AAPL Off With The Markets
Stocks are sinking after a jarringly weak report on employment worsened fears that the economic recovery is completely losing steam. Shares of AAPL are off as well despite excitement and news flow regarding next week's developers conference. Upcoming catalysts include the WWDC starting Monday;
iPad 2 sales updates; the next
iPhone launch this summer / fall; smartphone push into China and emerging markets;
iTunes and other cloud initiatives (coming next week); the continued evolution and adoption of
Apple TV; and new platforms such as video, books / publishing and social (
Ping). Shares of
Apple trade at
11x Enterprise Value / Trailing Twelve Months Free Cash Flow (incl. long-term marketable securities).
Apple Executives Are Giddy, Says Goldman Analyst (Business Insider) According to
Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope, Apple executives are quite excited. Apple COO Tim Cook suggested during a recent meeting that the tablet market could eclipse the PC market over the next several years. Hardly surprising; not only would you expect Apple executives to be excited about Apple products, but the iOS platform has been rocketing up anyway. Shope estimates that Apple will sell 8.1 million iPads in the June quarter, or a 72% year-over-year increase.
Read » iPad Plant Reopens Two Weeks After Explosion
(The Wall Street Journal) Foxconn's Apple iPad-manufacturing Chengdu plant, which shut down after a deadly explosion on May 20, is back in business. So much for analysts' negative outlook of being shut down for north of a month (with several cutting expectations). The explosion was apparently caused by combustible dust used in polishing workshops. The reopening of production activities at this plant should relieve concerns of financial analysts, many of who anticipated a shortfall of iPad 2 units as a result of the incident.
Read more at Business Insider.
Read » Walt Disney Not Part Of iCloud Next Week, Despite Jobs Board Seat
(The Wall Street Journal) Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company isn't part of the launch of Apple's iCloud next week, but sees a future for entertainment in the cloud. It is "very real, very apparent very soon." He implied Disney was reexamining its options and wouldn't necessarily focus on its own concept for media storage. Despite Apple's Steve Jobs sitting on Disney's board of directors, the studio didn't play favorites and give iTunes special access.
Read » iCloud Details: Free To Start, Then $25 Per Year, All Major Music Labels On Board (The Los Angeles Times) Another day and another rumor about iCloud ahead of the WWDC next week. Reports are surfacing that Apple will initially offer iCloud services for free to users who buy music from the iTunes Store and later expects to charge a subscription fee of $25 per year after the trial period. The company might also sell ads to be served on iCloud, and users will (still) be able to stream their music to any computer with a Web browser or an iOS device. Apple has also reportedly signed a cloud music deal with Universal, giving it deals with all four of the major labels. Take that
Amazon and
Google!
Read more at Business Insider.
Read » iOS Rumors (Or Wishful Thinking) Ahead Of Next Week (Cult Of Mac) What people are hearing:
- Twitter integration
- Voice recognition
- Google Maps improvements
- No more iPhone 3GS support
- New notification system and widgets
Apple will be announcing all the new features of iOS5 next week at the WWDC.
Read » Daily Trader: Long AT&T, Short Verizon Based On iPhone Rumors (Barron's) Hudson Square Research‘s Todd Rethemeier thinks that a fifth-generation iPhone will only run on fourth-generation cellular networks that are based on 3G HSPA radio technology rather than the latest LTE technology. And so what does he do? He cuts
Verizon to a Sell and upgrades
AT&T to a Buy. Bold. For AT&T iPhone 5 users, this could mean download speeds of 5-10 Mbps, compared to less than 1 Mbps for a Verizon user.
Read » 
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