aapl news
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Apple TV: What We Know, What We Don't and Why You'll Stand in Line to Get It
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5 Reasons Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Stock Hit a New All-Time High
Just when it looked like the Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) success story had taken a detour, Apple stock suddenly hits a new all-time high.
AAPL shot past its previous intraday high record of $644 by reaching $648.19 during Friday's session. The close of $648.11 easily broke the $636.23 record closing price set on April 9.
Today (Monday) Apple stock is up more than 1% in early trading, reaching an intraday high of $656.35.
That's hardly what many investors expected after Apple reported on July 24 that it missed on its June quarter earnings and offered weak guidance for the current quarter.
After that Apple stock dipped into the $570 range several times before quietly starting its climb back to its previous high.
Since those lows of late July, AAPL has soared 12% -- more than twice the rise of the Standard & Poor's 500 index and almost triple the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
How can this be? Why are investors so high on a company that hasn't really done anything spectacular lately?
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Will Apple Buy Facebook? No, But It'll be More than a Friend
It's a question that was getting asked as far back as three years ago, and seems to pop up again every time the Facebook stock price hits another new low: Will Apple buy Facebook?
Some tech pundits think that because Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) has so much cash -- $117 billion as of the June quarter - and lacks a presence in social media, buying Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) just makes sense.
Those with more level heads think such a move would be a spectacularly bad idea -- and extremely unlikely.
"I can see Microsoft making a stupid decision like this but not Apple - MSFT has a history of overpaying for questionable assets, being late to the game and having lost what truly innovative mojo they had under [CEO Steve] Ballmer's watch," said Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald.
"I think Apple knows that the Facebook model is kaput and that it's not profitable - very similar to Google in that regard, which has held off from really rolling out Google+," Fitz-Gerald added."Shareholders would revolt...and so would the institutional money."
But Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has strongly hinted at a cozier Apple-Facebook relationship.
Calling Facebook a "great company" at the D10 conference in May, Cook said, "We have great respect for them. I think we can do more with them. Just stay tuned on this one."
Why Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Will Not Buy FB
Facebook's shaky business model isn't the only reason Apple would shy away from buying the social media giant.
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Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) Patent Wars: This Little-Known Swedish Company is the Key
In a single stroke, Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) could gain the upper hand in its seemingly endless patent wars with Samsung Electronics (PINK: SSNLF) and others.
Or the tech giant could blow its chance and wind up paying billions of dollars in licensing fees.
The outcome hinges on how Apple deals with a little-known company based in Sweden.
This micro-cap just happened to file a patent for the "swipe-to-unlock" touchscreen gesture in 2002 - three years before Apple filed its patent.
The company, Neonode (Nasdaq: NEON), received its U.S. patent in January.
Neonode holds a number of touchscreen-related patents that could become decisive in several of Apple's mobile computing patent cases.
Already the "swipe-to-unlock" patent helped Samsung defeat Apple in a recent patent case in the Netherlands. Samsung said the patent, as well as a phone Neonode released in 2005, represented "prior art."
"Apple just shot itself in the foot and all the blood is going to go to NEON," Jim Altucher, managing director of Formula Capital and well-known investor, wrote in a blog post Tuesday evening.
Insiders told The Wall Street Journal in April that Samsung plans to use the Neonode patent in a similar but much more crucial case in San Jose, CA, scheduled for a July trial.
And Altucher added a scarier prospect for Apple.
If Neonode does indeed hold the patent trump card for "swipe-to-unlock," it could gun for a cut of Apple's profits by filing its own patent case.
Should Apple be forced to fork over licensing fees to Neonode, it could cost the Cupertino, CA, company billions of dollars a year.
So far all this sounds like a big mess for AAPL and a big opportunity for its patent war rivals. Not just Samsung, but also for such titans as Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT).
Yet if Apple acts boldly, it could gain a crucial advantage on its mobile computing competitors.
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How Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) Became the Vampire Squid of Tech
Business partnerships with Apple Inc. (Nasdaq: AAPL) produce abundant profits - but usually only for Apple.
Using its clout as a vendor of highly desirable consumer technology, Apple secures extremely favorable deals with suppliers, providers of goods and services, and retailers.
Such deals are a major reason behind Apple's extraordinary profits.
"Can Apple continue to roll through industry after industry, soak up all the profits, and leave everything it touches as a smoking wreckage?" Craig Moffett, an analyst at Sanford Bernstein & Co. told the Los Angeles Times.
Despite increases in business volume, many companies that deal with the Cupertino, CA-company discover it's usually a one-sided relationship when it comes to profits.
Apple has, in effect, become the technology world's "vampire squid" -- a term coined by Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi in 2009 to describe Wall Street behemoth Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS).
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