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Share prices of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) were soaring on Tuesday, closing up over 2 percent at US$190.01 Tuesday.
The company has enjoyed some good news lately -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) is betting on the iPhone's penetration of the enterprise, and interest in rumors that Apple will bring out a tablet computer has continued to simmer for months despite no official comment from Cupertino.
Other news hasn't been as positive. The iPhone is the only major smartphone platform to be excluded from Adobe's (Nasdaq: ADBE) Flash 10.1 update. In addition, complaints over AT&T's (NYSE: T) wireless service have hit the news again, sparking renewed calls for Apple to work with other U.S. wireless carriers.
Money, It's a Hit
Tuesday's Apple share price of $190.01 at close was almost two and a half times the January 2009 figure of $78.20.
In other words, Apple shares shot up more than 240 percent in nine months. Those are pretty respectable returns in a market bedeviled by recession and high unemployment.
True, Tuesday's results were recorded in a generally up market, with the Dow closing more than 130 points higher and the Nasdaq closing up more than 32 points. However, there are signs that Apple's strength is not too dependent on the market as a whole. Susquehanna financial analyst Jeff Fidacaro lifted his price target on Apple share prices from $180 to $210 on Tuesday. He predicts increased sales for Macs and iPhones and more downloads from the iTunes App Store.
Big Blue Bets on iPhone
On Tuesday, IBM extended Lotus Notes and Domino collaboration software to the iPhone in yet another example of the device's penetration of the enterprise.
Lotus Domino 8.5.1 lets the iPhone automatically sync with Lotus Domino for e-mail, contacts and calendar data through Lotus Notes Traveler software. It also lets system administrators remotely erase confidential data on lost iPhones.
"This is in direct response to customer demand for iPhone support," said Shawne Robinson, senior product manager at IBM Lotus Notes, Lotus Traveler, mobile and wireless.
More than half of the largest global 100 corporations use Lotus Notes and Domino, Robinson told MacNewsWorld. "We've already introduced support for the iPhone from Lotus Connections, Domino Designer, Lotus Mobile Connect and Lotus iNotes," Robinson said. "We plan to continue to invest in this platform, pending support for Lotus Sametime and other parts of the portfolio."
Big Blue's support could be a major boost for the iPhone. It further legitimizes the use of the device for enterprise mobile communications -- previously, iPhones have often been sneaked in through the back door when high-level executives insisted on using them as their corporate communications devices.
That might boost the adoption of the iPhone in the enterprise. This might, in turn, make the iPhone a greater threat to the BlackBerry platform, which currently dominates the corporate mobile communications arena. Look for iPhone sales to climb in the near future.
Will Kindle Choke on the iTablet?
Reports that Apple is planning to launch a tablet computer have been making the rounds for several months, though unconfirmed rumors about what Apple may or may not do next have a history of taking on a life of their own.
This time, though, there might be some zing to those rumors: Apple has re-hired Michael Tchao, one of the leading proponents of its Newton platform, and it's believed he's back to work on the tablet.
Also, Cupertino has apparently been holding talks with major media companies, according to Brian Lam, writing in the Gizmodo blog. These reportedly include the New York Times, McGraw Hill, and Oberlin Press, among others.
If Apple does indeed come up with a tablet computer, it might pose a threat to Amazon's (Nasdaq: AMZN) Kindle and the other e-readers in the market. At the very least, brand loyalty will likely lead some owners of other Apple gadgets to pick one up.
Listen closely to what Apple executives say during the company's fourth-quarter earnings call, which is set for Oct. 19.
No Flashing on the iPhone
When Adobe announced its Flash 10.1 platform on Monday, the iPhone was the only major mobile platform notably absent from the roster of mobile OSes on which the new version of Flash will run.
Will Apple be left out in the cold? Flash 10.1 promises to improve the mobile browsing experience. Still, this doesn't mean you won't ever get Flash on the iPhone. "The iPhone's probably been left out because Apple hasn't agreed to it," said Carl Howe, director of anywhere research at the Yankee Group. "It's still not impossible that Apple could join the crowd and implement Flash on its own terms, but I don't think it's going to happen."
Adobe has already come up with a work-around -- it says apps developed with Flash CS5 Professional can run on the iPhone. CS5, to be released to the public in April 2010, supports porting a Flash app into native applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.
Overall, though, Flash may not be very important to the iPhone. "When you're competing against 85,000 other applications, an iPhone app that's a port of another platform's app just isn't going to place that well with iPhone consumers," Howe pointed out.
Oh, That AT&T!
Something else that doesn't place well with some iPhone consumers is AT&T's wireless service.
iPhone user Manoj Gupta apparently got a first-hand look at exactly how burdened the carrier is. He took his iPhone to the Apple Genius Bar in an Apple retail store for help. The iPhone was dropping a lot of calls and AT&T had told him there was nothing wrong with its service. Staff at the Genius Bar reportedly told Gupta that a 30 percent dropped call rate is average in New York, Matt Buchanan wrote on Gizmodo.
Three days later, Morgan Stanley analyst Kathryn Huberty joined the roster of analysts urging Apple to work with a second U.S. wireless carrier. Pointing out that the iPhone's market share grew 136 percent in France when Apple worked with multiple carriers, she said Cupertino could double its iPhone sales and increase earnings per share by 41 percent if it did the same thing stateside.
Apple's share of the U.S. market could more than double if it added Verizon as a second carrier, Huberty said.
For its part, Verizon on Tuesday set up a partnership with Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) to work on Android phones. Still, Apple has to do something or face some strong questioning at shareholder meetings, because its fiduciary duty to shareholders is to maximize their returns.
