smartphoneapps.com The Most Popular SmartPhone Apps
We all love our smart devices. The power and flexability has propelled mobile computing to the forefront of technology for years to come.
If you alre like me, you are addicted to apps. Free apps, paid doesn’t matter. There are hundreds of thousands of apps available.
Are they any good? Some are, but why waste time on the crap.
Or for that matter is Zuckerberg (the Fraudian slip would be Suckerberg, but he’s carry that right to the bank!).
At $100 billion, the stock will already be trading at about 40 times 2013 estimated earnings. This compares to Apple, the hottest company in the world, trading at less than 15X earnings. Apple, meanwhile, is still growing faster than Facebook. Until growth reaccelerates, it’s hard to see how the stock will sustain a major upward move, especially at the expected trading price
The rapid growth of mobile represents a major change in usage patterns and a possible threat: Facebook is unlikely to be able to generate as much revenue per user from mobile as it does from the web, and the world really is going mobile. (Facebook actually just cited this in its latest IPO filing amendment).
The bottom line is that, as always, price matters. At $100 billion, Facebook will be valued at about half of Google’s valuation, despite having only 1/10th the revenue. That means that Facebook’s future will have to be really spectacular to give investors a great return from here.
The one the investors should not do is confuse familiarity with Facebook’s service with the stock being a good buy.
The public overall is similarly divided on the company’s future. Just under half of adults (46 percent) predict a short timeline for Facebook, while 43 percent say it has staying power.
Young people are more aware of Zuckerberg and have more positive views of the CEO, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Monday. Overall, one in five Americans say they’ve never heard of him, 30 percent don’t have an opinion and 14 percent plain don’t like him. Only about a third have a good impression of the CEO, who has alienated some with Facebook’s ever-changing approach to user privacy.
But 46 percent of people under 35 like him. And a scant 4 percent of those younger adults say they’ve never heard of him.
The privacy issue is a stinger. Three of every five Facebook users say they have little or no faith that the company will protect their personal information. Only 13 percent trust Facebook to guard their data, and only 12 percent would feel safe making purchases through the site. Even Facebook’s most dedicated users are wary — half of those who use the site daily say they wouldn’t feel safe buying things on the network.
As for how Facebook makes most of its money —selling ads— 57 percent of users say they never click on them or on Facebook’s sponsored content. About another quarter say they rarely do.
Your comments are welcome.
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I believe what Apple needs to produce is a phone to capture the billions of flip phone users who are really not after the major apps, or retinal 4″ displays. Packaging could follow the Nano and simply it could include the player functionality.
Apple’s recent Wall Street losing streak over the past week didn’t shake Goldman Sachs’ faith in the company in the slightest. Indeed, in a note to clients this morning, analyst Bill Shope reiterated his “buy” rating on Apple and boosted his 12-month price target on the stock to $750 from $700, arguing that this is “the beginning of a very big year” for the company.
According to Shope, recent investor concerns that have weighed on Apple shares — soft Mac sales, the prospect of an iPhone subsidy revolt among carriers — are overblown and will be proven wrong when the company reports earnings next week.
“We expect solid March quarter upside, which is likely to trigger healthy increases in iPhone, iPad and overall earnings expectations for the full year,” Shope wrote. “In addition, we believe recent investor concerns over a ‘catalyst-light’ June quarter are misguided, since this will be the first full quarter with a refreshed iPad, a lower-priced iPad 2, and a fully ramped iPhone distribution channel; in other words, the June quarter is when many of the recent catalysts begin to fully manifest into earnings power.”
And with that, he raised estimates for Apple’s second quarter to $36.9 billion and $10.18 per share, ahead of current consensus, which is about $36.67 billion and $9.98.
A five-day losing streak wasn’t enough to shake Goldman Sachs’ love for Apple.
In a research note this morning Goldman Sachs is not only sticking with its its “conviction” buy rating on Apple, but it also boosted its 12-month price target on the stock to $750 from $700.
“Despite recent volatility, we continue to believe Apple’s shares are very attractive at current levels,” said Bill Shope, an analyst at Goldman. “It remains our top pick, and we’d be buyers ahead of March-quarter results.”
Shope predicts Apple’s quarterly report, expected on April 24, will show strong iPhone and iPad sales figures will boost overall results. And any concerns of a “catalyst-light” current quarter are misguided, he added. Also, concerns about a potential reduction in iPhone subsidies from wireless carriers are “overblown,” Shope says.
“This will be the first full quarter with a refreshed iPad; a lower-priced iPad 2, and a fully ramped iPhone distribution channel,” Shope says. “In other words, the June quarter is when many of the recent catalysts begin to fully manifest into earnings power.”
Apple shares have followed yesterday’s 5.1% surge with another 0.5% gain this morning. The bounce back has occurred after the stock fell 8.8% over a five-day losing skid.
The recent drop in Apple shares sparked a broader debate about whether Apple was poised for even larger decline. The stock is up nearly sixfold since March 2009, and its upward march has been largely unchallenged until now. But yesterday’s snapback has diminished many of those fears.
On a valuation basis, the stock still looks pretty cheap. As WSJ’s Heard on the Street columnist Rolfe Winkler pointed out in today’s paper, as fast as Apple shares have climbed, earnings have climbed even faster. Apple is trading at 14 times this fiscal year’s earnings, which is comfortably below the roughly 16 times commanded by the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.
“At these levels, we don’t believe the bears can stick around for long,” Goldman’s Shope says.
summary…
Even with that compressed ratio, Apple can easily become a $1.53 trillion company by 2015. That’s $1,650 a share.
iTV’s adoption should be even faster than iPad.
Feature phone decline will open the door to massive iPhone growth.
The iPad market could be close to the size of the PC market today in a few short years.
Macs will keep taking share in the PC market as people look to complete their iOS set.
iAd and iPay are both wildcards here. They could be much bigger than what even I optimistically envision.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/03/21/why-apple-will-hit-1650-by-the-end-of-2015/
I want to start out and profess myself to be an Apple fan. In my household we use 2 macs, 4 iPod Touchs, 2 Shuffles, 3 iPhones and my iPad. I use an Airport Extreme for my router and 2 Airport Expresses to extend speakers throughout the house. So you might call me a bit of a fan.
All this being said, I began to investigate downloading MP3 music and streaming movies from Amazon. Their cost is generally lower than iTunes and when it comes to movies, Amazon’s prices are considerally lower than Xfinity on-demand and Apple. My Roku box “adjusts” SD streaming to HD on my 60 HDTV, so I’m satisfied in saving a buck for each rental. The ONLY problem I have with Amazon is that they won’t release a viewing app for the iDevices like Netflix’s. I struggle with that every time and even go as far as tying the Roku box to my Slingbox in order to use the Slingmedia viewer on my iPad.
The bottom line is that although I love Apple systems and devices, as far as media distribution I prefer Amazon. I even recenlty priced a new Macbook Air and will order it for about $100 cheaper on Amazon than in the Apple store. (and with Free shipping same as Apple, only 2 day shipping from Amazon instead of 3-5 from Apple). I also like the instant gratification!
By the way, I am long on both Apple and Amazon stocks. They are myt sweetheart stocks.
Apple Inc. has the best image of any American company, scoring a record high in a new reputation study, and stock hitting $500+ today, while financial institutions filled the ranks of the worst.
Apple, co-founded by Steve Jobs in 1976, vaulted to No. 1 in Harris Interactive’s annual public opinion poll on corporate brands.
The Cupertino, California company raced passed last year’s brand champ in the poll, Google.
Gotta love those Apples!
Rumors are rife that Apple may release the all new iPad 3 by the end of March. Apple has scheduled a media event next month on March 29. News leaked by the nearby electronic makers say that many high tech components have been sent to Apple since the last quarter of 2011
The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company has received a really big ?order’ for 28nm APUs from AMD (Advanced Micro Devices). AMD confirmed this Friday that it will shake hands to manufacture 28nm Krishna Wichita accelerated processing unit (APUs) during the initial phase.
Because of the Chinese New Year, the launch of iPad 3 has been postponed till the end of March instead of beginning of March. This long holiday season brought disappointment to the millions of Apple’s fans for delayed date of iPad 3′s release.
The new iPad 3 is slated to be thinner and lighter and it will also have an A6 quad-core processor. March 29 is not far away, very soon, we might see people playing around with the super-power quad-core iPad 3.
The working conditions at Chinese manufacturer Foxconn are notorious here in the U.S., but do Chinese youth have a different opinion of the embattled electronics giant? Possibly: Foxconn is hiring, and Chinese youth are literally lining up around the block to apply for a position.
Foxconn is a major supplier of manufacturing labor for electronics giants Microsoft and Apple. It’s expected that the company is gearing up production for the iPhone 5, to be released later in 2012.
To meet the labor demand, Foxconn held an open casting call of sorts at their Zhengzhou factory this week. Thousands of Chinese youth showed up to apply for jobs that pay as little as 1,650 yuan per month ? about $262. Because jobs at Foxconn also come with employer-supplied food and housing, jobs there are seen as desirable … from the outside, at least.
Once those Chinese workers finally land the job, they may not be so eager to clock in every morning. Foxconn gained notoriety over the past few years as a chronic abuser of its’ employees. Workers commit suicide at a rate so high that the company had to install suicide-prevention netting at its factory to stop them. And working conditions are dangerous ? an explosion at the plant last year took the lives of two workers and injured 16.
We do. That is why we spent years of development to create MacKeeper.
What is MacKeeper?
MacKeeper is like 911 for your Mac. It’s an easy way to manage routine tasks and keep your Mac secured, clean, reliable, fast and attended!
What makes it so special?
MacKeeper is a bundle of most important system utilities for performing different tasks on your Mac. It will rescue you from numerous apps and dozens of customer support centers
Do you love your Mac?
We do. That is why we spent years of development to create MacKeeper.
What is MacKeeper?
MacKeeper is like 911 for your Mac. It’s an easy way to manage routine tasks and keep your Mac secured, clean, reliable, fast and attended!
What makes it so special?
MacKeeper is a bundle of most important system utilities for performing different tasks on your Mac. It will rescue you from numerous apps and dozens of customer support centers!
System requirements Mac OS X 10.5 or later MacKeeper includes the following Security features:
Antivirus
Protect your Mac from all security threats.
Once MacKeeper is installed, Antivirus will launch and secure all actions you perform on your Mac. It protects your Mac from:
Mac OS and Windows viruses
Identity theft
Phishing attacks
Passing on viruses to friends
Fraud websites
Unsafe donwloads
Threats from external devices
E-mail threats
Mac spyware
Mac malware
What more can be said that hasn’t already. As I learned of his passing while watching Fox News on my iPad, sipping a glass of wine after work, I felt saddened at the loss of such genius. We will all miss you Steve. Your legacy will live on for many generations to come. Farewell.
In his own words:
“I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs
Amazon introduced Silk, an all-new web browser powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and available exclusively on the just announced Kindle Fire. You might be asking, “A browser? Do we really need another one?” As you’ll see in the video below, Silk isn’t just another browser. We sought from the start to tap into the power and capabilities of the AWS infrastructure to overcome the limitations of typical mobile browsers. Instead of a device-siloed software application, Amazon Silk deploys a split-architecture. All of the browser subsystems are present on your Kindle Fire as well as on the AWS cloud computing platform. Each time you load a web page, Silk makes a dynamic decision about which of these subsystems will run locally and which will execute remotely. In short, Amazon Silk extends the boundaries of the browser, coupling the capabilities and interactivity of your local device with the massive computing power, memory, and network connectivity of our cloud.
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) – 8/9/2011 – Apple Inc briefly edged past Exxon Mobil Corp to become the most valuable company in the United States after days of volatile stock market action.
The technology giant’s market value rose on Tuesday to $341.5 billion, just above Exxon’s $341.4 billion, even though the oil major’s annual revenue is four times that of Apple’s.
Exxon quickly regained the No. 1 spot as its shares rose and Apple’s shed some of their gains, with stocks globally remaining volatile because of soft economic data and the downgrading of the United States’ sovereign credit on Friday.
At 1:50 p.m. EDT Exxon’s market cap was $339.3 billion while Apple’s dipped to $338.8 billion.
Tuesday’s move by Apple, which ended Exxon Mobil’s run of more than five years at the top, capped a remarkable turnaround for a company that once teetered on the brink before Apple’s Steve Jobs returned to resuscitate the company he co-founded.
Thirteen years ago, some analysts said Apple’s value consisted of real estate holdings and cash on hand.
Apple joined, albeit briefly, a small group of companies that have held the top spot in the S&P 500, including General Electric, General Motors, IBM, Microsoft Corp and AT&T, according to Standard & Poor’s Index Analytics
Since July 1, Apple’s market capitalization has risen by more than $20 billion, fueled by optimism that a new version of its best-selling iPhone will lead to a monstrous second half of 2011.
Exxon’s market cap, on the other hand, has slipped nearly $60 billion in the same period due to volatile crude oil prices.
Apple lovers are known for their somewhat radical devotion to any new products the company introduces, but selling body parts to afford them is definitely something new ? and scary. According to the story, a youngster in China province wanted a new iPad 2 tablet so badly he was willing to part with a kidney to be able to afford it.
The student, a 17-year-old high school student told a local newspaper “I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.” The “broker” was true to his word, and after the operation was completed on April 28, he received his 20,000 yuan, which equates to a little over $3,000.
The young organ donor carried out these plans without the knowledge of his mother, who was surprised to see her son awash in new, expensive electronics. After discovering what the youngster had done, she promptly alerted authorities, who have been attempting to track down the buyers ever since.
So save your kidneys, kids.
Although the iPad 2 may be the media’s favorite choice, there are, in fact, a whole range of competing tablets sold by a number of different manufacturers, incorporating a range of operating systems. The question of whether you should by the iPad 2 vs. other tablets is important when it comes to getting the best value for your money.
At this point in time, the main competitors to the iPad 2 are the Motorola Xoom, Blackberry PlayBook and the HP TouchPad. Here are a few key points of comparison to help you make that all-important buying decision.
Operating System
The tablet computers feature the following operating systems:
* iPad 2 – iOS 4.3
* Motorola Xoom – Android 3.0
* HP TouchPad – webOS 3.0
* Blackberry PlayBook – BB Tablet OS (QNX)
Many people who own an iPhone will naturally choose the iOS operating system over the others, but there are pros and cons of all of them. The Android system is known as the main contender to Apple’s own, and it’s especially popular thanks to its customizable features. However, what really matters is what feels intuitive to you, so you’ll want to try out some demo models before you buy.
Price
When it comes to price, one of the best things about the iPad 2 vs. other tablets is that you do have a lot of choice. The prices start at $499 for the 16GB Wi-Fi Only model, going all the way up $829 for the 64GB Wi-Fi + 3G models. Other manufacturers are slowly starting to follow Apple’s lead.
Other Features
There isn’t much between the leading tablet models when it comes to the camera (the newest addition to the iPad 2). One area where the iPad 2 falls short is the RAM – its competitors were well ahead of the game already. However, the processing speed is comparable among all the devices, as is the storage and the screen resolution.
In the apps market, the iPad 2 vs. other tablets debate has a clear winner: nobody can match the scope of the Apple app store. What’s more, many of us are used to using apps on our iPhone or iPod Touch, so it feels natural to move to the iPad 2 where we can still expect a huge range of apps available.
Ultimately it’s difficult to pick a winner in the iPad 2 vs. other tablets debate. When it comes down to it, picking the operating system that you feel comfortable with is a huge factor. However, there are no signs that the iPad’s reign at the top of the tablet market is coming to an end just yet!
Is Apple (AAPL), with a nearly $300 billion market cap, still a bargain?
Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope thinks it is. He re-launched coverage of the stock for Goldman this morning, setting a Buy rating and $430 price target, while placing the stock on the firms “Americas Conviction List.”
Writes Shope: “We believe Apple’s platform-centric business model is the secret sauce that has enabled it to quickly capture market share in new computing segments while simultaneously enjoying considerable margin leverage. Furthermore, we believe significant growth and profit opportunities for this platform still lie ahead. As a result, we expect revenue and earnings expectations to continue to trend upward, and we view the shares as attractive at current levels.”
Shope notes that some on the Street have expressed concern about weakening margins at Apple ? but he thinks the worries are overdone. “Indeed, we believe Apple’s margins have already bottomed, and we expect the company to resume its leverage-driven upside in coming quarters,” he writes.
Shope also expects both iPad and iPhone sales to exceed expectations in 2011; he sees sales of 37.2 million iPads next year, “which could potentially made Apple one of the largest vendors in the global personal computing market,” if you include both tablets and PCs.