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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
Aug 31 2009, 04:04 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
There are two ways to look at the economic relationship between Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T), and both may be accurate. AT&T says it has signed up 10 million iPhone owners for its long-term calling and data plans. Many of those customers have come from other cellular providers. AT&T is thus adding new, and perhaps profitable, business.
On the other hand, AT&T pays Apple an estimated $400 a phone. AT&T probably has to hold onto its iPhone customers for the full two years of their subscription plan to make a lot of money.
The Wall Street Journal recently pointed out that AT&T has other smartphones that it does not have to pay handset companies like Samsung and Nokia (NOK) as much as $400 to acquire.
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Posted
Jul 09 2009, 05:40 PM
by
CAPS Editor
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Th![]() is post comes from Rich Duprey at partner site The Motley Fool.
Had Jerry Maguire been an investor instead of a fictional sports agent, he might have become famous for yelling, "Show me the cash flow!"
Earnings come and go, and the green-eyeshade types can legally manipulate them to mask a company's true operations. Yet a company's ability to generate cash remains the preeminent indicator of its worth.
In short, cash is king.
Let's look at companies that have proven themselves prodigious generators of free cash flow, which is the amount of money a company has left over that it could potentially pay to its investors.
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Posted
Jun 26 2009, 03:48 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Software applications which allowed owners of Apple (AAPL) iPhones to download pornography have started to disappear from the firm’s huge App Store which now has more than 50,000 offerings.
According to TechCrunch, Apple’s rules do allow for program that include nudity, so it is not clear what happened to the lewd content. Makers of the pornographic content say they had to cut access to the products because their servers could not take the demand.
Apple may be running into the same trouble that Microsoft (MSFT) did with its Bing search engine. The product made it easier for users to get to pornographic material. Apparently, Microsoft set up programs to help block that access.
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Posted
Mar 20 2009, 01:01 PM
by
Kim Peterson
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Shares of beleaguered Palm (PALM) are on the rise, but not because the company is doing all that well. Investors are simply making bets on the Pre, the super-hot phone Palm will debut in the next few months.
Palm is all about the Pre these days. The company is banking its future on the new phone's launch, mainly because everything else is a disaster. Its last quarterly results, announced Thursday, revealed that smartphone sales had dropped an astounding 72% from the year before. Its loss was much higher than analysts had expected. But yet Palm shares continue to creep up. The Wall Street Journal calls Palm shares "an option on the success of" the Pre.
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Posted
Feb 17 2009, 04:01 AM
by
Douglas McIntyre
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Something like a billion handsets are sold worldwide every year. That is good news for the large phone companies with big cellular businesses. Wireless handsets, calling plans, and data charges have built new revenue for them at a remarkable pace.
But, now the sales at telecom firms are hitting two walls.
The first is that cellular handset sales are slowing in developed nations. In the U.S., by some estimates, there are more handsets than people. The same problem has hit carriers in Japan and the E.U.
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Posted
Jan 12 2009, 09:42 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
 Is the cell phone a basic human right? That's the question the Toronto Star asks about a U.S. program that gives free phones and talk time to people on welfare or at poverty-level incomes.
The stock to watch in this area is America Movil (AMX), whose TracFone Wireless subsidiary runs the program. TracFone, by the way, has more than 10 million subscribers and is the top prepaid wireless service in the U.S. Providing food and shelter to the needy is one thing, but a cell phone? The government pays for most of the program, called SafeLink, which gives users 68 minutes of free monthly airtime for a year with no contracts. That includes voice mail, call waiting, text messages and international calling.
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Posted
Dec 08 2008, 08:17 AM
by
Minyanville
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
Use of cell phones may expand the reach of money transfers, pumping new profits into an old industry.
Vodafone Group and Western Union plan a partnership to serve the growing market for sending money across international borders by guest workers. A pilot program in the United Kingdom will allow residents of Reading to send money to Kenya, where Vodafone holds a 40% stake in wireless company Safaricom, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The sector is now small, but use of cell phones to transfer money has caught the attention of Citigroup and Visa. Obopay, a Silicon Valley startup, allows users to create an online account and transfer money via text message, Web browser
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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 22 2008, 11:06 AM
by
Kim Peterson
Rating:
Money Blog: Top Stocks Blog - MSN Money
The tech world is still incredulous at the strength of Apple's numbers Tuesday. Now we see why, amidst many calls for cheaper Macbooks, the company went in the opposite direction earlier this month. The economy may be sinking, but Apple isn't feeling the pain.
A lot of its momentum is due to the iPhone, of which Apple sold 6.9 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30. (That brings total iPhone sales, including the first version, to 13 million). Apple uses a subscription-based accounting method that doesn't immediately recognize all iPhone revenue on its books. If it did, the iPhone would have contributed nearly 39% of the total quarterly revenue. Mac computers accounted for 30%.
And that's causing people to rethink Apple. The iPhone has, quite suddenly, become Apple's most important product. And it has momentum like nothing else in Apple's portfolio.
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