Facebook Readies IPO Filing for Next Week ♦
A $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among U.S. companies, behind Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless. At a $100 billion valuation, Facebook would be worth about the same as McDonald’s Corp. and nearly half of Google Inc.
The hotly anticipated and most likely biggest IPO for a long time moves one step closer. The IPO filing should make for an interesting read.
Monthly active user growth has started to slow since early 2011 but it is great that Facebook’s aspirations were higher and didn’t give in to early acquisition bids.
In more recent times, Facebook’s influence on social has been so strong that it has totally transformed a major part of Google’s core search product.
Hawaiian Data Retention Bill HB 2288 tabled after vehement opposition ♦
Treena Shapiro reporting for Associated Press:
State lawmakers have tabled a proposal that would have required Internet service providers to retain all Hawaii consumers’ subscriber data and browsing histories for a minimum of two years.
Introduced a way to combat Internet-related crime, House Bill 2288 received support from Honolulu’s police and prosecutor departments and one individual, but was otherwise greeted with vehement opposition at a hearing Thursday.
Further backstory to this bill:
Open webOS 1.0 announced - HP to complete webOS open sourcing by September ♦
Interesting to note that the webOS source will be released under the Apache 2.0 license wherever possible.
… But still September is 8 months away which is a lifetime in mobile and tablets.
2012 - The year that Apple remains the largest US company by a good margin ♦
Much has been said about Apple surpassing Exxon Mobil as the largest US company today. In the past year Apple has traded places with Exxon Mobil but this has mostly been when Exxon Mobil was trading around a 52-week low of around $70 a share.
Based on yesterday’s earnings call, many Wall Street analysts have now adjusted their 1 year price targets for Apple to over $600 (prices from $515 to $670).
The difference this time around is that Exxon Mobil is currently trading around their 52 week high of around $87 a share. Their highest share price in the past 10 years was in December 2007 during record oil barrel prices where Exxon Mobil traded at $95 a share.
Even if we give a conservative estimate of Apple reaching $500 a share in the near term and trading at that price and above for a large portion of 2012, we come out with the following:
$500 share price x 932.21 million shares = $466.105 billion market cap
Exxon Mobil’s share price would need to reach an all time high of over $103 a share to even compare with that.
2012 is the year that Apple remains the largest US company by a good margin.
Con Artist Starred in Sting That Cost Google Millions ♦
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The government built its criminal case against Google using money, aliases and fake companies—tactics often used against drug cartels and other crime syndicates, according to interviews and court documents. Google agreed to pay a $500 million forfeiture last summer in a settlement to avoid prosecution for aiding illegal online pharmaceutical sales.
Google acknowledged in the settlement that it had improperly and knowingly assisted online pharmacy advertisers allegedly based in Canada to run advertisements for illicit pharmacy sales targeting U.S. customers.
Amazing story. I wasn’t aware that the government was involved in this operation or that it was a planned sting.
“Google’s employees were instrumental in bypassing policy regarding pharmacy verification,” Mr. Whitaker told the Journal. “The websites were blatantly illegal.”
Don’t be evil, indeed.
“Suffice to say this was not two or three rogue employees at the customer service level doing this on their own,” said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney. “This was corporate decision to engage in this conduct.”
Indefensible.
How Apple buffers the dip in sales when a new model iPhone is announced ♦
Tim Cook during today’s earnings call:
I would also attribute the performance [of iPhone sales] to the delayed purchases from the prior quarter as we’ve discussed in the October call as people were anticipating a new iPhone being announced. I think we made the correct decision to go with a broad range of iPhone. This turned out to be a benefit as we thought it would.
Prior to the announcement of the iPhone 4S Apple would only have one available model of iPhone out at a time. The iPhone 4S changed this cycle where they kept the prior iPhone 4 model and the iPhone 3GS (through AT&T). This led to a dip in sales for Apple in the lead up to the announcement, otherwise referred to as “delayed purchases”. In this case Apple had become a victim of its own success.
I remember a quote from Steve Jobs during the stolen iPhone 4 days where he mentioned that officially stating the stolen iPhone 4 was Apple’s was tantamount to “shooting his toes off” as it would lead to a dip in sales for the current model.
Having a slight diversification of available models (and how Apple does it with prior generations and cheaper price points) allows you to spread your risk when announcing a new model. Sales will not slow as much because the buyer will have piece of mind that the model that they buy today will not be obsolete and taken off of shelves the moment the new model is released. That feeling of buyers remorse and importantly the need to wait for the next model is reduced.
The other obvious benefit is that you can now target slightly different consumers with those models and lower price points.
The down side? In the short term the hype machine and pandemonium might be less when a new model is announced. I don’t see any real downside but it does take a couple of generations for a product to reach a state of hardware maturity such that they can deem a particular model “good enough” that it can remain as an item to continue selling.
Apple has figured out that the benefits far outweigh the negatives which is why they will surely employ this tactic when the new iPad 3 is announced.
Apple's 1Q 2012 financial results ♦
Apple just released its 1Q 2012 financial results which totally destroyed all estimates with revenues of $46.33 billion.
Just to put that in perspective, Google had revenues of $37.905 billion for the whole of 2011.
In the Q and A session Tim Cook mentioned that they had 85 million users sign up to iCloud in 3 months. Comparatively Larry Page mentioned in Google’s recent earnings call that there were 90 million users on Google+. The adoption rate for iCloud just shows you the strength of the robust upgrade system of iOS which allows them to push through features such as iCloud to their users on a massive scale.
Tim Cook also underlined Apple’s belief in the iPad. Apple thoroughly believes that the tablet market will eventually surpass the desktop PC market and Tim mentioned a recent report which had figures showing that tablets sales have already exceeded those of desktop PC’s in the U.S. in the fourth quarter. He followed on by saying that in terms of the tablet market, the iPad really stood out in a class of its own. A key figure that Tim mentioned to show the dominance of the iPad ecosystem is that there are 170,000 apps written specifically for the iPad compared to only a few hundred designed specifically for competing tablet platforms.
It was interesting to note that Tim Cook also mentioned that Apple sold 1.4 million Apple TV units in the quarter. I believe this is the first time Apple has released any Apple TV figures but this figure compares quite favorably to similar competing units such as Roku which reported sold 1.5 million units last year.
Famous Photogs Pose With Their Most Iconic Images ♦
At a time when everyone has a camera in their pocket and millions, if not billions of photos are flying around the internet each day, Mantoani wants to help people understand that iconic photos don’t just happen. They are the product of people who devote their entire lives to photography. Giving these people a face, he says, helps do that.
Some sample images from a new book Behind Photographs: Archiving Photographic Legends. I’ve always admired and preferred the unfiltered quality of photojournalism pictures.
Why the Emotional Criticism of iBooks Author Is Wrong ♦
Apple is offering a publishing and distribution channel and, by the way, here’s a free tool optimized for supporting that channel.
If Apple had decided to make iBooks Author a web app that constituted the first step in submitting your work to iBooks distribution, nobody would be complaining. They would see the online authoring tool as just part of the publishing channel.
Instead, Apple decided to make Step One of the iBooks publishing system a downloadable application.
The uproar surrounding the iBooks Author EULA was the biggest non-issue from last week’s Apple event.
Google shutting down Picnik ♦
Picnik will be closing on April 19, 2012.
Already a ton of comments from unhappy users.
This reminds me of the time Google shut down Slide and with it came outraged SuperPoke Pets players.
UPDATE @ Mon Jan 23 14:12:02 HST 2012: It looks like some people have started an online petition which currently has 2,644 signatures.
Older Posts
- 20 Jan 2012 » Riding technology waves
- 20 Jan 2012 » Otellini - Is there anyone that can compete with the iPad?
- 19 Jan 2012 » Apple's iBooks 2, iBooks Author - Bids to own publishing's future
- 19 Jan 2012 » Could Instagram Come To Windows Phone Before Android?
- 18 Jan 2012 » Apple just needs to put pressure on tablet pricing
- 17 Jan 2012 » Apple's iOS platform is looking to dominate the real ecosystem battle over content
- 13 Jan 2012 » Forbes is wrong about Apple needing cheaper iPhones in China
- 12 Jan 2012 » Android design - We would rather you guess
- 12 Jan 2012 » Introducing the Android Design site - Better late than never
- 12 Jan 2012 » Google And The Monopoly Paradox
- 12 Jan 2012 » U.S. PC Shipments Shrank in 2011 for First Time in a Decade
- 11 Jan 2012 » Schmidt says Google+ not favored
- 09 Jan 2012 » The Church of Market Share
- 06 Jan 2012 » Predictions on the 2012 model iPad 3
- 05 Jan 2012 » Active use and adoption of Siri - Definitely not hype
- 05 Jan 2012 » Android fanboys are out of touch with reality
- 05 Jan 2012 » Trends in Google+ comments
- 04 Jan 2012 » We Are The 0.6%
- 04 Jan 2012 » Comments
- 04 Jan 2012 » Microsoft And Nokia's Plans For Marketing Windows Phone In 2012
- 03 Jan 2012 » Locked bootloaders in Android devices are required to support Google DRM
- 02 Jan 2012 » Persistence - Big Sean on working with Kanye West
- 31 Dec 2011 » Apple actively defends developers and fights App Store piracy
- 30 Dec 2011 » Sir Jonathan
- 29 Dec 2011 » We as a society have not had the time to digest and quantify the value of our privacy
- 28 Dec 2011 » Apple wants to offer you a revolutionary television experience
- 28 Dec 2011 » Samba service is no longer running in Fedora 16 after an upgrade
- 27 Dec 2011 » What Windows Phone needs to do for it to take off
- 25 Dec 2011 » Google needs a partner for technologies like Dart
- 23 Dec 2011 » Magazine publishers also love the iPad
- 23 Dec 2011 » GoDaddy no longer supports SOPA
- 21 Dec 2011 » Predictions for the MacBook Pro 2012 model
- 20 Dec 2011 » Dell launches in China first
- 19 Dec 2011 » Marc Andreessen on software in 2012
- 18 Dec 2011 » Everyone Hates Google
- 16 Dec 2011 » Google's Android Update Alliance Is Already Dead
- 15 Dec 2011 » Apps I use on Android
- 14 Dec 2011 » Windows Phone is well positioned to take market share from Android
- 13 Dec 2011 » Louis CK's comedy special has already made a profit
- 13 Dec 2011 » Developers make more money on iOS compared to Android
- 12 Dec 2011 » Microsoft OneNote for iPad looks really clean
- 11 Dec 2011 » UI fragmentation of Google apps on Android
- 11 Dec 2011 » Louis CK self releases his performance at the Beacon Theater and future distribution
- 09 Dec 2011 » HP CEO Meg Whitman on the recent webOS announcement
- 09 Dec 2011 » Running 'git diff' returns nothing
- 09 Dec 2011 » HP to Contribute webOS to Open Source
- 08 Dec 2011 » What Eric Schmidt actually said
- 07 Dec 2011 » Windows Store announcement and the benefits of trials for apps
- 06 Dec 2011 » Web site transition
- 05 Dec 2011 » Evercore on the impact of Kindle Fire on other Android tablets
- 05 Dec 2011 » Commentary
- 04 Dec 2011 » Android graphics
- 03 Dec 2011 » The Kindle Fire defines the bottom end in tablet pricing
- 02 Dec 2011 » Commentary
- 01 Dec 2011 » Stanley Kubrick - New York photographs
- 29 Nov 2011 » Apple is going to be huge
- 27 Oct 2011 » Nexus One will not be receiving Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
- 26 Oct 2011 » Blackberry and their lack of battery design
- 13 Oct 2011 » Xcode 4.2 notes
- 16 Aug 2011 » It looks like HP's TouchPad is totally screwed
- 10 Aug 2011 » CentOS 6 minimal install CD - You may not want to bother with it
Pages
Projects
- Nikon Lens Buddy: Over 160 Nikon, Sigma, Tamron and Tokina lenses for Nikon cameras. Over 575 lens reviews. For iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
- Canon Lens Buddy: Over 150 Canon, Sigma, Tamron and Tokina lenses for Canon DSLR's. Over 735 lens reviews. For iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
- Mirrorless Lenses: Over 75 Micro Four Thirds, Nikon CX, Sony E, Samsung NX, Pentax Q and Four Thirds Mount lenses. Over 205 reviews. For iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
Copyright © Julian Yap 2011
