Today: Analysts have mixed reports on two of Apple’s newest products. Google speeds up its search results. Oracle is paying Mark Hurd nearly $ 1 million a year, plus a bonus of up to $ 10 million.
Apple update
Apple — the Cupertino maker of Mac computers and “i” devices — is losing sales because of the antenna design on the iPhone 4, according to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster.
According to a Bloomberg News report today, Munster surveyed 258 phone users in the Minneapolis area. According to his analysis, two-thirds of the phone buyers are aware of
the antenna design and 20 percent said it affected their decision whether to buy the phone.
Apple, you might recall, offered free bumpers to early iPhone 4 buyers in response to reports of signal-strength problem.
More Apple: The company’s stock, though, surged today. According to Bloomberg, brokerage UBS raised its estimate for Apple’s profit and share price.
According to Forbes’ Velocity blog, UBS analyst Maynard Um said he expects Apple to sell 28 million iPads in 2011. However, Um said, iPad sales are cutting sharply into PC sales. “It appears the iPad is adversely
impacting the PC industry, specifically notebook PCs,” Um wrote, according to Forbes.
Apple shares closed at $ 262.92, up $ 5.11, or 2 percent.
More big valley stocks: UBS, meanwhile, downgraded its ratings on Palo Alto computer titan Hewlett-Packard and Santa Clara chip behemoth Intel — both Dow components and among Silicon Valley’s biggest companies.
HP dropped $ 1.11, or 2.8 percent, to $ 38.81. Intel lost 22 cents, or 1.2
percent, to close at $ 17.90. (As always, there’s more on stocks today below.)
Google in an instant
Mountain View Internet juggernaut Google is speeding up its search results: At an event in San Francisco, the company revealed its new Google Instant search service — which starts offering results even before you’ve finished your search query.
“Google Instant is search-before-you-type,” Marissa Meyer, Google’s vice president of search products and user experience, explained today on the company’s official blog. “Instant takes what you have typed already, predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real time for those predictions — yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.”
We tested Google Instant today on the company’s Chrome browser. Before we could finish typing “sili,” Google delivered a full page of search”silicon valley.” (The Wikipedia entry for “Silicon Valley” was at the top of the page, followed by our own SiliconValley.com tech news site.)
Google estimates the faster search will save its users two to five seconds per query. The company will be rolling out Google Instant for Google.com searchers who use the latest version of the Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer browsers.
Hurd’s Oracle pay deal
Oracle — the Redwood City software giant that has grown in recent years through a series of multibillion-dollar acquisitions, including this year’s $ 7.4 billion buyout of Sun Microsystems — today detailed the pay package for new Co-president Mark Hurd.
At Oracle, the former HP CEO will make $ 950,000 a year, plus a bonus of as much as $ 10 million for the 2011 fiscal year, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Hurd was initially granted options to buy 10 million shares of Oracle stock. Over the next five years, he’ll get an additional 5 million options a year. All the options will vest at 25 percent a year beginning one year from the grant date.
“As the former chief executive officer of HP and NCR, Mr. Hurd brings to the board firsthand experience in successfully leading and managing large, complex global sales, support and consulting organizations in the technology industry,” Oracle said in a separate SEC filing nominating Hurd to its board of directors. “Mr. Hurd’s hardware experience is particularly important to us given our recent acquisition of Sun Microsystems.”
HP versus Oracle: Yesterday, you might recall, HP sued Hurd, seeking to stop him from taking the job at Oracle. An HP statement said the suit was necessary “to protect HP’s trade secrets and confidential information.”
In the afternoon, Oracle responded to HP’s suit. “Oracle has long viewed HP as an important partner,” CEO Larry Ellison said in a statement.
“By filing this vindictive lawsuit against Oracle and Mark Hurd, the HP board is acting with utter disregard for that partnership, our joint customers, and their own shareholders and employees,” Ellison said. “The HP board is making it virtually impossible for Oracle and HP to continue to cooperate and work together in the IT marketplace.”
Kno wins $ 46M from Andreessen, others
Kno, a Santa Clara startup in the digital textbook market, has won $ 46 million in equity and debt financing in a round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
“We are strong believers in the disruption of untapped markets and education is a prime example of a sector in need of digital innovation,” Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz and a member of Kno’s board of directors, said in a statement.
Kno is developing a foldout tablet device with two touch-screen displays. The startup was founded in 2009 by Osman Rashid, a co-founder of online textbook rental pioneer Chegg, and Babur Habib, who has worked as a chip designer at Intel and Phillips Semiconductors.
Silicon Valley Bank and TriplePoint Capital also participated in this round of funding. According to TechCrunch, the latest funding round for Kno brings total investment in the startup to $ 55.4 million.
Silicon Valley tech stocks
Up: Apple, Google, Cisco Systems, VMware, eBay, Gilead Sciences, Yahoo.
Down: Oracle, Intel, HP.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Up 19.98, or 0.9 percent, to 2,228.87.
The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Up 46.32, or 0.4 percent, to 10,387.01.
And the widely watched Standard & Poor’s 500 index: Up 7.03, or 0.6 percent, to 1,098.87.
Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.
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