by Jason Wilk on February 2, 2009
- Well, it’s no mystery now, there is an iPhone 2 in the wild somewhere, and two people are walking around with it. Since Apple was recently granted the patent for everything the iPhone is capable of, many are curious if video conferencing and video recording will be included in the next phone. In several areas throughout the document as seen below, there are many mentions of using video. Everything else seen in the patent is already in use on the phone.
“The device supports a variety of applications, such as one or more of the following: a telephone application, a video conferencing application, an e-mail application, an instant messaging application, a blogging application, a photo management application, a digital camera application, a digital video camera application, a Web browsing application, a digital music player application, and/or a digital video player application.”
“In some embodiments, the functions may include telephoning, video conferencing, e-mailing, instant messaging, blogging, digital photographing, digital videoing, Web browsing, digital music playing, and/or digital video playing. Instructions for performing these functions may be included in a computer-readable storage medium or other computer program product configured for execution by one or more processors.”
“In some embodiments, an optical sensor is located on the back of the device, opposite the touch screen display on the front of the device, so that the touch screen display may be used as a viewfinder for either still and/or video image acquisition. In some embodiments, an optical sensor is located on the front of the device so that the user’s image may be obtained for videoconferencing while the user views the other video conference participants on the touch screen display. In some embodiments, the position of the optical sensor can be changed by the user (e.g., by rotating the lens and the sensor in the device housing) so that a single optical sensor may be used along with the touch screen display for both video conferencing and still and/or video image acquisition.”
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by Jason Wilk on January 29, 2009
- Amazon.com is scheduled to release fourth-quarter 2008 earnings results today in a conference call at 5:00 PM ET. You can catch the live webcast here.
- Amazon supposedly had the best holiday season ever, beating out many of the major retailers. They were selling 72.9 items per second during the holiday shopping season. Thomson Reuters expect Amazon to report a profit of $0.39 per share, compared to $0.48 per share in the same period of the previous year. Although the holiday sales season was a monster hit for Amazon, revenue for the quarter is expected to total $6.4 billion, down 13.5% from a year ago.
- As BloggingStocks points out, Amazon is notorious for blowing earnings reports out of the water, beating some quarterly reports by as much as 43%. As I have said before, Amazon is fine in the down economy. It comes down to a simple equation to define their success: There is a much greater increase in online shopping adoption compared to the decrease in consumer spending this year. Some investors realize this. The share price has risen more than 30% from its 52-week low back in November. It is still down 33% from a year ago, but expect things to continue trending upward for the online retail giant. Keep in mind, the Kindle 2 hasn’t even come out yet.
Earnings Are Out:
Highlights:
- Operating cash flow was $1.70 billion in 2008, compared with $1.41 billion in 2007.
- Free cash flow increased 16% to $1.36 billion in 2008, compared with $1.18 billion in 2007.
- Common shares outstanding plus shares underlying stock-based awards outstanding totaled 446 million on December 31, 2008, compared with 435 million a year ago.
- Net sales increased 18% to $6.70 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $5.67 billion in fourth quarter 2007.
- Operating income was $272 million in the fourth quarter, compared with $271 million in fourth quarter 2007.
- Net income increased 9% to $225 million in the fourth quarter, or $0.52 per diluted share, compared with net income of $207 million, or $0.48 per diluted share, in fourth quarter 2007.
by Jason Wilk on January 27, 2009
- Amazon is expected to announce the new Kindle 2 @ their February 9th press conference. The event will be at the Morgan Library & Museum. It is described as being what the iPod Touch was to the original 1st gen iPod.
by David Heyerman on January 21, 2009
- $36 Billion in assets is not necessarily a bad thing to have going for you during a recessionary economy. So what exactly is PG&E going to do with their cash? CEO of the California utility, Peter Darbee announced at this week’s Fortune Green conference that the giant is looking into investing in/buying solar power plants.
- This is quite different than usual as we’ve seen utilities invest in wind in the past, but not solar. PG&E does have some hangups to deal with along the way, however.
- The Investment Tax Credit (ITC) grants a 30% tax credit to solar investments and has helped startups immensely in reducing costs to build their facilities. Only problem is the ITC doesn’t extend to utilities. Darbee let the audience know that he’s going out of his way to try and get the ITC modified to include utilities. He also noted than if the regulation does not get changed, they’ll simply establish a subsidiary to PG&E that will qualify for the credit…..very monopolistic of you PG&E…..considering it’s for solar, I’ll let it slide.
- We’ve already heard the CEO of Ausra talking about utilities stepping in and buying plants. Even though the solar sector is somewhat ironic right now, which companies do you think PG&E will be looking at?
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