Apple Q4 revenue hits $20 bil.

Apple Inc. revenue topped $20 billion after sales of iPhones, iPads and other products soared, the company reported Monday. Apple sold 4.2 million iPads and 14.1 million iPhones in its fourth quarter. Revenue jumped 67 percent to $20.3 billion from $12.2 billion last year.
For the full fiscal year, Apple's net income jumped 70 percent to $14 billion. The shares, however, sold off as much as 6 percent after-hours.

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Apple’s Earnings: Chips in the Masonry?

After a few hours to sleep on it, the maket reaction to Apple’s solid quarter still seems a bit puzzling. But pulling on a few strings, the ingredients of the angst become clearer.
First, as we noted in a post early yesterday, optimism surrounding Apple had reached such a level that mere greatness (as opposed to galactic greatness) might prove enough to disappoint. There’s actually a good deal of mere greatness in the report, and perhaps even a hint of human frailty.
Apple shares traded down 6% in after-hours trading and they look set to open around $300 a share, down from the regular close of $318. Not a good thing for the recent tech-led market.
Here are a few reasons Apple is coming down to earth (for now):

• Gross margins fell to 36.9% from 41.8%. Second consecutive quarter that this important metric has declined. It could indicate that Apple’s pell-mell growth isn’t being managed as effectively as it could.
• The phone sold great – nearly double the year-ago period at 14.1 million units. The iPad? Not so great at 4.2 million units. That might explain the blistering harangue by Apple CEO Steve Jobs against competing iPad products (read: Google) in the earnings conference call.
• Apple loves to talk the Street down so it can soar over the analyst estimates. It may be getting too good at it. It guided expectations to $4.80 a share in the next quarter, down from consensus expectations of $5.07 a share.
• Nothing goes up forever. Apple has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, sporting a market cap of $290 billion. Only ExxonMobil, at $337 billion, is bigger in the U.S. ExxonMobil has 102,000 employees and annual revenue of $317 billion. Apple has 34,000 employees and annual revenue of $57 billion. Of course, Apple is growing great guns, ExxonMobil is not. Other techs? Microsoft has a market value of $223 billion and IBM is a piker at $180 billion.

While angst is the order of the day, don’t forget this luscious niblet in Apple’s favor. The company’s quarterly profit rose 70% to $4.31 billion, a surge good enough to surpass mighty IBM which had profits of just $3.59 billion, 12% higher than last year. 
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Apple, IBM, Microsoft Will Test Tech Rally

Over the past six weeks, technology shares have soared. The Nasdaq Composite, an admittedly broad measure of tech, has risen 15% during that period, leading the market on its latest upward sprint.
Is that all about to go awry, starting this morning? Late yesterday, it certainly looked to be the case. Investors reacted badly to Apple and IBM earnings – which were both strong, but not strong enough to satisfy. Then came news of a top executive departing moribundish Microsoft.
This morning, however, global stocks are mostly higher. Asia has closed mostly in positive territiory and Europe is edging upward. Technology stocks, however, are putting in a mixed day, reflecting, perhaps, concern about what will happen when the U.S. opens in a couple hours.
Not too many big tech earnings today (EMC Corp. and Juniper Networks report), so tech-centric investors will continue to examine the earnings results from Apple and IBM. Since the view seems to be that the earnings weren’t “strong enough,” as opposed to truly lousy, the downside for both companies, and tech generally, is most likely limited.
Don’t be surprised if they are trying to take the group higher by the second-half of the session.

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YouTube Leanback graduates as Google TV is nigh

YouTube Leanback has had one of the shortest beta inceptions of any Google product, but with Google TV arriving in US stores this week it’s had to grow up quickly.  The system – which basically gives streaming YouTube videos a more TV-friendly interface – will be the center of the Google TV YouTube experience.

“When you view Leanback on Google TV (or online), videos based on your subscriptions and viewing history will begin playing immediately. If those don’t pique your interest, Leanback offers 10 channels, updated daily, featuring popular and interesting videos in genres like Comedy, Entertainment, News, Science & Technology, How To & Style, and more. You can also watch full-length movies and TV shows rented from youtube.com in the highest quality.” Google

There’ll also be straightforward access to the (currently US-only) beta of YouTube Rentals.  As for Google TV, the first Logitech Revue box will be priced at $299.99 and is due to hit shelves imminently.

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Microsoft researcher: Java attacks reached “unprecedented” levels during Q3

According to a recent report by Microsoft Malware Protection Center researcher Holly Stewart, attacks on Java reached “unprecedented” levels during the 2010 third quarter; but, most of them largely went unnoticed by the security community.
In a Monday blog post, Stewart, a senior program manager at Microsoft, specified that during the third quarter, attacks against Java touched six million, as against the earlier quarter figures of less than 100,000 attacks on Adobe PDF documents.
Talking about the attacks, Stewart said in the blog post: “Java is ubiquitous, and, as was once true with browsers and document readers like Adobe Acrobat, people don't think to update it. On top of that, Java is a technology that runs in the background to make more visible components work. How do you know if you have Java installed or if it's running?”
Stewart also added that almost all of the Java attacks during the third quarter could be traced to three vulnerabilities that have now been patched. These three holes are the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) list’s CVE-2008-5353, CVE-2010-0094, and CVE-2009-3867.
While CVE-2008-5353 and CVE-2010-0094 are deserialization issues, CVE-2009-3867 is a remote code execution issue caused by improper parsing of long file://URL arguments. Specifically speaking, CVE-2008-5353 was attacked around 3.5 million times; CVE-2009-3867 was attacked nearly 2.6 million times; and CVE-2010-0094 was attacked over 200,000 times.

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Apple beats the Street

Still, iPad supply problems drop shares

By Herald wire services
Tuesday, October 19, 2010 - Added 8 hours ago

Apple Inc. easily surpassed profit and revenue forecasts again, but supply bottlenecks curbed iPad sales to below Wall Street’s bullish targets, sending its shares down 6.5 percent in extended trading.
Weaker-than-projected gross margins and iPad shipments disappointed investors who had expected more from the company.
Some analysts said sales of the iPad, which began only in April, should ramp up in the current quarter as the company resolves hitches in the supply chain.

“IPads were low, but I also think they had a lot of production problems getting that off the ground,” said analyst Jane Snorek of First American Funds. “IPad demand is red hot and they can sell as much as they can make.”
Apple sold 4.2 million iPads in its second quarter on the market, below Wall Street’s expectations. Some analysts had projected shipments of closer to or even more than 5 million for the tablet computer launched only in April.
The company sold 14.1 million iPhones from July through September, more than the 12 million or so analysts were looking for.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare appearance on a conference call, noting Apple sold more iPhones than Research in Motion sold BlackBerry phones in the most recent quarter. “I don’t see them catching up with us in the foreseeable future,” he said.
Jobs also spoke disparagingly of the new tablet computers built on Google’s Android software. “The seven-inch tablets are tweeners, too big to compete with a smart phone and too small to compete with an iPad,” which has a 10-inch screen, he said.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple’s net income rose to $4.3 billion, or $4.64 per share, from $2.5 billion, or $2.77 per share, in the same period last year. Revenue jumped 67 percent to $20.3 billion from $12.2 billion last year.

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Gartner Predicts 19 Million Tablets in 2010 – Driven by iPad

Gartner, a major technology research company, just released their latest tablet sales forecast and it appears that the iPad is fueling a huge adoption of the new tablet form factor.  The company expects 2010 tablet sales will exceed 19.5 million units and that this numbers will largely be driven by Apple iPad sales.
Apple last reported iPad sales numbers back in June when they announced over three million iPads has been sold in less than 80 days.  Most analysts agree that Apple will easily exceed 10 million units this year, making it the best selling tablet device in the history of the market.
With a growing number of companies jumping into the tablet market with their own devices, the market has quickly become one of the fastest growing consumer electronics segments.  Apple, not waiting on the competition, has been expanding the iPad ecosystem in order to grab market share.
The company is looking to extend its market share going into the all important holiday season and just recently added Walmart, Target, AT&T and Verizon as new retail sales channels.  The availability of the iPad in these new retail outlets is sure to have a dramatic impact on iPad sales this year and help Apple grow its lead in this hot segment.
With increased supply and strong demand, Gartner expects worldwide consumer and enterprise adoption of media tablets to grow dramaticaly over the next several years. The company is forecasting tablet sales to exceed 54 million units in 2011 and grow to more than 154 million units sold in 2013.
This sharp increase in sales is expected to come at the expense of other consumer electronics devices as tablets begin to cannibilize sales of e-readers, netbooks, gaming devices and laptops. Carolina Milanesi, research vice president at Gartner says “Mini notebooks will suffer from the strongest cannibalization threat as media tablet average selling prices (ASPs) drop below $300 over the next 2 years.”
The iPad has turned out to be a surprise hit, exceeding the wildest expectations of industry analysts and the press.  When Apple first unveiled the iPad earlier this year, many people were skeptical that Apple could successfully establish a new “third class of device” as  Steve Jobs had suggested.  Fast forward six months,  Apple has been able to successfully execute their iPad strategy and have filled a unique niche in the consumer electronics market by selling millions of iPads. Based on Gartner’s forecasts, this trend should continue for the next several years.

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Xbox 360 Holiday Bundle Detailed

Xbox 360 Holiday Bundle Detailed [Microsoft's Big Offering For The Holiday Season Includes 250GB Hard Drive, Two Top-Notch Games, But No Kinect]

 

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Ah, the holidays. The most wonderful time of the year for those who make consumer goods. Microsoft has detailed their official holiday bundle for the Xbox 360 this year. Unfortunately, if you’re looking for Kinect, you’ll have to look elsewhere, but this plain holiday still bundle still packs a punch, including two Triple-A games.

The bundle includes the new Xbox 360 S “Slim” in it’s sleek black, along with the new 250GB hard drive capacity. As for the games, it’s including the old Xbox 360 standby pack-in, Forza 3. What’s new is that it also includes a code to download a digital copy of Microsoft’s Alan Wake horror/action game. What’s interesting is that Alan Wake is not a “Games On Demand” title, but it should be in the future, if Microsoft is going to distribute it digitally.
It’s worth noting that there are quite a few people out there who still don’t have internet or don’t connect their consoles to the internet (or, according to a chap in my local GameStop most people don’t. Sort of doubt him, though). These people will be missing out on one of their pack-in games, so bummer for them.
This bundle is still unconfirmed for North America, though. Via tips from insiders, it’s been “confirmed” for South Korea (₩398,000 or $359) and Europe (€250 or $350). If you’re hoping for a North American release, the above artwork is from a Canadian Microsoft distributor, according to gaming blog Joystiq, giving all of us hope for a North American release.

Via | Post filed under Computer/Console Gaming

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No GTA2 Re-release

 

 

It’s nice when rumors are true, but unfortunately a good portion of them turn out to be wrong. An old countdown clock on Rockstar Games’ website had everyone talking about Grand Theft Auto 2 getting a re-release on the Playstation Network and/or Xbox Live. In a display of supreme irony, this clock has only popped up due to a fix for the Y2K problem which caused the code to act as if the 21st century didn’t exist. The clock is from 1999 and was the countdown clock to the release of Grand Theft Auto 2 on the original Playstation.

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