Facebook's long-rumored initial public offering (IPO) of stock could be filed as soon as Wednesday if a new leak proves real. The share plans seen by the Wall Street Journal would most likely be underwritten by Morgan Stanley with help from Goldman Sachs. At $75 billion to $100 billion of expected value, it would be one of the most valuable IPOs to date.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty claims in an unusual Sunday research note that Apple would start production late on the next iPhone. Checks after a visit to Taiwan have led her to believe production would only start in mid-to-late August even with a launch still projected for September. Apple would "ramp aggressively" to get up to pace, Huberty said in the copy obtained by AppleInsider.
Sprint is considering an LTE strategy that would aim for nationwide deployment by the end of 2013, according to comments from Steve Elfman, the company's president of network operations and wholesale. Speaking at a telecom conference hosted by Morgan Stanley, the executive also suggests Sprint is capable of offering LTE devices by 2012.
Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty today issued a note claiming evidence that the whole notebook industry is shrinking due to the iPad. She pointed to NPD data from August which showed retail notebook sales having declined year-over-year for the first time. Notebook sales had started falling rapidly in April, when the iPad first shipped, and the decline has already continued in the first week of September.
The iPad's sales rate is fast enough that it could grow faster in its first year than netbooks, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty estimated today. Having increased the expected iPad shipments in 2010 from 6 million to 10 million, Huberty estimates Apple could move 13 million to 16 million iPads in the tablet's first full year, or well over the 7.6 million netbooks that sold in that category's first 12 months.
Notebook shipments surged a massive 43 percent in the first three months of 2010, Gartner found today. About 49.4 million portables shipped and were lead by HP, which pushed almost 9.5 million notebooks and held 19.2 percent of the market. Acer and ASUS profited from their experiences in netbooks and were the fastest growers at 48.4 percent year-over-year (to 9.1 million) and 113 percent (to 4.3 million) respectively.
The iPhone and iPod touch are pushing the entire industry towards the mobile Internet, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker said at the Web 2.0 summit yesterday. With about 57 million of Apple's devices shipped since June 2007, their growth has not only been much more aggressive than landline Internet access in general but the entire home electronics industry. Three times as many iPhone-based devices exist as did AOL and Netscape users two years into their respective histories; Apple is also already outselling the Nintendo Wii despite its products coming half a year later.
