by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Seagate CEO Bill Watkins is feeling pretty good about the hard disk market. His Asian competitors–mostly Toshiba, Fujitsu and Samsung–are in bad shape, he says, and may have to work together in order to survive. External drive sales are doing well, but the solid-state drive market isn’t gaining the traction that was predicted. Could end up being good news for Seagate.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
After six months of negotiation, Samsung has withdrawn its bid to acquire SanDisk at $26 a share. Samsung CEO Yoon Woon Lee expressed his “disappointment” and cited multiple reasons why the deal wouldn’t work–including a surprise announcement by SanDisk of a quarter-billion dollar operating loss. SanDisk, for its part, replied that it never got a reply to a letter rejecting Samsung’s bid as too low at $26 a share. All sound familiar?
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
In case you happen to think that Toshiba is going to outbid Samsung for SanDisk (SNDK), you ought to take note of the company’s currently grim view of the NAND flash memory market.
In fact, as Bloomberg reports, Toshiba today cut its full-year net income forecast for the March 31, 2009, fiscal year by 46 percent to 70 billion yen, which would be a four-year low.
by Therese Poletti, Senior Columnist, MarketWatch, Tech Tales
Samsung Electronics Corp. and SanDisk Corp. can both learn some useful lessons from other recent takeover battles in the technology sector, particularly the failed merger talks between Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc.
Defying skeptics who had warned that a deal would face significant hurdles, Samsung this afternoon announced that it has offered to buy SanDisk for $26 a share in cash.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
While SanDisk (SNDK) shares continue to trade sharply higher after Samsung said it is considering making a bid for the company, some analysts are cautioning that the notion of merging the two companies is far from a sure thing, and would involve substantial complications.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Verizon Wireless has aggressively cut retail prices on several models of the Research In Motion Blackberry as well as smartphones from LG and Samsung, according to research by Morgan Keegan’s Tavis McCourt.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
The global mobile handset market grew 15 percent in the second quarter to 297 million units, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.
Nokia (NOK) continued to dominate the market, with a 41.1-percent share, up from 40.9 percent in the first quarter, shipping 122 million phones.
The telecom company’s shares are up today for the fourth session in a row; in that period the stock has gained $1.21, or 15.8%, to $8.92. (That includes a gain of 8 cents today.) The move has pushed up Sprint’s market cap by $3.5 billion. Just why the stock is rallying is not entirely clear.
by Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron's, Tech Trader Daily
Motorola (MOT) shares continue to sink ever deeper into the mire.
The stock is getting whacked today, perhaps in part from some bearish commentary from the contract manufacturer Foxconn. According to Bloomberg, Foxconn Chairman Samuel Chin made some bearish comments following his company’s annual meeting today in Hong Kong.
Chin said that Motorola, Foxconn’s biggest customer in [...]
Oh sure, she looks friendly enough. But don’t let her matronly, argyle looks fool you. A retired Columbia University Professor, Gertrude Neumark Rothschild, is looking to extract some cold, hard cash from a who’s who of consumer electronics giants. Otherwise, they can forget about importing their goods into the U.S. Rothschild’s complaint, filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission on Feb. 20, claims that some 30 companies are violating a patent she owns for light-emitting and laser diodes. Today, the ITC has agreed to investigate the matter. It’s worth noting that Rothschild has already successfully tested the legislative waters with lawsuits against Philips and others–the Philips matter was settled out of court earlier this month.
Very often, in the excitement accompanying a new technology, there is some sort of “elephant in the room” that everyone convinces themselves is not really there. In the heady, early days of the World Wide Web, for example, investors in particular seemed to ignore the need for profit in the business models of so many [...]
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