Apple previews new Mac OS - Mountain Lion

Apple's new Mac operating system to be more like iPhone, reports Wall Street Journal
- 5.2 million Macs sold (record) in the quarter ended in December, up 26% from the same quarter in 2010
- 5.4% of global PC shipments in the fourth quarter, according to IDC, up from 4.5% a year earlier
-  73% increase in overall company revenue in the quarter ending in December
- 14.2%: Mac percentage of overall revenue in 2011
- 20.3%: Mac percentage of revenue a year earlier

NYT article on new Mac OS concludes with this quote that iOs (iPhone operating system) is the future:
- “Apple’s future is iOS,” said Phillip Ryu, chief executive of Impending, a company that makes iPhone apps. “It’s obvious OS X is playing catch-up and second fiddle. The Mac is in Apple’s future, but it’s not the destination.”

Business Insider summarizes what "Tech Bigwigs Are Saying About OS X Mountain Lion"

TechCrunch published a chart showing Apple has sold more iPhone's in 4 years than all Macs ever sold

Cloud over Microsoft is lifting, reports Fortune's Kevin Kelleher
- 19% increase in stock price in 2012
- $32 a share: last at that price in 2008
- $4.74 billion: Windows OS revenue in last quarter, 6% decline
- $4.24 billion: Xbox division revenue, up 15%
- $4.77 billion: Servers and tools, up 11%
- New Windows 8 to create cross-device experience and to be released later this year (possibly around same time as new Mac OSX)
- Metro interface on Windows 8 is "key to future."
- " It's a touch friendly interface designed to work on smartphones running Windows Phone 7, tablets powered by ARM processors, PCs using Intel chips and perhaps even the Xbox 360."

Oops: Amazon has fewer Amazon Prime users than previously estimated, reports Bloomberg:
-  between 3 and 5 million
-  instead of 10 million
- 13 million: JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimated that Prime had already reached 13 million by Sept. 30, 2011
- 139.6 times its trailing 12-month earnings, Amazon's multiple
-  14.5 times for Apple Inc.
- “It drills home the point that you’re paying a premium valuation for this company and key pieces of their economics aren’t disclosed"

Twitter tries to sell more ads to smaller businesses, reports Wall Street Journal
- $139.5 million in ads last year for Twitter (estimates eMarketer)
- $3.15 billion of ad revenue for 2011 for Facebook (IPO prospectus)

Twitter is being baked into the new Mac operating system, reports RechCrunch's MG Siegler:
- Apple has just revealed that Twitter is also going to be baked into the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion
- all  older ones that upgrade will have it too
-  60 million Macs out in the wild (versus close to 200 million iPhones)
- 25% increase in Twitter sign-ups after Twitter was integrated into iPhone in December

Oops: Google's tracking iPhone users in violation of Apple privacy policies, reports Wall Street Journal
-  22 of the top 100 websites installed the Google tracking code on a test computer
-  23 sites installed it on an iPhone browser
- Google deactivated iPhone ad tracking after it was contacted by WSJ

Yelp set to go public March 1 at $12 - $14, reports Wall Street Journal:
- $16.9 million loss for 2011
- $9.7 million loss for 2010
- 74% increase in revenue for 2011
- $83.3 million in revenue for 2011
- $836 million valuation at $12 share price
- Zynga, Groupon and Angie's List still trading above IPO price but have all declined since IPO pop

Hollywood bigwigs start producing 'made for web' TV shows reports Wall Street Journal
- 100 new YouTube video "channels" 
- $5 million in funding for each (or less) 
- Netflix launching its own shows (think HBO)
- Hulu doing same 
- Keifer Sutherland, who starred in a web show, said it was hard to "corral an audience" 
- Hedge fund/Netflix investor, Whitney Tilson said in a private email that he really liked the new Netflix show, Lillyhamer

Netflix reinstates $7.99 DVD-only plan reports TechCrunch

Baidu profit up, reports Wall Street Journal
- 77% rise in fourth-quarter earnings
- 2.05 billion Chinese yuan ($326.3 million), or 5.87 yuan per American depositary share in 2011
- 1.16 billion yuan, or 3.32 yuan a share, in 2010 

Phil's take: Apple sells at 14.5x earnings while Amazon sells at 139.6x trailing earnings? Hmm.

P.S. I'm still experimenting with and thinking about what I want to do on a daily basis with these Daily Artifacts. 

- $26.30, or about $52,850 annually: median hourly/annual income for telecommunications equipment installers and repairers
- .4% growth (from 2008 to 2010) 
- 25,000 cable technicians employed by Comcast 
- 186,470 employed in the U.S. (across whole industry, not just cable)
- 239,893,600 Internet users as of June 2010 

- 90% of 115.9 million homes with televisions in the United States subscribe to basic cable
- Growth in revenues and profits for cable operators is coming from Internet-related services
    - 16 products introduced by Comcast in 2011 (2x 2009 and 2010)
    - 20 different cable boxes from Time Warner Cable (up from 1 or 2)
- But there is no growth in salary for the thousands of installers 

Salaries of Internet professionals are growing and according to salary.com are 2-3x (on the low to middle end) higher than the installers and repairers:
- $102,000: web product manager
- $131,000: ecommerce marketing director 

Headline bias
- 80% of corporate stories in the Wall Street Journal are about Apple and Steve Jobs
- The remainder are about celebrities like Mark Zuckerberg 
- Very few stories (this one in the NYT is the exception) talk about the people who literally and physically make the Internet possible 

Phil's take: Meet the working class of the Internet: 168,470 telecommunications equipment installers and repairers. They along with call center reps, distribution warehouse employees and many others make the Internet possible. Next time you get frustrated with a call center rep or cable technician, get frustrated instead with the company - but not with the working women and men whose incomes have not gone up and without whom we'd literally have no Internet. 

Today’s Cable Guy, Upgraded and Better-Dressed
The New York Times 
December 29, 2011
http://nyti.ms/snCi8P

Apple Grabs 80% of the Headlines
Daily Artifacts
December 29, 2011
http://dailyartifacts.com/apple-grabs-80-of-the-headlines 

- 80% of the "most-viewed" corporate stories on WSJ.com were about Apple [note: corporate stories as a category excludes finance and investing articles, political events or general news, such as the death of Osama bin Laden]
- $108 billion in revenue in 2011 for Apple
- $10.8 trillion in revenue reported by Fortune 500 companies in 2010 (don't have 2011 numbers yet)
- ~1%: Apple is about 1% of Fortune 500 revenue 
- Headline bias: This dynamic - 80% of the headlines but only about 1% of the economic activity - is a good example of headline bias, my term for a classic behavioral economics insight. 
- As conceived by Daniel Kahneman and others, headline bias (or what they call "availability heuristic") is based on the idea that "if you can think of it, it must be important."
- Media both reflects and reinforces headline bias, which in turn can impact behavior
- Apple didn't just grab 80% of the headlines but according to recent reports, it dramatically outsold Android devices over Christmas 
- 4.2 million iOS activations on Christmas Day (i.e. iPhone, iPod Touch and iPads)
- 2.6 million Android activations 

Phil's take: Apple grabs 80% of the headlines and uses that headline bias to grow its business. But, Apple is not just a deft PR machine. Apple continues to dominate because it remains one of the few technology companies that understands and focuses on the customer experience. 

Side note: Buy and read Daniel Kahneman's book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. It's the best book of 2011 - by far.

Top Stories of 2011: All Apple All the Time
Wall Street Journal
December 29, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204464404577112801441424854.htm...

Apple vs. Android: Who won the X-mas bake-off?
Fortune Tech: Technology Blogs, News And Analysis From Fortune Magazine | December 28, 2011
http://pulse.me/s/4q6Wi 

Fortune 500: Walmart Rules Again
CNN
May 5, 2011
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/04/news/companies/fortune500_top_50_walmart.fort...

Availability heuristic
Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic 

- 6:30pm to 9:30pm: busiest traffic of the day for eBay in each time zone
- Asked if drinking might be a factor, Steve Yankovich, vice president for mobile for eBay, said, “Absolutely.”
- 9pm sales: Gilt Groupe is adding more 9pm sales to respond to high traffic then — perhaps some of it by shoppers under the influence
- “Post-bar, inhibitions can be impacted, and that can cause shopping, and hopefully healthy impulse buying,” said Andy Page, the president of Gilt Groupe 
- 8pm peak: ChannelAdvisor, which runs e-commerce for hundreds of sites, says its order volumes peak about 8 p.m., and that shoppers are placing orders later and later
- Evening online promotions:
    - 6 to 9 p.m., a limited-quantity sale on fashions at Neiman Marcus
    - 7:38 p.m., a promotion for three-day stays at Loews hotels
    - 8:44 p.m., a promotion by Gilt for macaroons and faux-fur blankets
    - 2:23 a.m., an offer by Saks for a $2,000 gift card with purchase

Phil's take: It's not clear that most evening purchases are driven by boozy browsing - but those retailers attempting to take advantage of alcohol-induced shopping may benefit themselves in the short-run but in the long run it's never smart to take advantage of your customers.

Online Merchants Home in on Imbibing Consumers
The New York Times 
December 27, 2011
http://nyti.ms/tVsrpN