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Posted
Dec 18 2007, 08:52 AM
by
Robert Walberg
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Remember when it was cool to own/buy a Dell computer? Not that long ago it was Dell, not Apple, that had the laid back young kid starring in commercials that resonated with consumers. "Dude, it's a Dell," was the stuff of genius. Dell's were cool, they were cheap and they were everywhere.
Yet in little less than five years Dell has gone from cool to ice cold. Its share of the PC market has eroded due to misguided retail practices, poor customer service and outdated design. The company has also lost its price advantage. Despite the cheap prices you see on the company's web site, or in the flyers that arrive in the mail, once you configure the computer to match even the most basic of needs, the price ends up being as high or higher as PCs from Toshiba, Hewlett Packard and Acer.
Quite simply there's nothing that sets the company apart anymore -- at least nothing positive. Its abysmal technical service group certainly set it apart, as waiting on the Dell help desk was an exercise bordering on cruelty. To its credit, Dell's management team has begun to address this issue by adding staff, but once you get a bad reputation it can be very hard to change consumer perceptions. Dell has a lot of making up to do and some blunt talk from its back-in-the-saddle CEO, Michael Dell, just might help remake its image. Let's face it, Apple was left for dead a few years back and look at what the return of Steve Jobs did for that company.
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Posted
Sep 22 2009, 10:26 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 My sister wanted to get Apple's iPhone, but the service was so bad in Tucson, Ariz., that she decided against it. And Cnet's Elinor Mills writes that iPhone calls from her San
Francisco apartment are dropping or are garbled.
While the iPhone itself draws raves from adoring fans, AT&T's (T) wireless service leaves much to be desired for some. Mills says her iPhone service is so bad it's often easier to have a Web video conference than make a simple voice call. She called AT&T to ask why, and was told that maybe the thickness of her walls or the network demand were to blame. AT&T insisted the issue was not newsworthy. And presto: That's the fastest way to make sure a reporter treats something as newsworthy. Bing: How people deal with iPhone dropped calls
Mills' story seems to be touching a nerve,
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Posted
Jan 14 2008, 03:24 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Netflix does most of its business by mail, but the company is getting ready for the future by spending $40 million on a video streaming service for customers with high-speed Internet connections. Today, the company is lifting restrictions on that service so that customers can watch as many movies and television shows as they want from Netflix's library of 6,000 titles.
Netflix previously set time limits on how much customers could watch per month, presumably to save money on bandwidth and the fees it must pay Hollywood when a movie is streamed. Today's move could be costly, because the company isn't raising its monthly rates to compensate for the added expenses.
Why the sudden burst of generosity? We probably have Apple to thank. If the rumors are true, Apple is set to announce movie rentals over iTunes tomorrow at its Macworld Expo. Apple hasn't been much of a competitor to Netflix before, but with a movie rental service the company becomes a threat.
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Posted
Jul 11 2008, 09:36 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Uh-oh. Apple's rollout of its highly-anticipated 3G iPhone is hitting some snags this morning. Looks like the "unknown error" message came out of its slumber in the seventh circle of hell and decided to wreak havoc on iPhone and iPod Touch owners. Here's the wording that they see when trying to sync the device in iTunes: "We could not complete your iTunes store request. An unknown error occurred (-9838)." I hate those number codes in error messages, because I know they mean something but have no idea what it is. Apple shares are down 2% to $172.66 this morning.
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Posted
Jan 17 2008, 12:32 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Talk about bad timing. Apple just announced it will offer downloaded movie rentals (including high-def) over the Internet. Netflix is working on a set-top box to do the same thing, and Microsoft has been ramping up its downloadable movie offerings over Xbox Live.
Now, one cable company is starting to push back at excessive bandwidth usage caused mainly by video downloading. After an internal memo was leaked, Time Warner Cable confirmed it's planning a trial in Beaumont, Tex., in which it will charge Internet subscribers based on usage. (Time Warner's shares closed down 22 cents to $22.35 Friday.)
It's a tricky situation for Time Warner and other cable companies. Customers generally pay a flat rate for Internet (about $50 a month in my case), but a small minority are basically torrenting HD movies like crazy and sucking up a bunch of bandwidth. According to the leaked memo, 5% of subscribers were using up half of the total bandwidth.
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Posted
Jan 06 2009, 03:06 AM
by
Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
This post comes from partner site The Big Money.
The U.S. car market ended 2008 on a dire note, according to new data released yesterday. Both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times report that General Motors (GM), Ford (F), and Toyota (TM) saw U.S. sales drop more than 30% last month, "capping one of the worst years for the industry in decades and solidifying the view that more turmoil lies ahead in 2009," writes the WSJ. Shares in GM and Ford actually rose on the news, which tells you just how little confidence remains on Wall Street for the fate of the Big Three. Indeed, with consumers shunning new car showrooms, auto execs must ask themselves whether their industry "will ever again have sales levels that it took for granted just a few years ago," the NYT writes. And it's not just U.S. companies feeling the pain. Along with Toyota, BMW and Honda both saw December sales fall more than 35%.
Barack Obama went to Washington yesterday to sell his estimated $770 billion economic stimulus plan on Capitol Hill. While CNN Money recaps the president-elect's intention to push through some $300 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses, the WSJ digs int
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Posted
Jul 31 2009, 12:36 PM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 This article was written by Minyanville's Scott Reeves
A Michigan teen has a novel excuse for not getting his homework in on time: Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle ate his book report. Justin Gawronski, 17, is a contemporary kid, so he got an attorney to press his claim against Amazon in federal court. Mixing high-tech and lawyers suggests the old ways are best: Pen, paper, and the family dog have served generations of slackers admirably. Gawronski, an advanced-placement student, said his notes lost all relevance when Amazon deleted electronic copies of George Orwell’s "Nineteen Eighty-Four" from his Kindle during a copyright dispute. Gawronski says he used the electronic book reader’s note function to make comments and annotations as he read the book, when -- zap! -- the text of the novel disappeared, thanks to the Thought Police at Amazon. This left him with comments referring only to empty disc space.
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Posted
Aug 28 2008, 11:52 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
It's a well-known secret that news organizations write obituaries of famous people before they're dead. Better to have a well-written and thorough obituary ready to go instead of rushing something together at the last moment.
But every so often, someone along the chain screws up and hits the "publish" button early. It happened with writeups about Mark Twain, Bob Hope and Pope John Paul II. And Wednesday, it happened to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
Jobs "helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music and refashioned the mobile phone," according to a premature obituary published by Bloomberg News.
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Posted
Oct 12 2007, 08:31 AM
by
Robert Walberg
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
They're ugly, made from plastic, get caught in escalators and are littered with holes, yet somehow Crocs have become a retailing phenomenon.
Everyone from little kids to grandparents now walks around in these clunky, brightly colored eyesores, and the madness isn't contained to the U.S. Management recently announced that it expects international sales to top domestic sales in the recently completed third quarter. Amazing.
Equally amazing is the growth in the stock. Shares are up 256% over the past 52 weeks alone. That's better than the returns of Apple (+128%) and Google (+46%) combined. So is it time to sell before the fad fades?
If you take your cue from insiders then maybe the answer is yes. Over the past few weeks, insiders have unloaded just over 179,000 shares at an average price of $67 per share. However, it's important to remember that insiders still own about 11% of the stock and that there are numerous reasons why insiders will occasionally sell their stock. The recent selling doesn't look to be unusually heavy so I wouldn't let this info sway my decision
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Posted
Feb 27 2008, 06:53 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Apple's iTunes store has surpassed Best Buy to become the #2 music retailer in the country, second only to Wal-Mart in sales. And an analyst from the NPD Group, which tracks these sorts of things, said that Apple is on track to catch Wal-Mart this year. Apple shares dipped less than a percentage point yesterday to close at $119.15. Best Buy shares rose 3% to $46.50, and Wal-Mart shares rose 2% to $51.40.
This news says much about the way we consume music. NPD notes that 1 million people stopped buying CDs last year, a trend most apparent in young people. In 2007, 48% of teens didn't buy a single CD -- up from 38% in 2006. So retailers like Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target -- who mainly sell physical CDs -- are going to see music sales slide. But what does the news say about Apple? Is the rise to No. 2 a result of its own sales savvy, or is iTunes the lucky beneficiary of the CD's decline? A closer look at the numbers sheds a little more light.
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