Wireless hardware distributor Brightstar was the company that placed an order for 1M BB10 (BBRY -3.6%) phones, Detwiler Fentor reports and AllThingsD confirms. Detwiler notes Verizon relies on Brightstar to handle "big-box retail and dealer agent channels," and thinks the order indicates Verizon is trying to mitigate inventory risk by having a distributor handle sales. [View news story]
When you don't believe in a product you don't order 1 million units, middlemen or not. Fear of not selling them is obviously not the reason of that covered order.
Waiting For Godot: Time To Sell Nokia Stock [View article]
6 years ago, Apple was different and no other company could have done what Apple did. When thy saw their computer market shrinking, they presented MacBook Air, which boosted the MacBook Pro sales too. And the Jobs' most impressive move was when Apple destroyed its iPod market feeling that the concurrence was getting close, by making an even more successful product - iPhone. Apple has always been five steps ahead of any tech company, but it was before. The day when Apple stalled with iPhone 4s and iPad Retina the concurrence was taking everything new that Apple brough to the market, from their unique ecosystem, to their marketing technics and even their design. The first one was Samsung, then Nokia and today Microsoft. Now Apple might slightly one step ahead. Microsoft reproduced iCloud, iTunes and AppStore offering to its clients a complete à la Apple connectivity between Windows PC, Windows tablet and WP Lumia recreating everything that Apple could offer, but for a much lower price.
The thing that Apple investors don't understand is that upgrading existing iDevices won't make Apple shares rise anymore. What they need is create a whole new product and maybe even create a whole new market for this product, like they did with iPods, iPhones, MacBook Airs and iPads. They simply need to prove that they still can do something good and innovative without Jobs. Until now they failed to do so and they became another tech comany with an average management. At the same time when Apple was declining, Nokia was revealing its full potential with products that no other phone maker from 90ies could ever make. Lumia's are now at the same level as iPhones, I'm wondering if Nokia could surpass Apple in the next years. I'm long NOK.
Nokia's Revival: The Ship Has Sailed [View article]
Eld,
You seem to forget that market isn't rational on the short term (6 months - 1 year), even though the classic economical theory says the exact opposite. There are some people who gamble, others who are centered on fundamentals and figures, I tend to do both. Every year, I keep 20-30% of my personal portfolio for outsiders, like NOK or HPQ. And guess what, outsiders make over 60% of my full year market profits year after year.
Market seems to always exaggerate the situation and that's how you make easy profits. Last year people were making noise about banks and I made nice profits on BAC, C, JPM and GS. This year it's tech stocks. For example, back in September I bought RIMM for $6,4 and sold it after a huge rally for $11,6, simply because the fundamentals wasn't following the rally, it was all about BB10 speculation. Well, I could already earn $2,5 more, while nothing new happened during last week. Is it rational? Nope.
Take Apple stocks. Is it rational that they lost almost $200? The figures are excellent, the market sentiment seemed great and suddenly there was a huge slump. Who could forecast that? Certainly not the guy analyzing his figures.
As my boss once said, it's less risky to invest in a terrible beaten penny stock than in stocks like Apple with apparently excellent fundamentals and that everyone is chasing... Last month he invested on the Greek market a week before a 30% rally. We almost thought that he got crazy and that we'd need to seek for another job, but the old man made it again... Sometimes even when you analyze the figures, you see only what you want to see. On the other hand, sometimes you just don't have the guts to take a risk. But saying that figures are telling you everything isn't 100% true.
You are long Apple, and it's fine for me, I'm not here to tell you who's right or wrong, while you shouldn't get so emotional about a stock! I'm just saying that Apple disappoints me a lot. I've been long AAPL from $192 and went out at $579, which is great for a two years investment. I could have get more, but it's already fine. Now I can forecast their next 2 years based on their policy. They will remove their MacBook Pro's and replace them by Retinas. MacBook Air will be eventually replaced by Air Retina, but they will have to make them slightly bigger like for the iPad 3. The iPads will continue to offer some useless "innovations", but they won't make them as inspiring as the first one. The iPad mini, if it goes out, will make people who can't afford an iPad, buy the shiny Apple tablet, but it won't offer anything new, except the size. The new iPods are great, but they are made for people who can't afford buying an iPhone. The product is great, many people buy the shuffles for their fitness, but the big ones are for poor people and they don't offer enough margin to Apple. The iPhone 6 will eventually become as good as the concurrent phones, but again, its design won't be much different from the iPhone 5, which is unfinished... And so on and on. They play it safe and loosing their customers, who have got used to the whole innovation thing they have been pushing for years. The huge Apple trend will eventually vanish and people will realize (once again) that the company was led by one single man - Jobs, who knew what people wanted, could formulate the whole idea and hire the right people who could realize his projects. They destroyed their iPod market by creating iPhone and now they destroy their iPhone maket by presenting an unfinished product without any kind of innovation. People was expecting something really huge, a year after the iPhone 4s disappointment, but they didn't get it. As for me, I have an iPhone 4s, which I'm going to replace by the new Lumia, I have an iPad 2, which I'm going to replace by Mcrisoft tablet, I have a MacBook Pro Retina which I'm already willing to replace by the next gen of Air. So basically it's going to be only one single new Apple product out of 3. To be honest, I've been buying exclusively Apple products for 5-6 years now, and suddenly, I'm willing to see what the other firms have to offer, and it's pretty much the same for all my friends and family. For some people iPad 3 was the end of Apple, for me it was the iPhone 5. Anyhow, now I'm long NOK and MSFT, and I think that I will go short AAPL after their iPad mini presentation and their figures. But it's my personal opinion, you may disagree and I will perfectly understand that.
More on Nokia (NOK) Q3: net cash from operating activities -€429M vs. €852M a year earlier. Achieves operating profit (non-IFRS) of €78M vs. loss of €327M a year earlier. Gross cash of €8.8B and net cash of €3.6B. Lumia volumes fall Q/Q to 2.9M ahead of launch of W8 devices. Overall mobile volumes increase to 76.6M from 73.5M, boosted by Asha phones. (PR) [View news story]
Why are people pushing the markets to a monopoly or a duopoly? Do you really want to come to a store and choose between an iPhone or a Samsung, an iOs or an Android? The more different software we have and the more phone makers we will have on the market, the better we will feel! A monopoly doesn't think about its customers, a healthy concurrent market does! A monopoly won't bring any innovation (the perfect example of it is Apple's new policy), while concurrence will bread the innovation, we didn't get for the last 4 years!
BlackRock has offered to buy about $80M in Twitter stock from early employees that would value the company at more than $9B, reports the FT. This is above the $8.4B Twitter was valued at in its last major funding round in 2011, but below the $10B-$11B valuation in 2 smaller transactions late in 2012. [View news story]
A site valued at $9B, the world must be going crazy again. The next bubble is already coming...
Some Apple (AAPL) commentary: 1) Horace Dediu estimates the iPhone and iPad's component costs respectively rose 29% and 65% Y/Y in FQ2, well above rev. growth of 3% and 40%. This, along with a mix shift towards iPads, is mostly responsible for Apple's gross margin drop (rather than price pressure). 2) Tero Kuittinen sees similarities between 2013 Apple and 2007 Nokia. "The strongest parallel is in the weird way both companies started fighting the consumer preference for larger displays … and then dug in as margins began eroding rapidly." Tim Cook may have just hinted a bigger iPhone will eventually arrive. But how long will it take? (yesterday) [View news story]
Chemguy,
The thing Apple fans and Apple board didn't realize yet, is that it's a free competitive market and not some communist regime. While Apple was opening new markets they could show themselves arrogant and disrespectful towards everyone. Today, 6 years later, each company has it's own iPad and iPhone equivalent to offer, while Apple products become even more irrelevant each day. Today it's not up to the customers to fit to the Apple products, but it's up to Apple to fit to the demand of their customers. A large part of people (and personally I'm not among them) prefer big smartphone screens. What's the point of fighting people's preferences? It's simply a lost cause and the annoying advices like "hold your phone differently"(Jobs) or "buy glasses" just destroy years of marketing and make people move to some other, less sectarian brands. That pointless and unjustified arrogance as well as Apple's uncompromising position will simply prove to everyone how pathetic Apple became without Jobs at the steer. Just another descending company, in the middle of its crash after a decade of glory, following the classic market cycle.
More signs of tighter ties between Microsoft (MSFT) and HTC as the Taiwanese device maker is reportedly planning 12-inch and 7-inch tablets based on the Windows RT OS. HTC was ruled out as an initial partner in Microsoft's tightly controlled selection process, and said it was getting out of U.S. tablets a couple of months ago amid market-share struggles against the iPad, Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire. [View news story]
Tack,
"And, to make matters worse, their too-late effort is led by a Windows-8 user interface that is completely unsuitable for desktop computers, especially corporate computers, where a touch screen of "Hollywood squares" is completely superfluous."
That's because Microsoft see that the PC is dying and they decided to participate in PC's execution rather than to fight against the natural evolution of the tech market. The Surface tablet is the first viable link between the PC and the tablet. It has the best of the two worlds, it's a tablet, it has a physical keyboard and a USB port. No doubt that they will beat Apple in a couple of years. Customers are pragmatic, it might take some time but common sense will take over the trend. iPad can't replace a PC, you can't do all the tasks on an iPad without a good physical keyboard, a flash player or a USB port. On the other hand Surface is a real solution, cause once you purchase a Surface, you buy a PC and a tablet for a cheaper price than an iPad. For now they will simply sell licenses to Nokia, HTC, HP, Acer, etc. for their tablet-PC's. The showed the way to go and eventually either they will revolutionize the talblet market or they will simply sell licenses. They will earn a lot with any configuration, even though Surface sales are certainly going to be disappointing for this quarter.
Microsoft guys are smart and they have a long experience so I'm sure that they will make an adapted version of Win 8 for the corporations. Surface Pro might be that adaptation. A serious OS with a talet making its way in the corporate world.
Disclosure : No positions in MSFT, I'm just a happy owner of a Surface.
Does Nokia Continue To Disappoint In A Highly Competitive Industry? [View article]
The competition between phone makers seems like men's discussions about who's penis is bigger... Baseless and useless. When you have a phone with 1GB ram, 32GB of memory, a 8MP camera, a 5" screen and a full Internet access supporting flash, what else do you need? My first laptop had about 128MB of memory on the hard disc and I was very proud of it! Apple's main argument is that it has the most of applications available on its AppStore. Well among their millions of Apps I bought 4 application and I downloaded about 30-50 of free apps in 4 years of use! Most of their application are completly useless and undeveloped. So as long as you have a complete Office, a PDF reader and an Email, what else do you need on your phone? Today, phones offer the exact same features, rather you buy a $200 or a $700 device you probably won't even feel the difference of use. Basically, the only difference between firms is the design, which is a very subjective and personal thing. For me, the more phone makers there are on the market, the better we, the customers, will feel! Fortunately, there are other firms accept Apple and Samsung and at some point, concurrence will bread the innovation we have been lacking for the last 3 years.
Nokia (NOK) is investing in Pelican Imaging, whose technology promises to improve autofocus, depth, and splicing for phone camera images, a move NOK hopes will help it win back customers from Apple and Android users. Array cameras, which mesh multiple optics into one image, "are on the cusp of being commercialized. It's very complicated to do this algorithmically, and Pelican is one of the companies that has mastered this technology," Nokia says. [View news story]
Meanwhile Apple "invest" $50b in their own shares. I just hope that Apple will have enough money left to keep paying Nokia for their patents during the next 5-10 years.
Pres. Obama reportedly won't be making a new budget offer to Republicans today, and will instead reiterate last week's proposal. Stocks have tanked on the news. S&P -1%. Dow -1.1%. NASDAQ -0.7%. [View news story]
Macro,
Raising taxes to the wealthy people won't necessary increase the tax income for the country. It's just a populist move. Wealthy people pay more taxes no matter what. If your revenue is $90k a year and you pay a 30% tax, you pay $27k a year, while if you earn $1m and pay the exact same 30% of taxes it makes $300k a year for the government. That's much more productive, equal and more democratic to make everyone pay the same percentage. It's a whole different story when a state is trying to get through a crisis. According to CNBC Mr Obama's project to increase taxes for families earning over $250k a year would bring some extra $40b a year. That's an extremely symbolic amount regarding the $16 trillions debt that the United States are facing right now. So yes, since I personally pay 55% of taxes a year (I live in Belgium), I suppose that wealthy people won't die if they start paying 39%, but it won't reduce the deficit. What bothers me, is that Mr Obama doesn't want to make any concessions by reducing the spendings and that is the main point here. Mr Obama is more interested in entering the history as being not only the first Black President, but also as the President who put in place the ridiculous European social system in the United States, while the country is completely broke. Mr Obama has his personal time scheme and so he's pushing all these reforms during a financial crisis without any regards for the economy.
Pres. Obama reportedly won't be making a new budget offer to Republicans today, and will instead reiterate last week's proposal. Stocks have tanked on the news. S&P -1%. Dow -1.1%. NASDAQ -0.7%. [View news story]
Macro,
Did we follow the same elections? I saw a president winning by barely 2% against a much weaker opponent with extremely archaic and conservative propositions. Americans weren't voting for Obama, they were voting against Romney. It's possible that your interpretation has been different, though...
Design is something very subjective, what you might consider as being ill-designed might seem cool to others. Personally I like the phone that I see on the photo above and it seems much better looking than the iPhone 5. I have a 4s and I'm waiting for the next Lumia to replace it. I like particularly the fact that the back of this potential Nokia phone is round, it would be very comfortable to hold in hands!
The Twitter account that leaked Nokia's (NOK) Lumia 920 and 820 has posted an image of the Nokia Atlas, a Windows Phone device said to be meant for Verizon Wireless. The Atlas' design appears closer to that of the mid-range Lumia 610 than that of the 920 (an AT&T exclusive) or 820. The leak comes a day after T-Mobile USA announced it would sell the Lumia 810, a phone closely resembling the 820, but lacking a 4G radio. [View news story]
Get real. No one has as performant marketing system as Apple, or maybe as stupid customers... Do you know another company in the modern history, that could issue the exact same "new" product and still beat the sales? Who could imagine that the iPhone 4s would be a success? It won't last, but it's extremely amazing to see! But don't forget that unlike Apple, Nokia shares worth only $2,60, so even if Nokia sells as much phones as 20% of what Apple sell, it would be a succes and the shares would soar. I think that after the iPhone 5 presentation, Nokia have pretty nice odds here!
Cyprus's parliament is due to convene this afternoon to debate an astonishing eurozone demand that it tax all bank deposits at up to 10% in return for a €10B bailout. While approval is not guaranteed, Cypriots rushed to take as much money as allowed out of ATMs. And although EU Commissioner Olli Rehn ruled out a deposit raid in other eurozone countries, menacingly for savers, eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem would not. "We are in a new world," says an economist. Update: The parliamentary debate has been postponed until tomorrow. [View news story]
Unsure Now,
First of all, that measure hasn't been voted yet, so no one "stole" anything from anyone. Secondly, I'm sorry, but how does it concern you? Unless you are a Cyprian citizen you can express your personal opinion, but no one needs your agreement to adopt these measures, so the fact that "you can never accept that" is a lonely and pointless whip in the middle of nowhere. Cyprus is a sovereign democratic state, Cypriots elected their new government just recently so the new government has the right to set special taxes to make the economy go better. Cypriots will be able to demonstrate their disagreement and if they are going to be convincing enough, they might make fall the new government and it won't be elected for a while (but I doubt that it will go that far), or they will make the government abandon these measures, which is much more likely.
Wireless hardware distributor Brightstar was the company that placed an order for 1M BB10 (BBRY -3.6%) phones, Detwiler Fentor reports and AllThingsD confirms. Detwiler notes Verizon relies on Brightstar to handle "big-box retail and dealer agent channels," and thinks the order indicates Verizon is trying to mitigate inventory risk by having a distributor handle sales. [View news story]
Waiting For Godot: Time To Sell Nokia Stock [View article]
The thing that Apple investors don't understand is that upgrading existing iDevices won't make Apple shares rise anymore. What they need is create a whole new product and maybe even create a whole new market for this product, like they did with iPods, iPhones, MacBook Airs and iPads. They simply need to prove that they still can do something good and innovative without Jobs. Until now they failed to do so and they became another tech comany with an average management. At the same time when Apple was declining, Nokia was revealing its full potential with products that no other phone maker from 90ies could ever make. Lumia's are now at the same level as iPhones, I'm wondering if Nokia could surpass Apple in the next years. I'm long NOK.
Nokia's Revival: The Ship Has Sailed [View article]
You seem to forget that market isn't rational on the short term (6 months - 1 year), even though the classic economical theory says the exact opposite. There are some people who gamble, others who are centered on fundamentals and figures, I tend to do both. Every year, I keep 20-30% of my personal portfolio for outsiders, like NOK or HPQ. And guess what, outsiders make over 60% of my full year market profits year after year.
Market seems to always exaggerate the situation and that's how you make easy profits. Last year people were making noise about banks and I made nice profits on BAC, C, JPM and GS. This year it's tech stocks. For example, back in September I bought RIMM for $6,4 and sold it after a huge rally for $11,6, simply because the fundamentals wasn't following the rally, it was all about BB10 speculation. Well, I could already earn $2,5 more, while nothing new happened during last week. Is it rational? Nope.
Take Apple stocks. Is it rational that they lost almost $200? The figures are excellent, the market sentiment seemed great and suddenly there was a huge slump. Who could forecast that? Certainly not the guy analyzing his figures.
As my boss once said, it's less risky to invest in a terrible beaten penny stock than in stocks like Apple with apparently excellent fundamentals and that everyone is chasing... Last month he invested on the Greek market a week before a 30% rally. We almost thought that he got crazy and that we'd need to seek for another job, but the old man made it again... Sometimes even when you analyze the figures, you see only what you want to see. On the other hand, sometimes you just don't have the guts to take a risk. But saying that figures are telling you everything isn't 100% true.
Nokia Still To Outperform Apple [View article]
You are long Apple, and it's fine for me, I'm not here to tell you who's right or wrong, while you shouldn't get so emotional about a stock! I'm just saying that Apple disappoints me a lot. I've been long AAPL from $192 and went out at $579, which is great for a two years investment. I could have get more, but it's already fine. Now I can forecast their next 2 years based on their policy. They will remove their MacBook Pro's and replace them by Retinas. MacBook Air will be eventually replaced by Air Retina, but they will have to make them slightly bigger like for the iPad 3. The iPads will continue to offer some useless "innovations", but they won't make them as inspiring as the first one. The iPad mini, if it goes out, will make people who can't afford an iPad, buy the shiny Apple tablet, but it won't offer anything new, except the size. The new iPods are great, but they are made for people who can't afford buying an iPhone. The product is great, many people buy the shuffles for their fitness, but the big ones are for poor people and they don't offer enough margin to Apple. The iPhone 6 will eventually become as good as the concurrent phones, but again, its design won't be much different from the iPhone 5, which is unfinished... And so on and on. They play it safe and loosing their customers, who have got used to the whole innovation thing they have been pushing for years. The huge Apple trend will eventually vanish and people will realize (once again) that the company was led by one single man - Jobs, who knew what people wanted, could formulate the whole idea and hire the right people who could realize his projects. They destroyed their iPod market by creating iPhone and now they destroy their iPhone maket by presenting an unfinished product without any kind of innovation. People was expecting something really huge, a year after the iPhone 4s disappointment, but they didn't get it.
As for me, I have an iPhone 4s, which I'm going to replace by the new Lumia, I have an iPad 2, which I'm going to replace by Mcrisoft tablet, I have a MacBook Pro Retina which I'm already willing to replace by the next gen of Air. So basically it's going to be only one single new Apple product out of 3. To be honest, I've been buying exclusively Apple products for 5-6 years now, and suddenly, I'm willing to see what the other firms have to offer, and it's pretty much the same for all my friends and family. For some people iPad 3 was the end of Apple, for me it was the iPhone 5. Anyhow, now I'm long NOK and MSFT, and I think that I will go short AAPL after their iPad mini presentation and their figures. But it's my personal opinion, you may disagree and I will perfectly understand that.
More on Nokia (NOK) Q3: net cash from operating activities -€429M vs. €852M a year earlier. Achieves operating profit (non-IFRS) of €78M vs. loss of €327M a year earlier. Gross cash of €8.8B and net cash of €3.6B. Lumia volumes fall Q/Q to 2.9M ahead of launch of W8 devices. Overall mobile volumes increase to 76.6M from 73.5M, boosted by Asha phones. (PR) [View news story]
BlackRock has offered to buy about $80M in Twitter stock from early employees that would value the company at more than $9B, reports the FT. This is above the $8.4B Twitter was valued at in its last major funding round in 2011, but below the $10B-$11B valuation in 2 smaller transactions late in 2012. [View news story]
Some Apple (AAPL) commentary: 1) Horace Dediu estimates the iPhone and iPad's component costs respectively rose 29% and 65% Y/Y in FQ2, well above rev. growth of 3% and 40%. This, along with a mix shift towards iPads, is mostly responsible for Apple's gross margin drop (rather than price pressure). 2) Tero Kuittinen sees similarities between 2013 Apple and 2007 Nokia. "The strongest parallel is in the weird way both companies started fighting the consumer preference for larger displays … and then dug in as margins began eroding rapidly." Tim Cook may have just hinted a bigger iPhone will eventually arrive. But how long will it take? (yesterday) [View news story]
The thing Apple fans and Apple board didn't realize yet, is that it's a free competitive market and not some communist regime. While Apple was opening new markets they could show themselves arrogant and disrespectful towards everyone. Today, 6 years later, each company has it's own iPad and iPhone equivalent to offer, while Apple products become even more irrelevant each day. Today it's not up to the customers to fit to the Apple products, but it's up to Apple to fit to the demand of their customers. A large part of people (and personally I'm not among them) prefer big smartphone screens. What's the point of fighting people's preferences? It's simply a lost cause and the annoying advices like "hold your phone differently"(Jobs) or "buy glasses" just destroy years of marketing and make people move to some other, less sectarian brands. That pointless and unjustified arrogance as well as Apple's uncompromising position will simply prove to everyone how pathetic Apple became without Jobs at the steer. Just another descending company, in the middle of its crash after a decade of glory, following the classic market cycle.
More signs of tighter ties between Microsoft (MSFT) and HTC as the Taiwanese device maker is reportedly planning 12-inch and 7-inch tablets based on the Windows RT OS. HTC was ruled out as an initial partner in Microsoft's tightly controlled selection process, and said it was getting out of U.S. tablets a couple of months ago amid market-share struggles against the iPad, Google's Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire. [View news story]
"And, to make matters worse, their too-late effort is led by a Windows-8 user interface that is completely unsuitable for desktop computers, especially corporate computers, where a touch screen of "Hollywood squares" is completely superfluous."
That's because Microsoft see that the PC is dying and they decided to participate in PC's execution rather than to fight against the natural evolution of the tech market. The Surface tablet is the first viable link between the PC and the tablet. It has the best of the two worlds, it's a tablet, it has a physical keyboard and a USB port. No doubt that they will beat Apple in a couple of years. Customers are pragmatic, it might take some time but common sense will take over the trend. iPad can't replace a PC, you can't do all the tasks on an iPad without a good physical keyboard, a flash player or a USB port. On the other hand Surface is a real solution, cause once you purchase a Surface, you buy a PC and a tablet for a cheaper price than an iPad. For now they will simply sell licenses to Nokia, HTC, HP, Acer, etc. for their tablet-PC's. The showed the way to go and eventually either they will revolutionize the talblet market or they will simply sell licenses. They will earn a lot with any configuration, even though Surface sales are certainly going to be disappointing for this quarter.
Microsoft guys are smart and they have a long experience so I'm sure that they will make an adapted version of Win 8 for the corporations. Surface Pro might be that adaptation. A serious OS with a talet making its way in the corporate world.
Disclosure : No positions in MSFT, I'm just a happy owner of a Surface.
Does Nokia Continue To Disappoint In A Highly Competitive Industry? [View article]
Apple's main argument is that it has the most of applications available on its AppStore. Well among their millions of Apps I bought 4 application and I downloaded about 30-50 of free apps in 4 years of use! Most of their application are completly useless and undeveloped. So as long as you have a complete Office, a PDF reader and an Email, what else do you need on your phone? Today, phones offer the exact same features, rather you buy a $200 or a $700 device you probably won't even feel the difference of use. Basically, the only difference between firms is the design, which is a very subjective and personal thing. For me, the more phone makers there are on the market, the better we, the customers, will feel! Fortunately, there are other firms accept Apple and Samsung and at some point, concurrence will bread the innovation we have been lacking for the last 3 years.
Nokia (NOK) is investing in Pelican Imaging, whose technology promises to improve autofocus, depth, and splicing for phone camera images, a move NOK hopes will help it win back customers from Apple and Android users. Array cameras, which mesh multiple optics into one image, "are on the cusp of being commercialized. It's very complicated to do this algorithmically, and Pelican is one of the companies that has mastered this technology," Nokia says. [View news story]
Pres. Obama reportedly won't be making a new budget offer to Republicans today, and will instead reiterate last week's proposal. Stocks have tanked on the news. S&P -1%. Dow -1.1%. NASDAQ -0.7%. [View news story]
Raising taxes to the wealthy people won't necessary increase the tax income for the country. It's just a populist move. Wealthy people pay more taxes no matter what. If your revenue is $90k a year and you pay a 30% tax, you pay $27k a year, while if you earn $1m and pay the exact same 30% of taxes it makes $300k a year for the government. That's much more productive, equal and more democratic to make everyone pay the same percentage. It's a whole different story when a state is trying to get through a crisis.
According to CNBC Mr Obama's project to increase taxes for families earning over $250k a year would bring some extra $40b a year. That's an extremely symbolic amount regarding the $16 trillions debt that the United States are facing right now. So yes, since I personally pay 55% of taxes a year (I live in Belgium), I suppose that wealthy people won't die if they start paying 39%, but it won't reduce the deficit. What bothers me, is that Mr Obama doesn't want to make any concessions by reducing the spendings and that is the main point here. Mr Obama is more interested in entering the history as being not only the first Black President, but also as the President who put in place the ridiculous European social system in the United States, while the country is completely broke. Mr Obama has his personal time scheme and so he's pushing all these reforms during a financial crisis without any regards for the economy.
Pres. Obama reportedly won't be making a new budget offer to Republicans today, and will instead reiterate last week's proposal. Stocks have tanked on the news. S&P -1%. Dow -1.1%. NASDAQ -0.7%. [View news story]
Did we follow the same elections? I saw a president winning by barely 2% against a much weaker opponent with extremely archaic and conservative propositions. Americans weren't voting for Obama, they were voting against Romney. It's possible that your interpretation has been different, though...
Divided On Nokia [View article]
The Twitter account that leaked Nokia's (NOK) Lumia 920 and 820 has posted an image of the Nokia Atlas, a Windows Phone device said to be meant for Verizon Wireless. The Atlas' design appears closer to that of the mid-range Lumia 610 than that of the 920 (an AT&T exclusive) or 820. The leak comes a day after T-Mobile USA announced it would sell the Lumia 810, a phone closely resembling the 820, but lacking a 4G radio. [View news story]
But don't forget that unlike Apple, Nokia shares worth only $2,60, so even if Nokia sells as much phones as 20% of what Apple sell, it would be a succes and the shares would soar. I think that after the iPhone 5 presentation, Nokia have pretty nice odds here!
Cyprus's parliament is due to convene this afternoon to debate an astonishing eurozone demand that it tax all bank deposits at up to 10% in return for a €10B bailout. While approval is not guaranteed, Cypriots rushed to take as much money as allowed out of ATMs. And although EU Commissioner Olli Rehn ruled out a deposit raid in other eurozone countries, menacingly for savers, eurogroup chief Jeroen Dijsselbloem would not. "We are in a new world," says an economist. Update: The parliamentary debate has been postponed until tomorrow. [View news story]
First of all, that measure hasn't been voted yet, so no one "stole" anything from anyone. Secondly, I'm sorry, but how does it concern you? Unless you are a Cyprian citizen you can express your personal opinion, but no one needs your agreement to adopt these measures, so the fact that "you can never accept that" is a lonely and pointless whip in the middle of nowhere. Cyprus is a sovereign democratic state, Cypriots elected their new government just recently so the new government has the right to set special taxes to make the economy go better. Cypriots will be able to demonstrate their disagreement and if they are going to be convincing enough, they might make fall the new government and it won't be elected for a while (but I doubt that it will go that far), or they will make the government abandon these measures, which is much more likely.