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Analysts upgrading AAPL

Susquehanna Financial’s Jeff Fidacaro: To $335 from $325.

Kaufman Bros.’ Shaw Wu: To $340 from $320.

Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster: To $348 from $340.

Caris and Co.’s Robert Cihra: To $325 from $310.

Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty: To $332 from $310.

International Strategy & Investment Group’s Abhey Lamba: initiate with $320.

Cowen’s Matthew Hoffman: initiate with $326.

At yesterday’s closing price Apple was trading at a 12-month trailing P/E multiple of 23 despite revenue growth that may exceed 50% and EPS growth that may exceed 70%.

Using the highest target of $348 price target as an example, it prices the shares at a P/E of less than 30 times the most recent 12-month earnings which does not take into account the contributions from the iPad. Continue reading “Analysts upgrading AAPL”

Unlocked iPhone 4 priced at €600

Factory unlocked iPhone 4 Sold by Apple in UK, Canada & France!! | All on the iPhone, iPod touch & iPad.

Unlocked iPhones are being made available at UK, Canadian and French Apple stores for the equivalent of $740, £500 and €600.

This will go some way toward making the iPhone available to a larger population, especially in developing countries.

Ballmer on leadership changes aka voluntary retirements

“And I think i’ve been quite public about the fact that I chose to make a set of leadership changes in the team of people building and executing on our Windows Phone software.

“We had to do a little cleanup, change things around,” Ballmer said

via AppleInsider | Microsoft CEO hopes to reenter phone market, disputes PC shift.

“I chose to make leadership changes” and Robbie Bach the ultimate leader of Windows Phone “retiring”.  Did he jump or was he pushed?

Time Inc. could not be more excited

We see the next flood of new portable color touchscreens headed to market in the next 18 months as a game changer. It will be the opportunity that content producers like Time Inc. have been waiting for to reestablish value for quality digital content. It’s argued that it will be impossible to get consumers to pay for digital content since they’ve grown up getting everything for free. We disagree.

The tablet restores something we lost when we went to the Web. Our readers can once again literally touch our content while still having that familiar “lean back” experience of a magazine. In real time, they can link in instead of linking out to the rest of the story on Time.com.

The advertising can be so good it can become content itself. It can help you evaluate products. And when you’ve made your decision it can help to find you a place to buy them.

As more and more hardware manufacturers come in with these e-readers there is just huge demand for our product, for our video product, for my print product—it’ll all be combined. We think very healthy business models will be coming out of it. We’ll be making more money in those businesses than we’ve been making with our traditional dot-coms.

People are paying. We know people will pay for it … it’s a business model that is just really very delicious.

via Time Inc. Is Really, Really Excited About Tablets « The Biz Blog – Forbes.com.

Using the politically correct terms “tablet” or “touchscreen” or “e-readers” to describe the iPad like it was PC for music companies to talk about “MP3 players” when referring to iPods.

The Walled Garden is only as good as its gardener

I’m assuming we’re supposed to compare this approach to the freer alternatives such as community gardens and city parks. Ignoring for a moment the fact that these gardens are also regulated by serious restrictions on what one can and can’t do, it still puzzles me that the “walled garden” is presented as an obviously undesirable structure.

Aren’t the benefits of a closed, carefully managed garden clearly visible? The experience is controlled, so it tells a story – one which may not emerge from a democratic, anything-goes process or do you think this sort of slow and deliberate story would emerge in a busy American city in the year 2010? Charging for admission means that the place can be maintained, improved, and marketed. There are downsides to this, of course — maybe the management makes boneheaded decisions now and then. Maybe you think that vine maple would look better a little to the left — maybe you’re even right.

via The Walled Garden – Neven Mrgans tumbl.

A walled garden is great as long as the gardener is an enlightened genius.  I can tell you that when operators tried to make walled internets for their handsets, the result was an atrocity.

It’s understandable why people recoil at the thought of a walled garden.  But they shouldn’t.  If it’s no good you can go somewhere else.

Katzenberg gets it

Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg sang Jobs praises for several minutes, before declaring: “His greatest accomplishment is going to be this tablet.”

“As Steve said last night, there is something indescribable about the connection,” Katzenberg said. “Our children are going to get educated on it. They are going to play on it. They are going to consume more media on that than any other (device).”

“The laptop is yesterday’s news,” he said.

via At D, all hail the iPad | Beyond Binary – CNET News.

Greatest accomplishment…to date.

Welcome to the new asymco.com

Asymco is now in its third home and fourth design.  After starting in February 2010 with iWeb hosted at me.com, moving a month later to WordPress.com, I’ve finally moved the blog to a proper hosting site (dreamhost) and merged the blog with asymco.com.

One reason I had to leave WordPress.com was that they required payment for the removal of ads from my pages.  Although I understand their business model, I felt that it’s more important that what users see is my content and only my content.

At the time of moving, the blog had 306 posts, 272 comments, 64 tags, 9 categories and nearly 40k hits.

Hopefully the transition will be painless to those who came to the old site.