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THE APPLE INVESTOR: Apple Boosting Staff At Retail Stores For Back-To-School, iPhone 5 And Holiday Season
THE APPLE INVESTOR: Apple Set To Explode In China, Currently It Has Only 9% Smartphone Share And Only 4 Retail Stores
THE APPLE INVESTOR: Should Apple Buy Barnes Noble For Its Retail Stores?
AAPL Up In A Tanking Market
After a weekend of frantic negotiations, Congress will finally vote to raise the country’s debt-ceiling, averting a forced default. That said, the markets are off after manufacturing data (ISM) slowed to its lowest level in two years. Shares of AAPL are bucking the trend, up about 0.75%. Catalysts include the next iPhone launch this fall as well as a possible iPad 3 ahead of the holidays; continued adoption in China and other 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 9.8x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (including long-term marketable securities).
Apple In Legal Battles For The Long Haul (CNNMoney)
Apple could convert courtroom victories to market gains worth more than $30 billion a year, argues Toni Sacconaghi at Bernstein Research. That is what is on the table for Apple in the spread of lawsuits against manufacturers of Android phones. Sacconaghi believes that Apple’s “key goal is to upend Android’s momentum by forcing a work around on key essential features which, if successful, could have huge, positive financial implications for Apple”. He believes Apple has “more to lose” than its rivals, and a whole lot to win.
No Refresh For Apple TV Slated Before The Holidays (AppleInsider)
As dissatisfied consumers return purchases of rival set-top-boxes in droves, Apple’s market-leading Apple TV continues to achieve moderate success, selling roughly 500,000 units per quarter as the 2011 holiday shopping season approaches according to industry checks by Concord Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Kuo said his industry checks have turned up no evidence that Apple plans to push a hardware revision of the Apple TV into production during the third quarter.
Price Cuts Come To iPhone 4, Now The Low-End iPhone (AppleInsider)
A number of reports are coming in that the iPhone 4 is going to see a price drop at a number of retailers this week. Radio Shack is planning to drop the price of the 16GB and 32GB ATT iPhone 4 to $169.99 and $269.99 respectively, while the price of the 8GB iPhone 3GS is expected to fall to $19.99. It may not be a sign of an iPhone refresh, this week, but it’s a sign that the rumored low-end iPhone just might remain older models marked down.
Apple Accounts For Two-Thirds Of The Mobile Phone Industry Profits (Asymco)
Apple’s share of the mobile phone industry’s profits has swelled to around two thirds, as the company’s iPhone sales have remained profitable while achieving the top spot in sales. Even before displacing Nokia as the world’s top smartphone maker in the most recent quarter, Apple has long consumed a disproportionate slice of the industry’s profits. Apple has gone from being responsible for half of the mobile industry’s profits, to accounting for two-thirds of that growing pile of cash.
Apple Should Take Its Cash And Buy Clearwire (Pedrotp Blog)
In the past year or so, there has been a lot of speculation on what exactly Apple will do with the huge amount of cash (now over $76 billion) they have on their balance sheet. Pedro Torres Picón, Managing Director at Quotidian Ventures, believes a big, bold move that actually makes sense would be to use some of that cash to buy Clearwire’s network assets and develop a nationwide wireless data network exclusively for their devices.
Apple Grew 12x The Mobile Phone Market Last Quarter (Various via iDygest)
According to IDC, the worldwide mobile phone market grew 11.3% year over year in the second quarter of 2011 with the worldwide shipment of 328.4 million units. Though still fourth among the top five mobile-phone players, Apple outshone its global rivals in the second quarter with skyrocketing shipment growth and a surge in market share. The company shipped 20.3 million iPhones in the quarter, a leap of 142% from the 8.4 million shipped in the prior year’s quarter and easily posted the highest growth rate despite the fact that its flagship iPhone 4 is now more than a year old.
It’s Official, Apple Is The World’s Top Smartphone Vendor (BGR)
Strategy Analytics agrees that Apple is now the top smartphone vendor with 140% year-over-year growth. The iPhone maker and Samsung both sold more smartphones than Nokia in the second quarter, although Nokia still sold most phones overall. Nokia falls into the number three position worldwide as Symbian devices are left significantly overshadowed. It remains to be seen if Windows Phone can stop the bleeding.
Daily Trader: Sprint Falls Without iPhone (AppleInsider)
Sprint, without the iPhone, is struggling to keep in sight of larger rivals such as Verizon and ATT, both of whom are selling mad amounts of the Apple device. Shares of Sprint Nextel fell almost 20% after the company posted heavy wireless subscriber losses that underlined a failed strategy in competing with U.S. iPhone carriers. Sprint invested heavily to build a faster WiMAX 4G network, promoting the HTC Evo 4G as the first 4G phone in the U.S. last year.