Time for a change
If you're hungry for an iPhone but don't want to deal with pretentiousness of your nearest Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) store or the "take a number" condescension at an AT&T (NYSE: T) wireless shop, the boxy folks in blue are coming through for you.
Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) becomes the third chain -- and the first third-party chain -- to begin stocking Apple's popular smartphones. First AT&T, and now Best Buy ... you could joke that Apple is taking over the world alphabetically.
Well, it's no joke -- Apple is trying to take over the world. The company projects that it will sell 10 million iPhones this year. With the lower-priced hardware, courtesy of AT&T's call to take a subsidized hit that it will make up in pricier 3G data plans, that 10 million figure is starting to feel more like a floor than a ceiling.
No matter how popular Apple is, the iPhone wasn't going to envelop the country overnight. Most wireless subscribers have two-year contracts that need to wind down. But Apple's superior specs and lower prices, coupled with its App Store for downloaded applications, make it the eventual winner.
Best Buy? It's just getting in early on the inevitable victory party.
Briefly in the news
And now, let's take a quick look at some of the other stories that shaped our week.
- Buyouts don't take the summer off. i2 Technologies (Nasdaq: ITWO), a specialist in supply-chain management software, agreed to let JDA Software (Nasdaq: JDAS) buy it in a $346 million deal. Can this be? There's an enterprise-software acquisition, and Larry Ellison is nowhere to be found?
- Netflix (Nasdaq: NFLX) saw red this week, and had nothing to do with the company's red mailers. The site suffered a service outage, as a technology snag shut down many of the company's distribution-center operations. Netflix promised refunds to subscribers who had their discs delayed. It's a good thing the company has its online streaming service, which never has to worry about physical fulfillment.
- Digital-photofinishing giant Shutterfly (Nasdaq: SFLY) is getting into the social-networking game, by allowing users to set up collaborative profile pages geared around their snapshots. The company is late to the photo-sharing game, but at least it has a loyal audience -- one that no doubt skews older than the teens who flock to Facebook and MySpace. So Shutterfly has a shot, but a picture can only tell so many words.
Until next week, I remain,
Rick Munarriz
