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Weekend Update, 12/12/08 [Digital Daily] — In this week ramping up to the holidays, good cheer–unsurprisingly–was hard to find. 2008 may well be remembered as the year the econalypse stole Christmas. Yahoo (YHOO) was bereft of cheer, for sure. BoomTown covered its long-dreaded layoffs and published Jerry Yang’s complete memo to Yahoo staff about the painful process, which began on Wednesday. Ex-Yahoos from all corners of the company declared their preferences (and vented) to BoomTown about the as-yet fruitless search for a CEO to replace Yang, who laid himself off last month. But wait–Digital Daily pointed out a singular moment of misplaced cheer–akin to fiddling... [Tags: aapl, boomtown, fairchild, fruitless search, good cheer]

Apple's Holiday Pitch For The iPhone: We Have Great Games (AAPL) — Nintendo's (NTDOY) DS may be beating Sony's (SNE) PSP in the portable game console fight, but there's a new kid in town: Apple (AAPL), which is increasingly touting its iPhone and iPod touch as a place to play games. At a San Jose "iPhone tech talk" event, Engadget heard Apple's John Geleynse call the iPhone a "gaming console," and reports Apple is planning a series of events with game publisher Electronic Arts (ERTS) to talk up the iPhone's capability for games. And then there's this new Web ad for the iPod touch in the works, riffing off its TV commercials,... [Tags: aapl, e reader, electronic arts, engadget, free apps]

Microsoft To Debut "Zune Phone" At CES? (MSFT) — We've all seen the rumors of that Microsoft (MSFT) would build a "Zune phone" before, but the latest version has a date and a place: Jan. 7, during Steve Ballmer's keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Barron's: Trip Chowdhry, of Global Equities Research, today asserts that the company will unveil a new device combining the features of the company's Zune music player and its Danger Sidekick handhelds, combined with what he describes as 'some motion enhancement features' using an accelerometer, like the Apple (AAPL) iPhone. The timeframe is in line with a previous report from CNBC... [Tags: aapl, accelerometer, barron, cnbc, consumer electronics show]

Apple’s Munich opening is mobbed — in fullscreen panorama — Here’s something you don’t see very often. Apple (AAPL) opened its flagshop Munich retail outlet — the first Apple Store in Germany — at 10 a.m. Saturday morning. A huge crowd showed up, and somebody captured the scene in QTVR — extreme panorama QuickTime virtual reality. To experience it, click on the image above — or go to this webpage — and then drag your mouse around to get a feel of what it was like to be there. (The sound loop of the crowd could drives you nuts; there’s a speaker button on the bottom of the screen that... [Tags: aapl, apple employees, apple store, classic glass, first apple]

Weezer, Moby, Daft Punk Hit The iPhone App Store Via 'Tap Tap' Games (AAPL) — More big music stars are making it onto Apple's (AAPL) iPhone app store today via two new editions of "Tap Tap Revenge," the Guitar Hero-for-the-iPhone game by Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tapulous. "Christmas With Weezer" includes six Weezer Christmas songs recorded exclusively for the game, and two hits off their latest album. "Tap Tap Dance" includes ten songs from artists including Moby, Daft Punk, and The Chemical Brothers. It's built from scratch and features more advanced, artist-custom graphics than the free version of "Tap Tap Revenge." Both new games cost $4.99. Apple gets 30%, or about $1.50. Tapulous shares the remaining... [Tags: aapl, bart decrem, chemical brothers, christmas songs, custom graphics]

Year-end review: Apple’s best of 2008 — “30 Rock,” “The Wire” and “Battlestar Galactica” are among the TV shows honored in iTunes 2008, Apple’s (AAPL) comprehensive — and surprisingly opinionated — year-end review. Available through what used to be called the iTunes Music Store, iTunes 2008 covers all the media the online venue now serves up: movies, TV, audiobooks, podcasts, iPhone apps and music in genres ranging from Alternative to World. Most categories are represented by software-generated lists of top sellers — often a good way to find out what your kids are listening to or what you might be missing. The lists of free and paid... [Tags: aapl, battlestar galactica, blogosphere, bryan cranston, center stage]

Apple’s Reduced iPhone Production Hurts Infineon — Buried in the long, confessional press release from Infineon (IFX) about its woeful outlook is a tidbit that appears to confirm recent reports that Apple (AAPL) has slowed production of the iPhone. In the release, Infineon reports that “revenues in the Wireless Solutions segment” in the December quarter “are anticipated to be strongly negatively impacted by the weakening of global demand and, in addition, by a reduction in demand at one specific customer.” (emphasis added.) Infineon provides Apple with the HSDPA wireless data chip used in the iPhone. Analysts note that in the September quarter, Infineon actually outperformed expectations due... [Tags: aapl, channel inventory, citigroup, craig berger, data chip]

RIM Blows Q3, But 'Exceptional' Response To New BlackBerries (RIMM) — Good news and bad news from BlackBerry maker Research In Motion: Way after hours at 9:35 p.m., the company announced that it blew its third quarter. But RIM (RIMM) says "exceptional" response to its new gadgets led to record subscriber growth at the end of the quarter. RIM says Q3 sales will fall between $2.75-$2.78 billion, below consensus of $2.96 billion and about 9% below its forecasted range of $2.95-$3.10 billion. RIM says it added 2.6 million net new subscribers during the quarter, 10% below its forecast of 2.9 million. Why? Later than anticipated product launches, the lousy economy, and... [Tags: aapl, blackberries, company announced that, company posts, currency trends]

Apple’s iPhone is the star in a series of charts published Tuesday by Needham & Co. analyst Charles Wolf. The first is a quarter-by-quarter snapshot of the worldwide smartphone market that shows a sharp uptick in Apple’s (AAPL) share set against the downward drift of its major competitors — Nokia’s (NOK) Symbian, RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Mobile. The second chart shows the same data without Symbian — which lets you zero in on the competition between the iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile. In this chart, the rise in Apple’s market share after the July release of the... [Tags: 3g, aapl, charles wolf, drift, grabs]

Apple's Top iPhone Game Seller: Apple (AAPL) — Leading Apple's (AAPL) best-selling iPhone games list: Apple. Apple said today that its Texas Hold'em poker game is the most-purchased iPhone/iPod touch game so far, beating games from the likes of Vivendi, Sega, Freeverse, and Pangea Software. What does this mean? Apple isn't disclosing how many copies of its game it sold for $5. (We know it's more than 500,000, but that's it.) So we don't know how much revenue or profit Apple got from its game -- not enough to matter, anyway. We also don't know if Apple actually built the app or if it contracted another company to... [Tags: aapl, apple iphone, electronic arts, freeverse, game platform]

Apple's Antivirus Push Nothing To Get Scared About (AAPL) — There's a lot of fuss this week about a technical note Apple (AAPL) quietly published to its support site last month encouraging its customers to use "multiple antivirus utilities" to keep their Macs secure. But... aren't Macs supposed to be virus-free? Don't they make fun of Microsoft (MSFT) for all the viruses that affect Windows? Sure. Apple's been fortunate to avoid the virus, worm, spyware, and trojan problems that have plagued Windows over the years. Part of that could be that Macs are inherently more secure than PCs. But the biggest reason has always been that there are far fewer... [Tags: aapl, antivirus tools, antivirus utilities, apple iphone, best interest]

No, the iPhone Doesn’t Appeal to Business Customers at All … [Digital Daily] — $500 fully subsidized with a plan! I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn’t appeal to business customers because it doesn’t have a keyboard which makes it not a very good email machine. …Right now we’re selling millions and millions and millions of phones a year, Apple is selling zero phones a year. In six months, they’ll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace and let’s see … what’s the expression? Let’s see how the competition goes. – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on the iPhone, Jan. 2007 “Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone... [Tags: aapl, apple, business customers, ceo steve ballmer, charles wolf]

Top of the Apps — Since its July debut some 10,000 iPhone applications have been released to Apple’s App Store and 9,887 of them are still available for purchase. 10,000 apps. An impressively broad ecosystem for just under five months of development. Apple’s (AAPL) year-end list of Top App Store Downloads for 2008, then, is both handy and timely (Click on the image below to see the top 10 paid and free apps). It’s largely what you’d expect, with the Games and Entertainment categories proving most popular, Facebook and Pandora dominating the Paid App category, and Texas Hold ‘Em and Moto Chaser topping the Free... [Tags: aapl, apple, breadth, chaser, debut]

Palm: Fall Sales Horrible, Slashing Costs (PALM) — Palm's (PALM) fiscal second quarter was so bad they had to tell us about it in advance: The once-hot smartphone maker says sales for the quarter that ended Nov. 28 will be between $190 million to $195 million, 40% below the $331 million that Wall Street expected. Palm, which is still selling an old, uninspired smartphone lineup, says the economy has further pinched sales. The company will now slash costs by $20 million per quarter by next spring, as it prepares for its Hail Mary pass: A new smartphone platform that no one knows anything about, which will face extreme,... [Tags: aapl, apple, blackberry, economy, goog]

Palm CEO Circa 2006: Apple Win in the Smartphone Sector? Never Gonna Happen — Looks like Palm (PALM) will end 2008 much the way it ended 2007, with layoffs. After market close Monday, the downtrodden handset maker warned that sales for its fiscal second quarter will come in well below expectations. “We are seeing unprecedented dynamics in the global markets as economic uncertainty hampers demand for consumer products,” Palm CEO Ed Colligan said in a statement. “In order to ensure Palm’s long-term success during these uncertain times, we’re taking several steps to significantly reduce our cost structure.” First among those steps: layoffs–just in time for the holidays. Palm blamed its dire straits on “reduced... [Tags: aapl, ceo, dire straits, economic uncertainty, ed colligan]

Palm Says FY Q2 Revs Come Up Dramatically Short — The troubles at Palm (PALM) have gotten deeper. This afternoon, the company warned that it expects to report revenue for its fiscal second quarter ended November 28 of $190 million to $200 million, dramatically short of the Street consensus of $330.8 million. Palm said the shortfall was due to “reduced demand for maturing smartphone and handheld products.” Palm said that while it had expected those factors to pressure results in the November and February quarters, “the difficult economic environment has greatly intensified the negative impact on product sales.” In a statement, CEO Ed Colligan said that “we are seeing unprecedented... [Tags: aapl, administrative support, asia pacific, company warned that, economic environment]

Nokia Launches the N97 To Keep Up With The Internet, Google vs Apple vs Nokia Heats Up — Nokia (NYSE: NOK) may be the largest handset maker in the world, but the big question is: will wireless incumbents like Nokia, or newcomers like Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), be the ones to thrive in an industry that is increasingly focused on the mobile Internet? Today, Nokia's unveiling the N97, which is the company's best chance at staying relevant in the fast-paced and increasingly competitive industry. Nokia has done a good job of keeping this project under wraps, so this morning will be the first time pictures of the phone and the device's specifications will be made... [Tags: aapl, e mail, g1, good job, google]

Amazon's Sold-Out Kindle Their Best-Selling Gadget On Cyber Monday (AMZN) — Today is "Cyber Monday," the day that comScore says is supposed to be an "accurate bellwether" for holiday e-commerce shopping. So what does it say that Amazon's (AMZN) best-selling electronic gadget, according to Amazon, is its back-ordered Kindle e-book reader -- which won't ship for three months? It's possible, of course, that Amazon's chart is broken. Or that third-party "used and new" Kindle transactions are occurring so rapidly that they're pushing it to the top. Some 34 used Kindles start at $450 and go up to $1,500. Maybe people are buying today to avoid paying twice as much in two... [Tags: aapl, amazon, amzn, bellwether, blu ray player]

BlackBerry Storm Update On The Way? Responsible For Delay? (RIMM) — Research In Motion's new touchscreen BlackBerry Storm -- the phone it's counting on to fend off Apple's (AAPL) iPhone this Christmas -- is still in short supply: Verizon Wireless again says new orders will ship "by 12/15," about a week later than it promised orders would ship last week. Both companies have kept very quiet about the reason for the delay. Short supply is one theory. But rumors still persist that buggy software -- one of the reasons the Times' David Pogue thrashed the gadget last week -- is responsible for the delays. One reader sent us the following unconfirmed... [Tags: aapl, ahold, battery life, boy genius report, buggy software]

Nokia To Show Off iPhone Killer This Week? Another Tablet? (NOK) — Nokia (NOK), the world's biggest cellphone maker, is supposedly making a big product announcement Wednesday morning at an event in Barcelona. It's a little late in the holiday season for a big consumer product launch, so it might not be a gadget that's on sale until next year. But it could create some buzz for Nokia's investor roadshow in Brooklyn on Thursday. What is it? We don't know. Here's Phone Scoop editor Eric Zeman's report from Spain: According to what I've been told by Nokia staffers, Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo will be dropping a huge bomb during his keynote address.... [Tags: aapl, anonymous tips, consumer spending, field communication, global consumer]