts of the Fed's policy meetings that year show.

The meetings occurred as the country was on the brink of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. As the year went on, Fed officials shifted their focus away from the risk of inflation as they slowly began to recognize the severity of the crisis.

During 2007, the Fed began to cut interest rates and took extraordinary steps to ease credit and shore up confidence in the banking system. Throughout the year, the housing crisis deepened. Banks and hedge funds that had invested big in subprime mortgages were left with worthless assets as foreclosures rose. The damage reached the top echelons of Wall Street.





REUTERS



Ben Bernanke





At the Fed's Oct. 30 policy meeting, Janet Yellen, then-president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said the economy faced increased risks. But she hardly predicted anything dire.

"I think the most likely outcome is that the economy will move forward toward a soft landing," she said.

Chairman Ben Bernanke noted that housing was "very weak" and manufacturing was slowing.

"But expect for those sectors, there is a good bit of momentum in the economy," he said. Bernanke did acknowledge that there was "an unusual amount of uncertainty" surrounding the Fed's economic forecasts.

"In the aggregate data, there is yet no clear sign of a spillover from housing," Bernanke said in summing up the views of the committee.

By December, the economy had plunged into the recession, which would last until June 2009. Five years later, the economy has yet to fully recover.

The Fed did take action in 2007, although investors seemed to think it waited too long. Markets were disappointed when the Fed refused to cut interest rate cuts at its Aug. 7 meeting. After the meeting, the Fed issued a statement declaring that the threats to growth had only "increased somewhat."

At the meeting, various Fed officials signaled their belief that the biggest threat facing the economy was inflation — not slower growth, the transcripts show.

Days later, BNP Paribas, France's largest bank, announced that it was suspending withdrawals from three investment funds, a move that jolted financial markets around the world.

On Aug. 10, the Fed held the first of three emergency conference calls to discuss the emerging crisis. The committee announced that it would pump billions of dollars into financial markets to try and calm turmoil on Wall Street and ease the tightening of credit.

One week later, the Fed called an emergency meeting to cut the discount rate on loans to banks.

Then in September, the Fed cut its key short-term interest rate for the first time since June 25, 2003. The Fed would cut the rate two more times in 2007 as the financial crisis worsened.

Still, the transcripts showed the central bank struggled through the year to develop a clear sense of how serious the unfolding crisis could be and what harm it might do to the U.S. economy.

At the Fed's final meeting of that year in December, the central bank's staff presented an economic forecast for 2008 that proved to be overly optimistic.

And despite concerns about the lending market and the quality of loans — particularly in real estate — Bernanke predicted that no major bank would fail.

"The result of this is that, although I do not expect insolvency or near insolvency among major financial institutions, they are certainly going to become more cautious."

In March 2008, investment banking giant Bear Stearns was rescued with the help of Fed support. In the fall, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the government and the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008 set off a full-blown financial panic.










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Bioethics commission meets at UM to consider testing anthrax vaccine on children




















In “Dark Zephyr,” fictional terrorists released a cloud of anthrax on San Francisco. Adults were successfully vaccinated, but doctors didn’t know the safe dosage to give children.

Fortunately this was just a practice exercise in emergency response in 2011. But the realization that modern medicine had no protocol to protect children from a deadly bacterial pathogen prompted U.S. Secretary of Health Kathleen Sebelius to ask the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues to consider the ethics of using healthy children in anthrax vaccine research.

The discussion has taken the 13-person commission a full year. The central question is to find the balance between the hypothetical risk of not knowing how to treat children in an anthrax bioterrorism attack and the real risk to healthy children who would participate in a study.





The commission, composed of leaders in medicine, social policy and law, met at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine this week for the last of four sessions to publicly ponder these ethical issues. The UM Ethics Program has long been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the six global “Collaborating Centres for Bioethics.”

Amy Gutmann, the commission’s chair, reminded participants the commission’s role is advisory only. “The question we must address is whether the U.S. Government could ethically support a pediatric [anthrax vaccine] study under any circumstance,” Gutmann said. “We will not render a final decision as to whether a particular study should move forward. Nor are we working to justify any particular protocol or outcome.”

An existing vaccine is routinely administered to adults in the military and other fields to protect against anthrax spores that are deadly if inhaled. Before the vaccine can be ethically researched with children, new trials in young adults should occur, said Col. Nelson Michael, director of the U.S. Military HIV Research Program and member of the commission. These studies would administer lower doses of the vaccine to determine the safest dosage in 18- to 20-year old adults.

Such studies would not be efficacy studies, however, which have been done in animals. Researchers would never infect humans with anthrax for a study, according to Michael, who is an expert in vaccine research.

“It would be completely unethical to conduct an anthrax challenge trial in humans,” Michael said.

The issues surrounding this research question are unprecedented in bioethics for a few reasons, according to Lisa Lee, the director of the commission’s staff. First, testing an anthrax vaccine on healthy children is unlike other pediatric research because research subjects will enjoy no direct benefit, as would, for example, a child with cancer who could be saved by previously untested treatment.

Second, anthrax is not a naturally occurring disease, and the probability of an attack is “unknowable.’’ The capability to use anthrax as a biological weapon is widely acknowledged, since letters infected with anthrax spores were sent to politicians and media outlets in 2001, killing five people. (A 2010 FBI investigation blamed the attacks on an Army scientist who helped develop the anthrax vaccine and later committed suicide.) Security analysts have presented their interpretation of the likelihood of a bioterrorism attack, but even the best intelligence cannot put a percentage on the chance that terrorists will unleash anthrax on American cities.





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Amazon holiday results to show sales tax impact






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Acting as a tax collector may have hurt Amazon.com, Inc’s holiday sales analysts and industry executives said, but they expect to know more when the internet retailer reports its fourth-quarter results on January 29.


Best Buy Co., an archrival of Amazon in consumer electronics, saw holiday online sales increase in three states where Amazon started collecting sales tax ahead of the period.






“There was a little softness in states where Amazon is now collecting sales tax,” said R.J. Hottovy, an equity analyst at Morningstar. “That isn’t surprising to me. It levels the playing field for brick-and-mortar retailers.”


Critics of Amazon argued it had an unfair advantage because most retailers have had to collect state sales tax on online sales for years because they have stores and other physical operations in these locations.


But many states, hungry for extra tax revenue in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, introduced new laws requiring that Internet-only retailers also collect sales tax. Brick-and-mortar retailers hope the requirement will reduce Amazon’s price advantage and help them recoup lost sales.


CHANNELADVISOR DATA


Amazon, the world’s biggest Internet retailer, began collecting sales tax of 7.25 percent to 9.75 percent in California on Sept 15, about two weeks before the start of the fourth-quarter. Third-party sellers on Amazon.com saw a drop in sales during the quarter, compared to other states, according to an analysis by e-commerce firm ChannelAdvisor.


It also started collecting sales tax in Pennsylvania in September and in Texas in July.


Amazon’s fourth-quarter results should provide clues on whether consumers changed their shopping habits when faced with higher taxes on their purchases from the company’s website.


ChannelAdvisor, which helps merchants sell more online, analyzed its clients’ sales on Amazon.com in California, and compared them to other states before and after the sales tax kicked in.


Before Amazon began collecting the tax in California, ChannelAdvisor client sales were 5 percent to 10 percent above other states. The week before the September 15 start of the tax, sales spiked as high as 70 percent compared to other states.


“The surge before the tax went into effect was much larger than I thought it would be,” said Scot Wingo, chief executive of ChannelAdvisor. “Californians definitely bought a lot in the three or four days before the tax went into effect.”


After Amazon began collecting tax, its California sales leveled with other states. Then, in early November, they slipped as much as 10 percent below other states, ChannelAdvisor data showed.


During one of the busiest holiday periods, in late November and early December, sales dipped further in California vs other states. Toward the end of the holiday period, client sales in California recovered, the data showed.


“There was a sales impact of about 10 percent at the worst point of the dip,” Wingo said. EBay, another Amazon rival, is an investor in ChannelAdvisor. Wingo also owned Amazon shares, but sold them in the fourth quarter for personal tax-related reasons.


Amazon’s tax collection in California had the most impact on fourth-quarter sales of more expensive items priced at $ 200 to $ 250, Wingo said.


PRICES, PROFIT


Amazon probably lowered prices by 8 percent to 9 percent on items most affected by this, although it is tricky to separate such reductions from the usual holiday season promotions that were also happening, Wingo said.


The extra price competition may dent Amazon’s profitability in the fourth quarter, Morningstar’s Hottovy said.


Amazon is expected to make 52 cents a share in the fourth quarter, on revenue of $ 22.3 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. In late October, the company forecast operating results ranging from a profit of $ 310 million to a loss of $ 490 million.


Hottovy expects $ 22.4 billion in revenue and an operating loss of $ 210 million, or a $ 135 million loss after excluding stock-based compensation and other operating expenses.


BEST BUY


In California, Texas and Pennsylvania, Best Buy said it saw a 4 percent to 6 percent increase in online sales during the holiday versus the rest of its chain.


The retailer also saw an increase of 6 percent to 9 percent in online orders that are picked up in its stores in those three states compared with the rest of its chain.


Overall, Best Buy reported better-than-expected holiday sales last week, sending its shares up more than 10 percent.


“This makes Amazon equal to everyone else. They no longer have that sales tax advantage,” said Anne Zybowski, vice president of retail insights at Kantar Retail. “If this had happened to Amazon when they were just a bookseller years ago, they may not be as big as they are now.


Despite the tax changes, Amazon’s consumer electronics prices were still at least 5 percent below Best Buy’s during the holiday season, Zybowski said. But Best Buy may have benefited from even a small change in this area.


“Particularly in consumer electronics, any narrowing of Amazon’s price advantage at the margin is important because Best Buy brings service and other shopper benefits to the category,” she said.


Best Buy will take away people’s old TVs when they buy a new one and the company’s Geek Squad service will install devices in shoppers’ homes, services Amazon does not provide, she noted.


An Amazon spokesman declined to comment when asked if the company saw an impact on fourth-quarter sales from the collection of sales taxes in the three states.


In the past, Amazon executives have said there was little or no impact from such changes in other regions.


Several analysts have argued that shoppers use Amazon for its vast product selection and convenient, fast shipping and returns, and not just its low prices.


“While not great for Amazon, it’s just one of many consumer benefits its service offers,” said Ken Sena, an analyst at Evercore Partners. “And while there may be early effects from this change, I still see usage trends remaining in Amazon’s favor.”


(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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