Puneet Sikka

Verizon lost 63,000 FiOS video customers in the last quarter.

Hollywood has box office sales of $11.38 billion to date in 2018. Superhero films accounted for 25.5% of the total ticket sales.

AT&T (T) gained a number of assets through its acquisition of Time Warner including HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros.

The cord-cutting trend is picking up steam all over the world.

Apple (AAPL) stock has lost 33% in the last three months.

NetSuite is Oracle’s enterprise resource planning software product.

On December 20, Symantec announced that its Cloud Workload Protection (or CWP) product won the “product of the year” award in the cloud security category.

AMD (AMD) stock has had a great run this year.

To maintain a good relationship with its sellers, Amazon it lowering the fees it charges them.

Facebook (FB) has been trying to come up with a mobile payment service for WhatsApp in India (EPI) for quite some time.

Hackers attacked IBM (IBM) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s (HPE) networks and stole confidential information from clients’ computers.

We’ve looked at IBM’s side of the equation. Now let’s see how Samsung will benefit from this deal.

Last week, Intel (INTC) launched some innovative products on its Architecture Day to take on AMD and Qualcomm.

Red Hat (RHT) announced its earnings for the third quarter of 2018 yesterday.

On December 17, Oracle (ORCL) announced its earnings for the second quarter of fiscal 2019. The company’s revenue growth was 2%.

Facebook (FB) has been looking to diversify its business away from online advertising for some time.

Altice USA (ATUS), the fourth-largest cable company in the US, is all set to launch its own mobile service by next year on Sprint’s (S) network.

Both T-Mobile (TMUS) and Sprint (S) have high hopes that their proposed merger will pass the regulatory hurdle.

On December 11, Symantec announced that it will partner with Fortinet (FTNT) to provide comprehensive security solutions.

Accenture entered into the practice of digital ad-buying last year and became a potential threat to ad agencies such as Omnicom and WPP.

NVIDIA (NVDA) stock has had a dream run in the last three years. However, the last couple of months have been bad for the company’s stock.

Verizon (VZ) stock has seen a decent run-up in 2018—the stock has increased 8%.

Dish Network (DISH) has seen falling fortunes this year, with its stock down 35% year-to-date. The reason why is simple.

On December 11, Oracle launched a new cloud product named Oracle Cloud Native Framework to address the needs of developers.

Amazon (AMZN) stock has been one of the best performers in 2018.

According to KeyBanc analysts, Microsoft’s (MSFT) “cloud business could be bigger than Windows by 2021.”

In Verizon’s (VZ) filing with the SEC on December 11, the company announced that it’s taking a $4.6 billion goodwill impairment charge for Oath.

During Cramer’s lightning round on CNBC on December 10, Jim Cramer said that Cisco (CSCO) “is currently the cheapest large-cap tech stock.”

A complaint has been filed against Fitbit (FIT) for misleading investors. Fitbit claimed that it had the best-selling fitness tracker on Amazon.

GoPro (GPRO) has had a rough year so far. Its stock has fallen 40% in 2018. Last month, GoPro stock fell steeply by 24% on the day of its third-quarter earnings.

Today, SQN Investors, one of Yelp’s (YELP) top five stockholders, publically published a letter criticizing Yelp’s board and management.

We’ve been watching the race between the top two US telecom providers, Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T), in implementing 5G technology to as many markets as possible.

Yesterday, Qualcomm (QCOM) announced in a press release that it, China Mobile, and Chinese (FXI) smartphone makers are partnering to develop next-generation 5G smartphones.

Today hasn’t been a good day for Apple (AAPL) supplier Largan Precision in Taiwan. It reported about a 29% decline in its revenues in its latest earnings report.

The US dollar (UUP) has continued to strengthen this year. Ongoing US-China trade tensions are making investors nervous.

Last year, Oracle and AT&T entered into an agreement through which Oracle will migrate thousands of existing Oracle databases on AT&T’s network to Oracle cloud.

Given the trend of companies moving their software applications from on-premises to the cloud, Oracle is finding itself in a difficult situation.

Oracle’s (ORCL) Autonomous Database is its cloud-based self-driving database, as the name suggests.

ERP is the largest segment for Oracle’s applications business, and within this segment, Oracle has two main products: Fusion ERP and NetSuite.

SAP (SAP) continues to be the largest player in the ERP market with revenue of over $7 billion in 2017. Oracle is another top player.

The software-as-a-service market is led by Microsoft (MSFT). Oracle (ORCL) is ranked fourth in this market with a share of ~6%.

In the last quarter, Storage Systems revenue fell 5.6%, which the company blamed on growing competition amid continued pricing pressure.

IBM credited ~4% its Systems revenue growth to the success of its POWER9 processors.

Mainframes, large computers that can process billions of transactions daily, are mostly used by banks, retailers, and airlines.

In July, IBM launched a blockchain solution specifically for the financial service industry, LedgerConnect.

AI is the buzzword these days, and the market has huge growth potential.

IBM credited its margin stability to its operational efficiencies, namely synergies from acquisitions, scale efficiencies in its cloud business, and productivity initiatives such as leveraging agile processes and using automation.

In October, IBM (IBM) shocked the world by acquiring Red Hat (RHT) for $34 billion, marking its largest acquisition to date.

The market’s most important segment may be the hybrid cloud.

One business driving growth for IBM is the cloud.

IBM’s (IBM) Global Business Services segment comprises its Consulting, Global Process Services, and Application Management sub-segments.

IBM’s (IBM) investors pay close attention to the company’s FCF (free cash flow).

Microsoft (MSFT) is another stock on our list of top performers from the last year in the US large-cap tech sector.

Microsoft (MSFT) expects to clock double-digit revenue growth in the holiday quarter this year.

Microsoft’s Bing has shown promise time and again, but it’s still not able to beat Google’s growth in terms of search advertising.

Microsoft (MSFT) has recently launched a number of devices that show it’s serious about capturing a fair share of the PC market.

Microsoft has managed to grow its gaming revenue rapidly. In fact, its gaming revenue growth has accelerated over the past few quarters.

According to a report, Microsoft managed to grow its share from 8% in the fourth quarter of 2015 to 12% in the first quarter of 2018.

Although Amazon’s Amazon Web Services continues to be the most popular cloud platform, Microsoft’s Azure is growing faster.

A couple of years ago, Microsoft (MSFT) acquired LinkedIn for a valuation of $27 billion, its biggest acquisition to date.

Until a few years ago, in the days of Windows 7, Microsoft (MSFT) didn’t take the cybersecurity business too seriously.

In June, Microsoft (MSFT) acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion, and it recently completed this acquisition.

Another important business for Microsoft is Dynamics 365, a cloud-based application tool that it launched in 2016.

Microsoft (MSFT) launched Windows 10 more than three years ago. It was an important launch because of the tepid response to Windows 8.

Microsoft launched Microsoft 365 about a year ago, and the company claims that it’s already a multibillion-dollar business.

The last couple of months have been volatile for the markets in general and tech stocks in particular, but Microsoft has been steady.

Apple aims to penetrate the enterprise market, having entered into a long-term partnership with IBM in 2014 and collaborated with Cisco in 2015.

Google (GOOG) has made a lot of strides in its cloud business over the last year or so.

Google Play has started to become another important business for Alphabet’s Google segment.

Consumers in India downloaded 6.2 billion apps from Google Play in 2016, a significant rise from 3.6 billion downloads in 2015.

Google (GOOG) has credited its growth in the online ad market to three key drivers: mobile search, YouTube, and programmatic ads.

Google has gradually started taking the non-advertising business for YouTube seriously.

Advertisers and marketers are seeing great success on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube platform, according to Google.

Amazon’s AWS is a fast-growing business for the company that saw its revenues rise by 55% YoY (year-over-year) to over $3.2 billion in 3Q16.

India ranks high on the list for Amazon as the e-commerce giant targets international markets—especially after failing to penetrate the Chinese market.

A major factor behind Amazon’s widening losses has been the large rise in content costs related to acquiring video content and producing its own content.

Amazon’s losses in international markets have grown from $121 million in 1Q16 to $541 million in 3Q16. But what’s been driving this trend?

Amazon leads the cloud infrastructure services market Amazon (AMZN) continues to lead the cloud infrastructure services market. According to a Canalys report, Amazon led the market with a share of 30%, while Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOG), and IBM’s (IBM) SoftLayer had a combined share of 30% as of 2Q16. The report also states that the […]

Amazon trying different strategies for AmazonFresh Amazon (AMZN) has been experimenting with its grocery business, AmazonFresh, for a long time now. It has been slowly expanding AmazonFresh and adding locations where it is available. Northern Virginia, Maryland, Dallas, and Chicago are among the most recent additions. Amazon has also been experimenting with AmazonFresh pricing strategies. In […]

Launch of new Apple Watch and MacBook lineups In the previous part of this series, we discussed how Amazon (AMZN) continued to dominate the US e-commerce market in 2016. However, according to a report from Slice Intelligence, Apple (AAPL) managed to grow the fastest during this period. As the chart above shows, Apple managed to grow […]

The holiday season is considered the best period for retailers. Preliminary results from research company Slice Intelligence indicate that Amazon (AMZN) dominated the holiday season in 2016.

Last quarter, Google upgraded its BigQuery data analytics software and made Google Cloud Machine Learning available for businesses for training purposes.

Google (GOOG) now plans to monetize YouTube in a different way, by offering a video subscription streaming service—similar to what Netflix (NFLX) offers.

Google (GOOGL) has recently mentioned that advertisers have started to adopt programmatic ads for digital marketing campaigns in increasing numbers.

Google continues to innovate by bringing new ad formats and improved ad measurement tools for YouTube.

Despite its impressive revenue growth, Google’s (GOOGL) overall costs grew at an even higher rate last quarter.

Apple (AAPL) and IBM’s (IBM) partnership continues to gain strength. These companies had forged a partnership in 2014 to have IBM analyze data collected from Apple devices.

Last quarter was not a great one for Apple (AAPL) in terms of Mac sales.

In addition to the App Store and Apple Music, Apple Pay is turning out to be another promising product for Apple’s Services segment.

Apple has now managed to grow its paid subscribers for its music service to more than 17 million.

Apple (AAPL) has been disappointing investors over the last few quarters with negative revenue growth rates.

Amazon’s (AMZN) operating margins have improved dramatically in the last few quarters courtesy of AWS and Prime.

Verizon’s wireless business accounts for more than 70% of its revenues. However, the business has recently seen falling revenue growth.

It’s been more than a year now since AT&T (T) closed the acquisition of DIRECTV, which it acquired for $49 billion.

Like Verizon, AT&T (T) also saw a revenue decline in its US wireless business in the last quarter on a year-over-year basis.

AT&T aims to increase the penetration of SDN to its networks gradually. AT&T’s SDN penetration was only 5% last year, but it expects it to increase to 30%.

Postpaid churn rates for telecom companies have declined during the past year, except for Verizon Communications (VZ).

Apple released its iPhone 7 on September 7. Sprint and T-Mobile have announced that their pre-orders for iPhone 7 have exceeded pre-orders for iPhone 6.

AT&T closed its acquisition of DIRECTV for $49 billion one year ago, and its synergy targets are already well ahead of the schedule.

To become profitable, Sprint has been trying to cut costs. Both its costs of services and SG&A costs have declined during the past year.