AllThingsD » Barron’s Tech Trader Daily

Q4 Laptop Market Better Than Feared, Says Sterne Agee

Tiernan Ray — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 16:00:20 +0000

The PC notebook market seems to be doing better than expected, to judge by recent shipment data, writes Sterne Agee analyst Vijay Rakesh writes in a note to clients this morning.

For example, Rakesh sees Taiwanese notebook assembler Compal’s notebook shipments this quarter up perhaps as much as five percent from last quarter, which is ahead of Intel’s notebook projection for the industry of just three percent growth.

Various original device manufacturers are mentioning a decline in PC shipments of just five percent, and say shipments could actually be flat with last quarter. That’s better than Intel’s projection for a six percent decline, and better than the seasonal expectation for a 10 to 15 percent decline.

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Cablevision Reportedly to Buy Bresnan for $1.3 Billion

Eric Savitz — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 07:00:48 +0000

As has been rumored, Cablevision (CVC) will buy Bresnan Communications from a group of private investors led by Providence Equity Partners for about $1.3 billion, Reuters reports, citing “a source familiar with the situation.”

The deal reportedly will be announced Monday.

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Nokia Risks "Fading Into Irrelevance," Analyst Warns

Eric Savitz — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:15:04 +0000

Can Nokia (NOK) effectively compete against the Apple (AAPL) iPhone and the onslaught of phones based on Google (GOOG) Android?

Rodman & Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar this morning wonders in a brief research note if the company is at risk of an “interminable slide.” He notes that checks find the company is is paring back orders for the September quarter due to “continued share loss.”

Kumar says that volume shipments of the company’s new flagship N8 smart phone will not start until the September quarter, which he says is “even further out that the current reset expectations.” He thinks that the latest version of the company’s Symbian operating system software could be facing opposition from independent software vendors, “as applications cannot port over from the legacy environment and have to be recompiled.”

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RIM Hit by Second Outage in a Week

Eric Savitz — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:35:40 +0000

Research in Motion (RIM) shares are holding up well despite a second service outage in one week for North American and South American users of the BlackBerry, following last Thursday’s crash.

RIMM shares are up 16 cents, or 0.4 percent, at $67.38.

The Toronto Star reports this morning that the outage has ended and that RIM says the problem was with software for BlackBerry Messenger, a real-time communications program on the phone similar to instant messaging.

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Is Stimulus Plan Slowing Spending on Telco Gear?

Eric Savitz — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:12:00 +0000

Spending on telecommunications equipment has apparently slowed down in anticipation of pending details on a piece of that the government stimulus that will provide incentives for building out the nation’s broadband network, according to Avi Cohen, head of research at Avian Securities.

Cohen points out in a note to clients that Adtran (ADTN) execs asserted on their post-earnings conference call yesterday that the prospect of government subsidies apparently curtailed spending by Tier 2 and Tier 3 carriers and cable providers in the first quarter. The theory: companies opted to wait on capital spending projects until policies on incentives were clear.

As Cohen notes, there will be two sources of the added government funds.

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Report: Nortel Mulling $1 Billion Offers for Various Assets

Tiernan Ray — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:00:04 +0000

Nortel Networks (NT) the once multibillion-dollar telecom vendor now trading as a micro cap, may be considering offers of as much as $1 billion for its product portfolio of gear that lets phone companies string Ethernet networking to homes and businesses, according to a report in the Toronto Globe & Mail. Avian Securities’ analyst Avi Cohen argues the most likely bidders are Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia’s (NOK) Nokia Siemens, and Cisco Systems (CSCO), with Alcatel Lucent (ALU) and Motorola (MOT), less likely because of their own titanic problems.

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Cisco's Chambers: No Current Talks on Big Deal; EMC Off

Voices — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:19:33 +0000

Cisco Systems (CSCO) CEO John Chambers said in an interview on CNBC that the company is not currently in any negotiations for a large acquisition, Reuters reports. The comment came in response to a question about whether the company might be in talks to acquire enterprise storage giant EMC (EMC).

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Update: Extreme In "Serious" Talks With Bidder, JMP Says

Eric Savitz — Fri, 16 May 2008 18:07:30 +0000

A quick update on my post yesterday regarding rumors that Extreme Networks (EXTR) might be acquired by privately held Enterasys.

In a research note yesterday, JMP Securities analyst Samuel Wilson wrote that “sources suggested to us that at least one interest party has stepped forward to begin serious discussions with the company.” (He did not name any specific buyer.) Wilson contends that in the right hands, the networking equipment maker’s installed base, customers channel and intellectual property “could be worth considerably more than their current enterprise value.”

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