Another significant win for Apple's popular tablet brand: British multinational banking and financial services company Barclays has confirmed it's purchased 8,500 iPads “to assist our branch colleagues to interact with customers, improving the customer experience”.
The announcement couldn't have come at a worse time for Microsoft, whose Surface tablet hit store shelves on October 26 but so far has generated only "modest sales", per CEO Steve Ballmer...
Disney CEO and Apple board member Bob Iger earlier this week purchased $1 million worth of shares of the iPhone maker, just one week after exercising an option on a million shares for $17.9 million. The move is seen as an attempt by the Disney executive to show confidence during a period of sell-offs one analyst described as "insane".
Iger joined Apple's board of directors a year ago and is credited with healing wounds between the two companies when his predecessor Michael Eisner led the studio. The executive purchased $1 million worth of Apple stock at the time, then worth near $375 per share. Under Iger, Disney has been a loyal supporter of Apple, permitting movies on iTunes during a time when other Hollywood content owners avoided Steve Jobs...
After seeing a quarter of its market cap wiped off as shares hit a half-year low, Apple has finally rebounded as investors return to senses with a big rally on Monday. The unexpected sell-off has been "insanely insane", according to Topeka's Brian White. AAPL hit $565.35 a share in after-hours trading.
It closed at $565.73 a share. All told, AAPL soared today $38.05, or 7.21 percent, its second highest one-day dollar gain since 1984. It also pulled Nasdaq and S&P 500 with it. Though still a far cry from the mid-September high of $705.07, it's a good sign that investors haven't lost confidence in Apple's longer-term prospect, especially after eight straight weeks of losses...
Apple CEO Tim Cook should consider becoming a financial consultant, if this iPhone thing fizzles out. Apparently, he is on speed-dial for both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. U.S. President Barack Obama called Cook seeking comment on the looming "fiscal cliff" crisis, according to Monday reports. Although it's not known what advice the Apple leader gave Obama, Cook was among a number of CEOs the White House contacted. Other business leaders included JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, Jim McNerney of Boeing and Craig Jelinek of Costco...
Shares of Foxconn, the world's largest contract manufacturer that assembles Apple's iPhone, iPad and a number of products for other big names in tech, posted its third-quarter earnings yesterday. The results are stronger than expected and attributed to high demand for the iPhone 5, warm iPad mini reception and the incoming new iMac, which arrives in November and is already predicted to be in short supply.
On the other hand, investors are also concerned over Apple's long-term growth prospect and Foxconn becoming too dependent on the Cupertino, California designer of shiny gadgets...
Markets finally opened this morning after a two-day period of suspended trading over Hurricane Sandy. Apple on its part has cunningly slipped in news late Monday that it fired iOS chief Scott Forstall and retail boss John Browett over a series of missteps that cost the Cupertino, California-headquartered company both reputation and market position.
Apple's bet was that investors, fans and the general public would have some time to process the news before jumping to conclusions. Many watchers and analysts deemed the move a strategic re-aligning, one that gave Apple's design guru Jony Ive more power, turning him into the steward of the user experience across Apple products. Still, some investors were spooked and sent shares of Apple down to their lowest level since late July...
A strange thing has just happened: Google has posted its third-quarter earnings prematurely, giving Wall Street analysts and investors a pause as the company missed expectations substantially. Compared to Google's stellar results in past few quarters, largely driven by soaring sales of ad slots and Apps hosted solutions for businesses, the September quarter saw the search giant stumble a bit.
The Mountain View, California-headquartered company reported a huge 20 percent dive in net income to $2.18 billion (operating income was $3.26 billion). Net revenue was $11.3 billion versus the $11.9 billion that investors had been expecting. Google earned $9.03 a share versus an analysts' estimate of $10.65, a huge disappointment analysts had expected, on average.
Doesn't look good at all. I guess that $12.5 billion acquisition of unprofitable handset maker Motorola Mobility has really 'paid off', so to speak...
Shares of Google have been rising lately due to a number of factors boosting its revenue, from the growing Google Apps hosted productivity suite stealing biz from Microsoft to the successful launch of the Nexus 7 tablet and a new range of Motorola phones to nice ad sales, relentless Android march and steady dominance in search and maps, only highlighted by Apple's iOS 6 Maps woes. And now, the search giant has passed another milestone as its market capitalization surpassed that of Microsoft in early trading...
U.S. carrier Sprint, the nation's third-largest, announced its June quarter earnings today. The company reported no change in iPhone activations which remain steady at 1.5 million units, the same as in the March quarter. In this quarter, 40 percent of iPhones went to new customers versus 44 percent for the quarter-ago period. However, the company's loss dropped from $863 million in Q1 2012 down to an operating loss of $629 million this quarter ($1.38 billion net loss), which was again partially blamed on high iPhone subsidy...
Apple ahead of the markets close just announced results for the calendar 2012 second quarter, the company's fiscal 2012 third quarter. As Apple is now an iPhone company, let's just get down to business. Apple shipped 26 million iPhones in the quarter, representing a 28% growth over the year-ago quarter.
The number is down substantially though, from the previous quarter, in which it sold 35.1 million handsets. Apple refreshes the iPhone annually and typically sees two gangbuster quarters after a new model is out, followed by two quarters when growth pauses as buyers await the new model.
iPad and Mac sales, and other performance metrics after the break...
Carrier AT&T just posted its calendar 2012 second quarter earnings, hours ahead of Apple's conference call after the close of trading today at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern. AT&T activated 3.7 million iPhones, 22 percent to new customers. The figure represents 77 percent of AT&T's total postpaid device sales and about 55 percent of its total phone sales to contract customers, but also a 14 percent quarter-over-quarter drop in iPhone sales...
Apple will be reporting results for the second calendar 2012 quarter (corresponding to its third fiscal 2012 quarter) next Tuesday, July 24, shortly after the markets close at 2pm Pacific, 5pm Eastern.
Ahead of the earnings release, Apple just issued an alert this morning regarding streaming audio from the conference call which will be available here via QuickTime, beginning on July 24 at 2pm Pacific. The iDB team will be following the conference call so you don't have to, posting interesting bits and pieces right as we learn about them...