AAPL Down As Market Sells Off
Wall Street is sliding, with NASDAQ and S&P 500 falling more than 1% out of the gate to start the week, as renewed jitters about Europe's debt crisis and the global economy overshadowed the start of the earnings season. Shares of AAPL are off as well. Catalysts include
second calendar quarter results to be released on July 19th at 5pm ET; the next
iPhone launch this fall as well as the possible
iPad 3 ahead of the holidays; smartphone push into China and emerging markets;
iCloud rollout and adoption; the continued evolution and next generation of
Apple TV; and new platforms such as books / publishing and social (
Ping). Shares of
Apple trade at
12x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities), low versus historical standards.
Nortel Patent Consortium Looking To Possibly Kill Android (TechCrunch) But the ad-hoc patent group that offered $4.5 billion for bankrupt Nortel Networks' 6,000 patents is facing antitrust scrutiny for possibly conspiring to keep
Android technology from Google's clutches. Patent-poor
Google desired the patents to protect its mobile operating system from increasing litigation from Apple,
Microsoft and others trying to compete with the open-source platform. Now that Android is on top of the world, it is faced with the greatest crisis of its short life as barbarians armed with patents mill at the gates. MG Siegler at TechCrunch does a good summary of what exactly went down.
Read » 100 Million iPhones Shipped In 12-Months With 50% Of Net Earnings Of Handset Industry (AppleInsider) Not only is Apple getting ready to achieve an important milestone with the shipping of no less than 100 million
iPhone devices over a 12-month period. And according to Canaccord Genuity analyst T. Michael Walkley, that would bring the total installed base of
iOS devices up to 415 million by the end of 2012. The company is also enjoying the highest level of profits on the handset area. Apple accounted for about 50% of the net earnings of the handset industry in the first three months of the ongoing year.
Read » Apple's Back-To-School Offer Schooling Microsoft (Benzinga) Apple's promotional Back-to-School program that offers students a $100 gift card for
iTunes stores along with the purchase of a new Mac seems to be going well. According to a report from Global Equities Research, more incoming college students are picking up an Apple computer than a
Windows computer this year. Apple is not just edging out
Microsoft either; Macs are beating out Windows machines at an impressive rate of 8 to 2.
Read » Tablet Unit Increase For 2011 Based On Strength Of iPad 2 (IDC) IDC raised its tablet shipment forecast for the year due to growing consumer interest in tablets and the introduction of new devices. In spite of a seasonal drop in total tablet shipments, the company raised its estimates for 2011 to 53.5 million units on the belief that Apple's
iPad 2 will continue to carry the tablet market. Worldwide media tablet shipments into sales channels fell by 28% on a sequential basis in the first calendar quarter of 2011 to 7.2 million units worldwide.
Read » iTunes To Get Some Competition, Spotify To Launch In The U.S. This Week (AllThingsD) Spotify is ambitiously planning to snag 50 million users in its first year of operation in the U.S. according to advertising promotional materials. The company is touting its partnership with
Facebook as a big contributor to this number, with 150 million
Facebook users getting invitations to sign up for
Spotify. This news comes after months of delays as the popular European music streaming service struggled to close deals with U.S. record label companies. The company is said to launch in the U.S. as early as this week.
Read » Apple Not Likely To Go With First Generation LTE Chipsets (iSuppli) With the launch of the fifth generation iPhone delayed to fall this year, there is some speculations that this could give Apple enough time to add support for
4G LTE networks. However, iSuppli is making the case against Apple going with first generation LTE chips in its next iPhone. These chipsets are expensive and would increase overall costs and decrease margin, not to mention the chips are big and would require larger hardware. There's also the issue of decreased battery life.
Read » Apple Gearing Up For Higher Definition, Could Be In Advance Of Its TV Product Line (AppleInsider) A 1080p-capable
Apple TV and 1080p iTunes movies are expected to make their debut this September or October, according to sources. Up until now, most Apple products max out at HD 720p and the existing Apple TV even downscales 1080p content to 720p. But a "handful of films" from the major movie studios are reportedly being submitted to the iTunes Store with a resolution of 1920x1080 and an "average bitrate encoding of 10,000Kbps."
Read » Is There An iPod Touch 3G In The Works? (9 To 5 Mac) Here's a gadget that would make tons of consumers happy, an
iPod touch 3G. Rumor has it, Apple could be introducing a 3G-enabled version of the iPod touch this September. Similar to options available for the
iPad Wi-Fi 3G, users would have the option of purchasing the 3G iPod touch directly from a wireless carrier with a data plan. Such a device could help carriers lock in more data plans and would continue to boost Apple's presence among the flood of new Android handsets.
Read » Freemium Apps Take Over Paid Apps In Revenue According To Survey (Flurry) Mobile apps analytics firm Flurry compared the revenue generated among the top 100 grossing iOS games in January and June. In January, revenue generated from premium games made up 61%, while 39% of the revenue came from freemium (free-to-play) games. The study revealed that between January and June, the trend had reversed itself: 65% of the revenue from those top selling games is from freemium titles.
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