AAPL Off As Market Drops
Employers added no net workers last month. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.1%, a sign that many companies are nervous about the economy's possible double dip. Shares of AAPL are off, in line with the broader markets. Catalysts include the next
iPhone launch this fall; the
iPad 3 in the spring of 2012; continued adoption in China and other emerging markets;
iCloud /
iOS 5 rollout and adoption; the continued evolution and next generation of
Apple TV; and new platforms such as mobile advertising (iAd), books / publishing and social (
Ping). Shares of
Apple trade at
9.6x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities).
The Department Of Justice Looks To Block AT&T's Acquisition Of T-Mobile And 34M Subs For Apple
(Various via iDygest) So much for Apple's access to T-Mobile's 34 million subscribers, unless they do it alone. And no word thus far for the
iPhone 5.
AT&T's bid to acquire
T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion is being blocked by the DOJ. The lawsuit (suing to halt the merger) points to
T-Mobile USA's role as a low-cost competitor to the three other nationwide mobile carriers as a reason to block the deal. AT&T is confident the company will prevail in court.
Read » Big Leap In iPad Shipments (Digitimes) Contract assembler
Foxconn may ship 20 million units of the
iPad 2 this quarter, according to Digitimes. Apple sold over 9 million iPads in the fiscal third quarter which ended in June. That's a 60% sequential increase. And that means Apple may sell 25.5 million iPads during the second half of 2011, a 76% increase over the first half of this year. But it’s not exactly clear how Foxconn shipments compare with Apple’s reported sales nor did the article cite sources, so take it with a grain of salt.
Read » 4 In 10 Mobile Phones Are Now Smartphones (Nielsen) Smartphones are rising! But maybe not as fast as some predicted. Nielsen says that feature phones have slipped to 60%, down from 62% in the three month period ending in May. If smartphones maintain this growth, they will cross over into the majority probably sometime in next year. Nielsen originally thought that
smartphones would be the dominant mobile choice this year. In any event, that's a lot of market share to fight over for Apple and
Google (and
RIM and
Microsoft, I guess).
Read » Another Year, Another Bar, Another Lost Next Generation iPhone (CNet) History repeats itself. Once again, an Apple employee is rumored to have left an unreleased
iPhone prototype at a bar. The phone supposedly went missing at the tequila lounge Cava 22 in San Francisco’s Mission District in late July, and it was eventually sold on
Craigslist for $200. Let the iPhone 5 media frenzy continue to go into overdrive.
Want all the iPhone 5 rumors? Look no further.
Read » Apple Finds New iAd Boss, Was The Old iTunes Boss (9To5Mac) Apple has promoted
Eddy Cue to the head of its iAd business. This marks Tim Cook's first major executive promotion since taking control after
Steve Jobs resigned last week. Before, Cue was Apple's
iTunes boss. His new, official title will be Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services.
Cue will be the replacement to former iAd boss Andy Miller, who left Apple on August 17 to become a partner at Highland Capital.
Read » My Neighbor, Steve Jobs (Palo Alto Patch) Cute article. I couldn't resist. Lisen Stromberg's neighbor, Steve Jobs, has been in the news lately. They watched their children grow up and go to school together. He even knew her name. But while many continue to drone on (and rightly so) about the impact of the Steve Jobs era, she will think of his son’s high school graduation. There Steve stood, tears streaming down his cheeks, his smile wide and proud, as his son received his diploma and walked on into his own bright future, leaving behind a good man and a good father who can be sure of the rightness of this, perhaps his most important legacy of all.
Read » 
