News from category ‘Financial’

As you may know, in March  Deutsche Telekom reported its intention to acquire the rival carrier, T-Mobile, for AT&T, its subsidiary company. The estimated price of the deal amounts $39 billion. The fact has recently attracted attention of federal regulators, as in case of successful transaction AT&T will become the leader in the field of wireless carriers, and the number of its customers will reach about 130 million people.

The FCC is eager to find out "how AT&T's wireless spectrum is being used, the nature of its overall network and why it believed it needed T-Mobile's spectrum to meet its goals for 4G", reported MacNN this Friday. Officials also investigate whether AT&T considered solutions alternative to acquiring T-Mobile, and what is the scope of those solutions.

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Hollywood advertisements makers are afraid of online video streaming and a recent studies proves that. IPG Media Lab studied people’s behavior when they watched TV. They found out that people usually had the TV on, but they were not actively engaged and watched. The company studies 48 participants and about 94% of them were distracted during the 30 minutes of watching. The iPhone and other smartphones account for 60 percent of the distractions from TV ads, according to a behavioral survey. It’s not surprisingly, because it’s obvious that when you glance away, you miss the commercials on TV.

It seems that the explosion at the Chengdu Foxconn plant may in fact lead to a loss in production of 500,000 iPads, despite contrary reports from yesterday. The figures come from IHS iSuppli, which did note the exact figure will depend on how long the plant remains closed.

The Chengdu plant is said to produce 30% of all iPad 2s and some, including Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital Markets last week speculated that the impact could even be as large as a loss of production between 1.8 million and 2.8 million iPads. Whilst others such as Shaw Wu of Sterne Agee doesn’t believe the Chengdu shut down will have much of an impact at all on iPad 2 production, with other plants picking up the slack.

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Bloomberg reported last night Apple has reached a deal with Sony Music Entertainment, following reports that the company managed to sign the Warner Music Group and EMI. This leaves Universal, the biggest label of all four in the United States, out of the equation, but according to the rumors Apple is actively focused on closing all the remaining paperwork with music labels by next week.

Apple has reached licensing accords with Sony Corp. (6758)’s music division, EMI Group and Warner Music Group, the people said. Universal Music Group, the largest recording company, is close to a deal, another person said. The company also would need to reach agreements with music publishers, which control different rights than the labels.

Research firms Distimo and Newzoo conducted survey that revealed that there are roughly 63 million gamers on the iOS ecosystem who (individually) download, on average, 2.5 games per month. Games represent half of all apps downloaded across the iOS and Mac App Stores with more than 5 million games downloaded per day – based on the survey that included the US, UK and five other European countries. A clear majority of 4.6 million are downloaded for the iPhone or iPod Touch whilst just over 400,000 are for the iPad and just a sliver for the Mac with 41,000 per day.

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Cnet reports that Apple has inked a deal with EMI over the upcoming launch of the rumored cloud music service that is expected to be unveiled at the WWDC in June. Cnet also claims the last two remaining deals with Sony and Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group (Warner Music Group reportedly signed a deal last month) could be signed as early as next week.

Apple has signed a cloud-music licensing agreement with EMI Music and is very near to completing deals with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, multiple music industry sources told CNET.

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Pharmaceutical sales reps are trying to find better ways to engage and sale their products during all their sales calls. Doctors and physicians typically only give these sales reps 30 seconds of their time as well. That’s not very much time so every second is important, and so is presentation.

Eric Newmark, an analyst at IDC Health Insights, says that sales reps “still struggle with their ability to differentiate themselves through clear, concise, and interactive messaging.” So the pharmaceutical industry may have a solution to the problem: Purchase many Apple iPads to give the sale reps “a quicker, lighter and more attractive way of displaying drug-related information,” Newmark wrote.

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According to Nielsen Soundscan report, US music sales have increased by 1.6% over the course of this year. The report gives the credit for the rise, unsurprisingly, to digital music sales, which in terms of albums was up 16.8% and in terms of individual tracks was up 9.6%. As for physical media, CDs were down by 8.8%, but Vinyl increased by 37%, although they only account for 1.2% of sales. Nielsen interestingly suggests the arrival of the Beatles on iTunes as a key reason, pointing to a dramatic increase  starting from when it was released on iTunes. As for the most popular genre’s, Rock had the greatest market share in album sales whilst Pop was the most popular for digital tracks.

The iPad’s cannibalization of the PC market may have slowed. New purchasers of the iPad are less likely to have foregone purchasing a PC. It found that of those who had purchased the iPad over the holiday season, 12% would have decided against a PC purchase when they bought an iPad. This is a 2% drop from the 14% of those decided against a PC amongst those who had owned their iPad for 6 months or more. Netbooks were saved the most, with iPad cannibalization falling by 50%, which actually led the netbook market to grow by 21% between September 2010 and March 2011. The report contradicts what analysts were calling the “iPad effect” in the first quarter of 2011 when US PC sales fell 10.7%.

Apple I, a computer that back in the 1970′s was sold by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in Jobs’ garage at $666.66, and was the first machine to come with 8K of RAM, was bought by Italian entrepreneur Marco Boglione, a long-time Apple user and fan who spent €150,000 to buy the #82 copy of the original Apple I. The item includes the original motherboard, manual and a letter from Steve Jobs, but no screen or keyboard.

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Marketing and advertising group WPP conducted its annual study of global brands and placed Apple at the top of the list of the most valuable brands for the first time. Brand values are calculated using an analysis of financial and market data alongside reports from analysts and surveys of over two million consumers around the globe. Apple checks in with a brand value of over $153 billion, up 84% over last year and well ahead of second-place Google, which had topped the survey for the previous four years, at $111 billion.

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Apple continues to hold second place among the world's top smartphone manufacturers with 18.7% market behind Nokia, with unit sales up 114% year-over-year. Although market-leader Nokia's smartphone share declines, Apple’s share is rising by three percentage from the year-ago quarter.

Apple reached a new record shipment volume in a single quarter, and inched closer to market leader Nokia with fewer than six million units separating the two companies. The company posted market-beating year-over-year growth and recorded triple-digit growth in two key markets: the United States, with the release of its CDMA-enabled iPhone, and Greater China. Additionally, the company enlisted South Korean Telecom and Saudi Telecom as carrier providers of the iPhone.

Last month, we reported that Foxconn plans to invest $12 billion to start producing and assembling mobile devices in Brazil throughout the next five years, including Apple’s iPad — currently assembled by Foxconn in its Asian facilities. Whilst the original reports claimed Foxconn was planning to start building iPads in Brazil this November, Reuters reports today the company has moved the estimated date to July.  Reuters also reports Foxconn will initially import components from Asia to assemble devices in Brazil, shifting the manufacturing chain to local production in the next few years.

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Yesterday Fortune released its annual rating of 500 American’s largest companies by revenue. This time Apple landed at 35th place with over $65 billion in revenue.

Apple climbed 21 slots into the top 50 of the Fortune 500 this year. How'd it get there? The company not only continues to expand its reach in existing markets, it also keeps creating new ones. Take the iPad, which showed the world the power of tablet computing when it was introduced last year. iPad 2 followed, and was one of the most highly anticipated electronic products this year.

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Yesterday, on May 3 Needham & Co analyst Charlie Wolf sent a note to his clients, where he reveals that Apple retail stores made only 12.9% of worldwide revenues for the company in March. Due to the increased number of distribution points, such as big-box retailers and international carrier stores the revenue has declined since the second quarter of 2008, when the revenue share from retail stores was 21.6%.

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