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IDC and Gartner reports show PC shipments in the third quarter 2012 declined by 8% from the prior year. This creates an uncertain outlook for sales of PC's powered by Windows 8 operating system enabling touchscreen technology.

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Verizon's support for another ecosystem in Nokia powered by Microsoft software. This would increase its leverage with Apple and reduce the large payments for carrying iPhones.

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Greg Smith, a midlevel executive at its London office, writes an op-ed article in the New York Times on March 15, 2012, describing the culture at Goldman Sachs as toxic. Smith is from S. Africa, of Lithuanian Jewish origin, and studied on a scholarship at Stanford before joining Goldman.

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In comments to the Financial Inquiry Commission bankers Blankfein and Dimon show a lack of comprehension of the magnitude of the global financial crisis and their role in it. Blankfein says this kind of crisis was a once in a 100 years event and one should't react. Dimon says such crises happen every 5 to 7 years and is not something to get overly concerned about. And they offer no solutions or problem solving ideas, except to resist any form of regulation that would strictlly limit damage from a future crisis.

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Nokia's failure to build the smartphone before Apple and other competitors. This comes after investment in R&D by Nokia exceeded that of Apple and Google in the last decade. The focus was on pure R&D as opposed to building products using new technologies and staying ahead of the curve.

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Blackberry RIM discards a plan to go private. CEO Thorstein is to leave the company and Fairfax Financial Holdings led investor shareholder group will invest $1 billion in the company. Fairfax owns 10% of Blackberry. After the news was announced the RIM Blackberry share price dropped 16% to $6.49. John Chen, former CEO of enterprise software company Sybase is the interim CEO. At its current cash burn rate, even with the $1 billion infusion Blackberry would run out of cash by the end of 2014.

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Petrobras remains stuck in 2016 with a huge debt load of over $125 billion and a slump in oil prices. CEO Aldemir Bendine is a career government banker appointed by President Rousseff in 2015, as she faces impeachment proceedings for a corruption scandal involving Petrobras. His 11 months in office have been marked by disagreements with the board, with Bendine walking out from one meeting. Petrobras has changed chairmen twice in the 11 months. Bendine's goal of divesting assets worth $15 billion in 2016 may not be achievable say analysts, with other oil companies also divesting assets. As an outsider Bendine faces skepticism from insiders in the company. A oil strike went on for weeks before workers won a raise, resulting in lost production.

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Nokia announced a loss of 929 million euros for the first quarter of 2012. Sales declined from 10.4 billon euros to 7.4 billion euros in the same quarter prior year. The only bright spot for the company is that the Lumia 900 sold throught AT&T has made a successful launch in the U.S. Nokia CEO Elop says the phone is sold out in stores in the U.S. Lumia sales were 2 million in the 1st quarter of 2012, at an average price of 220 euros ($290). Nokia's strategy now is to bring the Lumia line including the lower end Luma 610 phone to Asian markets by June- to China, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia. Nokia's biggest problem is the older Symbian phones, which consumers are passing by and which now have to be discounted rapidly or replaced quickly with the Lumia line. The other related problem is falling margins on basic phones as Chinese competitors discount heavily- basic Nokia phone prices fell 18% to 33 euros ($43) from 40 euros or($52) the prior year. The speed in the drop in business for mobile phones can be guaged from the sales decline of 40% in the 1st quarter from $9.3 billion to $5.6 billion. Things are made worse by the 772 million euro ($1 billion) charge taken for Nokia Siemens Networks, a network joint venture with Siemens. Sales for Nokia Siemens fell 7% in the first quarter to $3.8 billion. Nokia Siemens has 53 contracts to build new mobile networks with Long Term Evolution Technology more than competitors Ericsson and Huawei, according to Nokia Siemens. Everything now depends on the speed with which Nokia can move to its Lumia line across the board, especially in China....

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Plans to introduce its Luma line to China by June 2012 in cooperation with China Telecom. It is betting on Chinese demand for smartphones to recover. Sales of CDMA phones- China Telecom uses CDMA technology- are expected to double to 60 million in 2012 from 30 million in 2011. China provided 17% of Noka sales in 2011, mostly basic or older phones. The challenge is now to get the Lumia line up and running fast. Nokia's timing is right as smartphones are just beginning a surge in China- IHS forecasts an increase from 65 million in 2011 to 120 million in 2012. Nokia's advertising and marketing and close work with China Telecom has also to kick in for it to maximize on this opportunity.

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Strong competition from Samsung in emerging markets is another hurdle facing Nokia in its plans for recovery.

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This condensed adaptation of the book by McNish and Silcoff on the collapse of Blackberry with the launch of the iPhone, tells a story of complacency at Research in Motion. Supreme Court Justice Brandeis once said that complacency was like all the seven sins rolled into one. In the smartphone industry the results were lethal. RIM founders Lazaridis and Balsillie responded to the iPhone launch believing this would not affect Blackberry. The founders rationalized that what would determine success in the business was security, battery life, ability to type, and using less capacity so as not to strain networks, areas in which RIM was strong and on which it had built its market presence. Design, using mobile to offer broad access to internet content, and the touch screen, were not seen as changing the very nature of the phone market. During the summer of 2007 many users shifted to the iPhone, and it cultivated a cult following using strategies Apple had honed on earlier product launches, reaching 1 million in sales. RIM was completely unprepared and could offer Verizon Communications a prototype called the Storm, which was launched hastily with product glitches still remaining. This happened in November 2008 and turned out to be complete disaster- initial sales were great selling 1 million units in 2 months of 2008, but reversed when almost all of the units were returned because the browser was slow and the clickable screen did not respond well. Nokia, another competitor, is also caught unawares sticking to its formula of success, when all the rules were being rewritten by Apple by showing what the new possiblilities were with the right technology in what one could do with a smartphone. Blackberry introduced a smartphone in 2012 by putting together a patchwork of licensed technologies. By this time Apple, Samsung and other competitors had captured significant market share, and the smartphone flopped. The successor Z10 also flopped in 2013. Nokia faced another problem- the inability to convert R&D, at times larger than Google and Apple, into new products, and the failure of management to grasp the potential of new technologies. According to a former employee, Nokia management turned down a internet ready phone with touch screen developed by its engineers in 2004....

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With poor sales for the Blackberry Z 10 in 2013, AT&T and Best Buy retailers are discounting the phone to $49 for a refurbished phone, and $99 for a new phone from the original price of $199. Such steep discounting soon after the March 2013 launch of the Z 10 suggests the phone is selling poorly.

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Petrobras CEO, Aldemir Bendine, faces the difficult tasks of regaining investor confidence, establishing better governance, and carrying out a divestment program to cut the debt load of $133.9 billion. He is a bank executive from Banco do Brasil appointed in February 2015 following the corruption scandal at Petrobras. The new board at Petrobras following the corruption scandal is now free of political appointees, and includes academics, business leaders and technical experts. Bendine says, today there is not the same atmosphere as in the past with political appointees, and he sees no chance for government interference.

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In the face of relentless questioning Goldman CEO Blankfein, CFO Viniar ,and Mortgage Products VP, Fabrice Tourre, hold tightly to their story that they did nothing wrong. At one point Viniar was asked by Senator Levin of Michigan how he felt about Goldman employees describing the deals by Goldman in sour terms. Viniar replied that it was unfortunate that it showed up in the email. Levin asked Viniar whether he had no qualms about the matter much less about the email. Mostly the four Goldman executives questioned and the senators seemed to be talking past each other, with the senators- Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kaufman Jr. of Delaware, John Ensign of Nevada, Susan Collins of Maine, Claire McCaskill of Missouri- appearing exasperated that the Goldman witnesses were dodging questions or simply buying time. Senator Pryor compared the whole thing to Vegas casino gambling to which Senator Ensign said that it was more like playing a slot machine while these types from Wall Street were manipulating things in their favor, even Vegas casino were not manipulating the odds while the game was being played. ...

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As part of his plans to revive Sony, CEO Hirai plans to increase sales in emerging markets by 44% in 3 years. Sony is the leading brand for television, audio equipment, and notebook computers in India. Hirai plans to increase operating margins to 5%, and increase revenues by 33%, by March 2015. The outgoing CEO, Mr. Stringer reached 5.4% operating margin in the fiscal year ending March 2008, but things changed after the global financial crisis and the problems in 2011 with the tsunami and earthquake in Japan and floods in Thailand. Sony also plans to start a new medical business with medical diagnostic products, and endoscope type products that use its advanced image sensors. Sony plans to focus on mobile devices, digital cameras, and videogames for further investment.