Archives for November 2012

November 29, 2012

RIM Stock Soaring

Remember the Blackberry? I’ve used it for years. Goldman Sachs just upgraded RIM (Research In Motion) sending stocks to soar. Of course, everything hinges on the on the new Blackberry 10 smartphone. Goldman changed RIM’s outlook from Nuetral to Buy, while changing next year’s target price from $9 to $16. Here are some highlights from Yahoo’s article.

Research In Motion rose Thursday after Goldman Sachs upgraded the phone maker’s shares, saying there’s a “30 percent chance” RIM’s much-delayed BlackBerry 10 smartphones will be a success.

Goldman Sachs analyst Simona Jankowski lifted RIM to “Buy” from “Neutral,” the latest analyst to voice a slightly more optimistic view for the troubled company. Goldman lifted its 12-monthprice target to $16 from $9.

RIM was once Canada’s most valuable company, with a market value of more than $80 billion in 2008, but shares have sunk due to ground lost to Apple Inc.’s iPhone and phones running Google Inc.’s Android system.

Shares of Research In Motion added 67 cents, or 6.4 percent, to $11.77 in midday trading on the Nasdaq. The stock is up 78 percent since late September — but it’s down 23 percent this year through Wednesday’s close, and has lost more than 90 percent from its 2008 high.

November 29, 2012

Are You Looking For A Linux Laptop?

You might want to try the Dell XPS 13. Dell is releasing a lightweight 13 inch XPS 13 laptop loaded with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. It’s targeted for mostly developers, but is sold to anyone that’s interested. Here are some highlights from the article published by Computerworld.

For developers.

Over six months, Dell worked with the open-source community to develop tools, drivers and software for the OS to work on XPS 13.

It’s a little bit pricey.

The laptop has an Intel Core i7 CPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB of storage. Priced at $1,549, it comes with one year of on-site support as part of the package. The laptop is now available in the U.S. and Canada, and will become available in other countries next year.

The company has described the new XPS 13 with Ubuntu as a developer edition, but will sell the product to enterprises and consumers as well.

Some really great features here.

The joint development effort has also led to some new features unique to the laptop. One is called the “profile tool,” which enables developers to easily set up software development environments via quick access to tools for Ruby, JavaScript and Android in the github repositories.

Another feature on XPS 13 is the “Cloud Launcher” which Dell said allows for simulation of cloud environments on the laptop. The simulated environment can then be deployed directly to the cloud.

November 29, 2012

Google Play Growing In Asia

I recently got a new Droid Razr on Black Friday. I ordered it online. I have been playing around with it particularly with Google Play. Computerworld has an article about how Google Play is outpacing the Apple App Store in Asia, particularly in Japan and South Korea. Here are some highlights I gathered from that article.

The growth of Google Play in Asian countries has been so robust that Japan exceeded the U.S. for the first time in Google Play revenues in October.

Google Play revenues grew 311% from January to October, while App Store revenues grew 13%.

The success in Asia for Google Play is partly because more people use smartphones and tablets in Japan and South Korea than other countries.

Since the App Store is expected to earn nearly $5 billion in 2012, that means Google Play is on pace to earn about $1.25 billion in 2012.