5 Companies That Had A Rough Week

The Week Ending Sept. 4

Topping this week's roundup of companies that had a rough week are some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies that have to pay millions of dollars to settle an antipoaching class-action lawsuit.

Also making the list are owners of jailbroken iPhones who were hit with a malware attack; NetSuite and its shareholders who got slammed with a stock price downgrade; Fujitsu's scramble to recall faulty notebook computer batteries that pose a fire hazard; and further evidence that Samsung is losing smartphone market share.

Not everyone in the IT industry was having a rough go of it this week. For a rundown of companies that made smart decisions, executed savvy strategic moves -- or just had good luck -- check out this week's Five Companies That Came To Win roundup.

Apple, Google And Others To Pay $415M To Settle Antipoaching Lawsuit

Apple, Google, Intel and Adobe will fork over $415 million to settle a class-action lawsuit, approved by a U.S. District Court judge Wednesday, charging that executives at the four companies conspired not to hire each other's employees.

The lawsuit, brought by thousands of employees at the technology companies that are among the biggest in Silicon Valley, charged that they sought to keep salaries down by agreeing not to poach employees from each other.

As evidence, the suit cited emails from late Apple CEO Steve Jobs and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt that included requests not to hire away each other's workers, according to a CNET story.

The companies, which have denied wrongdoing, offered to settle the case earlier this year for $324.5 million, a deal that Judge Lucy Koh rejected. Other companies originally named in the suit, including Intuit, Pixar and Lucasfilm, reached earlier settlements.

Malware Hits 225,000 Jailbroken iPhones

In a reminder that jailbroken mobile phones can be a security risk, a line of malware called "KeyRaider" reportedly infected compromised iPhones this week and collected login credentials for more than 225,000 Apple accounts, including iTunes payment information.

Security company Palo Alto Networks called the attack the largest known Apple account theft caused by malware, according to a story on the CNNMoney website. The company, working with Chinese iPhone software developer WeipTech, reportedly discovered the hack.

Most of the affected jailbroken phones are believed to be in China, according to a Wired story. But an Ars Technica story said iPhone owners in 17 countries, including the U.K., France, Russia and Japan, also were impacted.

NetSuite Shares Tumble On Stock Downgrade

Not a good week for NetSuite or its shareholders. On Friday, financial analyst firm Raymond James dropped its rating on NetSuite to "underperform" from "market perform."

That caused the price of the cloud application company's shares to tumble 3.6 percent in early trading Friday to under $85 -- the first time they have been that low since last October.

NetSuite has consistently reported quarterly revenue growth in the 30 percent to 35 percent range, but has yet to report a profit. Raymond James said its downgrade was based on an "unfavorable risk profile" and that some investors "may grow impatient with NetSuite's lack of operating margin expansion and profitability."

Fujitsu Recalls Battery Packs That Pose Fire Hazard

Fujitsu has recalled as many as 70,000 battery packs for the company's Lifebook notebook PCs that the company said can overheat and "in rare instances may ignite and result in fire," according to a notice on the vendor's website.

According to the Japan Times, there have been three cases of fire resulting from the faulty batteries, which were manufactured by Panasonic between May 2011 and July 2012.

While some of the batteries were originally installed in the Lifebook notebooks, many were sold as separate products, and some were installed as replacements during repairs. The affected laptops were sold in Japan in 2011 and 2012, and globally in 2012.

Samsung Smartphone Market Share Continues To Slide

Samsung continues to lose ground in the worldwide smartphone market. A report from comScore out this week said Samsung's share of smartphone subscribers for three months ending July 15 was 27.3 percent, down 1.3 points from 28.6 percent in the three months ending April 15. ComScore's reports are based on subscriber data from smartphone users.

While Samsung is the No. 1 smartphone maker in the world, it has been losing market share to Apple at the high end of the market and to low-cost Android devices at the low end.

An IDC report in July put Samsung's second-quarter share of worldwide smartphone shipments at 21.7 percent, down from 24.8 percent in last year's second quarter.