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Posted
Jul 21 2009, 03:52 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Wall Street analysts expect Apple’s earnings to do better than estimates. This is not surprising. Apple (AAPL) has a history of setting low expectations about its figures and then beating them handily. It has become a game of chess between the company and experts who follow it.
Some analysts tracking the company go so far as to send people to Apple stores and other retailers to count how products are selling. Others check with companies that supply components to Apple for its products like the iPhone and Mac to gauge demand.
Apple’s results should be pulled down by the same gravity that has hurt the consumer electronics and PC markets. The relentless slowing of the economy has made both individual and business purchasers of computers slow to upgrade their hardware. The Apple iPhone is more expensive than most other handsets. A recession is hardly a good time to overpay for a phone.
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Posted
Apr 23 2009, 03:46 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
As the executives at Apple (AAPL) were passing around the Dom Perignon, their counterparts at other companies that design and manufacture smartphones were putting all sharp objects out of reach. In a recession, there is only so much air in any room. Smartphone sales are suffering like all consumer electronics. If the iPhone is doing extraordinarily well, others are doing badly.
What almost no one saw coming in Apple’s results for the March quarter was that the company would sell nearly 3.8 million iPhones. Most educated guesses were around 3.1 million to 3.3 million. In a world where securities analysts send spies to Apple stores and bribe hardware component suppliers for data on iPhone parts shipments, experts are not supposed to be off that much. It makes them look bad, but it makes Apple look good, both for its ability to keep things secret and for building a handset that is expensive, making the iPhone an aspirational product for many people who buy it. Some consumers walking into AT&T (T) stores don’t have $299 for the iPhone and the money for the exorbitant calling plan that goes with it. They go anyway, like junkies to a dealer.
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Posted
Jan 15 2009, 02:51 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 cost (to us) of Bank of America's Merrill Lynch acquisition keeps on climbing. The Wall Street Journal writes that the Treasury Department is set to "give billions in additional aid" to BoA to help close the deal because of the stricken securities firm's "larger-than-expected losses in the fourth quarter." BoA got $25 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program back in October and its need for more money at this point illustrates a "deepening fragility among the nation’s largest banks," writes the New York Times. That's the view from Treasury anyhow. It worries that if the deal falls through it will further undermine the stability of U.S. financial markets, adds the WSJ. The fourth quarter wasn't kind to Deutsche Bank (DB), which warns that heavy trading losses will force it to take a $6.3 billion loss on the back of the global financial meltdown. Meanwhile JPMorgan's (JPM) chief executive has been looking forward and -- surprise -- 2009 looks pretty bleak.
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Posted
Dec 30 2008, 08:52 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Thousands of employees have gone to Glassdoor's site to rant and rave (but mostly rant) about their jobs and share salary information. They also have plenty to say about their CEOs, and Glassdoor reviewed the CEO ratings to find out who's been naughty and nice this year. According to the reviews, the CEO that Santa should have rewarded the most this year is Art Levinson of Genentech, who was praised for making great products and taking care of his employees. Apple's Steve Jobs came in second place, followed by Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs. Who was the naughtiest of them all? Steve Odland of Office Depot, who is accused of stifling retail stores with failed business programs and allowing underperforming workers to stay on board. Others on the list include AOL's Randy Falco and Greg Brown of Motorola. Here are the full naughty and nice lists:
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Posted
Dec 17 2008, 08:05 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Motorola employees probably aren't a happy crew today. The company's going to stop contributions to its 401(k) plan and freeze its U.S. pension plan. Also, some employees won't get raises next year. This is after Motorola said it would lay off 3,000 workers, striking hard at its handset division team. Companies across the country are making similar moves to survive the recession, but Motorola's also trying to hit a target of $800 million in costs saved next year. With all this internal turmoil, I don't know how Motorola's going to pull off its short-term goals. The company is overhauling its mobile division, throwing out projects already in motion and cutting the number of software platforms in its handsets. It's had to shelve some product launches scheduled for next year.
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Posted
Oct 30 2008, 11:17 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Motorola shares fell 6% midday Thursday to around $5 after the company gave a double-whammy of bad news: Fourth-quarter results would miss expectations, and the struggling mobile unit will just get weaker next year.
The company will lay off about 3,000 people, and won't spin off its mobile group as early as it had hoped. The mess at Motorola is just too big to clean up quickly. It might be too late to turn this company around, but co-CEO Sanjay Jha is trying.
"The reality is there is no quick fix here," said Jha, who has only been on the job for a couple of months. It doesn't help that Motorola doesn't have any superstar phones to sell this quarter. Screwing up the holiday season gives you a pretty good idea of how clueless management has been this year in planning, design and execution.
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Posted
Oct 30 2008, 08:49 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Growth in the mobile phone market is nearly flat as consumers cut back in the credit crunch. Worse, there will be no immediate turnaround.
The market isn't contracting, but only Samsung Electronics gained market share -- and that meant making price cuts.
In previous quarters, the industry has expanded at about a 10% clip overall as manufacturers and carriers scrambled to offer new equipment and services
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Posted
Oct 29 2008, 09:48 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Big wins for Google and Motorola today. The Wall Street Journal reports that Motorola is scrapping some of its own designs and will start using Google's Android operating system in some phones. Motorola was suffocating under six different operating systems in its phones -- few of which had the juice to compete with the savvy systems that Google and Apple have already put out. So Motorola is winnowing that to three: Microsoft's Windows Mobile will be used in its high-end devices, Google Android will go in the high-volume middle class of phones and Motorola's own P2K operating system will run low-end phones. The move is part of a slate of big changes expected under Sanjay Jha, the new CEO of Motorola's struggling cell phone division. How struggling? The division lost $12 average on each of the 28 million phones it sold last quarter, the Journal says. Jha could also announce thousands of layoffs, perhaps as early as tomorrow in the company's quarterly earnings call.
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Posted
Aug 19 2008, 07:06 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Motorola is having a difficult time selling phones in the U.S., although it's still -- just barely -- the market leader. Motorola already reported a 22% drop in handset sales for the second quarter. Today, research firm The NPD Group said that Motorola's rivals swooped in and gained market share as Motorola's declined. Now, the company has a 21% market share in the U.S. Samsung and LG are tied at 20%, while Nokia has 9% and Reseach in Motion's BlackBerry phones are at 7%. Apple's 3G iPhone didn't go on sale until after the quarter ended.
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Posted
Aug 04 2008, 11:53 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Motorola shareholders are liking the new guy picked for the soon-to-be-spun-off handset division. Shares of the company rose 12% today on news of Sanjay Jha's appointment. Jha is going to share CEO duties with current CEO Greg Brown until the spinoff, which is planned for the third quarter of 2009. He's definitely got the technical know-how for the job: he's been the chief operating officer of Qualcomm and also president of the division that made chips for cell phones. So we know he's a tech whiz. But does he have the style savvy for the job?
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