Shares of Apple (AAPL) are down more than 20% in the past three months from highs in the $700 range. Despite guiding for a record holiday quarter, Wall Street continues to be split on Apple’s future. Some analysts expect the company’s success to continue while others have argued that “people overbelieved in Apple.” Rob Cihra of Evercore Partners thinks the company will report record sales on January 23rd when it posts its fourth quarter earnings results. In a recent note to investors picked up by Apple Insider, the analyst estimated that Apple could report having sold 50 million iPhones in the fiscal first quarter, representing a 35% year-over-year increase and 86% growth from the previous quarter. He also believes the company may have

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Overall mobile phones sales are continuing to slow but Apple and Samsung remain in the lead and accounting for almost half of worldwide purchases, latest third quarter figures from Gartner reveal.As might be expected smartphones bucked the trend with sales up nearly 47 per cent over Q3 2011 though Nokia, despite its new Lumia handsets, still only managed to sell 7.2 million phones in this segment. The Finnish maker's sales generally fell nearly 22 per cent as fewer Symbian handsets were sold - with Canadian BlackBerry maker taking up most of the slack with its operating system now boasting the No.3 slot after Android and Apple. Continue reading →

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LONDON (Reuters) - Record labels say they have maintained high levels of investment in new music despite sweeping changes to their business in the digital age and a decade of falling revenues caused by sliding album sales and online piracy. According to a new study from industry body IFPI published on Monday, record companies invested $4.5 billion in A&R (artists and repertoire) and marketing in 2011. That was down from $5 billion in 2008, partly due to a significant drop in the amount record labels were willing to spend on marketing up-and-coming talent at a time of shrinking income. ...

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Computer security company Symantec Corp. said Wednesday that its fiscal second-quarter net income rose 6 percent from a year ago as revenue ticked higher.

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Comcast Corp., the nation's largest provider of cable TV and Internet services, more than doubled its net income in the third quarter, chiefly due to the sale of wireless spectrum and its stake in the A&E TV channel.

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TORONTO (Reuters) - Research In Motion Ltd delayed the make-or-break launch of its next-generation BlackBerry phones until next year, in a devastating setback to the once-dominant technology company whose sales are crumbling. Shares of the company, which also announced a steeper-than-expected quarterly operating loss and deep job cuts on Thursday, plunged 14 percent after it said it would release its revamped BlackBerry 10 devices early in 2013. It conceded the development had "proven to be more time-consuming than anticipated. ...

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Tuesday granted Apple Inc's bid to stop Samsung Electronics from selling its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the United States, giving the iPhone maker a significant win in the global smartphone and tablet patent wars. Samsung's Galaxy tablets, powered by Google's Android operating system, are considered by many industry experts to be the main rival to the market-leading iPad. The ruling also comes as Samsung, a distant second to Apple in the tablet market, faces growing competition from rivals, with Microsoft and Google preparing their own tablets. U.S. ...

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Mobile phone sales worldwide suffered a rare dip in the first three months of this year on softened demand in Asian markets, industry tracker Gartner reported Wednesday.

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Mobile phone sales worldwide reached 419.1 million units in Q1 2012, a 2% decrease compared to the same period last year, Gartner's latest report says.

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TAIPEI (Reuters) - U.S. sales of two new smartphones from Taiwan's HTC Corp will be delayed due to a patent dispute with Apple Inc, a fresh blow to the company as it tries to turn around declining sales in what was once its largest market. Shares in HTC tumbled more than 6 percent after it said shipments of the phones were being held up by U.S. customs officials. Apple scored a narrow victory against HTC in a patent lawsuit in December over technology in the smartphones, one of many such disputes in the fiercely competitive smartphone market. HTC said in a statement on Wednesday that "the U.S. ...

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