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PC Sales Takes Toll On Seagate
Seagate Technology Plc’s shares tumbled as much as 8 percent on Tuesday, after the hard disk drive (HDD) maker projected first-quarter revenue below estimates on slowing sales of personal computers.
The company has been hit by sluggish economic growth and shaky sales of PCs as consumers shift toward tablets and smartphones.
FBN Securities cut its price target on Seagate’s stock to $32, saying selling prices had started to decline from their peak levels after theThailand floods last year and inventory had started rising.
Seagate’s weak outlook follows an upbeat fiscal 2013 forecast from rival Western Digital Corp, which is banking on strong sales to big businesses.
The company forecast first-quarter sales of about $4 billion, below analysts’ estimates of $4.62 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.
Is GM Reconsidering Facebook
July 12, 2012 by admin
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General Motors Co and Facebook Inc are in talks about the return of the U.S. automaker as a paid advertiser almost two months after GM said it would stop running ads on the social networking website, sources close to the situation said on Tuesday.
Although the two companies remain far from reaching an agreement, Facebook executives have actively courted the world’s largest carmaker. One source said Facebook was not pushing for GM’s immediate return, but offered to provide data showing the effectiveness of the website’s paid ads.
Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg sent GM Chief Executive Dan Akerson an e-mail urging the company to reconsider its decision shortly after the third-largest U.S. advertiser pulled its ads in May, a move that undermined confidence in Facebook on the eve of its highly-anticipated initial public offering, according to sources who were not permitted to speak publicly because the talks are ongoing.
HP Wants The Court To Bully Oracle
HP has asked California Superior Court Judge James Kleinberg to order Oracle to continue developing software for its Itanium servers.
HP and Oracle have been locked in a bitter legal dispute over Oracle’s decision to stop supporting Intel’s IA-64 architecture used in Itanium processors. Now HP has asked Judge Kleinberg to order Oracle to continue developing software for its Itanium servers until it stops selling them or the contract term expires.
Oracle claims its decision to stop developing for Intel’s IA-64 architecture was spurred on by Intel having made it clear that it intended to focus on its x86 Xeon processors. Intel has said that its Xeon processors are being edged into the market presently occupied by its Itanic chips.
HP disputed Oracle’s claims of Itanium reaching the end of its life and it emerged that HP had a contract with Intel to support the chip. However, and perhaps most damaging for HP, was a release of emails between Intel and HP that seemed to suggest that Intel had enough of Itanium and that HP was having to all but strong-arm Intel into continuing to produce Itanium processors.
Is It “Game Over” For RIM?
June 11, 2012 by admin
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Research In Motion’s share price on Monday fell to less than $10 on Nasdaq, a breach that technical analysts say could prompt even further declines, after an analyst warned that the BlackBerry maker’s sales were dismal last month.
The stock, which is trading at its lowest since 2003, has fallen nearly 15 percent in the past week alone.
After an announcement last week that RIM expects to post a quarterly operating loss, sentiment is extremely bearish on the stock, said Elvis Picardo, a strategist at Global Securities in Vancouver.
To make matters worse, Pacific Crest analyst James Faucette said in a note to clients on Sunday that RIM sales deteriorated further in May.
On Monday, RIM’s shares fell 5.8 percent to $9.66 on the Nasdaq, while its Toronto-listed shares closed on Monday 6.1 percent lower at C$10.03.
“You would have expected the C$10 level to have provided pretty strong support, but if it cracks through that it’s really hard to say where this decline will stop,” said Picardo.
RIM, which almost invented the concept of on-the-go email with its first BlackBerry device in 1999, has seen its once dominant position fade in the face of competition from Apple Inc’s iPhone and devices from the likes of Samsung Electronics Co using Google Inc’s Android software.
Intel’s Itanium Processor Available Until 2022
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HP will have access to Intel’s Itanium processor until 2022, according to Intel’s Kirk Skaugen.
Skaugen, who used to be VP of Intel’s Datacentre and Connected Systems Group, testified under oath during the HP versus Oracle lawsuit that HP and Intel had an arrangement that “enabled HP to have access to the Itanium microprocessor through 2022, and that HP could extend even longer”. Skaugen’s testimony was submitted as part of court documents filed on 23 April and gives some indication of how long both HP and Intel were expecting to push Itanium.
Oracle, which has been involved in an increasingly bitter spat with HP over Itanium and the hiring of its current co-president and former HP CEO Mark Hurd, claims Intel’s Itanium was on its way out, alleging that HP mislead it and customers, leading to its decision to drop support for the IA64 architecture.
However, according to HP, “Oracle resorts to mischaracterising HP’s statements, taking them out of appropriate context, or misstating the relevant timeline.”
HP claims Skaugen’s comments show that when HP said Itanium had a long future it wasn’t lying. “By any measure, all of HP’s statements regarding the length of its roadmap and the future of the Itanium microprocessor were true,” HP said in documents filed with the court.
Skaugen’s comments are something of a surprise, not because they show an agreement between HP and Intel – HP already admitted that one existed – but the length of Intel’s commitment to HP on Itanium and the fact that HP could extend it.
HP’s language suggests that it, as the customer, had the upper hand in the contract with Intel, with the firm saying, “Intel was committed by contract to continue producing Itanium microprocessors”. Skaugen’s testimony in court supports HP’s claim.
Did HP Really Need Intel?
Back in the day HP said it chose Intel to co-develop Itanium due to its process technology, as it didn’t have the cash to fund next generation fabs.
Intel has often been the butt of Itanium jokes, but HP invested as much, if not more into the enterprise. Kirk Bresniker, CTO of HP’s Business Critical Systems told The INQUIRER that HP needed Intel’s manufacturing capability. Bresniker said HP’s decision to partner with Intel was due to the firm realising it couldn’t afford the VLSI manufacturing process iteration needed for developing competitive chips.
Bresniker said, “It is really an extension of the CISC processor that led us to partner with Intel on the Itanium. We knew we weren’t going to be able to maintain the investment levels neccessary to continue to fund deep sub-micron fabs.”
Until HP’s foray with Itanium, the firm was known for its PA-RISC systems, some of which Bresniker designed himself back in the early 1990s. Bresniker said, “We got to the point of microprocessor development and more importantly the economics of fabrication environments and realised we were facing transition to the deep sub-micron [fabrication processes] and potentially writing billions and billions of dollars worth of cheques for fabrication, and part of the impetuous for us to partner with Intel on the Itanium design was that we wanted to have access to the world’s number one microprocessor silicon fabrication.”
While HP continued with PA-RISC chips well into the new millennium, HP’s decision to offload the work of actually producing chips onto Intel could be seen as shrewd move, and one that firms such as AMD did a decade later. The cost of process node iteration is getting ever higher, which is something that Intel itself admits.
Not surprisingly, Bresniker wouldn’t be drawn on the demise of Itanium, though HP did announce Project Odyssey late last year, which effectively mixes and matches the firm’s Itanium kit with Intel Xeon servers. He did admit that the firm had to go towards x86 in the mission-critical market, Bresniker was quick to point out that while Intel is porting more features from the Itanium chip, not everything will be moved over.
iPhone Adds To Sprint’s Losses
February 14, 2012 by admin
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Sprint Nextel posted a bigger loss, reflecting the higher costs of offering Apple Inc’s iPhone. But the loss was smaller than expected because its signed up fewer new customers than expected.
Since Sprint subsidizes the cost of some of its phone sales, its costs rise and profit dwindles the more customers it wins. But since subscriptions fell short of expectations, its loss was smaller than expected.
Sprint’s loss was 35 cents per share excluding unusual items compared with Wall Street expectations for a loss of 37 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters.
Its profit margin based on operating earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization (OIBDA) fell to 9.5 percent from 16 percent a year earlier but beat expectations for 8.6 percent, according to eight analyst estimates Reuters compiled.
“It’s still unbelievably depressed and subscribers were below expectations,” said Roe Equity Research analyst Kevin Roe who also noted that Sprint’s targets for the full year were not particularly impressive.
The margin decline was hurt by the hefty cost of selling the iPhone.
Does Yahoo Have a Buyer?
December 8, 2011 by admin
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Blackstone Group and Bain Capital are putting together a bid for all of Yahoo Inc with Asian partners in a deal that could value the Internet company at about $25 billion, a source familiar with the discussions said on Wednesday.
The potential bid by the group, which would include China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s Softbank Corp, has not yet been finalized, the source and two other people familiar with the matter said.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, whose primary interest is in buying back a 40 percent stake owned by Yahoo, is keeping its options open and said it has not decided whether to participate in a bid for all of Yahoo.
“Alibaba Group has not made a decision to be part of a whole company bid for Yahoo,” Alibaba Group spokesman, John Spelich, said in an emailed statement on Wednesday.
Yahoo’s shares, which closed at $15.71 on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday, gained 6.4 percent to $16.72 in after-hours trading, valuing the company at more than $20 billion.
WebOS Lives
October 13, 2011 by admin
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HP is aiming to keep WebOS alive by putting it on printers.
The firm has discontinued its WebOS devices such as the Touchpad tablet and Pre 3 smartphone but WebOS will appear on new products, according to Pocketlint. The operating system (OS) will come on the Designjet line of HP printers.
An HP spokesperson said, “HP is currently investigating using WebOS on its Designjet range of professional printers.”
It’s likely that the OS will come on consumer printers at some point in the future, too. The following statement also hints that it could appear on products other than printers.
“HP is 100 [per cent] committed to producing print solutions that meet our customer needs and we will continue to drive innovation to ensure our products and solutions meet market demand. We built our printing franchise based on being OS agnostic – we have been and will continue to be agnostic to meet our various customer needs. As webOS plans develop we will continue to evaluate how and if we incorporate it into our future products.”
HP’s PC Division Decision This Month
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HP will decide on the future of its PC business this month, according to a statement from its newly installed CEO.
While it was under the Apotheker captaincy the firm announced rather shocking plans to dump the PC business. Okay, it didn’t explicitly say that, rather it said that it would consider selling it or spinning it off, which apparently meant something else to HP than it did to normal people.
According to Bloomberg, new HP CEO Meg Whitman sprinkled a little more colour into the HP PC business tapestry, and in a conference call said that the firm is almost ready to say what its plans are.
It’s likely that shareholders and the board are still reeling from the suggestion, but the extra time will give HP room to decide on what it wants to do with the still profitable, but boring hardware arm.
While it was under Leo Apotheker’s rule the firm had given itself the deadline of the end of the year for a decision, but presumably sick of people asking her, “what are we going to do with the PC business?”, Whitman has bought the decision forward.