Apple And Amazon Should Rejoice As Microsoft Morbidly Embraces Nook (Forbes)
TechCrunch reports that Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) may spend $1 billion to buy Nook outright from Barnes & Noble. In the pre-market Barnes & Noble stock moved up as much as 30% and was still higher by nearly 20% on the day in the afternoon. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has an existing investment in Nook of about one-sixth of the enterprise. Barnes & Noble has done an incredible job with Nook even though it is nowhere near as popular as the Kindle lineup from Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) or iPads from Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL). Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) started as a book seller. No wonder it is the leader in the eReader market with its Kindle line of devices. Barnes & Noble, with a century of pedigree in books, is the number two player in the e-reader market. However, the Nook’s share has been stagnant. In contrast, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been rapidly increasing its share of the market.
Amazon Is Developing Smartphone With 3-D Screen (WSJ)
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) +1.28% hardware ambitions are broadening. The Seattle e-commerce giant has recently been developing a wide-ranging lineup of gadgets—including two smartphones and an audio-only streaming device—to expand its reach beyond its Kindle Fire line of tablet computers, said people familiar with the company’s plans. One of the devices is a high-end smartphone featuring a screen that allows for 3-D images without glasses, these people said. Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles, they said. Users may be able to navigate through content using just their eyes, two of the people said.
Rackspace Tumbles by a Record as Sales Trail Analysts’ Estimates (BusinessWeek)
Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX), a provider of Web-based computing services, plunged as much as 27 percent after its revenue result and forecast trailed analysts’ estimates. Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX), which first sold shares to the public in August 2008, fell to $38.58 at 12:23 p.m. in New York, and earlier touched (RAX) $38.30, a record drop. Before today, the biggest one-day decline was 20 percent. Facing stepped up competition in the cloud-computing market from Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), which has lowered prices in its web-services division seven times this year, Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) said sales in the second quarter will be $369 million to $375 million. That trailed the average analyst estimate (RAX) of $384.4 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Chief Executive Officer Lanham Napier said sales to business customers in the first quarter were slower than forecast.
Rackspace results fall short of expectations (CNBC)
Rackspace Hosting, Inc. (NYSE:RAX) said Wednesday that its first-quarter profit rose, but the results fell short of Wall Street expectations. Its stock dropped 17 percent after-hours trading. “We got off to a slow start for the year,” Chief Financial Officer Karl Pichler said in a statement, adding that “our immediate focus is on restoring our growth trajectory.” The San Antonio cloud-computing company manages systems for businesses. Net income was $27.3 million, or 19 cents per share, compared with $23.2 million, or 17 cents per share, a year earlier. But profit dropped 9 percent from the previous quarter and fell short of analysts’ expectations _ they were looking for 20 cents per share, according to a FactSet survey.
