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Thursday, September 12, 2013
High iPhone price spooks investors, Apple shares drop
By Ryan Vlastelica and Eileen Soreng
REUTERS - Apple Inc's new iPhones got panned by Wall Street on Wednesday as investors decried one model for being too costly for emerging markets such as China, and dismissed the other model as lacking enough game-changing features.
The world's most valuable technology company missed an opportunity to introduce a low-end smartphone to drive sales in Asia, where Samsung Electronics and China's Huawei have a wide lead over Apple, analysts say.
The plastic iPhone 5C unveiled on Tuesday will sell for 4,488 yuan in China, Apple said. That is more than the average monthly urban income in China, and about double the cost of mid-tier devices from Samsung and other vendors. The cheapest phones in China, made by the likes of Xiaomi, go for about $100 apiece.
"Investors were put off that Apple's price point didn't go low enough to attract a new market. It doesn't have the same range in price that Apple's competitors have," said Mark Luschini, chief investment strategist at Janney Montgomery Scott in Philadelphia, which manages about $58 billion in assets.
The high-end iPhone 5S disappointed Wall Street and revived fears that Apple's most innovative days may be behind it. The phone has a fingerprint scanner to improve security, but analysts said that was not likely to be enough to make the iPhone 5S a sure win in the crowded smartphone market.
"There was nothing transformational announced. It has the fingerprint scan and new colors, but bigger features, like different screen sizes, don't seem to be at the ready. This was less than expected from a company that has a reputation for surprising with a killer product or strategy," said Luschini.
Shares of Apple slid 5.4 percent to close at a month low of $467.71 on the Nasdaq after at least three brokerages downgraded their rating on the stock. Still, Apple remains up 18 percent since the start of July, when anticipation about the phones began building.
Apple executives - and the company's many fans in the industry - maintain both iPhones are best-in-class. While the corporation itself has not addressed the uproar over its iPhone 5C's price tag, some analysts say it's a good move to preserve margins while leaving room for future reductions.
WAITING FOR CHINA MOBILE
China is critical to Apple's growth prospects as its biggest market after the United States. Apple fell to No. 7 in the second quarter in China with a 5 percent market share, losing ground not just to Samsung but also to local rivals such as Lenovo and ZTE .
Early signs point to a lukewarm Chinese response to the new iPhones. Only 2.6 percent of 35,000 Chinese consumers surveyed by Web portal Sina.com said they would consider buying the 5C.
"We worry that Apple's inability (or) unwillingness to come out with a low-priced offering for emerging markets nearly ensures that the company will continue to be an overall share loser in the smartphone market until it chooses to address the low end," Sanford C. Bernstein analysts said in a note.
Wall Street is banking on Apple securing a partnership deal with China Mobile Ltd soon, granting the iPhone more than 740 million potential buyers. Some investors were disappointed that a deal was not announced on Tuesday.
Still, the iPhone 5C carries a total component cost of $165, versus the $199 of the last-generation iPhone 5 and $236 for Samsung's top-tier Galaxy S4 smartphone, according to IHS iSuppli's preliminary estimates - suggesting there is room to cut prices if warranted.
"Rather than offer attractive pricing for consumers, and move the iPhone 5C into a new and growing price segment, Apple retained a premium pricing strategy in targeting the $400-800 smartphone segment," Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha wrote in a note.
"This segment is not forecast to see meaningful growth long term. This decision, at the margin, is good for profitability but not growth."
Apple's profit for the quarter ended June 29 fell 22 percent as gross margins fell below 37 percent from more than 42 percent in the year-earlier quarter. Garcha estimated that Apple's share of the global smartphone market would fall to 15.5 percent this year and 13.1 percent next year, from 18.1 percent in 2012.
OVERSOLD?
Some analysts said Wednesday's selloff in Apple shares may have been overblown.
Nomura analyst Stuart Jeffrey said Apple may have ensured stable margins for the next couple of quarters by pricing the 5C in the United States at $99 with a contract and $549 without.
Saying the 5C was "nobody's low-margin phone," Cowen and Co analyst Timothy Arcuri noted that Apple's new relationship with Japan's NTT DoCoMo Inc plus the expected tie-up with China Mobile supported the view that Wall Street's estimates for Apple earnings in 2014 looked too low.
Arcuri said gross margins for the 5C appeared to be as high as in the mid-50 percent area.
Raymond James and Associates maintained its "strong buy" recommendation on the stock and raised its share price target to $675 from $600, based on expected demand for the lower-end iPhone, coupled with the NTT DoCoMo relationship and the preservation of gross margins.
Canaccord Genuity kept its "buy" rating on the stock and raised its target price to $550 from $530, citing Apple's aggressive launch plans in more than 100 countries by year-end.
The brokerage also raised its 2014 estimate for iPhone sales to 180 million units from 177 million.
(Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York and Neha Alawadhi and Saqib Ahmed in Bangalore; Writing by Edwin Chan; Editing by Ted Kerr, Steve Orlofsky and Ken Wills)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/high-iphone-price-spooks-investors-apple-shares-drop-000137615--sector.html
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Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Kenya's small-scale tea farmers see revenue increase, prices fall
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Revenue from tea produced by Kenya's small-scale farmers climbed 13 percent to 69 billion shillings in the year to June, the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) said on Monday, as it warned lower leaf prices could hurt tea earnings going forward.
Tea is a leading foreign exchange earner in east Africa's largest economy and members of KTDA account for about 60 percent of tea output in Kenya, the world's top exporter of black tea.
Small-scale farmers produced 1.1 billion kg of green leaf over the period compared to 970 million kg realised the previous year, KTDA said.
"This has resulted in KTDA managed factories earning higher revenue of 69 billion shillings, up from 61 billion shillings earned in 2011/12 financial year," KTDA said in a statement.
The rest of Kenya's tea is produced by large-scale farmers and corporations.
Lerionka Tiampati, managing director of KTDA, said the amount payable to farmers per kg of tea made would drop by about 10 percent in the 2012/13 financial year due to the high cost of production and a stronger shilling.
He said the average exchange rate in the past 12 months stood at 85 shillings to the dollar compared to the previous year's 89.16, negatively impacting total revenue.
"The small scale tea sub-sector in Kenya has not been spared from the global market dynamics, but the high volumes delivered mean that farmers will even out," Tiampati said.
Tiampati said the overall earnings for the Kenyan tea industry in 2013 could drop owing to depressed leaf prices since the start of the year.
"The new 2013/2014 financial year has started on a low note, with the sub-sector witnessing depressed earnings at the Mombasa Tea Auction. This seems to continue for the better part of the year and is likely to impact on the next earnings if the situation does not change," Tiampati said.
Tiampati added that the political crisis in Egypt, inefficiencies at the port of Mombasa, and uncertainty over Kenya's March 2013 general elections affected prices at the regional auction in Mombasa.
The Tea Board of Kenya, the regulator, said in June the east African producer expects to produce 410-415 million kg of tea in 2013, up from 369 million kg last year, helped by good weather.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kenyas-small-scale-tea-farmers-see-revenue-increase-135848502--finance.html
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After NSA encryption furor, tech companies ask for more transparency
Privacy 
12 hours ago
Connie Zhou / Google via AP file
This undated photo shows backup tapes stored at a Google data center in Berkeley County, S.C.
Following revelations that the NSA may be compromising encryption standards, tech companies in the U.S. are on the defensive, answering the potential threat to their own reputations with expressions of outrage and a volley of petitions to publish more information about government requests.
Google filed a transparency petition on Monday seeking the ability to publish "detailed statistics" about information sought for U.S. foreign intelligence gathering. The company joins Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo in doing so.
"Today?s motions from Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo ... press for the companies? right to publish the number of specific types of FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) requests that each company receives," said Kevin Bankston of the Center for Democracy & Technology.
"This is an important right for the companies to assert as they work to maintain their users' trust in the face of continuing revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance of the Internet."
Meanwhile, Google, Facebook and others met Monday with a panel established by the White House to review the sweeping domestic surveillance exposed by Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency.?
The panel established by the White House, called The Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, was charged with recommending how to balance security and privacy concerns. President Barack Obama met with the new group on Aug. 27. It is to provide an interim report within two months.
Google is also closing some of its own data back doors in the wake of the NSA allegations, says?the Washington Post, which reported that, "Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers."?
Separately, Google maintains that it "[does] not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems. Also "As for recent reports that the U.S. government has found ways to circumvent our security systems, we have no evidence of any such thing ever occurring," a Google spokesperson said in a statement emailed to NBC News.?
On Friday,?Yahoo published the company's first transparency report, indicating that it had?received 12,444 data requests from the U.S. government relating to 40,322 accounts in the first six months of 2013.?
"We regularly push back against improper requests for user data, including fighting requests that are unclear, improper, overbroad or unlawful," Ron Bell, General Counsel, Yahoo,?wrote in a Tumblr post explaining the release.
Yahoo said the alleged snooping had "substantial potential for abuse" while Microsoft has "significant concerns" and "will be pressing the government for an explanation," according to?statements published by the Guardian on Saturday, and confirmed by NBC News.?
Facebook, which published its own transparency report on Aug. 27, also got into the fray, when the social network's general counsel published a letter describing the company's previous requests for more transparency.
On Monday morning, Facebook's Colin Stretch wrote that:?
... although we have been permitted to disclose a range of the total number of requests we have received and the number of users associated with those requests, we have not been permitted to specify even approximately how many of those requests may be national security-related, nor have we been permitted to provide information identifying the number of those requests that seek the content of users? accounts.
Facebook's latest global data request report showed that the U.S. government led the global call for data requests, asking for details of over 38,000 Facebook users in the first six months of 2013.
In a statement emailed to NBC News, a Facebook spokesperson wrote that: "We have not consulted with the NSA or any other government agency about the security features in our products, including encryption, and we never would do so. We continue to believe the reporting on this issue is misleading and inaccurate."?
Since the Guardian's first revelations that the NSA was engaged in high-tech snooping of U.S. civilians over domestic communication lines, trade organizations and tech companies have been requesting permission for more open disclosure of government requests for data, each wave of allegations followed by louder requests for transparency.?One comprehensive request dated July 18 this year by the Center for Democracy and Technology included signatures from Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo, Dropbox, Reddit, and many others.?
A post published Friday?on the IC On The Record, a Tumblr account hosted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, dismissed the news of NSA's encryption cracking tactics as obvious and dangerous:?
Anything that yesterday?s disclosures add to the ongoing public debate is outweighed by the road map they give to our adversaries about the specific techniques we are using to try to intercept their communications in our attempts to keep America and our allies safe and to provide our leaders with the information they need to make difficult and critical national security decisions. ??
Nidhi Subbaraman writes about technology and science. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Google+.?
This story was updated at 5:25 p.m. ET. Reuters also contributed to this report.
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Saturday, December 22, 2012
Mayan what? Apocalypse 2012 quiet so far
With rumors of a Mayan apocalypse making the rounds online and at the water cooler, when do we know the world is out of danger from the various astronomical and other cataclysms claimed by some to spell doom?
Some have pegged the end on 12/21/12 at the moment of the winter solstice, which at one point had been estimated by the U.S. Naval Observatory to take place at 11:11 UTC, or 6:11 a.m. EST. The Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice, when the top half of the planet (everything north of the equator) will face away from the sun, actually occured at 11:12 UTC, or 6:12 a.m. EST. Either way, the moment has ticked by, and the world is still here.
Today does mark an end, to the 13th 144,000-day cycle (called a b'ak'tun) of the ancient Mayan Long Count Calendar. The least worried about this rumored doomsday date? The Mayas.
Their calm comes amidst some particularly startling freakouts elsewhere: Chinese farmers making "doomsday escape pods;" NASA being flooded with worried phone calls; and supposedly mystical mountains in Europe getting overrun with apocalypse tourists. Oh yeah, and some kids got two days off school. In Michigan, two counties cancelled classes Thursday and Friday, citing both fears about school violence after the elementary school shooting in Connecticut last week and rumors about the end of the world causing distraction, according to CBS Detroit. [Mayan Doomsday (Not): Coverage & Countdown]
This week in the northwestern province of Qinghai, the government arrested more than 400 members of a doomsday-preaching group called the Church of the Almighty God, confiscating computers, banners, books, cellphones and other items, The Guardian reported.
Like many rumored doomsdays -- from a 1910 scare tied to Halley's Comet and a doomy divination by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1982 to TV preacher Harold Camping's 2011 claim -- that have come and gone, this one seems to have left Earth unscarred. Even so, social scientists have said the Mayan apocalypse does stand out from the rest. Most past scares have been sparked by charismatic leaders issuing divine proclamations. The Dec. 21 scare, however, was more of a grassroots prediction that seemed to pop up almost entirely online.
But where did it come from? Dec. 21 on the Western calendar likely corresponds to the end of the 13th b'ak'tun of the Mayan Long Count Calendar, one of three calendars the ancient Maya used to count time. The calendar works by counting first days, then 20-day chunks of time, then 260-day periods and 7,200-day periods. Ticking up like a car odometer, the calendar finally keeps track of 144,000-day blocks of time called b'ak'tuns.
Continuting the cycle, 20 tuns become one ka'tun (7,200 days total) and 20 ka'tuns become one b'ak'tun (144,000 days total, or close to 400 years).
By matching Mayan calendar dates to our own calendar, researchers have concluded that Dec. 21, 2012, is the likely date for the last day of the 13th b'ak'tun. (Dec. 23 or Dec. 24 are other possibilities, thanks to different units on the calendar turning over at different times of day.)
Written in modern translation, that makes Dec. 21, in Mayan date, 13.0.0.0.0. Tomorrow, Dec. 22 will be 13.0.0.0.1. The ancient Maya believed that 13 b'ak'tuns represented one full cycle of creation, but they did not predict the world would come to an end. In fact, their calendar includes some rarely-used units of time even larger than b'ak'tuns that would have allowed the Maya to count millions of years into the future, had their empire not crumbled around A.D. 900.?
Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook?& Google+.
Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mayan-apocalypse-2012-quiet-far-144125309.html
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'So You Think You Can Dance' Hoofs It Into a 10th Season
LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Put on your dancing shoes; "So You Think You Can Dance" has been given a 10th season, Fox said Thursday.
Auditions for the upcoming season will begin January 18 in Austin, Texas, before moving on to Detroit, Boston, Los Angeles and Memphis.
Fox's president of alternative programming Mike Darnell praised "SYTYCD" creator Nigel Lythgoe in announcing the renewal.
"I couldn't be more proud of the amazing work that Nigel and the entire 'So You Think You Can Dance' team has done over the past nine seasons," Darnell said. "This show is truly one of the most compelling series on television and I can't wait to bring it back for Season 10."
Last season, the series underwent a format shakeup after Fox cut the show from two nights a week to one, eliminating the results shows.
Fox did not say when the new season of "So You Think You Can Dance" will premiere.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/think-dance-hoofs-10th-season-212139119.html
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MissTravel's Twelve Trips For Christmas: Top Destinations For Holiday Romance
There?s no place like home for the holidays, especially if that place is New York. MissTravel.com, the world?s only travel-dating website, names New York City as America?s favorite destination for the holidays.
New York, NY (PRWEB) December 20, 2012
New York City is America?s favorite destination for the holidays according to MissTravel.com. The destination-dating website reveals its ?12 Trips for Christmas? list, today, analyzing the most popular travel destinations for the holidays based on the preferences of their American members. American members have proposed over 8,000 trips through the site, this month, with 891 trips planned for New York City.Top 12 Cities for Destination-Dating in December
1. New York, USA 891 Trips
2. Cancun, Mexico 774 Trips
3. Paris, France 569 Trips
4. Bali, Indonesia 507 Trips
5. Dubai, UAE 450 Trips
6. Prague, Czech Republic 342 Trips
7. Orlando, USA 288 Trips
8. Honolulu, USA 274 Trips
9. Santorini, Greece 203 Trips
10. Milan, Italy 171 Trips
11. Boston, USA 164 Trips
12. Cabo, Mexico 155 Trips
?There is something iconic about New York at Christmastime,? says Brandon Wade, Founder & CEO of MissTravel.com. ?Many classic Christmas movies take place there, inspiring many Americans to travel to New York during the holidays in search of romance and adventure.?
Traditionally most Americans spend the holidays traveling to their hometowns to spend time with loved ones, but according to a recent study conducted by the website, 29% of members stated that they would rather go on a holiday than go home for the holidays.
?It?s tough to be single during the holidays, and sometimes home is the last place you want to be,? says Wade. ?Instead of going home alone, many singles prefer to bypass the traditional holidays and take a vacation instead. A destination date is the perfect solution to combat holiday loneliness.?
MissTravel.com is the only dating site where beautiful singles fly for free, courtesy of the generous members. Since its debut in April of this year, MissTravel.com has amassed over 250,000 members worldwide, inspiring over 190,000 trips in 15,000 destinations.
For more information about the ?12 Trips for Christmas? list or to schedule an interview with Founder & CEO, Brandon Wade, please email press (at) misstravel.com or call Jennifer Gwynn at (702) 241-0100.
About MissTravel.com
MissTravel.com is the premier website for destination dating. Launched in April 2012 as the only travel dating website where beautiful people can travel for free, courtesy of its generous members, MissTravel.com has received media coverage worldwide. The website has been featured on CNN, Good Morning America, The Today Show, etc. Since its launch, the website has amassed over 250,000 members worldwide. MissTravel.com was founded by MIT alumn and online dating expert, Brandon Wade, and joins an impressive brand family of successful niche dating websites, including SeekingArrangement.com - the world?s largest website for mutually beneficial relationships; WhatsYourPrice.com - the world only online dating auction; and SeekingMillionaire.com - the premier millionaire matchmaking website.
Jennifer Gwynn
MissTravel
(702) 241 0100
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