samsung - What We're Reading - StockBuz2024-03-29T11:45:44Zhttp://stockbuz.ning.com/articles/feed/tag/samsungSmartwatches Overtake Swiss Watcheshttp://stockbuz.ning.com/articles/smartwatches-overtake-swiss-watches2016-02-19T18:51:03.000Z2016-02-19T18:51:03.000ZStockBuzhttp://stockbuz.ning.com/members/1t2xbcvddkrir<div><p><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1291275?profile=original"><img class="align-left" style="padding: 10px;" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1291275?profile=RESIZE_320x320" width="310"></a>According to the latest research from <a href="https://www.strategyanalytics.com/strategy-analytics/news/strategy-analytics-press-releases/strategy-analytics-press-release/2016/02/18/global-smartwatch-shipments-overtake-swiss-watch-shipments-in-q4-2015#.Vsdia9Dw_6m" target="_blank">Strategy Analytics</a>, global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1 million units in Q4 2015, compared with 7.9 million Swiss Watch shipments. It is the first time ever that smartwatches have outshipped Swiss watches on a global basis.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Cliff Raskind, Director at Strategy Analytics, said, “We estimate global smartwatch shipments reached 8.1 million units in Q4 2015, rising a healthy 316 percent from 1.9 million in Q4 2014. Smartwatches are growing rapidly in North America, Western Europe and Asia. Apple Watch captured an impressive 63 percent share of the global smartwatch market in Q4 2015, followed by Samsung with 16 percent. Apple and Samsung together account for a commanding 8 in 10 of all smartwatches shipped worldwide.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Steven Waltzer, Analyst at Strategy Analytics, added, “We estimate global Swiss watch shipments reached 7.9 million units in Q4 2015, falling 5 percent from 8.3 million in Q4 2014. Global demand for Swiss watches is slowing down, and major players like Swatch are struggling to find growth.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;">Neil Mawston, Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, added, “The Swiss watch industry has been very slow to react to the development of smartwatches. The Swiss watch industry has been sticking its head in the sand and hoping smartwatches will go away. Swiss brands, like Tag Heuer, accounted for a tiny 1 percent of all smartwatches shipped globally during Q4 2015, and they are long way behind Apple, Samsung and other leaders in the high-growth smartwatch category.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #ccffcc;">The question now is, who can gain market share as usage grows and who will lose?</span></p></div>Chinas Move Won't Help U.S. Tech Firmshttp://stockbuz.ning.com/articles/chinas-move-won-t-help-u-s-tech-firms2015-08-30T15:37:43.000Z2015-08-30T15:37:43.000ZStockBuzhttp://stockbuz.ning.com/members/1t2xbcvddkrir<div><p>China’s moves to spur its slowing economy and restore investor confidence are having an important but less obvious effect on the tech sector: Strengthening Chinese companies that already were making life difficult for U.S. rivals, many of whom have staked their growth plans on the world’s second-largest market.</p>
<p>The government’s <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-moves-to-devalue-the-yuan-1439258401" target="_self" class="icon none">surprise decision in early August to devalue China’s currency</a>, in particular, could make it harder for U.S. companies to sell into the country by making their products more expensive to local buyers.</p>
<p>At the same time, a cheaper yuan makes Chinese-produced goods less costly abroad—dovetailing with government policies that have been promoting foreign sales by Chinese technology vendors.</p>
<p>“We see the key driver [of government action] being exports,” said Handel Jones, a consultant at International Business Strategies Inc. who has written books on China’s high-tech sector. Chinese companies “will become more aggressive.”</p>
<p>Once known mainly for its low-cost manufacturing, China became a prime target for many U.S. companies bent on growth owing to its huge population, which amounts to 20% of the global total. But the country is no longer merely a consumer and manufacturer of products conceived abroad. Local companies are coming up with homegrown designs for mobile devices, PCs and other products, and some are beginning to court global markets largely dominated by U.S. companies.</p>
<p>In smartphones, where China ranks as the world’s largest market, Xiaomi Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co. <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/xiaomi-chinas-new-phone-giant-takes-aim-at-world-1433731461" target="_self" class="icon none">have used attractively designed and priced products to take the No. 1 and No. 2 sales positions</a>. Chinese brands, in fact, accounted for four of the top five brands in the country in the second quarter, researchers at International Data Corp. found.</p>
<p><a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/AAPL">Apple</a> <span class="company-name-type">Inc.,</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/AAPL" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a> at No. 3, is still enjoying brisk iPhone sales and generating big profits in China. But <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/SSNHZ">Samsung Electronics</a> <span class="company-name-type">Co.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/SSNHZ" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a> is no longer among the top five suppliers there, according to IDC. Troubles in its mobile unit have triggered declines in net profit for five straight quarters.</p>
<p>Slowing demand hasn’t helped. Smartphone shipments in China fell 4% in the second quarter year on year, Gartner Inc. said, marking the first-ever decline there. IDC this week cut its forecast for unit growth in 2015 to 1.2% from 2.5%, down from 19.7% in 2014.</p>
<p>The flagging domestic market is encouraging some Chinese phone vendors to look abroad for sales. Xiaomi, for example, has begun selling smartphones in Brazil and India. Huawei, which has long operated around the world, sells half its smartphones outside of China and is making a particularly aggressive push in Peru and other South American countries.</p>
<p>“You walk around Lima and you see Huawei almost everywhere,” said Ryan Reith, an IDC analyst.</p>
<p>The rise of Chinese brands extends to personal computers, server systems and networking devices. Chinese customers in many cases are shifting their buying to products from local companies, hurting U.S. companies like <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/HPQ">Hewlett-Packard</a> <span class="company-name-type">Co.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/HPQ" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a>, <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/IBM">International Business Machines</a> <span class="company-name-type">Corp.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/IBM" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a> and <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/CSCO">Cisco Systems</a> <span class="company-name-type">Inc.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/CSCO" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a></p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-KB075_chinat_TOP_20150827174258.jpg"><img class="align-right" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-KB075_chinat_TOP_20150827174258.jpg?width=300" width="300" /></a><span class="wsj-article-caption-content">Xiaomi has used attractively designed and priced products to take the No. 1 smartphone sales position in China, where Apple ranks No. 3. Above, the Xiaomi Note, left, next to an iPhone 6.</span> <span class="wsj-article-credit" itemprop="creator"><span class="wsj-article-credit-tag">Photo:</span> Peter Earl McCollough for The Wall Street Journal</span> Chinese vendors that once relied mainly on low-cost manufacturing have realized they can do better if they handle design and other chores themselves, said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University Channel Islands. “The money is in design, distribution and marketing,” he said. In servers, for example, China’s <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/LNVGY">Lenovo Group</a> <span class="company-name-type">Ltd.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/LNVGY" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a> reached No. 1 in its home country <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/lenovo-gains-all-approvals-for-ibm-deal-1411964681" target="_self" class="icon none">after completing the purchase of IBM’s high-volume server line</a>. Lenovo’s server shipments in China more than doubled in the second quarter, IDC estimated. Huawei, which ranked second in China server sales behind Lenovo, posted a 30% jump in sales. H-P, the world’s largest server maker, grew just 9% in China in the quarter and ranked fifth in the market. Dell Inc.’s unit shipments in China fell 2.5%.</p>
<p>The sheer scale of the Chinese market makes such trends worrisome for foreign companies. The country is expected to spend about $211 billion this year on information technology excluding telecom services, IDC estimated before the recent economic gyrations. That is second only to the U.S., and accounts for about 10% of total global spending.</p>
<p>The stakes are high for startups as well. China has attracted a mob of Silicon Valley upstarts, some of which have been banking on money from Chinese investors or raising money on the prospect of sales in the country.</p>
<p>The Chinese affiliate of Uber Technologies Inc. is close to securing about $1 billion in new funding from investors in the region, part of the ride-hailing company’s rivalry with deep-pocketed Chinese rival Didi Kuaidi Joint Co.</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BT-AD911_CHINAT_9U_20150827165105.jpg"><img class="align-left" src="http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BT-AD911_CHINAT_9U_20150827165105.jpg?width=400" width="400" /></a>Investors have agreed to funding that would value UberChina at about $7.5 billion, according to a person familiar with the matter. The final paperwork has been signed but it could take several weeks for the round to officially close, the person said.</p>
<p>China also looms large for home-rental site Airbnb Inc., which has announced it would work with Sequoia Capital’s China arm and China Broadband Capital to expand in the country. The Chinese investment firm Hillhouse led Airbnb’s latest financing round, which valued the company at $25.5 billion based in part on big projections of future growth that may require substantial international expansion.</p>
<p>Developments in the Chinese market aren’t all bad for U.S. companies. The declining yuan, for example, could reduce the costs of goods they buy or manufacture there, helping their profit margins.</p>
<p>And not all U.S. companies face credible local competition. <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/INTC">Intel</a> <span class="company-name-type">Corp.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/INTC" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a> and longtime rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., for example, are the only companies that supply the kinds of processor chips used in PCs.</p>
<p>But Chinese companies are developing expertise in other chips, including cellular modems and another variety of processor found in most smartphones. That trend could pose a challenge to Intel’s attempts to penetrate the mobile market, and to mobile-chip leader <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/QCOM">Qualcomm</a> <span class="company-name-type">Inc.</span> <a href="http://quotes.wsj.com/QCOM" class="chiclet-wrapper"></a>’s effort to defend its turf.</p>
<p>“The Chinese government has been very open and public about wanting to reduce their reliance on foreign silicon,” said Derek Aberle, Qualcomm’s president, in a recent interview.</p>
<p>Courtesy of <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-moves-wont-help-u-s-tech-firms-1440745381" target="_blank">WSJ</a></p>
</div>Weekend Reads May 3rd-4thhttp://stockbuz.ning.com/articles/weekend-reads-may-3rd-4th2014-05-03T20:46:01.000Z2014-05-03T20:46:01.000ZStockBuzhttp://stockbuz.ning.com/members/1t2xbcvddkrir<div><ul>
<li><a target="_self" href="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1290581?profile=original"><img class="align-right" src="http://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/1290581?profile=RESIZE_480x480" width="375"></a><a href="http://blog.stocktwits.com/investors-say-bottom-is-in-for-gold/" target="_blank">Stocktwits:</a> "investor say the bottom is in for gold"</li>
<li>Hey, wait a minute. Didn't StockBuz say watch for a gold (GLD) weekly right shoulder to form back in <a href="http://stockbuz.net/articles/all-that-shines-gold-and-silver?context=category-Commodities" target="_self">March</a> and early <a href="http://stockbuz.net/articles/gold-sticking-with-it?context=category-Commodities" target="_self">April</a>? Even posting on the <a href="http://stockbuz.net/charts/inverse-gold-miners" target="_self">gold miners here</a>. We're ahead of the herd once again......<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong>maybe.</strong></em></span> (click image to enlarge) At least risk is minimal; stop below $120</li>
<li><a href="http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/sina" title="Sina Corporation">SINA</a> pre-announced an earnings beat but also announced it has <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/pr/9784973-sina-announces-receipt-of-government-notices" target="_blank">received two notices</a> from Chinese regulators stating its "License for Online Transmission of Audio-Visual Programs would be revoked due to certain unhealthy and indecent content from third-parties or by users" on Sina.com and its affiliated online literature site. Ouch!</li>
<li><span class="light_text bullets">JPMorgan becomes the first to warn on trading revenues in Q2, <a href="http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579538162442521646?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTWhatsNewsCollection&mg=reno64-wsj" target="_blank">expecting markets revenue to slip</a> 20% after declining 17% in Q1.</span></li>
<li><span class="light_text bullets">AAPL wins a Federal jury decision again Samsung on smart phone patients but it's a victory for Samsung with less than 10% sought, actually being awarded ($120m vs. $2bil). <span class="light_text bullets">The jury <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-03/apple-wins-120-million-from-samsung-in-smartphone-trial.html" target="_blank">rejected</a> Apple’s claim on the patent that enables updating of applications while other features of the phone are in use. Apple also lost its claim over a patent that allows a user to perform a universal search for information with a single click. One would think Federal jury's are tired of all the lawsuits.</span></span></li>
<li><span class="light_text bullets">HSBC says o<span class="light_text bullets">ffshore wind power is <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-01/offshore-wind-to-grow-6-fold-aiding-suzlon-vestas-hsbc.html" target="_blank">set to grow six-fold by 2020</a>, benefiting turbine makers including Vestas Wind Systems (<a href="http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/vwdry" title="Vestas Wind Systems A/S ADR">VWDRY</a>, <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/vwsyf" title="Vestas Wind Systems A/S">VWSYF</a>) and Gamesa Tecnologica (<a href="http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/gctaf" title="Gamesa Corporacion Tecnologica S.A.">GCTAF</a>). I'm sure the Koch brothers will push for a surcharge on those as well. (Oklahoma recently approved a surcharge for solar users) <em>Puhlease.</em></span></span></li>
</ul>
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