market

SecondMarket, which facilitates equity transactions for non-public companies, said today that the typical company on its service is awfully large -- and focused on consumers.

According to the firm, the typical private company on SecondMarket has a $329 million market cap and average funding of $108 million. The company has been in operation for seven years and has about 200 employees.

Digging deeper into its data, SecondMarket found that 48.3 percent of the companies involved in so-called liquidity events, or transactions of some form, came from the gaming industry. Another 21.8 percent of those companies were involved in … Read more

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- To help tell the story of how it came up with the iPhone and the iPad, Apple enlisted the same man it uses to sell the products to potential customers.

Apple's marketing chief, Phil Schiller, who is a frequent face at the company's product launches, retold the creation story of the iPhone and the iPad -- a slightly expanded version of the tale jurors heard during the company's opening statements earlier this week. He also gave the world a glimpse of a secret portion of Apple's marketing strategy -- how much it … Read more

Things are not looking good for PC makers in the age of the iPad.

Market researcher Canalys makes this point with PC shipment stats, which are a function of the way it sees the PC market. In short, tablets are PCs too. (And note Canalys defines "PC" generically, not the traditional definition of a Windows PC.)

That gives Apple an overwhelming lead over No.2 Hewlett-Packard. In the second quarter, Apple shipped about 21 million PCs versus about 13.5 million for HP, according to a Canalys report released today. Lenovo was a close third with 13.1 … Read more

Samsung has widened its lead over Apple in mobile phone shipments in the second quarter, said IDC.

The global mobile phone market grew only 1 percent year over year in the second quarter of 2012, IDC said Thursday. Samsung and Apple shipped almost half of the world's smartphones.

Samsung and Apple have more than doubled their combined market share over the past two years, IDC said.

"Samsung employs a 'shotgun' strategy wherein many models are created that cover a wide range of market segments. Apple, in contrast, offers a small number of high-profile models," said Kevin Restivo, … Read more

commentary Facebook will report its first quarterly earnings as a public company today when the markets close. The hype is unbelievable. It's almost like the company's IPO all over again.

Here are 10 headlines to give you an idea of the type of scrutiny the social-networking giant is enduring:

So far this month, Facebook's stock has fallen some 7 percent. The biggest loser is, of course, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The damage has cost the 28-year-old his spot on the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index of the 40 richest people in the world.

This drop won't affect Zuckerberg's day-to-day living. In fact, he just refinanced the mortgage on his $6 million home in Palo Alto, Calif., with a 30-year adjustable-rate loan starting at 1.05 percent.

The rates available to individuals with a high net worth (Zuckerberg may have lost some value, but he's … Read more

Google's first branded tablet was bound to rouse the interest of analysts across the globe, as well as appeal to consumers. Combine that with a bargain-rate price of $199 and curiosity becomes surprise.

Can Google make a fair profit margin on the device, which was announced last week for preorder? Or is the price tag on the Internet giant's first tablet model, the Nexus 7, based on gaining a customer base rather than profit margin?

This is where hardware specialists come in. Research firm UBM TechInsights recently came up with a preliminary cost estimate of $184 per device, … Read more

There's a pretty good chance you've scanned a QR code with your smartphone. QR is short for "quick response." Hidden in those lines are embedded code only your smartphone can read that points it to a new location on the Web. Online marketing gurus are singing the digital praises for the inexpensive cost with maximum return on investment.

The real estate industry is one example. Agents are able to market their hottest properties and themselves by embedding QR codes into their signs and brochures. QR design companies say they're seeing exponential growth in their business … Read more

Windows 7 has taken the majority of the global operating system market for the first time, according to figures from web analytics company StatCounter.

Microsoft's latest operating system till the impending arrival of Windows 8, Windows 7 had 50.2 percent of the OS market for the month of June, while Windows XP -- the second most popular OS -- trailed behind at 29.9 percent of the world's PCs, the figures show.

Windows 7 was launched close to three years ago in October 2009 but, despite receiving a warmer reception than its predecessor Vista, it's been … Read more