I AM NOT MOVING – Short Film – Occupy Wall Street

Please share with everyone, including your leaders. This video is meant to be a warning to our leaders.

Video Tags: Occupy Wall Street

The Market Ticker – But But BlackBerry Was Dead?!

By Karl Denninger, The Market Ticker

The worm turns….

Research outfit Raymond James says that the debut of BlackBerry’s new BlackBerry 10 operating system and the two handsets on which it runs have gone a long way toward repairing the home turf market share erosion the company has suffered over the past few years. In the fourth quarter of 2012, BlackBerry’s share of the Canadian market topped out at a dismal 6%. But by the first quarter of 2013 it had more than doubled, rising to 13.5%.

13.5%, a clean double in one quarter?

Did I read that right?

And by the way, the Z-10 was only on the market in Canada for less than half of that quarter.

Now to be fair, I own a Z-10.  I came from Android as a guy who has ported Android (twice) because I didn’t like the versions that shipped with the hardware I owned and have hacked on it and loaded various versions from other people for years.  

I undertook all of that because of problems with the software provided “stock”; it was either bloated, unstable or (frequently) both.

The Z-10 continues to impress me, incidentally, although I will not try to snow you and tell you it’s perfect.  It’s not.  What I can tell you confidently however is that I vastly prefer the Zed to the Samsung Android devices.

It’s just easier, simpler, and more-productive to use.

Canadian and EU carriers have now rolled out version 10.1 of the phone’s firmware, which includes several material improvements that I’ve talked about before.  There are various “hacked” versions floating around and it also turns out that loading new firmware on the Z-10 is a trivial matter, where with Android phones it frequently was and is not.  While the Triumph (for example) was really nice in this regard certain Samsung phones can be a pain and many have a risk of “hard-bricking” the device inadvertently — that is, unrecoverably screwing it up to the point where it has to be exchanged.  It appears to be nearly impossible to actually hard-brick the Z-10, although I’m sure someone will come up with a better idiot at some point….

Recently I have discovered a way to change software versions on the phone non-destructively.  While carrier OTAs (over-the-air upgrades) have typically been able to do this on most devices it has been difficult or impossible to do so as a third party in most cases, and attempting it has usually been fraught with risk (including a device that refuses to cleanly boot and run.)

US carriers still have 10.1 in test and have not yet rolled it out for wide release.  However, I’ve been running it for a while, and a couple of days ago “harmonized” my phone with the Canadian and EU releases, all of which are of the same version as far as I can tell.

If you’re still on a 10.0 release you’ll like the update, and if the US market share figures wind up anything like the Canadian ones there’s going to be quite a shock coming to a number of people.  Remember that the US didn’t get the phone until April and the Q-10 (with the keyboard) has not yet shipped at all.  

Additionally in recent days the LA County Sheriffs Department (largest in the nation) has recently confirmed it is deploying the new BB10 phones and the underlying corporate BES infrastructure.  I expect these announcements to continue now that both BES and the phones are out.  In addition I suspect there will be material acceleration in this trend once the Q10 ships in the US market — an event that is now just a couple of weeks away.

Those who have written off the company in the enterprise space have, in my opinion, made a big mistake.

The bottom line is that the penetration results for Canada thus far are well beyond my expectations, especially considering that the Q-10 is not in those figures.  I was looking at the smartphone universe in the US/Canada market as a marketplace where BlackBerry could command a mid-to-high single digit presence and have a nice, stable business.  If they actually deliver double that or better then the stock is not just undervalued it is grossly undervalued, particularly given that the margins on the new phones are wildly better than their previous generation devices.

In addition I look at the introduction of the Q5, a somewhat-decontented Q10 for emerging markets, as an excellent step forward.  Someone will eventually bring that device into the North American market; being a keyboard device it could easily have a great deal of appeal to people who are very heavy text message users at the right price-point, displacing some of the lower-end Android appeal.  Again, the issue is one of margins — if you can replace the commodity-style margins on the older devices with one that returns double that you win big, and it appears that’s exactly what BlackBerry intends.

When you add to this the ridiculous amount of short interest in the stock this looks to be quite a warning to those who believe the company is going to fail — you could well be proved wrong in dramatic fashion.

Disclosure: The author is long BBRY.

More articles from the Market Ticker….

Weekly Forex Market Followup (May 13th – May 17th 2013)

By Michael Trinkle, ForexTraders

Key Fundamental Forex Events for the Week of May 13th through May 17th

The following table lists the key economic data and other events that came out during the week of May 13th through May 17th, with release times displayed for the GMT time zone.

The list also indicates how much each release deviated from the market consensus forecast upon release, as well as what the affected major currency pair or pairs did after each event or set of events.

Monday, May 13th

• 1:30pm USD Core Retail Sales -0.1% versus -0.1% expected. The currency rose.
• 1:30pm USD Retail Sales 0.1% versus -0.3% expected. The currency rose.
• 11:45pm NZD Retail Sales 0.5% versus 0.9% expected. The currency fell.

Tuesday, May 14th

• 10:00am EUR German ZEW Economic Sentiment 36.4 versus 39.5 expected. The currency fell.
• 10:30am AUD Annual Budget Release noted that, “In response to difficult global conditions and the sustained high Australian dollar, this Budget charts a pathway to return to balance in 2015 16 and to surplus by 2016 17, improves the sustainability of Australia’s public finances and builds on Australia’s record of fiscal and economic strength. This Budget delivers $43 billion in savings to return the budget to surplus and fund key nation-building reforms.” The currency fell.

Wednesday, May 15th

• 9:30am GBP Claimant Count Change -7.3K versus -3.1K expected. The currency rose.
• 10:30am GBP BOE Governor King said that, “Today’s projections are for growth to be a little stronger and inflation a little weaker than we expected three months ago. That’s the first time I’ve been able to say that since before the financial crisis” The currency rose.
• 10:30am GBP BOE Inflation Report noted that, “CPI inflation remains above the 2% target and is set to edge higher over coming months. Inflation is likely to stay above the target for much of the next two years, bolstered by external price pressures and administered and regulated prices. But inflation is expected to fall back to around 2% in the latter part of the forecast period, as external price pressures fade and a gradual revival in productivity growth curbs increases in domestic costs.” The currency rose.
• 1:30pm CAD Manufacturing Sales -0.3% versus 0.6% expected. The currency rose.
• 1:30pm USD PPI -0.7% versus -0.6% expected. The currency rose.

Thursday, May 16th

• 3:00am NZD Annual Budget Release noted that, “The NZDMO continues to focus on extending the duration of the Crown’s debt portfolio and is considering launching two longer-dated bonds as part of the 2013/14 bond programme. Possible maturities being considered include an April 2027 nominal and a September 2030 inflation-indexed bond.” The currency fell.
• 1:30pm USD Building Permits 1.02M versus 0.94M expected. The currency fell.
• 1:30pm USD Core CPI 0.1% versus 0.2% expected. The currency fell.
• 1:30pm USD Weekly Initial Jobless Claims 360K versus 332K expected. The currency fell.
• 3:00pm USD Philly Fed Manufacturing Index -5.2 versus 2.5 expected. The currency fell.

Friday, May 17th

• 1:30pm CAD Core CPI 0.1% versus 0.2% expected. The currency fell.
• 2:55pm USD Preliminary University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment 83.7 versus 77.9 expected. The currency rose.

Saturday, May 18th

• 4:00pm USD Fed Chairman Bernanke has not yet spoken. Hawkish = good for currency.

Technical Recap for the Majors This Week

EURUSD:

Forecast: Mildly Higher
Actual: Lower from a 1.2977 open to a 1.2828 close.

USDJPY:

Forecast: Higher
Actual: Higher from a 101.77 open to a 102.87 close.

GBPUSD:

Forecast: Mildly Lower
Actual: Lower from a 1.5355 open to a 1.5199 close.

AUDUSD:

Forecast: Lower
Actual: Sharply lower from a 1.0007 open to a 0.9735 close.

USDCAD:

Forecast: Mildly Higher
Actual: Higher from a 1.0111 open to a 1.0277 close.

NZDUSD:

Forecast: Mildly Lower
Actual: Lower from a 0.8288 open to a 0.8074 close.

More articles from ForexTraders….

Floorplanner helps buyers visualize homeownership

In a recent study conducted by Floorplanner, an online 3-D floor-planning platform, it was discovered that 73% of people experience the “Imagination Gap” in which they cannot visualize themselves or their belongings in a property that they’ve viewed online.

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