Editor’s Note: Related tickers: Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT), Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO)
Amazon to sell set-top box to challenge Apple TV (ET)
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) will release a set-top TV box later this year that will stream video over the Internet, challenging Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)‘s Apple TV device and a similar gadget sold by start-up Roku, BloombergBusinessweek reported on Wednesday. The box will plug into TVs and give viewers access to Amazon’s digital video content, which the company has been expanding, BloombergBusinessweek said, citing three unidentified people familiar with the project. An Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Amazon’s video content is already available on other set-top devices, including Roku. Building its own gadget will help Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) put the content more directly in front of consumers and give developers another reason to create apps for Amazon’s digital platform, BloombergBusinessweek said.
Apple Faces Dilemma Over Strategy in China (WSJ)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) +0.78% sales in Greater China rose at a healthy clip in its latest quarter. But the numbers belied growing concerns in the company’s second-largest market as the bonanza in high-end smartphones started winding down. China’s rapidly expanding middle and upper classes had discarded old cellphones for new smartphones in surging numbers over the past two years, scooping up expensive smartphones made by Apple, HTC Corp. 2498.TW +3.92% and Samsung Electronics Co. 005930.SE +0.20% and others. But with almost 300 million Chinese already subscribing to high-end mobile services, the next wave is centering on less-expensive smartphones, leaving Apple in a quandary over whether to chase lower-end users or keep focusing on the smaller, high-end segment, where profit margins are greater.
Google buys Wavii for $30 million, mirroring Yahoo’s deal (ET)
Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) has acquired Wavii, the Seattle-based startup behind a news summarization app, for roughly $30 million in cash, a person with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday. Google’s successful bid came after Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) had expressed interest in buying Wavii to incorporate the startup’s natural language technology into Siri, Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant feature, said the person, who declined to be named because the deal has not been publicly announced. Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Wavii declined to comment. Google’s purchase comes several weeks after Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) paid a similar amount to acquire Summly, the news reader and Wavii competitor founded by 17-year-old Nick D’Aloisio in London.
Apple shares fall as buyback, dividend hike fail to please (NDTV)
Shares in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) are set to open down 3 per cent on Wednesday as the company’s plan to return $100 billion in capital failed to appease shareholders shaken by the iPhone maker’s first quarterly drop in profit in a decade. A soft outlook from Apple for the current quarter prompted at least 17 brokerages to slash their price targets on the iPhone maker’s shares by up to $180 per share. Apple forecast revenue of $33.5 billion to $35.5 billion this quarter, lagging Wall Street’s average expectations of $38.2 billion.
For Its Next Feat, Apple Will Win Back Investors With Buybacks (WSJ)
Can an unloved company buy back investor love with share repurchases? The odds aren’t in its favor, but Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) +1.05% is sure going to try its darnedest. Birinyi Associates, in a note to clients last night, tallied up 28 share buyback authorizations totaling $15 billion or more, stretching back to the summer of ’04. (At $50 billion, Apple’s buyback bonanza is easily the biggest.) As Wednesday’s performance suggests — Apple is down about 1.5% at last glance — Apple’s buyback is drawing at most a “meh” from the marketplace. And perhaps that makes sense: Over the next three, six and 12 months, Birinyi found companies authorizing buybacks fell an average 3.3%, 3.7% and 1.2% respectively, and generally underperformed the S&P 500 to boot.
Competition from Samsung, others deflates expectations at Apple (WashingtonPost)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) released its quarterly earnings report Tuesday as many investors and analysts turn increasingly skeptical about the company’s prospects. Profits at Apple declined for the first time in a decade: The company’s net income fell 18 percent, to $9.5 billion, in the first quarter, compared with the corresponding period last year. That beat analysts expectations, and revenue increased 11 percent, to $43.6 billion. But the combination of slower revenue growth and tighter profit margins was enough to unnerve some investors. Apple gained nearly 2 percent to close at $406.13 Tuesday before reporting its quarterly results. In after-hours trading, the stock initially rose but cooled and was trading in slightly negative territory late Tuesday.
Apple to distribute $100 billion in cash to its shareholders (NDTV)
Apple is opening the doors to its bank vault, saying it will distribute $100 billion in cash to its shareholders by the end of 2015. At the same time, the company said revenue for the current quarter could fall from the year before, which would be the first decline in many years. Apple CEO Tim Cook also suggested that the company won’t release any new products until the fall, contrary to expectations that there would be a new iPhone and iPads out this summer. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) on Tuesday said it will expand its share buyback program to $60 billion – the largest buyback authorization in history. It is also raising its dividend by 15 percent from $2.65 to $3.05 per share. That equates to a dividend yield of 3 percent at current stock prices. The average yield for the 20 largest dividend-paying companies in the U.S. is 3.1 percent, according to Standard & Poor’s.
Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘We Had Our Best Quarter Ever in China’ (WSJ)
Despite state-run media attacks and porn crackdowns aside, China was the lone growth market for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the latest quarter, company executives revealed in an earnings call on Tuesday. Revenue for the Cupertino, Calif. electronics maker rose 8% year-on-year to $8.2 billion in greater China, which includes Hong Kong and Taiwan. In every other market, the company saw sales decline or stay flat. …The reference to “first-time buyers” is a noteworthy nod to Apple’s efforts to tap the market for lower-end smartphones – a strategy analysts say could be especially risky in China.
Has Apple hit Google’s Glass wall? (GlobalNews)
In the fall of 2008 Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced it would buy $40 billion worth of its own stock, an unprecedented sum for the software giant – or any other company for that matter at the time. Investors like share “buybacks” because they help lift a company’s stock price. It suggests the company is making so much money, it can afford to send back a special reward to its investors. But the move also suggests something else: decline. …Apple’s transformative iPhone – the catalyst for so much of the company’s unparalleled success in recent years – has showed recent signs that its hold over consumers is slipping. Apple’s share of the smartphone market is 20 per cent globally, compared with 70 per cent among phone makers using Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s Android.
Apple debt issuance would dwarf that of tech rivals (Reuters)
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) could go from being the only major technology company with no debt on its books to one that issues as many bonds as a major global bank, as it seeks to fund its $100 billion capital reward for shareholders unveiled on Tuesday. Apple has $145 billion of cash, but “only” $45 billion of that is on hand in the U.S., according to some estimates. That is not enough to pay for plans to buy back $60 billion of shares over the next three years. That means the company will have to issue about $15 billion to $20 billion a year for the next three years, according to credit research firm CreditSights.
