GOOG Bright Star In A Down Market Stocks are mixed this morning as investors continue to worry about European debt issues. Shares of GOOG are bucking the trend, coming back from Friday's sell-off on the downgrade by
Morgan Stanley. Upcoming catalysts include second calendar quarter results to be released
Thursday, July 14 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Time; continued
Android momentum in the smartphone and tablet markets; regaining ground in China; updated software, adoption and media partners for
Google TV; the roll-out of
Google Music; and progress in other newer initiatives (Google+, location-based services, mapping, gaming, Chromebooks, etc.). The stock trades at approximately
12x Enterprise Value / EBIT, inexpensive relative to peers and historical trading levels.
Android Users Prefer The iPad (Boy Genius Report) Apple's market-leading
iOS tablet isn't just the slate of choice for
Apple fan boys. According to Canaccord Genuity analysts,
Android smartphone users are purchasing the
iPad over Android alternatives like the
Samsung Galaxy and
Motorola XOOM. Early iPad adoption among Android users could pose a problem for Android-based competitors hitting the market (
Amazon).
Read » Samsung Loses Its CTO Responsible For The Company's Android Dominance (TechCrunch) Speaking of
Samsung, Omar Khan, the Samsung CTO who was responsible for the rise of the
Galaxy Tab and other Android-powered mobile devices, is moving to
Citibank to handle that company's global digital banking initiatives (
American Express). He is arguably behind Samsung's dominance in Android over the past eighteen months. The comes as a blow to Samsung, which has been facing not only competition from other Android-adopting OEMs like
HTC, but an ongoing mobile tech patent infringement lawsuit from
Apple.
Read » Apple Goes After HTC Again On Patent Infringement (BGR) Like it's doing with Samsung, Apple filed a new patent complaint with the International Trade Commission looking to block the sale of several Android-based HTC devices it claims infringe on Apple patents. The complaint is the second Apple has lodged against the phone maker in the past 16 months. A judge is scheduled to issue a decision in that case on Aug. 5.
Read » Google Has Its Own eReader (Various via techDygest) Back in January, iRiver announced the iRiver Story HD, a promising sounding device that had boasts about being the the world's highest resolution 6-inch eBook reader. The company just launched the first eReader to officially support the Google eBooks platform. Paid titles are also supported through the
Google Books storefront, which competes with virtual shelves from Apple,
Sony,
Amazon,
Kobo and Barnes & Noble.
The hardware looks suspiciously like the first Kindle.
Read » Google+ Not Just Going After Facebook (Tristan Louis) After several fizzled attempts at social networking (from Buzz to Wave) Google is getting it more right than wrong this time. Google+ is not even two weeks old yet and is already becoming a social networking favorite among early adopters. Estimates for the
Google+ user base run as high as 10 million already.
But what's is missing from the commentary? Google does not seem to support those core components of the platform, which makes one wonder if
Facebook really is the target.
Read » Google Acquires Digital Loyalties Startup (TechCrunch) Startup Punchd has been acquired by Google. The company is still very young but it's a smart move. Punchd lets customers accrue digital versions of buy-10-get-1-free cards which would tie in well with Google's payment products, like
Google Wallet. On the flip side, the company enables small businesses to run loyalty programs on smartphones.
Read » Daily Trader: Since Google+, Stock Has Added Much Market Cap (TechCrunch) How much is social worth to Google? Investors added $20 billion to Google's market cap the first week after the launch of Google on June 28. A Morgan Stanley downgraded on Friday brought the total down to $15.8 billion over concerns the search giant could capitalize on new products such as Google.
Read » 
