Microsoft Corp

LinkedIn’s stock, which traded at $269 in February 2015, fell to one of its lows of $101.11 in February 2016.

Microsoft (MSFT) is behind only Amazon (AMZN) in the overall cloud space.

Electronic Arts’ (EA) Packaged Goods segment includes games created and published by the company for consoles, handheld devices, and PCs.

Salesforce continued its spree in December 2016 with its acquisition of Twin Prime, a startup focused on machine learning.

As of December 26, 2017, Microsoft (MSFT), with a market cap exceeding $650 billion, continued to be the largest software player. Oracle came in second.

In fiscal 3Q18, Microsoft’s capital expenditure was $3.5 billion, with most going toward data center expansion.

Earlier in the series, we discussed IBM’s improved position in the cloud space due to its prowess in the hybrid cloud space.

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.

In September 2014, Microsoft (MSFT) announced its acquisition of Mojang, a Swedish company popular for its game Minecraft, for $2.5 billion.

Microsoft Teams for Office 365 Microsoft’s (MSFT) aim is to boost Office 365’s adoption by including new and efficient features. In fiscal 4Q17, to target education, Microsoft launched Microsoft Teams in Office 365. Microsoft Teams is a chat-centered workspace that requires the Office 365 subscription. It enables the members to access the team’s content instantly from […]

Intel Core M processors, or Lama Mountain, are expected to be available by the end of October 2014. They should lead to more design wins for Intel.

The Digital Media segment of Adobe (ADBE) provides tools and solutions that enable individuals, businesses, and enterprises to create, publish, promote, and consequently monetize their digital content anywhere.

AMD (AMD) provides customized silicon chip solutions to original equipment manufacturers (or OEMs). The chip solutions are found in a variety of products. They help product development.

In late February 2018, VMware announced its acquisition of CloudVelox, taking its hybrid cloud to the next level.

Alphabet (GOOGL) has several branches, and Google is the branch that looks after its smart speaker business.

Microsoft’s cash and short-term investment balance of $136.9 billion was on the top of the list for the fourth straight quarter.

Many companies are shifting their focus toward AI, which has been increasing the competition for NVIDIA (NVDA).

Oracle was trading at a forward EV-to-EBITDA multiple of ~8.6x on June 29, 2016.

Microsoft, Amazon, and other vendors are pursuing a $278.3 billion revenue opportunity in the global public cloud market, according to the latest Gartner estimates.

Azure is an integral contributor to Microsoft’s Commercial Cloud business, which had an annualized revenue run rate in excess of $14 billion. 

A few weeks back, Bloomberg had reported that Microsoft (MSFT) was planning to launch a smaller version of its Surface tablet, popularly known as the “Surface Mini.”

Are markets upbeat on potential tax reforms? The markets (SPY) (IVV) surged last week with the announcement of a phenomenal update on the corporate tax cut. The S&P and Nasdaq Comp gained ~2% in the week ended February 10, 2017. The Trump administration’s proposed tax cut is likely to boost the economy, though analysts have […]

Intel gained a lion’s share in the PC and sever space. However, IBM’s Power Architecture may challenge Intel’s dominance in the server market in the future.

In late 2016, Oracle (ORCL) launched the second generation of its IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) offering, Oracle Bare Metal Cloud.

In July 2015, investors poured approximately $23 billion in US ETFs with 50% of total investments in equity funds.

The US saw positive fund flows in 2014 due to a relatively better economic position.

SanDisk (SNDK) announced its 3Q15 earnings on October 21, 2015. The market reaction was positive, which showed a marginal increase of 0.16% in after-hours trading.

The gaming console market is the key growth driver for AMD. It has an upper hand over NVIDIA (NVDA) in this segment through its application processing unit.

Hewlett-Packard had significant bargaining power with chip makers—like Intel (INTC). It remains to be seen how the split will impact its bargaining power.

In 4Q14, AQR Capital raised its holdings in Apple (AAPL). AAPL constituted 1.46% of the fund’s fourth-quarter portfolio.

Google, an Alphabet (GOOGL) company, recently bought a 1,210-acre piece of land in Reno, Nevada, for $29.1 million, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Apple continues its bond sale trend in 2017 Earlier in this series, we discussed how IBM had continued its trend of share buybacks, and how the IT (Information Technology) sector continued to be the top spender among industries. In early February 2017, Apple (APPL) raised $10 billion in debt. The Financial Times, citing Dealogic estimates, stated […]

On February 24, Microsoft announced that it will acquire Xamarin, a mobile app platform provider. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

A comparative lack of security for Android shows that BlackBerry could do more harm than good to its image as a secure player by adopting Android as its operating system.

The launch of PowerApps holds importance, as the enterprise mobile apps market is expected to surge significantly.

Twitter (TWTR) announced in mid-February that it would be dismantling its app for Apple desktop computers.

On January 19, 2016, Netflix (NFLX) announced its 4Q15 results. Netflix recorded international streaming revenues of $566 million in 4Q15.

As the PC demand slowed, Intel started reducing its exposure in the CCG segment.

Apple (AAPL) was the biggest public company by market cap between 2011 and last November, when holding that title became a game of cat and mouse.

Apple believes its partnership with IBM will help it penetrate the enterprise market. Building enterprise apps—and using IBM’s big data and analytics capabilities—is one way to provide better service to enterprises.

AWS and the continued success of the Prime membership program were the main drivers for Amazon in 2015. This will likely continue in 2016 as well.

Part of the reason Samsung forecast a decline in earnings for Q2 was an increase in operating expenses. Samsung had to incur higher operating expenses.

The quality and variety of the smartphone lineup is an important parameter for any telecom company. For Verizon, it’s even more important, as it’s trying to increase the popularity of its Edge program by attracting customers to upgrade their devices faster.

The mobile advertising market is expected to grow at a faster rate than the overall digital advertising market.

The SMAC (social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) revolution has forced technology players to look for various avenues of growth in the rapidly changing environment.

The technology sector reported a 52.5% decline in workforce reductions to 23,813 for the first half of this year, compared to 50,161 announced in 1H16.

Stages of deep learning In the previous part of this series, we saw that GPU[1.graphics processing unit]-accelerated computing is helping supercomputers solve many complex problems efficiently. The cost and time savings brought by GPUs have encouraged many cloud companies to use these chips for their deep learning tasks. Deep learning happens in two stages. The […]

Earlier in this series, we discussed the factors that might impede Oracle’s (ORCL) dominance in the database space, which is also the company’s cash cow.

Snap (SNAP) is poised to release its second-quarter results amid speculations of the company taking a deeper plunge into gaming.

During the recent installment of Asia’s largest computing show, Computex, Microsoft (MSFT) announced that it will start selling smartphones and tablets running its software at below $200.

Microsoft stock closed at $101.87 on June 20, close to its lower Bollinger Band of $98.

HP’s (HPQ) split into HP Inc. and HP Enterprise will finalize by November of 2015.

Twenty-First Century Fox (FOXA) owns STAR India, India’s (EPI) largest media network. STAR India develops, broadcasts, and produces programming for 51 channels in seven languages in its portfolio.

The company has now stopped including results from Microsoft’s Bing search engine through the Facebook search.

The newly released Xbox One X is powered by the 2.3 GHz, 8-core AMD Jaguar processor, 12GB of RAM, and a six-teraflop AMD Radeon GPU.

While Amazon (AMZN) currently dominates the smart speaker market, its days at the helm could be numbered if two recent studies are any guide.

Microsoft (MSFT) is set to release its fiscal Q4 2018 financial results on July 19.

US stocks didn’t have a great start last week. Reports emanating from China drove US markets down sharply, but they rebounded the next day when Microsoft (MSFT) helped them bounce back.

On November 28, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech “appeared to signal a nearer end to the U.S. central bank’s interest-rate hikes,” Reuters reported.

Intel owns more than 99% of the server chip market. AMD is looking to make inroads in this market with the new x86 Zen architecture, which is expected to be competitive with Intel.

US equity markets gained in the week ended April 24, 2015. But the week was all about the NASDAQ, which gained 3.2%.

Tax office in Singapore Broadcom (AVGO), which has proposed to acquire Qualcomm (QCOM), currently maintains large corporate offices in both the United States and Singapore. However, Broadcom is incorporated as a Singaporean company, so its tax office is in Singapore. Last year, the company said that it was considering shifting its corporate headquarters, or tax base, to […]

The tech sector’s competitive edge So far in this series, we’ve discussed the potential effects of Trump’s proposed tax reform on prominent tech stocks such as Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM), and Amazon (AMZN). Tech companies continue to be preferred by investors due to their proprietary technological expertise and large cash balances. Their technical […]

On July 21, Microsoft (MSFT) stock crossed $74.3, its all-time high since the company became public in 1986.

Apple Watch, Apple Pay, Apple TV, and iPad Pro are niche businesses for Apple (AAPL). But these still have the potential to become big in the future.

Surface Hub features built-in advanced sensors, cameras, NFC, and microphones. Through the welcome screen, users can call or connect a personal device to display content on the screen.

Apple’s sales in China fell by 26% year-over-year in fiscal 2Q16 to $12.5 billion. Sales more than doubled for Apple between fiscal 2Q12 and fiscal 2Q15.

IBM was trading at a forward EV-to-EBITDA multiple of 8.77x on April 8, 2016. This was lower than Microsoft’s and Oracle’s at 10.22x and 9.10x, respectively.

Juniper issued upbeat guidance for the current quarter. EPS is expected in the range of $0.59–$ 0.64.

Apple’s stock is trading at a forward P/E of 12.5x, which is lower than its main peers, Google (GOOG) and Microsoft (MSFT).

The Pandora One service has 3.3 million subscribers and includes advertisement-free access, better audio quality, and reduced timeouts, and offers listeners with additional skips.

Sports titles led EA’s growth in 2Q16. In September 2015, EA launched FIFA 16 and NHL 16. According to the NPD Group, both games made the Top 10 Games list for September 2015.

Google, Inc. has taken clear forward strides in the mobile devices market. Android should gain up to a 52% share by 2015.

Apple (AAPL) reported earnings per share of $3.36 on revenues of $78.4 billion for fiscal 1Q17, which ended in December 2016.

Before the rollout of the Windows 10 operating system, Microsoft announced a free upgrade from the existing Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 operating system.

Salesforce is a prominent player in the software space, along with Microsoft (MSFT), Oracle (ORCL), IBM (IBM), and SAP (SAP).

Intel spent ~$11.5 billion on R&D, or research and development, in 2014. This represents ~21% of its total revenue—compared to 19% in 2013.

The recent suing of Uber by Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Waymo over allegations of theft of self-driving technology only tells part of the story of these former allies, who are increasingly pulling in opposite directions.

Apple (AAPL) has now completed $248.4 billion of its $300 billion ongoing capital return program at the end of fiscal 1Q18.

In 1Q16, Nvidia’s gaming revenue stood at $587 million—an increase of 25% on a YoY basis. For 2Q16, Nvidia expects revenue of $1.01 billion.

According to Nvidia, PC gaming represents approximately 40% of the global gaming market—more than phones, consoles, tablets, or any other single gaming segment.

Oracle’s tepid top- and bottom-line guidance for fiscal Q1 2019 has affected its stock price.

Huge investments are required to operate fabs. Unlike other chip makers, Intel (INTC) hasn’t outsourced its fabs. It has invested heavily in them over decades.

Recently, Intex announced the introduction of its first smartphone in India, named Cloud FX. This smartphone will be based on the Mozilla Firefox operating system and will be priced pretty low, at $33.

Amazon’s cloud-computing segment, Amazon Web Services, is growing at a rapid rate. It continues to maintain a market-leading position in the cloud space.

In 3Q17, Comcast’s Business Services segment generated revenues of $1.6 billion, which rose 12.6% year-over-year.

Oracle’s (ORCL) new Software Licensing segment’s revenues declined in fiscal 3Q17, falling 15.8% to ~$1.4 billion.

Apple is planning to invest $1.0 billion in building a new campus in Austin, Texas, which will house up to 15,000 additional workers.

On January 7, 2016, the New York Post reported that activist shareholder Corvex Management could be building up its stake in Time Warner.

Apple does not disclose unit sales for its Apple TV, which is a part of the company’s Other Products segment.

Facebook (FB) recently acquired Redkix, a team collaboration tools provider. Estimates are that it paid ~$100 million for the startup.

The second estimate from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (or BEA) showed that gross domestic product (or GDP) growth for the US economy slowed to 2.2%.