Under The Radar News - Friday

Bear bailout. JPMorgan Chase (JPM) & the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said they will provide secured funding to Bear Stearns (BSC) for an initial period of up to 28 days. "JPMorgan Chase does not believe this transaction exposes its shareholders to any material risk. JPMorgan Chase is working closely with Bear Stearns on securing permanent financing or other alternatives for the company," it said. Shares are down 21% at 9:54 AM. What's not clear: What exactly prompted the move, and what are the "other alternatives"? [see 2nd, 3rd and 4th items]

Bear shunned as counterparty. Speaking on CNBC, Punk Ziegel's Richard Bove says there are rumors a European bank refused to accept Bear Stearns (BSC) as a counterparty earlier this week, followed by Wall Street banker Morgan Stanley (MS), leading to its crisis.

Bear lost investor confidence. "Bear Stearns (BSC) has been the subject of a multitude of market rumors regarding our liquidity. We have tried to confront and dispel these rumors and parse fact from fiction. Nevertheless, amidst this market chatter, our liquidity position in the last 24 hours had significantly deteriorated. We took this important step to restore confidence in us in the marketplace, strengthen our liquidity and allow us to continue normal operations." -- Bear Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz

Hmm... There is speculation the Fed's unprecedented move to inject $280B into global markets was largely an attempt to stave off a collapse of Bear Stearns (BSC). Although the move was billed as "a way to improve liquidity across financial markets," analysts say BSC needed funds "in a hurry."

Com score backtracks on Google. Com score says that after analyzing Google's (GOOG) drop in paid clickthroughs, it believes Google's efforts to improve the quality control of its clickthroughs contributed to the negative growth trends, rather than what many worried was general weakness in online advertising.

BP CEO: Nothing less than reinventing itself. BP (BP) CEO Tony Hayward told department heads in a hard-hitting internal meeting that the oil giant needs to reinvent itself. "BP has reinvented itself before in the 1970s and early 1990s. It needs to reinvent itself again in 2008." Hayward warned of dire consequences if the company fails to address its performance shortfalls, and challenged executives to take immediate steps to stop and/or simplify activity. He called his current agenda the "biggest thing BP has taken on in the last 20 years," and said he intends to push BP back to the forefront of the energy industry.

Can't judge a 'book' by its cover. AIG (AIG) CEO Martin Sullivan is urging regulators to move away from "fair value" accounting after it and other companies took massive writedowns when forced to mark unrealized losses to current market prices. Sullivan suggests companies should estimate their maximum potential loss, while unrealized losses the company thinks it can avoid would be reported off balance sheet. The WSJ said in an article this morning the SEC is looking at implementing accounting changes very similar to the ones suggested by Sullivan.

Intel quad core to roll out in Q3. Intel (INTC) will launch its Core 2 Extreme Qx9300 CPUs in Q3. They will sell for $1,038 in thousand-unit quantities. Intel thinks quad-core CPUs will become the standard by the second-half of 2009.

Sprint speculation. Some analysts think Sprint Nextel (S) could be acquired, while others think Sprit will sell-off parts of its operations to generate cash, and still others say Sprint will do nothing substantive. A Merrill analyst thinks Deutsche Telekom (DT) could acquire Sprint; WSJ has speculated Mexican telecom executive Carlos Slim could make a move for the maligned carrier.

No BlackBerry ban in India. The Indian government said it will not ban Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerrys, but said it will look into security issues. Indian security agencies expressed concern over the fact that BlackBerry emails can not be traced or intercepted. "We want operators to talk to BlackBerry people and put pressure on them to provide the necessary and satisfactory answers to security agencies. That is what we are talking to them," Telecoms Secretary Siddhartha Behura said.

Software sales drive video gaming. Video game software sales jumped 47% in February. The top title was Xbox 360's (MSFT) Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Sales of Sony's (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's (NTDOY.PK) Wii topped Xbox 360 sales. Xbox 360's group product manager said shortages of the console will be addressed before April 29, the slated release date of blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV.

Wells Fargo potential buyer of National City. Wells Fargo (WFC), which recently acquired five banks in Wyoming and Idaho, may be looking at struggling National City (NCC). Wells' deep pockets and National City's depressed share price make the move seem plausible. On Thursday, WSJ said investment bankers are shopping NCC.

KickApps may be next for AOL. AOL (TWX) may not be finished after yesterday's acquisition of number-three social networking site Bebo for $850M. Sources say another big deal is brewing, perhaps an acquisition of KickApps for about $90M. KickApps develops white-label social widgets, communities and applications.

Napster, O2 join forces. Napster (NAPS) signed a deal with Telefonica's (TEF) O2 that will give O2 subscribers access to nearly five million downloadable tracks for the phone and PC. Digital downloads surged 50% last year.

J.P. Morgan loses hedge fund. Duration Capital is severing its ties with its primary broker, J.P. Morgan (JPM), after heavy losses on muni bond investments. Duration will continue to raise funds, invest, and do business with other primary brokers, including Merrill Lynch (MER).

Suicidal shorts. Art Cashin on CNBC after this morning's post-CPI spike. "This has to be the most skittish and suicidal bunch of shorts I've seen in 25 years." That, of course, was before the news of Bear Stearns' near failure rocked the market.

Google says Android will outsell iPhone. Rich Miner, group manager for Google's (GOOG) mobile platforms, notes the Android SDK has been downloaded 750,000 times to the iPhone's (AAPL) 100,000 (mind you that was in just four days). "I'd certainly be looking at the iPhone, and if you believe there will be lots of Android phones out there, as we do, I'd be developing for both platforms," he said, adding, "there's a much larger potential market on Android than for the iPhone."

Comments

[Thinkingahead]

Don't developers have to pay for the AAPL SDK? And don't they also have to cough up 30% of revenues to Apple? On that basis I would view 100,000 downloads on AAPL as being much more serious and valuable than 5 million of the GOOG freebie. What am I missing?

[Reader851]

believe nothing of what you read or hear now....greed and fear are driving

[F. J. Taylor]

Eli, you always have things of interest, are a compendium of information and (mostly!) good ideas, and I love your columns. That said, you are way off the mark on iPhone vs. Google.

First, as Miner himself said; "That's for a device that doesn't even exist yet." He's right - it doesn't - and it may never exist. (Though I tend to think it will emerge eventually.)

I am a big believer in the Open Source movement - it has some remarkable people doing remarkable things that need to be done.

However, I don't see Android (if and when it emerges) as being even a match for iPhone, let alone a killer. The iPhone already has generated some self-proclaimed "iPhone killers" a la the iPod - but we see how far they went. (What's a "Zune" again...?)

Put simply, a hodge-podge of Open Source software for a mobile device is simply no match for the smooth, slick, well-integrated iPhone. This is all the more relevant because the Apple OS and Mac is once more a growing market share, thanks to iPod, iTunes - and especially thanks to Microsoft's Vista, which is driving even die-hard MS users away in droves - and into the arms of Apple. (I just helped yet another life-long Windows tech convert the other day!)

It's like the difference between Linux and OS X - both are Unix based, and have safer, faster, and more secure operation than Windows ever did or ever will. Both have nice GUIs (now that the interfaces on Linux have been substantially improved). But if you want to run a Unix based machine with the best GUI out there - you want a Mac!

Likewise, if you want a great mobile device designed for web-based work, and that also has a lot of terrific native software supported by the best support team out there, and that will seamlessly interface with the growing number of Macs - you get iPhone - this a no-brainer.

That said, I believe there will be a market for Android, and that it fills a much-needed gap. I also hope it spurs Apple into some much-needed reforms of the iPhone and their business model (such as being locked to one provider).

However, when I buy, it will be iPhone. (BTW, my stepson [another die-hard Windows convert!] just did - and he loves it!!!)

[pinz]

What's an android?


sent from my iPhone
Pinz

[steveballmer]

You missed the Mix'08 fallout!

[meh]

u apple folks are funny, a 20 billion bank just crumbled and hey on other news apple has a new sdk that works with sybase how nice.....who really cares