Chief Financial Officer for Apple, Peter Oppenheimer, has been quoted as saying that
Sales of the iPod Touch actually doubled over the previous year. The iPod Touch is similar to an iPhone, but without the phone.
Speaking of that product, I really like them but they can be hard to get a repair in a timely fashion. It is better to do an iphone repair at an independent company that can handle all types of water damage, a cracked screen or dropped iPhone repair, etc.
For it’s part, Apple sales jumped 25 percent to $9.9 billion last quarter. Company spokesmen said its outlook for the current quarter would be well below what analysts are expecting. Apple is known for being extremely conservative in issuing guidance.
Wall Street didn’t buy it and sent the company’s shares up $13.38, or 7.1 percent, to $203.24 in extended trading. The shares had closed regular trading at $189.86, up 1 percent on the day.
On December 3, 2009, Jeff Smykill wrote the following on the ars technica website:
According to one analyst from Caris & Company, Mac sales could grow next year by as much as 26 percent, outpacing the rest of the PC industry, which is expected to grow by only 16 percent. Apple last quarter shipped 17 percent more Mac computers than it did in 2008, but eight percent less iPods, making the 26 percent prediction seem somewhat lofty considering the current economic climate. The report, which Apple Insider was made privy to, concludes that the increase will result in a four percent market share by the end of 2010. iPods are cool but I really love the iPhone, I just wish they were easier to have a repair done.
In an attempt to regulate various credit counseling services the houses of the Tennessee legislature have passed bills to help monitor these particular firms. The legislation is known as the Uniform Debt Management Services Act, which mandates that these firms have insurance, as well as other conditions. One of these said conditions is that, for firms located outside of the state, these firms in question have to register with the state itself. This is due to many of the firms overall being located just outside of the state and doing advertising in a number of venues.
Senator Doug Overbey a republican from Maryville sponsored the Senate bill and believes it is a way to protect the consumers in Tennessee. The act was drafted using the Uniform Law Commission, which is an outfit that is more than a century old, which is primarily about on protecting customers. It should be noted that there are numerous non-profit or free credit counseling firms that are available out there.
This commission stated that many consumers with credit card debt can do what these companies do themselves. The commission went on to say that these companies usually charge a large upfront fee. The advice they give for clearing up credit card debt is to stop paying the company, and to save a significant amount of money, which they will use to negotiate a settlement.
Credit management companies offer certain tips to keep the person within their budget in the tough economic times without suffering from doing without the daily pleasures of life.
One of these tips is not to stay at home because of a budget, if eating out is something the family is used to doing. Rather change the place that a meal will be eaten where children eat free, this will lower the cost of eating out.
I also believe that many folks just need free credit counseling and other forms of Debt consolidation, Debt help and related services. Yet credit counseling is especially key I think. Increase the amount of the mortgage payment even a small amount and if a loan modification is needed the lender will more readily approve the modification according to Michelle Jones senior vice president of the Consumer Counseling Service of Greater Atlanta. This same group also says that families on a budget should avoid purchases, if something is needed to purchase it at a consignment, thrift or second hand shop, this includes clothing and other items. These are places where items are gently used and allow the family to stay within their outlined budget. Families that need to stay on a budget to keep from sinking into financial debt are also urged to make use of credit counseling, that can help them.
I just got back to Hawaii (I reside part of the year on the beautiful garden island of Kauai, lucky me) and I just wanted to report on a recent move by the Nissan Motor Company. As many of you are already well aware, the Nissan Motor Company has been best by rapidly dipping automotive sales, and they are now planning to transfer their production
of the flagship subcompact automobile from Japan to the much lower wage country of Thailand. All in all,
the Nikkei business daily newspaper has stated that Nissan will make the move to shift 100% of all Japanese automotive production of this model
to Siam in 2010 and then ship it back to the home country. Nissan is the island nation’s third-biggest automobile manufacterer overall and is in the process redesigning its leading March supermini model as a sort of cosortium with the French automobile manufacturer partner Renault SA (the biggest such producer in all of France).
They are trying hard to appeal to those who are searching for a fuel-efficient ride. You can go here for a Hawaii Nissan dealer.
This economic news with a global impact comes on the heels of Nissan’s recent effort to move the facilities of the Micra, which is basically the March’s foreign version, from the United Kingdom to India within the next two years.
A lot of these moves appear to be pure economic necessity. For example, The global recession has not missed Japan’s automakers,
which in the last decade or so years had few problems selling their compact and fuel-efficient automobiles.
The Microsoft Corporation has releases
it’s much anticipated Windows Server 2008 virtualization technology Hyper-V.
It has also released it ahead of schedule, a rarity for the Washington State based software giant.
Hyper-V, which is also sometimes referred to as simply “Viridian,” is currently ready for download from Microsoft’s corporate site and can now be used with the x64 beta version of Windows Server 2008. T
This particular technology, known as a a hypervisor, is essentially the underlying virtualization technology for the server release, which is a significant upgrade which, if all goes well, should be released on February 27 of next year.
Hyper-V makes the most of virtualization-enhanced microprocessors from the Intel Corporation and AMD and is supposed to help Microsoft compete with the virtualization leader of the field: VMware. In fact, they already has hypervisor technology available for sale.
Hypervisors permit cross-platform support so server computers may run a variety of versions of different OSes like Windows and Linux, for example, side by side on a single piece of hardware.
According to an Associated Press report out of the capital, The House today approved a 4-year extension of a moratorium on state & local taxes on web access.
This is good news for netrepreneurs but it could have been better since there was plenty of support in both sides of the political fence for a permanent ban.
As it was, the measure passed by a fairly wide margin.
The tax ban, which was initially passed back in 1998, is set to expire on November first. The extension exempts some states that approved taxes prior to the initial enactment.
Broadly speaking, the bill to make the moratorium permanent has 238 House co-sponsors, which is more than is needed.
Representative Lamar Smith, a Republican from the lone star state, stated that a permanent ban would make certain that businesses would continue to invest in the world wide web
and keep it’s access affordable, at least in the near future. He claimed that by limiting the House to consideration of a temporary extension, Democrats “want to leave the door open to taxing the Internet in the future.”
But it was nonetheless argued that a temporary ban was the correct way to go both for various reasons.
The Senate, which has to act next on this particular legislation, called HR 3678, has “in many ways made it clear that a permanent moratorium would be dead on arrival,”. And without swift action, the ban was in danger of expiring before new legislation could pass, according to one source.
In addition, it was argued that it could potentially permit lawmakers to make corrections and modifications as required, as has occurred the 2 times the moratorium has been extended previously since it’s inception in the late 90’s.
Action is not at all assured in the Senate, where there is some substantial support for a permanent tax ban. Personally, I really hope that they go ahead with a permanent tax ban for the web, but then again, I make an income from the web so
I suppose I am a bit biased in this regard.
Renowned writer and journalist Alex Veiga of the Associated Press reported
today that foreclosure filings across the country have gone up by almost fifty percent the previous month as compared
with September of last year. This distubing news has been caused because financially struggling home buyers who are already behind on their mortgage payments
have defaulted on their mortgages or have moved nearer to losing their houses to foreclosure, he reported.
His report was based data from a real estate information firm which specilaizes on this topic.
Unfortunately for both the home buyers and the countries’s economy as a whole,
the September figure is the 2nd highest total for filings in a one month period of time since the firm had started tracking monthly filings some 2 years prior.
The filings in question include default notices, auction sale notices as well as bank repossessions. Certain properties in question may have also received more than 1 notice if the owners have several mortgages.
As a general rule of thumb, borrowers must be sixty to ninety days past due on their mortgage payments before their lender will percieve them to be in actual default, the initial step of the foreclosure process.
If a house owner cannot find a way to get current on his or her payments, the house is then usually put up for auction, and if it does not sell, it ultimately goes back to the bank, sadly enouph.
The foreclosure ratio for the country last month was 1 foreclosure filing for every 557 households, according to the data.
The United States housing market has seen sales decline and home prices fall or at least remain flat, making it much more difficult for homeowners who cannot afford to make their payments to sell their homes or seek refinancing.
Many of these same homeowners were among those who took on adjustable-rate or ARM loans which are now adjusting to a higher interest ratio. This means payments that they can ill-afford to make, unfortunately.
Last month, Nevada, Florida & California had the highest foreclosure rates in the United States.
These surging delinquencies have had a very undesirable ramification: they have prompted the mortgage industry to further tighten up it’s lending standards, thus reducing options for house owners who are struggling to make
their payments.
