Stocks and Sectors

Dan Rayburn submits:

There’s been a lot of discussion on the blogsphere over the last few weeks due to Steve Jobs being quoted as saying one of the reasons Apple (AAPL) won’t support Flash video on the upcoming iPad was due to Flash being a "CPU Hog". Apple’s workaround to Flash video is to use HTML5 and that encouraged some to even suggest that HTML5 would kill off Flash, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

But rather than debate this topic, Jan Ozer, a technical writer for StreamingMedia.com and encoding guru, decided to spend the time to actually test Flash versus HTML5 and published all of his testing methodology and results on his blog. While you should check out his entire post to see all the details, here are some of the highlights of what he says.

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Erick Schonfeld submits:

No wonder Apple (AAPL) is suing HTC for patent infringement over its Android phones. In the three months between October and January, Android’s overall share of smartphone subscribers in the U.S. rose 4.3 points to 7.1 percent, according to mobile market share data released by comScore. Android showed the biggest single gain of any of the top five smartphone platforms. Apple’s share was virtually flat at 25.2 percent (up 0.3 percent), while RIM’s Blackberries saw a 1.7 percent gain to 43 percent.

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Jason Schwarz submits:

So here we are. Apple is at all time highs. The stock is up another $5 today. The Apple/QQQQ slingshot trade has generated huge returns. We’re waiting to sell until Apple moves against the market to the downside. But what is really going on here? This stock action certainly isn’t happening because mainstream
investors decided they wanted to buy in last Friday. This isn’t
investing 101. This is advanced hedge fund action so let’s make an
effort to understand things from their point of view.

This run is happening because of Norway. About a month ago, some third
party Apple reseller decided to put a link on their website to allow
customers to pre-order the iPad. They had to shut it down because the
demand was overwhelming. We all know that Steve Jobs worries just as
much about marketing as he does about the products themselves. At the
end of the day, nobody actually needs an iPhone or an iPad in the same
way that nobody needs an In-N-Out Burger or a Tito’s Taco. The
atmosphere of standing in line to get your favorite product is very
important.

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Michael Comeau submits:

The Apple (AAPL) vs. Adobe (ADBE) flash war has been heating up for quite some time now, but the rivalry may run a heck of a lot deeper than you think.

Adobe is best known for Photoshop, the defacto standard in photo and image editing software – and if my calculations are correct, Apple would like to kill it.

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Dan Rayburn submits:

Sony (SNE) just announced that 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros have all agreed to allow Sony to stream their movies over the PlayStation Network to users of the PS3. The service, which launched yesterday, is only available in the U.S. but will be expanded to consumers in U.K., France, Germany, and Spain.

The PlayStation Network is the first gaming console to offer high definition movies from all of the major movie studios and consumers will have the option to either buy or rent HD titles. There’s no word as to how many titles the studios will make available or how quickly they will be added, but Sony did list 18 new movie releases in the press release from all six studios that are available today.

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Trefis submits:

Apple (AAPL), which competes with Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) Kindle, is expected to launch iBookstore alongside its tablet PC, the iPad, in April 2010. iPad owners will be able to download books to their iPad through iBookstore, an application which will be available on Apple’s iTunes store. We estimate that iTunes and iPhones Apps constitute about 6% of the $267 Trefis price estimate for Apple’s stock.

We expect Apple to generate ebook revenue of $400 million in 2010 by selling around 48 million ebooks at an average price of $8. You can access our full forecasts and rationale for AAPL here:

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Sam Diaz submits:

During a presentation in front of the Federal Trade Commission yesterday, Google’s Chief Economist painted a picture of a newspaper industry whose demise was caused by a number of sources, not just the Internet.

That goes contrary to what newspaper executives have been saying for some time: that the Internet and, in particular, news aggregators like Google have been giving away content that newspapers used to be able to charge for – both in subscriptions and ad revenue. In a blog post, economist Hal Varian explained that his testimony is part of the FTC’s exploration of the future of the news industry.

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optionMONSTER submits:

By David Russell

Research In Motion (RIMM) ripped higher yesterday, and options traders are positioning for the gains to continue.

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optionMONSTER submits:

By Chris McKhann

Put volume dominated the option trading in Palm (PALM) yesterday as its shares fell to a new 52-week low.

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TechCrunch submits:

By Matt Burns

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