market

Facebook's stock is bouncing back -- for now

Don't look now, but Facebook shares have been on the rise for the last three trading days. Last Wednesday, the social network's stock stood at $27.24. It closed today at $31.41, a 15 percent rise in less than a week.

So far, Facebook has recovered more than $10 billion of the $35 billion in market capitalization it blew off following its disastrous IPO. Facebook's painful low of $25.52 -- just 12 days ago! -- is now starting to fade a bit.

There are many possible reasons for Facebook's recent rise. The company has … Read more

IDC forecast: iPad up, Android down, BlackBerry irrelevant

IDC has updated its tablet forecast, raising Apple's iOS share at the expense of Android, while RIM's Blackberry fades to irrelevance.

IDC now expects iOS to grab 62.5 percent of the tablet market in 2012, up from 58.2 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, Android's share will slip to 36.5 percent from 38.7 percent in 2011.

And where does that leave BlackBerry? Virtually nowhere. RIM's tablet platform fades to 1 percent of the market in 2012, down from an already-tiny 1.7 percent share in 2011.

The market researcher is not currently forecasting Windows 8 or Windows RT tablets … Read more

One upside to Nokia's shake-up: An end to its lame ads

Perhaps one silver lining to Nokia's massive shakeup is an end to its poorly thought out "smartphone beta test" campaign for the company's flagship Lumia 900 smartphone.

You've probably seen one. Following the Lumia 900's launch in April, the commercials were everywhere.

They were also ineffective and likely hamstrung the phone's potential. The ads did little to highlight what made the Lumia 900 unique: its fresh look, powerful camera, competitive price, and the still little-used Windows Phone operating system.

It's no surprise that after a strong start, sales of the Lumia 900 fizzled, … Read more

HTC: Low-end smartphones would spoil our brand

In the pot of struggling smartphone makers, it seems like a logical move to push towards the emerging market.

The rapidly-expanding population centers make Brazil, Russia, India and China -- BRIC countries -- an attractive point of interest for smartphone makers when they fall on hard times. Research in Motion made a push with low-end smartphones, and Nokia always has. There's a trend emerging.

As the third musketeer in the dwindling smartphone sales race, HTC is taking a different move by signalling a full-throttle-ahead approach in its existing high-end smartphone markets.

The Taiwan-based smartphone maker said it wants to … Read more

U.S. tablet usage hits 'critical mass,' ComScore reports

In just the two years since the release of Apple's iPad, the U.S. tablet market has reached a "critical mass," with nearly one in four smartphone owners also using a tablet in the three-month period ending in April, according to data released by market researcher ComScore.

Tablet use among smartphone owners has more than doubled in the past year, going from 9.7 percent last year to 23.6 percent this year, ComScore found. By comparison, only 10.4 percent of feature phone owners also use a tablet, "suggesting that smartphone ownership is highly predictive … Read more

Apple, Samsung to own 50% of smartphone market by 2013

Samsung and Apple are already doing a nice job controlling the smartphone market, but in the coming year, things will get even better for the companies, according to a new report.

Cannacord Genuity analyst Michael Walkley wrote in a note to investors today that he believes Apple's and Samsung's combined worldwide market share at the end of the second quarter was 48.1 percent. By the end of the year, that figure could hit 49.7 percent. And by the conclusion of 2013, their combined share could reach 52.3 percent.

Walkley believes that Samsung will take the … Read more

Pepsi mashes up Twitter and music giveaways in marketing

Pepsi is trying something new to connect its brand with would-be customers. It involves music, and it involves Twitter, though how exactly this effort is supposed to get people to drink more soda isn't quite clear.

Starting today, Pepsi will post a video summary of music news on its corporate Twitter page each Wednesday, based on trending music topics on Twitter. It will also offer a free MP3 download from Amazon that relates to the video news summary. To get the song, users will have to send a tweet with a Pepsi hashtag.

Pepsi will also stream video of … Read more

Android, iOS nab 82 percent of smartphone market in Q1

Android and iOS are stealing mobile market share at a shocking rate, new data from research firm IDC has revealed.

During the first quarter, Android and iOS combined to secure 82 percent of the smartphone market. Android-based device vendors shipped 89.9 million smartphones last quarter, jumping 145 percent year over year. Apple's iPhone shipments soared by 88.7 percent to land at 35.1 million units.

Android and iOS shipments hit 36.7 million units and 18.6 million units, respectively, during the first quarter of 2011. At that time, the platforms owned 54.4 percent of the … Read more

Tapping social media to track stocks

For better or worse, the buzz on social media could be your guide to when and how to trade stocks.

Since last summer, Derwent Capital Markets has been using Twitter sentiment to help drive its hedge fund, as its algorithms sort out the ups and downs of people's chatter on the social network.

Now, Derwent is ready to share that ability with you. The firm today announced it's working on an online retail trading platform with a "built-in social media sentiment analysis research tool" -- which will track social media data from Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere … Read more