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Ive due $30m stock windfall, may seek relocation back to UK
Other than Steve Jobs' brain, the mind most clearly at work in Apple's history of compelling and human-centric products belongs to Jonathan 'Jony' Ive, 44. After joining Apple in 1992, he rose to become the company's senior vice president of product design and has contributed his own clean, minimalist aesthetic to the wall of industrial design legends. With Tim Cook firmly established as the executive/operations lead on Apple's depth chart, anyone looking for the creative future of Apple has to have Ive at, or near, the top of the list. Today's Times of London (behind paywall) reports that Ive is about to reap the rewards of his service and dedication. Ive received a 'golden handcuffs' option grant in 2008 when Apple's stock was at a low ebb of around $100, allowing him to buy shares that -- having remained in Apple's employ -- he is now eligible to sell. Ive's profits from these options could approach $30 million, thanks to the dramatic runup in AAPL over the past two years. With his additional wealth -- his net worth after the options cash in is estimated at $128 million -- Ive and his wife Heather might want to move back to England with their twin sons. The Times suggests that Ive and the Apple board have "been at loggerheads" over Ive's desire to spend more time back home, but the Ives reportedly want to educate their children in England. Ive owns a manor house worth about $4 million in Somerset. The paper quotes an anonymous friend of the Ives on the topic of a commute from the UK to Cupertino: "Unfortunately he is just too valuable to Apple and they told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them ... It's a shame. We hardly ever see anyone at the house." Apple's spokesperson gave the Times a 'no comment' on the option grant and deemed the report of his desire to move to England "speculation." Photo of John Lasseter & Jonathan Ive from wikimedia commons (cc)
Nokia shareholders and unions fight back against Microkia
Nokia shareholders are not very happy right now with NOK taking a 25 percent hit since the announcement of the Microsoft marriage. Stephen Elop, Nokia's first foreign-born CEO, is taking heat on multiple fronts even as he prostrates himself to the media in hopes of getting his message out. Already, we've heard numerous conspiracies calling Elop a "trojan horse," sent by Steve Ballmer to sabotage Nokia from within. Conspiraloons are quick to point to records showing Elop holding a significant number of Microsoft shares -- a situation that Elop says is temporary (and outdated) having already sold a majority of his Microsoft position with plans to sell off the rest in favor of Nokia stock just as soon as he's free to do so under regulatory moratoriums meant to prevent insider trading. Nevertheless, Nokia will be facing at least two very real showdowns on its near-term horizon. First, will be a battle with the Finnish trade union Pro which is demanding €100,000 (in addition to severance payments) for every Nokia employee that loses their job under Elop's new strategy -- money the unions says will be used for reeducation. The union estimates that Nokia could cut as many as 25% (5,000 people) of Nokia's 20,000 workers located in Finland. The second major hurdle facing Elop, and the board of directors that appointed him, will come at Nokia's Annual General Meeting for shareholders. Already, a cabal of nine frustrated shareholders have been grabbing attention with its "Nokia Plan B" proposal to oust Stephen Elop and return Nokia to a MeeGo focus giving Symbian a five-year minimum reprieve. The group has since disbanded after its plan was rejected by institutional investors. Nevertheless, we don't expect Symbian / MeeGo fans and developers to give up without a fight, and we expect Helsinki Fair Centre's Amfi Hall to be center-ring when the event kicks off on May 3rd in Helsinki.
RBC ups its target price for AAPL to $425
It could be partly because of Apple's 71% year over year revenue growth reported in yesterday's first fiscal quarter 2011 earnings report, or it could be the result of the 17 million iPads shipped in 2010. But either way, Boy Genius Report just let us know that RBC Capital Markets has revised their Apple stock price estimate, raising it from last week's $395 to $425 today following the earnings report. They are expecting Apple's revenue for 2011 to come in at just a shade under $100 billion, and 2012 looks to come in at $108 billion. With the first quarter showing Apple selling 16.24 million iPhones, 7.33 million iPads, 4.13 million Macs and 19.45 million iPods while revenue rose to $26.7 billion, 2011 looks to be off to a solid start -- and yet another year that I think back to 2005, when I could have bought Apple stock at around $65.
Apple beats Street estimates; 16M iPhones, 7M iPads sold in Q1
This just in: Apple's financials for the first fiscal quarter ending December 31, 2010 are in, and Apple easily beat the Street. Revenue for the first quarter rose to $26.7 billion, with earnings per share at $6.43. Apple's gross margin, which is always quite high, was at 38.5%. Wall Street estimates were modeling $24.43 billion in revenue, and EPS of $5.40, with a gross profit margin of 27%. During the quarter, Apple sold 16.24 million iPhones, 7.33 million iPads, 4.13 million Macs and 19.45 million iPods. More news coming up shortly during our liveblog.
Apple stock rises to over $342 intra-day
On a day where the Dow Jones Industrial Average is down by US$38.20 and the Nasdaq composite is nearly flat, once again, AAPL is bucking the trend and going straight up. At this writing, Apple stock is at $342.05, (a new intra-day high) and bouncing. So far the stock is up $5.93 or 1.76 percent on moderate volume. I'm sure that this is at least partially due to the anticipated Verizon (VZW) announcement tomorrow. Surprisingly enough, Verizon is about flat for the day, trading at $36.01 or up only $0.08 so far. If the Verizon announcement goes as we all hope, I can see this continuing, but who knows? So if you've got 'em, hold 'em.
Motorola split official tomorrow, we hope you like red
Here we go. Perfectly timed with this week's festivities, Motorola's split, wherein one become two (a "reverse Spice Girls," if you will) is crossing the final t's and dotting the remaining i's. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that by Tuesday, the Motorola stock ticker (MOT) will stop trading, being replaced instead by Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. (MMI) and Motorola Solutions Inc. (MSI, no relation). The latter will focus on public-safety radios and handheld scanners while the former, with a bright new logo, will be the smartphone / set-top box-focused company that for all intents and purposes we mean when we simply write "Motorola" from here on out. It just rolls off the tongue better.
The Perfect Ten: Most controversial MMO stories of 2010
Well, this is it, folks. The end of the year. A time of reflection, of massive weight gain and of lists. Man, we like our lists, do we not? Fortunately, at Perfect Ten Industries, we've been excelling in lists for months now. Frankly, we're just getting warmed up! While 2010 may not have been much to write home about in terms of newly launched MMOs, there was more than enough controversy to keep the discussion brewing for months. MMOs are big business, and when every move you make is closely scrutinized by millions of gamers, there's no room to slip up unless you like forum hyenas pouncing all over you, snapping and snarling at your faulty flesh. So let's take a jaunt down our top 10 list of the most controversial stories of 2010 on Massively, keeping in mind that it was devilishly hard just to keep this list to 10 at all. What's a week without being riled up about pixels and polygons, after all?
Goldman Sachs resumes Apple coverage, targets AAPL at $430
Investing firm Goldman Sachs has decided to start covering Apple's stock profile, and that news sent the AAPL stock price up to $325.06 this morning, a nice boost from the day before. And that's not all -- not only did Goldman Sachs pull AAPL into its reporting fold, but it was about as bullish as you can get on a stock, saying through a spokesman that "we believe significant growth and profit opportunities for this platform still lie ahead." The company had been covering Apple previously, but when that special analyst left the firm, it took them a while to find a replacement. But it looks like they've found someone else they feel is qualified to make a prediction. The company predicts a $430 price target for AAPL, so if any of you happen to fall into some money over this coming holiday, you'll now know just where to put it. (Note: this is not actual financial advice, obviously, and there's no guarantee of success in the stock market.) Apple seems to be the success story that keeps on growing -- AAPL has hit a few all-time highs in 2010, and the forecast is pretty sunny all the way around.
Ubisoft stock experiences 'biggest drop' in over a decade
Yesterday's quarterly review did not win over many investors. Ubisoft's share prices fell 22 percent, which Bloomberg calls the company's biggest drop "since at least 1996." Apparently, people did not respond positively to the company losing millions of dollars. In fact, a number of analysts have downgraded the stock, such as Deutsche Bank's move from "buy" to "hold." The tumultuous fall of Ubisoft's stock price may provide some opportunity for other investors, though. Michael Pachter offered a more favorable analysis of the company's upcoming portfolio, telling Gamasutra that "Ubisoft has the potential to deliver much higher revenue and EPS going forward as it focuses on AAA-quality franchise games with a history of success (emphasis ours)." For better and for worse, that means Ubisoft needs to focus more on games like Assassin's Creed, and less on games like Beyond Good & Evil if it plans to woo investors back.
While store customers get Halloween patches, Apple's retail VP cleans up
File under "Awww": Children visiting the Bellevue, WA Apple Store on Halloween were treated to collectible instant-stick logo patches, says iPhone Savior. The patches ran out pretty quickly, but they were popular while they lasted. Patches are certainly nice keepsakes, but if you want to talk real holiday rewards, let's consider Apple's senior VP of retail Ron Johnson. Over the weekend, as noted by Apple 2.0, an SEC reporting form listed Johnson as selling a few stock options. To be precise, he sold 150,000 shares on Thursday, with an average selling price per share of $306.07 -- which, along with the strike price (the 'sticker price' on the shares, which are granted by Apple) of $11.06, means he cleared a cool $44 million in pretax profits. Johnson isn't a first-time seller, either; over the past three years his total profits from option sales come to about $200 million. Can't argue with the job he's doing, as Apple's retail stores continue going gangbusters quarter after quarter -- but maybe he needs a new nickname. RJ Nabisco, because he's making bread? Hmm. Needs work. image courtesy Interior Design Room
Some Apple execs exercise stock options
Several Apple executives took advantage of the fact that Apple stock hit an all-time high recently to cash out some stock options for extra christmas spending money. Apple hit $319 on October 18 and Bertrand Serlet, software engineering senior VP exercised 5,000 options at $318.50 while controller Betsy Rafael, operations SVP Jeffrey Williams and hardware SVP Bob Mansfield all sold at over $300. Mansfield in particular made a killing exercising 40,000 options that were priced at $36.54 for $308 each. That's a tidy profit of $10.844 million. Sometimes it's worth hanging on to those options for a while. If only all stock options were so valuable. Mansfield has overseen the development of a number of Apple computers in recent years including the slim new MacBook Air, the iMac and the regular MacBook. [Source: Fortune via Macsimum News]
Rumor: Final Fantasy XIV draws a $26 million ragequit
reddit_url = "http://massively.joystiq.com/2010/10/13/rumor-final-fantasy-xiv-draws-a-26-million-ragequit/"; reddit_target="gaming"; Tweet You may or may not be one of the people unhappy with Final Fantasy XIV in its current state. Certainly the game has both drawn its fair share of ire and praise, and it's hard to picture a launch with more strongly divided opinions. But even if you hate everything the game turned out to be, you have to admit that you can't make quite the spectacle that one unnamed Japanese player did -- a rage-fueled quit that involved selling off $26 million worth of Square-Enix stock as a parting gesture. Square-Enix experienced a definite dip in stock value on the 7th, dropping from 1800 yen a share to 1735 a share before recovering later in the day. According to Japanese sources, this was preceded by a rather angry dispatch from a shareholder explaining that he was so disgusted by Final Fantasy XIV he no longer wanted any of the stock. While there is some debate as to the chain of events and their veracity, it would certainly make this event the ultimate response to the question of "can I have your stuff?" [Thanks to Stormwaltz for the tip!]
Tim Cook rumors affect Apple, HP stock
Late yesterday morning, a rumor hit the the Internet suggesting that Apple's COO Tim Cook was going to leave the company to become HP's CEO. As a result, Apple's stock took a dip while HP's showed a sudden spike. In morning trading, Apple's stock fell nearly US$17 (or 5%), while HP's rose by more than $0.40 (over 1%). Clearly, investors like Tim Cook, and they saw his rumored departure as detrimental to Apple and a win for HP. Fortunately for Cupertino, it's not true. Cook quickly denied the rumor, saying that he "...loves Apple" and is not going to HP. In January of this year, there was a rumor that Cook would become the CEO of GM, which also turned out to be false. You'll remember that Cook took over as interim CEO during Steve Jobs' medical leave of absence in early 2009. The company successfully released several new products with Cook at the top, and many believe that he's in the running to eventually take over for Jobs. [Via The Mac Observer]
Samsung Fascinate arriving in Verizon stores, early September launch seems a given
Lest all the paper-based leaks weren't sufficient evidence for you, we've now got ourselves an insider at one of Verizon's brick-and-mortar outlets informing us that Fascinate launch kits are being distributed. VZW is said to be training up its staff (presumably that involves more than just pointing out where the above puzzle piece should go) and the whole thing's looking "right on track" for the mooted early September launch. So that basically gives us about a week's time to kill with 21:9 HDTVs, 3D prototypes, slinky tablets, and whatever else we can find at IFA. We might just be able to manage it.
Report: EA selling a 15% stake in Ubisoft
EA has been sitting on a good chunk of Ubisoft stock for a few years now. It looks like the company is planning to unload some of those shares (perhaps a result of some recent losses?). Bloomberg reports that EA is preparing to offload a 15% stake in Ubisoft -- last we heard, EA was holding onto nearly 25% of voting shares in the French publisher. The company currently holds the single largest stake in Ubisoft shares, Bloomberg says. UBS AG, a financial services firm apparently brokering the sale, is currently placing about 14 million shares at a price of 6.48 Euros per share, according to the terms laid out to Bloomberg. Ubisoft's shares fell 3.2 percent in Paris yesterday, to a price of 6.97 Euros -- as of right now, shares are currently up, at 7.09. We've contacted EA for confirmation and will let you know what we hear back. [Update: We've updated the post for accuracy.]
No pre-order? AT&T won't have an iPhone 4 for you until June 29
The thinking all along was that there'd be an allocation of unreserved iPhone 4s in AT&T stores this Thursday for customers who didn't bother to (or couldn't) pre-order the phone ahead of time, but not so much. Turns out that the extra stock won't be arriving until June 29, at which point it'll be available on a first-come, first-serve basis (read: every man, woman, and child for themselves) both in stores and online. Of course, this is strictly an AT&T announcement -- Apple Stores and Best Buys are still possibilities -- but basically, there's no point in lining up on the 24th at your local AT&T shop unless you've got confirmation that a reserved phone is available for you. Follow the break for AT&T's full statement.
Best Buy's iPhone 4 inventory plans revealed by another purported leak
Seriously, can't we keep any mystery in our lives anymore? After we saw what's purported to be Best Buy's "playbook" for the iPhone 4 debut yesterday, today we're being treated to an inventory list revealing the stock ordered up from Apple for the big retailer's launch of the new handset. Black 16GB variants of the iPhone 4 dominate, with up to 70 per store, but the leak also includes smaller orders for the white 32GB units as well. None of these are in stock yet, mind you, and that playbook did serve up some confusing messages as to whether Best Buy will have any unreserved iPhones to sell at all on launch day. Still, at least you'll now have a better idea of which locations stand the best chance of dishing out some of that Apple pie you crave so much.
Ford SYNC owners to get stock quotes, horoscopes and movie listings shouted at them
Hooray for voice command systems... that no one uses. Okay, so maybe someone uses 'em, but until voice recognition software improves drastically and / or our own memory banks swell dramatically, we still see most motorists reaching for buttons, toggles and wheels when it comes time to interact with their vehicle. That said, existing Ford owners with SYNC'd rides can soon do a lot more talking with their system thanks to a few complimentary updates hitting the Traffic, Directions & Information (TDI) sector. The cloud-based service will allow drivers to demand that a given stock quote, horoscope, movie time or travel inquiry be sorted and shouted, and just in case you glossed that last sentence over, we're going to reiterate once more that your SYNC system will now read back your horoscope. And guess what? These updates should be taking effect immediately, so feel free to make a mad dash for your garage and try 'er out.
ARM CEO dampens talk of Apple acquisition, says 'nobody has to buy the company'
Apple buying ARM may not seem like the likeliest of rumors, but talk of an acquisition has been enough to send ARM shares to their highest point since 2002, which has now prompted ARM CEO Warren East to comment on the matter. While he's obviously pleased to see his company's stock doing so well, East says that "common sense tells us that our standard business model is an excellent way for technology companies to gain access to our technology," adding that, "nobody has to buy the company." Of course, saying that nobody has to buy the company doesn't exactly rule out the possibility of an acquisition -- Apple or otherwise -- and, last we checked, ARM's stock was still edging up higher into positive territory, so dampening talk doesn't seem to be dampening investors' interest just yet.
Cigars all around: AAPL catches MSFT on S&P 500
[This is officially the most times I have had to change a headline. –MR.] Remember "I would shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders" and "the future of Apple looks like Silicon Graphics"? How about "doomed to fail?" Remember "The Mac market is ending?" Good times, good times. You've come a long way, baby. VentureBeat notes that as of today's market close, Apple's total market valuation position on the S&P 500 index passed Microsoft's. Apple is now #2 on the US list after ExxonMobil. Update: Looking at the valuations, as of the close Apple is still behind by quite a bit. Not sure where VB's numbers are coming from, but we'll find out. Update 2: Looks like MarketWatch ran incorrect confusing numbers at the close today, which is where the erroneous info came from. Apologies to all. Update 3: Trust the WSJ to clarify matters. While Microsoft still has a larger full market value than Apple, the Standard & Poor's index is "float adjusted market capitalization weighted" (gesundheit!), meaning that it is tracking the smaller number of shares actually available for public purchase, as opposed to the larger number tied up in instruments such as employee options. Based on that measurement, Apple has in fact pulled ahead of Microsoft, according to S&P's Howard Silverblatt: "AAPL has an index market value of $241,534 million and MSFT has a market value of $239,515 million – AAPL is #2." [Thanks Tim!] Disclaimer: I have a small, long-term position in AAPL. [via Techmeme]
