Apple’s evolution leaves it between two camps for investors, explains low share price (AAPL)

Ben Lovejoy

guidance

An insightful Reuters blog by financial journalist Felix Salmon suggests that Apple’s surprisingly low share price may be due to the evolving nature of the company leaving it between two sets of investors.

Conservative investors, who like slow-growing stocks with high dividends, are constitutionally uncomfortable with the volatility inherent in the tech world. And technology investors, who are happy taking that kind of risk, want to see substantial growth. Apple, notwithstanding the fact that it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, is falling through the capital-markets cracks.

Apple always used to be the company which surprised and delighted investors and customers alike. Its guidance to investors was deliberately pessimistic, blowing through those figures when it reported actual revenue and earnings. It was notoriously secretive about new products, launching new ones in a playful manner with Steve Jobs’ famous ‘One more thing‘ moments… Read more

T-Mobile launches its first iPhone commercial as it officially begins selling the $99 iPhone 5

Jordan Kahn

We can’t say we didn’t know it was coming. T-Mobile already started accepting preorders for the iPhone 5 back on April 5, and today marks the first day of official availability for the iPhone on the carrier’s revamped “Un-carrier”, no-contract, unlimited voice and data plans.

To accompany the launch, T-Mobile is also kicking off its first iPhone ad campaign today that begins with the first TV spot above (via TMO News). Of course the ad not so surprisingly focuses on its new carrier approach more so than the device itself:

“It’s the phone that’s revolutionizing phones, make sure its running on the carrier that’s revolutionizing wireless… Only T-Mobile lets your iPhone 5 be as great as an iPhone 5.”

Earlier this month T-Mobile started rolling out a carrier update for existing unlocked iPhones on its network that brings LTE support, improved battery life, visual voicemail support and more. It also started a campaign offering users trade-in value for their old devices to make the switch to T-Mobile.

The iPhone 5 is available to purchase for $99 down with a $20 per month financing plan through T-Mobile’s website and brick-and-mortar stores. As noted by TMONews, the carrier has also started setting up its in-store displays and advertising for the iPhone (Gallery below): Read more

AnoStyle is giving away an anodized iPhone 5 to a 9to5Mac reader!

Mark Gurman

9to5anostyle4

We’ve previously covered and reviewed AnoStyle’s anodization service for iOS devices like the iPhone 5 and iPad mini. We found the process for an iPhone 5 to be seamless:

There isn’t much to report besides everything turned out great and I love the result. It feels and looks like my iPhone, only in gold. The only con to AnoStyle, at least for the gold color option, is that the text below “iPhone” on the back is now extremely faint. Other than that, I feel like I own a limited edition iPhone (dusts shoulder off), and at least four people have asked me how I managed to snag a gold iPhone.

Today, AnoStyle has agreed to giveaway an anodized iPhone 5 to a 9to5Mac reader. The winner, which we will select and announce one week from today, can choose either a black/slate or white/silver iPhone 5 plus the anodized color (red, pink, yellow, orange, blue, teal, green, violet, gold, copper, bronze, blue steel, rose gold, or flat black).
 The iPhone 5 is an unlocked 16GB unit, but the winner can choose to pay the difference for a higher capacity model.
How to enter:
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T-Mobile iPhone launch wrap up: LTE speed and HD audio tests, the new $579 AWS A1428 iPhone 5 and the plan gamechanger

Seth Weintraub

We were on hand in New York City today to watch the unveiling of the iPhone on T-Mobile and its new LTE/plans that purport to save T-Mobile customers a lot of money over its U.S. competitors.

T-Mobile tipped us to its grand plan to become the ‘Uncarrier’ at CES in January 2013. The idea is to radically simplify the phone plan purchasing experience by cutting away most complexities of the carrier agreements. The effort was very forward thinking and Apple-like in that sense, and the results are certainly a big change for the industry.

You basically start with a $50 a month unlimited data plan and go from there. T-Mobile will throttle you after 500MB, unless you give them $10 or $20 more a month, which gives you 2GB or unlimited before un-throttling. Family plans are $30 for the first extra device and $10 for each one thereafter. I imagine most normals will pay $50 a month. That’s a lot less than the typical iPhone user pays.

Screen Shot 2013-03-26 at 6.08.42 PM.

But, let’s not kid ourselves on what’s motivating T-Mobile here. It has been losing customers like crazy and that’s largely due to its failure to carry the iPhone. The iPhone represents well over half of all smartphones on every other big U.S. carrier, and it will likely dominate T-Mobile over the next few years. T-Mobile said that even though it won’t officially support the iPhone until April 12, it currently has over 2.1 million iPhones on the network. That’s about to skyrocket…

CEO John Legere comes from over a decade at Global Crossing, an IP Data backbone firm, so cutting through all the B.S. and delivering fat delicious packets of data is his specialty.

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Apple analysts react to Galaxy S4 launch with a variety of wild insights

Jordan Kahn

Samsung-GalaxyS4-vs-iPhone-5

Samsung officially unveiled its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone last night at a theatrical, Broadway-style presentation in New York, and analysts are quick to jump in today with opinions on what it means for Apple. AAPL is having a decent morning hitting a high of 442.50 and opinions from analysts seem to be split down the middle regarding whether the S4 has what it takes to cut into Apple’s market share.

Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray doesn’t seem too impressed with the S4 upgrade but noted Samsung’s new S Band is “a quick first pass for Samsung on wearable technology ahead of Apple’s watch. Munster added that he expects Apple to launch its smart watch product by 2014 (via Barron’s):

The Galaxy S4 appears to be largely an incremental update to the S3 including a slightly larger screen (4% larger on diagonal), better camera and processor, and updated software, but largely the same body style and casing. We believe some of the software features are unique, including the tilt to scroll, video pausing based on facial recognition, and hand gesture based interactions, but view these software improvements as minor compared with what Siri was to the iPhone 4S or even Google Now to Android.

Jefferies analyst Peter Misek thought the S4 will be “incrementally negative for Apple” but doesn’t view the S4 upgrade as “revolutionary” (via Zdnet): Read more