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Posted
Dec 05 2007, 09:16 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 The Facebook debacle-in-the-making may have peaked today, now that founder Mark Zuckerberg has come out of hiding and apologized. To quickly recap: The social networking upstart rolled out an advertising push that was so invasive and abusive that 50,000 members signed a petition to protest the move. The ad program, called Beacon, ushered in a tidal wave of bad publicity for the company. Read my earlier post for more on Beacon.
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Posted
Mar 04 2008, 03:56 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
"Grand Theft Auto IV" comes out April 29, and I can't wait. It's the next installment in the controversial, violent, mayhem-filled series, and it will become the year's top-selling video game. Those who haven't played GTA are often mortified by the carjacking, cop-killing and other nefarious shenanigans it offers. But these games sell because above all else, they're unbelievably fun. (The new title will surely be rated "mature," so don't let the little ones get their hands on it.)
The upcoming game is a huge reason why Electronic Arts is making a major, and slightly hostile, play for GTA publisher Take-Two Interactive. EA offered $2 billion for Take-Two last month -- $26 a share, up from an earlier offer of $25 a share -- and was flatly rejected. Take-Two called the offer "the wrong price at the wrong time." Its shares, in the $16 range before EA's offer was made public, closed at $26.20 Monday.
Take-Two is smart to reject such a low offer. But how much is the company worth? A Wedbush Morgan analyst thinks EA should walk away if Take Two continues to thumb its nose. But Cowan's Doug Creutz thinks EA is justified in going as high as $32 a share. A Take-Two investor wants $33 a share.
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Posted
Mar 04 2008, 12:24 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The Google freefall hit a notable mark today: its shares are trading lower than where they ended 2006. Shares slid as low as $435.78, but closed today at $444.60. That's down by a third since November; the company's market cap has dropped during that time to $140 billion from $232 billion.
Give Intel some of the blame. The chipmaker lowered its Q1 profit margin forecast, and when Intel does that it drags the whole tech sector down. There was also news today that one of Google's top sales execs is jumping ship for social-networking darling Facebook.
But bigger issues are felling Google -- concerns about slowing revenue and profit growth, and about the economy affecting Google's paid click business. A report out last week by research firm ComScore showed a 7% drop in the number of times people clicked on Google's advertising links in January. The number of paid clicks per Google search query fell by 8%.
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Posted
Mar 06 2008, 12:11 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
A friend of mine was thrilled to get an Apple iPhone for Christmas from his wife. But he returned it a few weeks later. Why? Because he couldn't access his work e-mail on the device. The iPhone, for all its cool features, lacked one essential tool: the ability to sync easily with corporate e-mail on the Microsoft Exchange server.
How many times has this story been repeated? That's why today's news from Apple is huge. The company said it will work with Microsoft to license the ActiveSync synchronization program, which lets iPhone users get e-mail, contacts and calendar information from Microsoft Exchange servers. It sounds like this could happen sometime in the summer.
The move means Apple is going after Research in Motion's ubiquitous BlackBerry in the corporate market. But this isn't a death knell for Research in Motion, which has a huge lock on enterprise customers. RIM had a 73% market share for smartphones in February, according to ChangeWave Research. Palm's market share has declined over the past year to 18%, and Apple's iPhone is around 5%.
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Posted
Mar 07 2008, 06:08 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Selling wine online in this country is pretty screwed up. Or, as the Financial Times so elegantly stated, it's "a business fraught with regulatory complexities and littered with the wreckage of previous failures."
But Amazon is up for the task, and is recruiting a senior wine buyer on its site. I'd like to volunteer, but my knowledge of wine basically comes from what I learned in "Sideways." Amazon has been interested in this area for some time, having spent $30 million nine years ago for a 45% stake of Wineshopper.com. Oops, Wineshopper was folded into Wine.com the next year.
Maybe Amazon can help straighten out the convoluted mess that is selling wine online. Retailers can only ship wine to 26 states. Wineries and retailers follow different rules. FreetheGrapes.org has a nice summary of this complex issue. And the competition is nasty. Online wine retailer Wine.com went so far as to conduct its own sting operation, telling state regulators whenever it found that its rivals were violating wine-shipping laws.
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Posted
Mar 14 2008, 12:23 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Yahoo seems to be dropping its anyone-but-Microsoft merger attitude. Senior executives from both companies met on Monday to discuss Microsoft's cash-and-stock acquisition offer, although "discuss" might be too strong a word, since the Yahoos "mostly listened," according to the WSJ.
Yahoo had a duty to shareholders to at least hear Microsoft out, now that its list of possible alternatives is down to pretty much zero. AOL is busy with its $850 million acquisition of social networking site Bebo. Rupert Murdoch says News Corp. is staying out. Google lost its initial enthusiasm about thwarting the bid.
It's unclear how serious the meeting was. No bankers attended and no negotiation took place. We don't even know if the CEOs were there. But the official silence has been broken. Yahoo shares fell nearly 3% today to $26.71 on the news, and Microsoft shares are down nearly 2.3% to $27.96.
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Posted
Mar 17 2008, 12:19 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Palm's cute Centro phone is a hit, but that caused shares to fall today. Citi analyst Jim Suva wonders if the $100 Centro is selling a little too well, to the point where it's cutting into margins. Palm reports earnings Thursday, and Suva thinks the company will miss analyst estimates and stop providing guidance.
That's some pretty bold predicting by Suva. We'll see how close he is to the mark later this week. (Analysts are expecting $315.3 milion in revenue and a 14-cent loss). Palm shares fell today but climbed back in afternoon trading to just under $5.
The question -- and it's a valid one -- is whether the Centro is snagging buyers who otherwise might have picked up the higher-margin Treo. Of course, the other side of this is whether the Centro is snagging buyers who otherwise might have gone for an iPhone or Blackberry. Palm's subsidizing the Centro partly in hopes of getting new data users, and internal research shows that 72% of Centro buyers previously used a traditional handset and not a smartphone.
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Posted
Mar 19 2008, 08:02 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
After pooh-poohing music subscription services for years, Apple is talking to labels about that very idea, according to the Financial Times. It's about time. Apple could really energize iPod sales this way. But here's the twist: instead of the regular pay-every-month scenario, the fee would be bundled up front into the price of an iPod or iPhone.
In other words, if you pay more when you buy the iPod, you could get free access to all the music on iTunes for the life of the device. Executives talking to the FT said research has shown that people will pay up to $100 for that, or they would be willing to pay a $7 to $8 monthly fee for a music subscription.
Nokia has a similar deal in place for devices it's developing, and reportedly will pay music labels $80 for every device sold. Apple, in its typical drive-the-labels-nuts fashion, has only offered to pay about $20, according to the FT. Nokia is being hit hard with the news today; its shares have fallen nearly 8% this morning to $30.17. Apple shares are down less than 1% to $132.04, and shares in RealNetworks, which owns the competing Rhapsody music subscription service, are down nearly 2%. Napster shares are down 3%.
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Posted
Mar 24 2008, 02:04 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
So combining the only two satellite radio providers in the U.S. won't create a monopoly. Huh? That's what the Justice Department said today after giving its blessing to the merger of XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio.
Both stocks soared today on the news. XM shares closed up 15% to $13.79, and Sirius shares closed up nearly 9% to $3.15.
The first thing I thought after seeing the news was that the price of satellite radio will go up. But the DOJ sees it differently. The merged company won't be able to raise prices, accordng to the DOJ, because doing so would send customers into the arms of traditional radio, HD radio, iPods and the audio content available on cell phones.
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Posted
Mar 26 2008, 12:10 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Filed under: Google, Comcast, Time Warner, Sprint, wireless, Intel, Verizon, AT&T, Kim Peterson, Clearwire, VIX
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Lots of big numbers are being tossed around today in support of WiMax, a wireless technology that can deliver high-speed Internet access over several miles. Clearwire is a leader in developing WiMax, and has been trying to hammer out a partnership with Sprint for months. But working out a deal hasn't been easy, partly because building out WiMax is so expensive and partly because both companies have their own struggles to deal with.
Now, the two biggest U.S. cable companies are stepping in with loads of cash. According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast and Time Warner are talking about funding a new WiMax company, one that would be run by Sprint and Clearwire. The company would operate a nationwide WiMax network. Comcast is reportedly offering $1 billion and Time Warner is adding $500 million. Bright House Networks, a small cable company, might pony up between $100 million and $200 million.
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