Beats signals the need to buy not build. Apple is thought to be in advanced talks to buy Beats Audio for $3.2bn. Beats Audio is a premium headphone maker with an estimated 51% share of the $1bn premium headphone market. It also has recently launched a streaming music service that has some innovative functionality such...
Nintendo’s intransigence could be fatal. Nintendo reported another dreadful set of results as it missed its own forecasts made just three months ago. Q4 14A revenues / Net income were JPY72.6bn / LOSS JPY33.4bn compared to consensus at JPY86.1bn / LOSS JPY27.9bn. 2.72m WiiU units were sold over the last 12 months missing the companies...
There is no longer a reason to sell. Twitter is no Facebook but I suspect that the next 2 years could follow a very similar story. Twitter’s stock has collapsed from its high of $73 for two main reasons. Its user growth has failed to follow the course that the market was expecting. The market...
Adjusting view for error regarding wilful infringement. Yesterday’s note (see here) was incorrect in its statement that no finding of wilful infringement had been found against Samsung. In fact, Samsung has been found to wilfully infringe the ‘721’ patent which claims rights over the slide to unlock feature on smartphones. This means that Samsung was...
Victory costs Apple most of the value of its IP. Apple has won a finding of infringement by some of Samsung’s products but has been awarded just 5.4% of the damages it had asked for. This deals a devastating blow to the perceived value of Apple’s IP as this case will be used as a...
The single offerings for Digital Life are running out of steam. Linked-In reported good Q1A results but guided weakly as growth is slowing more quickly than many were hoping. Revenues / EPS were $473.2m / LOSS $0.11 compared to estimates of $467m / LOSS $0.08. Historically Linked-In has established a habit of guiding nicely above...
Anonymous login is a land grab for user data. Facebook is holding its F8 developer conference this week at which the most significant announcement was anonymous login. This is a new feature that allows users, who use Facebook to login into third party apps and services, to control how much, if any, of their data...
Twitter’s Q1 was good, but not nearly good enough. Twitter reported results that met headline expectations but were not the blow-out that the valuation of the stock demands. Q1 revenues / adjusted-EBITDA were $250m / $37m compared to consensus at $242m / $20m. The monthly active user count accelerated to grow 6% QoQ (up from...
Nokia’s new strategy is focused on the shareholder. With the deal to sell the handset business to Microsoft now closed, Nokia has announced its new strategy, capital structure and leadership team. Nokia will position each of its three remaining businesses for growth, return €3bn to shareholders over the next 18months and pay down €2bn of...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
Microsoft – Hopes Surface
The Surface-mini needs to be on WP8.1 not RT. Microsoft is holding an event on May 20th where it is expected that the latest additions to the Surface line of products will be launched. A Surface-mini is expected to headline the event being a 7-8” tablet with a Qualcomm processor, presumably at a very low...