Archive for the ‘Competite Strategy’ Category

Google (GOOG) to take aim at Apple (AAPL)’s iTunes

Posted by Michael on October 21st, 2009

googleGoogle (NYSE: GOOG) has not confirmed the details just yet, but it appears all but certain that the search engine giant will be launching a music search next week that will allow users to search for music and gives the ability to download selected tracks.

Music downloads has been a major driving force for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) through its iTunes service, and Google is looking to grab a piece of that pie. According to sources, users will be able to go onto the new Google music site and search for a particular song or artist. Suppose you search for the band U2, you will get a list of available songs, which if clicked will launch the song into a streaming player, and also provide the user the option to download the music.

Google stock has traded up to a new 52 week high today, trading as high as $559.35, and is currently trading up 0.9% to $556.73, up $5.01.

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Time Warner (TWX) strikes deal with YouTube

Posted by Michael on August 19th, 2009

Time Warner announced today that it had reached a deal with Google’s YouTube site to start showing clips of some of its popular television shows and movies.

Google has been under increasing pressure as of late to turn a profit from the video sharing site that it paid $1.65 billion for in 2006, and today’s deal should help give its advertising revenues a nice little bump.

Time Warner will sell ads for the clips, and give a percentage of that advertising money to Google, but there was no specifics made as to what share each company would be getting from the advertising revenues.

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Wal-Mart (WMT) puts up strong January sales figures

Posted by Michael on February 5th, 2009

Retail sales figures for January are in, and the picture is not pretty for most retailers out there. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers, sales dropped by 1.6% in January, which was actually a little better than the 2 to 3% dip analysts had been expecting, but still marking the fourth straight month sales have shrunk.

While most retailers are facing hard time, Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) actually had a sales increase in the month. As consumers tighten up their spending, and look for cheaper products, it doesn’t really come as much of a surprise that shoppers are heading into Wal-Mart stores, which typically have the reputation of lower prices.

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Posted in Competite Strategy, Economy, Recession No Comments »

Exxon Mobil (XOM) posts another record earnings period, but fails to match Wall Street estimates

Posted by Michael on July 31st, 2008

With the way oil prices have been moving this year, it is not too surprising that oil giant Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM) was able to show yet another record setting quarterly profit this morning. However, despite the record setting quarter, the company still failed to meet analyst expectations.

Let’s take a look at the numbers; For the quarter, Exxon posted $2.22 per share on profits of $11.68 billion and a stunning $138 in revenue. If you want to look at it in a different way, that means that the company made profits of $1,485.55 every single second of the quarter.

Sounds great, but analysts were disappointed and were expecting to see the company come in much higher, with EPS of $2.47, and revenues of $144.4 billion.

As a result the stock is dropping today, as traders have looked past the record setting numbers, and driven shares of the company down by about 3.5% after an hours trading this morning.

The main culprit was, believe it or not, the high oil prices. For Exxon, since the company both produces it own oil, and refines it into gasoline, the record high prices that oil has reached lately have put a crimp in the company’s gasoline profit margins. Since Exxon actually buys more oil than it sells, the rising oil prices hit the company’s refining margins, since oil prices were about twice what they were during the same period last year, with gasoline prices “only” rising about 30%.

So, the boys over at Exxon can enjoy sitting back and enjoying the title of the biggest quarterly profit by a U.S. company once again, but if they want to keep a smile on their faces, they are going to have to continue to look for ways to overcome the profit margins in their refining business moving forward.

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Posted in Bad News, Before the Bell, Competite Strategy, Earnings, Oil No Comments »

eBay (EBAY) sellers cast accusations suggesting eBay padding auction listings

Posted by Michael on March 5th, 2008

ebayAs we looked at last week, disgruntled eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) users decided to get together and boycott eBay in reaction to a couple of key changes that were made on the site.

These changes were (in summary):

  1. Increased final selling fees
  2. Allowing PayPal to hold certain payments up to 21 days
  3. Removing the option for for sellers to leave negative feedback on sellers

The eBay boycott was supposed to last a week, but was extended to last 2 weeks, and the impacts of the strike are still up for debate. While eBay is denying that the strike had any impact on its business, sellers are furious and accusing the site of padding it’s listings in order to create the false allusion that the strike was of little or no success.

There have been several posts on the eBay forum with users posting what they consider to be viable proof of eBay’s shady practices, and one user has gone so far as to post a video on YouTube illustrating what he considers to be the fraudulent listings.

For now, eBay is claiming that it had a bug in its system which resulted in some fake item listings, but has denied any intentional wrong doing.

You can be sure that we have not heard the end of this saga!

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Posted in Bad News, Competite Strategy, Competitive Strategy, Consumer Experience, E-commerce, Technology No Comments »
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