CNN Money
Latest
Tim Cook is CNN Money's CEO of the Year for 2014
CNN Money has named Apple's Tim Cook as the best CEO of 2014. Citing a rise in the value of the company's stock by 40 percent during the year, a share price near an all-time high, and very successful launches of both the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus and Apple Pay, Cook beat out BlackBerry's John Chen, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, and GM's Mary Barra - among others - for the prestigious spot on the list. The site had this to say about Cook: Cook has arguably the toughest CEO job in America. He's had to convince skeptics that Apple can still innovate after the death of Steve Jobs. He's proven all the naysayers wrong. Cook was also recently lauded by the Financial Times as "Person of the Year", praising him for leading the company through the release of Apple Pay and the impending launch of Apple Watch, as well as for putting principles (renewable energy, human rights, and accessibility to name a few) before profits.
iPhone revenue greater than all of Microsoft's
The next iPhone is expected to launch next week and CNN Money decided it was a good time to run a list of superlatives related to the financial impact of Apple's smartphone. To start out with, Apple's iPhone business unit could be a Fortune 50 company on its own. That business unit is already bigger than all of Microsoft in terms of revenue. From June 2011 until June 2012, the iPhone generated $74.3 billion in revenue for Apple. By comparison, all of Microsoft's business units together generated $73 billion in revenue. CNN Money notes that if you take all of the revenue that Apple generates from the iPad, various iPod models, iTunes, the Mac and the 30 percent take of all apps sold, it still doesn't add up to the revenue stream from the iPhone. A year-by-year comparison of the impact of the iPhone to Apple's bottom line shows that in 2008 -- one year after the first iPhone was launched -- the device accounted for 9 percent of Apple's total revenue; now that figure is 53 percent. Of course, there's always the question of what "worth" means, as Forbes pointed out a few weeks ago. In this case, we're talking about sales, and that's a pretty fluid thing. Nokia's Lumia 920 could be a huge hit, for example, and the iPhone is no longer the "number one" smartphone according to one survey. Way back in Februrary Ed Bott did a breakdown of how Apple, Google and Microsoft make their money. Of course the iPhone was a major component of Apple's business, versus Microsoft's more distributed revenue streams, and Google's lopsided revenue stream (advertising). As MG Siegler points out, even if you took away the iPhone from Apple's chart, the remainder is still bigger than Microsoft's total business. That's significant. Apple is always good at showing off the numbers at its events, so we can count on even more amazing financial statistics next week.
CNN Money: New York Times gets Tim Cook's earnings wrong
The New York Times ran a report over the weekend that claimed Tim Cook was a million-dollar-a-day CEO. Acording to a follow-up report from CNN Money, that estimate is way off. The CNN report claims the NYT was correct with the CEO's yearly salary of US$900,000, but made a mistake when it included the one million shares of Apple stock that Cook was granted in 2011. These shares won't vest for ten years, which means Cook won't see any of that money until 2021. CNN Money took the value of those shares ($376.2 million on the day they were granted) and calculated that Cook would get $103,000 a day over the ten-year period. When you combine the stock money with Cook's salary, the resulting figure is not even close to the $1 million the NYT claims.
Harmonix founders detail the company's failure-ridden road to success
Believe it or not, things weren't always going so well for Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchise developers Harmonix. Starting out in 1995 as a "music tech" company, founders Alex Rigopulos and Eran Egozy took four years of "misstarts and product concepts that never made it anywhere" before they had any success. Talking to CNN Money, the two detail five years of strange, misguided, or ill-informed ideas that eventually somehow lead to The Beatles: Rock Band.First up: "The Axe," something that Rigopulos describes as "a joystick music improvisation system." In so many words, you moved the joystick around and various sounds were produced. Unsurprisingly, only 300 were sold -- "a horrendous failure that led to a painful lesson," Rigopulos says. "You can't really build a business on an entertainment experience that only keeps people entertained for 15 minutes." Second, the two tried breaking into the (at the time) $10 billion Japanese karaoke market ... and met with resounding failure once again. Luckily for us, lessons learned overseas came back with the duo and Harmonix became a game company. Rigopulos and Egozy quickly changed their company's focus from "music tech" to "gaming," creating Frequency and Amplitude soon after. Though the games didn't directly lead to the financial success achieved later with Guitar Hero and Rock Band (GH didn't get off the ground until RedOctane approached Harmonix in the early oughts), both helped the now major developer to get a foot in the door.
Nintendo and CNN Money's best gifts for gamers
CNN Money's Chris Morris usually has interesting input on the gaming market, but with his Ten Best Gifts for Gamers, he seems to have missed the mark.Two titles for the DS appear on the list -- Brain Age and New Super Mario Bros. Great games? Indeed, and were this a list of suggested gifts for non-gamers or those new to the hobby, we would happily applaud. But for established gamers? Who hasn't played these games? How many of us still own them? We thought the whole idea behind gift-giving was to find something new, but maybe we've been doing it wrong all these years.Any DS games on your personal wishlists? Or are you the type who can't stand waiting and just buys them on your own?
Sneak attack launch quite possible, says CNN Money
Chris Morris' famed "Game Over" column over at CNN Money depicts a tantalizing future...well, a closer one, anyway. Morris states that industry insiders and other various information dealers, lurking in the dark alleys of Kyoto, all point to an early Wii launch in October...or possibly even late September. The biggest shred of proof? "Indeed, the company appears to be already manufacturing final retail units of the Wii, according to a June 21st analyst's note from P.J. McNealy of American Technology Research."If true, this is good news indeed. Not only would allow the Wii this possibly early launch, but supply will certainly be more prolific then the generally bungled Xbox 360 launch. In addition, it would allow Nintendo a heck of a jump start on rival-who-isn't-really-a-rival-but-who-are-you-trying-to-kid Sony, launching in the US on November 17th. Still, can we really expect this? Many assume that Nintendo is going to release final launch information at the Tokyo Game Show, which takes place from September 22nd-24th. Such a short window may not be enough time to build a large marketing campaign and momentum going into the launch. Take it with a grain of salt.[Thanks, Eric!]
And the award for 46th most important business personality goes to... Mike Morhaime!
CNN Money has named Mike Morhaime, the CEO of Blizzard Entertainment, as the 46th most important person in a list of 50 personalities that represent Business 2.0. We'll leave out our annoyances with the list as a whole (c'mon, naming "consumer as creator" as #1? Cop out!) so instead we'll use Mike's naming as an opportunity to analyze the importance of Blizzard's crowning achievement, World of Warcraft, to the World of Business.The totality of CNN's tribute to Mike is dedicated to the wild popularity of WoW. The article claims that WoW is more than "just another video game", citing the uniqueness of the game's popularity (6.5 million users and climbing), profitability (WoW brought in $700 million last year) and peripherals (a thriving out-of-game market for virtual goods worth around $200 million) as factors that make Mike a uniquely influential business leader.Big business' attraction to World of Warcraft's is no doubt due to the game's domination of MMO marketshare -- when you own 50% of a subscription based market you're bound to draw the attention of the suits -- so we wouldn't be surprised if WoW isn't the company's last MMO, despite earlier denials by a Blizzard staffer. Still, we feel sorry for Mike. On one side he's got the money crazy suits asking for more, MORE MMOs, and on the other he's got millions of StarCraft, Diablo and WarCraft fans screaming for sequels to their beloved franchise. He deserves an award just for being able to maintain that smug smile!
Infinium founder charged with using "impending Phantom launch" to inflate and sell stock
Timothy Roberts, the founder and former CEO of Infinium Labs, the company that promised us the Phantom (which came in at second on Wired's list of vaporware products of '06), has been accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission of artificially inflating stock and selling it on at a $422,500 profit. The SEC alleges that Roberts hired a promoter to send junk faxes to investors citing the Phantom's imminent launch, when in fact the console had postponed the launch due to insufficient funds. According to the SEC, Roberts then sold 1.3 million shares from the company -- without any disclosure -- and secretly paid the promoter he had hired. These two actions, unfortunately for Roberts, are against the law: the SEC has asked a court to force Roberts to surrender the cash, pay a penalty and to prohibit him from ever becoming a CEO again.Meanwhile, the company -- sans Roberts -- has blown through $63 million without producing the Phantom and has lost another CEO yet still claims to be relevant and capable of launching The Phantom along with a useless lap-based keyboard accessory. Someone put the company out of its misery. Pretty please?[Thanks, Neal]
