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The Future Of VR As Told By Oculus, Google, PlayStation Execs

Loading the player… At this week’s Vision Summit for virtual reality and augmented reality in Hollywood, executives from Facebook ( FB )-owned Oculus, Alphabet ( GOOGL )-owned Google and Sony ( SNE )-owned PlayStation shared their insights about the future of VR. Oculus founder Palmer Luckey said that both hardware and software developers need to be successful for VR to be prosperous, with two key measures of success being dollars spent on content and hours spent playing content. Oculus Headset and Rift-ready PC bundles will go on presale next Tuesday, starting at $1,499. Oculus is offering the bundles at a discounted rate to get more gear out there. Google’s VP of VR, Clay Bavor, pressed the point that the Internet giant’s goal is “VR for everyone.” He said that some 5 million of the cheap Google Cardboard viewers — which use smartphones to show VR content — had shipped as of the end of 2015, with 30 million Google Play Store app downloads. He said that there’s “similar momentum” on Apple ( AAPL ) iOS. Google is also working in the augmented reality space with its Project Tango, which enables mobile devices “to navigate the physical world similar to how we do as humans.” Sony is one of the companies working with NASA on robot control and space exploration demos. Microsoft ’s ( MSFT ) HoloLens is also said to have space applications. Dr. Richard Marks, the director of PlayStation Magic Lab, said that Sony’s VR platform will have the capability to be used with other entertainment content besides games, including movies, painting, sculpting and potentially even live concerts.

Apple iPhone Sales In China Fall Off Cliff In January

Apple ( AAPL ) iPhone sales sank deeper than the overall market in China in January, as smartphone sales disappointed ahead of the Chinese New Year. “January was supposed to be a seasonally strong month, but smartphone sell-through was down 20% (vs. December) and down year over year,” Rosenblatt Securities analyst Jun Zhang said in a report Thursday. Apple and Samsung were hit harder than other smartphone vendors. Zhang estimates that Apple iPhone sales in China were down 35% in January vs. December. Last year, iPhone sales were up 15% month-over-month in January, he said. Meanwhile, Samsung’s smartphone sales were cut in half in January vs. December, Zhang said. Samsung’s high-end smartphone (Galaxy S6 and Note 5) sell-through was 1.1 million units in January, compared with 2.3 million in December. South Korea-based Samsung was hurt by Chinese vendor Huawei launching new models (Mate 8) and gaining market share in the high-end of the market. “Since people usually buy smartphones as a Chinese New Year gift, January is usually a solid month,” Zhang said. “We also believe the smartphone market has not bottomed yet and that the overall slowing macro affecting consumer spending is now becoming a real concern since we are seeing more layoffs in Chinese companies (different from the 2008-2009 situation).” China is an important market for Apple. It accounted for 24% of the company’s sales in the December quarter. Apple CEO Tim Cook said last month that the company’s sales in Greater China started showing signs of weakness in January, most notably in Hong Kong. RELATED: Morgan Stanley Says Apple Stock Ripe For Picking . Apple Poised To Disappoint With March Product-Launch Event .  

Lipper U.S. Fund Flows-February 3, 2016

By Tom Roseen Did we just see mutual fund investors turn on a dime? After yanking nearly $5 billion from their accounts the previous week, this past week’s data show estimated net flows of $2.1 billion into equity mutual funds-for their first positive flows week this year. Although the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average was up for the week, the scant 392 points probably wasn’t as important as a rising sentiment that 16,000 is as good a floor as any we’ll find in this market. But count equity exchange-traded funds’ (ETFs’) authorized participants among the unconvinced: they withdrew about $8.5 billion (net), backing out of the SPDR S&P 500 Trust ETF ( SPY , -$3.2 billion ) and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF ( IWM , -$1.2 billion ) , but they made modest contributions to the SPDR Gold Trust ETF ( GLD , +$758 million ) . Taxable bond mutual funds suffered their thirteenth weekly net outflows (-$523 million), but the week’s magnitude was the lightest yet. The Loan Participation Funds classification (-$333 million) notched its twenty-eighth consecutive week of outflows from mutual fund investors and High Yield Funds suffered outflows of $108 million as investors kept a wary eye on the junk sector. On the other hand, bond ETFs collected $671 million of inflows as the week’s biggest individual bond ETF inflows belonged to the iShares 7-10 Treasury Bond ETF ( IEF , +$412 million ) , while the iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF ( LQD , -$423 million ) led the outflows list. Municipal bond mutual fund investors added $585 million to their accounts while the muni market gained 0.48% for the week-after the previous week’s little tumble. Money market funds saw outflows of $3.8 billion this past week, of which institutional investors pulled $4.2 billion and retail investors redeemed $400 million.