Tag Archives: msft

Yahoo Bidders Get April 11 Deadline, Must Unveil Financial Details

Yahoo ( YHOO ) is facing interest from as many as 40 groups and has set an April 11 deadline for any preliminary bids on its core Internet business and Asian assets, according to media reports Tuesday. Yahoo is sending letters asking suitors for bids, said a report in the Wall Street Journal. Bidders reportedly are being pressed on financing details along with conditions for a deal, including tax implications for separating Yahoo’s Alibaba Group ( BABA ) and Yahoo Japan assets from the core. Some buyers may be only interested in Yahoo’s core Web business in whole or in pieces, the report said, and some might bid for Yahoo’s 15% stake in China e-commerce giant Alibaba   or Yahoo’s holdings in Yahoo Japan. Yahoo wants to thin the field to serious potential buyers, the WSJ said. Yahoo is under pressure to get an auction process moving before this summer, when its shareholders will vote on whether to sweep out Yahoo’s current nine-member board and replace them with a slate proposed last week by activist investor Starboard Value. The hedge fund launched a proxy battle after criticizing Yahoo’s financial performance and slow movement toward a sale. Meanwhile, “any bids for Yahoo’s core business will show a discounted price target, and may not want to include Yahoo Japan assets if it’s from a domestically focused company,” wrote Rosenblatt Securities analyst Martin Pyykkonen in an industry note Tuesday. He added that “potential private equity buyers would seek a lowball price, with the plans of splitting the company even more so than just the core Yahoo assets from the stakes in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan.” This week, reports said  Microsoft ( MSFT ) might put up “significant” financing in a bid for Yahoo. Microsoft executives are in talks with potential investors about providing funds to buy the troubled Internet company , Re/code reported. A Reuters report said those talks are in the early stages. Microsoft and Yahoo have a longstanding search and ad partnership, and Microsoft is focused on preserving that relationship, it said. Private equity firms interested in Yahoo have approached Microsoft, Reuters said. In 2008, then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tried to buy Yahoo for about $45 billion. But Yahoo’s core business has since weakened, Pyykkonen wrote. “Fast forward to today, and there are declining fundamentals in Yahoo’s core business, which include user and usage year/year declines and a write down of a portion of Yahoo’s Tumblr business,” he said, as Facebook ( FB ) and Alphabet ( GOOGL )-unit Google both have more revenue concentration from mobile advertising. “Based on yesterday’s closing prices, Yahoo’s core business and its minority stake in Yahoo Japan were valued at $3.43 billion, based on the majority of Yahoo’s market cap being in its Alibaba stake (16% = $30 billion). We see any potential sale of Yahoo’s core business as being a long and protracted process (due diligence, price negotiation, proxy battle, etc.) through much of this year and with limited upside, if any, from the current stock price,” said Pyykkonen. Yahoo stock was up 2.5% in midday trading in the stock market today , near 36. Shares of Alibaba, Facebook, Alphabet and Microsoft were all up about 1% midday Tuesday.

Apple Off The Hook: Has FBI Battle Been Good Or Bad For Stock?

Apple ( AAPL ) is now off the hook for helping the FBI hack into the San Bernardino terrorist’s iPhone, after the feds dropped their case late Monday. But a lot of questions remain unanswered. We don’t officially know the third party used to hack the phone, or its method. We also don’t know what information it was able to recover. One thing’s for sure: The hotly debated Apple-FBI battle has raised questions about smartphone encryption and privacy. As far as how Apple’s stock has reacted to all of this, the share price has risen about 13% since news of the case broke on Feb. 16 — but it had the help of a rally from the major indexes. Shares have been more or less in a standstill since March 16, even with new products from the consumer tech giant unveiled last week, as they try to find support around the 105 price level. The stock is rising 1.4% in above-average trade today, on track to break a three-session losing streak. Apple is up nearly 16% from its January low, but is still 20% below its all-time high of 134.54 reached last April. Silicon Valley heavyweights including Alphabet ( GOOGL )-owned Google, Facebook ( FB ), Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Amazon ( AMZN ) all backed Apple in the case, signaling that they too may put up a fight in future encryption cases. Facebook was up 1.1% Tuesday and Microsoft rallied 1.2%. Amazon gained 1.2% and Alphabet added 0.5%. Image provided by Shutterstock .

Augmented Reality Could Be The Next Big Leap For Personal Computing

Major tech companies like Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ) believe the next leap forward in personal computing could be augmented reality glasses, with Microsoft set to usher in the new era on Wednesday. Computerized glasses that overlay information onto a wearer’s field of vision could replace having to glance at smartphones, tablets and PCs for many applications. Some futurists say augmented reality glasses — as opposed to virtual reality — could one day replace smartphones. With AR computer headsets like Microsoft’s HoloLens, users can get visual and audio instructions from remote experts for tasks such as electrical and plumbing repairs. Such glasses can also give people on-screen navigation and directions, deliver alerts and messages, and assist in identifying objects and locations. Commercial applications are expected to be early drivers of augmented reality — aka mixed reality — applications. Many field service, warehouse and maintenance workers could benefit from hands-free smartglasses technology that can be operated by voice commands, gestures or eye movements. “AR will have a profound impact, particularly on how we do a lot of jobs and how a lot of business gets done,” Tom Mainelli, an analyst with market research firm IDC, told IBD. “But it’s very early days.” With the  developer launch of Microsoft’s HoloLens on Wedneseday, augmented reality could be starting another hype cycle, Mainelli said. The last hype cycle around AR crashed a few years ago when Alphabet’s Google Glass sputtered during its development. That early version of Google Glass was more of a head-up information display than a true augmented reality headset. It had an eye-level display, forward-looking camera, wireless connectivity and microphone for voice commands. By contrast, Microsoft HoloLens projects images and visual information onto the lenses of its special glasses in the wearer’s field of view. The HoloLens headset also is packed with sensors for integrating the real world with computer data. Microsoft is at first focusing on commercial applications for HoloLens. First out is the Development Edition of HoloLens, which costs $3,000 and is targeted to software developers and enterprises. Microsoft estimates it could take another five years for a consumer version to hit the market. “There is going to be a lot of business use cases for augmented reality before it comes to the consumer market,” Brian Blau, an analyst with research firm Gartner, told IBD. Augmented reality glasses are likely to find early use in service industries, logistics, health care, education and design, analysts say. Confusing matters is the fact that many research firms like to combine augmented reality with virtual reality in their market projections. While both technologies feature wearable displays, VR is an immersive experience that blocks out your surroundings and AR uses see-through displays for adding digital data to the real world. Virtual reality is coming to market sooner,  Facebook ’s ( FB ) Oculus Rift starting to ship on Monday and Sony ’s ( SNE ) PlayStation VR expected to launch in Q3 or Q4. Both products, for now, are focused on video games and surround entertainment. Revenue Of … $120 Billion By  2020? Augmented reality is about accessing information and making people more productive. In January, Digi-Capital forecast that AR/VR revenue could hit $120 billion by 2020, with AR grabbing about $90 billion and VR at $30 billion, up from practically nothing last year. Besides Alphabet and Microsoft, other companies developing augmented reality technologies include Atheer, Daqri, Canon, Magic Leap, Meta, Osterhout Design Group, Seiko Epson and Vuzix ( VUZI ). Other companies said to be investing in AR include Apple ( AAPL ), Facebook, Samsung and Snapchat. Apple is likely looking at augmented reality glasses as an eventual replacement for the smartphones, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster said in research report last week. He predicts Apple will come out with “mixed reality” glasses in the 2021-2025 time frame. “We believe 10 years from now, Generation Z will find reality inefficient,” he said. “Being accustomed to having instant information from smartphones and other devices, Generation Z will see the benefits of mixed reality headsets that augment the world with real-time information as they need it and in their field of view, without needing to look at one piece of information at a time on a smartphone.” For AR headsets to go mainstream, they’ll need to be much smaller and less expensive, analysts say. The experience also will need to improve, with refinements to speed, field of view and resolution. Augmented reality will be in the development stage for the next few years, Mainelli said. AR headsets will ship in small volumes to developers and for proof-of-concept projects, he said. “It will take a couple of years before we start seeing meaningful volumes,” he said. “And even then these will be expensive devices, which is why it will be a commercial play first.”