Chris Umiastowski is a former sell-side equity analyst at Orion Securities and TD Securities. Before that, he was an engineer for Nortel Networks. Chris is co-host of the Mobile Nations Stock Talk podcast. Chris owns stock in Apple as well as Google.
Short-term hits to the wallet may ultimately be good for the company The mother ship behind Android (that'd be Google) reported its Q4 earnings on Thursday, and while there isn't a lot of Android-specific news to consider form the report (we did get small nuggets on the Nexus 6, Google Play usage and and Chromecast use), I know many of you are interested in Google as a whole, or even...
Centrallo is a new productivity app, and if you spend any time making to-do lists I think it will quickly win you over as a fan. While it is designed for making lists, it does a whole lot more as I'll explain. I've been a beta user for the last month, and Centrallo has just come out of public beta today. It's rock solid and you can start enjoying it for free on Android or iOS today...
On Tuesday this week Samsung dropped a bit of a bomb on Wall Street. Instead of profiting to the tune of $5.2 billion for the quarter, which is what analysts were expecting, Samsung said it would only pull in $3.8 billion. While it's easy to throw out the sarcastic "Poor Samsung" comments, this is a huge miss. Earnings will come in 60 percent lower than the year-ago quarter. Analysts...
Mountain View has been a prime example of the long-term play Google went public 10 years ago today. I remember it well because, at the time, I was working as an equity analyst covering the technology hardware sector on Bay Street in Toronto. When IPOs happen, the investment bankers typically are the ones who set the offer price. Google used a Dutch auction, which was controversial and...
Earlier this week Google confirmed two small acquisitions — Directr and Emu. Both of them should help push the company's mobile and advertising agenda forward. Let's start with Directr, a movie-making app that is being absorbed into YouTube. If you take a look at the company's website you'll see a nice video walkthrough that shows the awesomeness of this app. Video is super important...
But if there's one company it needs to look out for, it's Facebook Google on Thursday reported its second-quarter results for fiscal year 2014. We already posted a brief summary of the numbers, and now it's time to dive a bit deeper. Let's the the disclaimers out of the way: I'm a Google shareholder and have been for many years. I'm optimistic on the company's outlook and while I will...
Not that this is any sort of surprise, but Google has finally announced a developer program for the Nest division. The timing couldn't be much better since I just finished writing about why I'm looking forward to the primary mobile players, Apple and Google, integrating "Internet of Things" hooks into their respective operating systems. "Works with Nest" is a set of APIs that...
An Amazon phone might make more sense than you think Over the last month or so there have been enough informative leaks to say, almost with certainty, that Amazon will be releasing a phone. I say "almost" to leave the door open to a change in plans, however small that chance may be. I recently learned that Amazon has hired several former BlackBerry designers. It sounds like they've...
The struggle between short-term thinking and long-term investing continues Yesterday after the market close, Google reported its Q1 results for 2014 which Derek Kessler nicely summarized already. While its clear that Google is growing the top line in a very healthy manner (19 percent year over year growth), Wall Street was disappointed and the stock is trading lower today. In my usual...
A gentle reminder that stock splits basically don’t matter and, no, Google hasn’t robbed you of voting rights. On Thursday morning Google started trading post-split, as explained in this post from Derek earlier in the day. I’m a Google shareholder, and instead of having shares worth over $1,100 each I have twice as many shares trading at half that price. I think it’s important for...
Two giants, one surprise and a still-struggling BlackBerry While today doesn’t mark any particularly important day on the calendar as far as mobile technology goes, I thought it would be useful to pull up a one year chart of the stocks that make up the most relevant names to Mobile Nations. From largest market value to smallest, these are Apple, Google, Microsoft and BlackBerry.
The news of Facebook acquiring WhatsApp for an enormous pile of money is front and center in the mobile communication industry today, and for good reason. Having watched WhatsApp grow from nothing into a cross platform winner over the last five years and doing a darn good job of executing on a growth plan, I'm impressed with what they've done. And while I was shocked to see the deal's...
Despite weak performance, the balance sheet looks pretty good HTC shareholders absorbed some pain today as the stock dropped almost 4% on the Taiwan Stock Exchange. The drop followed the company’s release of its Q4 results for 2013 along with a discussion of expected Q1 and 2014 results. The main reason for the stock’s decline today is probably the Q1 outlook. Revenue guidance is...
Google's growth continues to impress as it wraps up its 2013 earnings For those of us whose idea of fun includes reading financial reports from tech companies, Google posted its fourth-quarter 2013 results on Thursday. And because Google generates the vast majority of its revenue by selling advertising, it should come as no surprise to you that discussion of Android was not a focus of...
Yesterday Google surprised us all with its announced plans to sell what’s left of Motorola to Lenovo for $2.9 billion. Since others have already done a great job of explaining how Google didn’t actually lose that much on the entire deal, I won’t rehash the math. Instead I’d like to focus on what I think of this whole situation. When Google first bought Motorola, it seemed pretty clear...
This wasn't a $3.2 billion impulse purchase, by any means Now that all the silly jokes about watching ads on your thermostat are over (they weren’t really funny to begin with), let’s have another conversation about Google’s acquisition of Nest Labs. (For another, see Phil's "Let Nest be Nest" piece from earlier this week.") As a quick reminder, for a cool $3.2 billion Google has bought...
A look at Amazon's holiday winners may mark the beginning of a major shift for Microsoft and Windows Over the last year I’ve been paying close attention to the growing number of laptop vendors selling Google powered Chromebooks. We’ve got a Samsung Chromebook in my house, which otherwise is a mixture of Mac, Android, iPhone, iPad and BlackBerry. I think it’s going to take many years to...
The Chromebook is turning into the success that some thought Netbooks would achieve Remember a few years ago when tablets hadn’t yet come onto the scene, and all the tech pundits were talking about massive growth in the Netbook market? These mostly Windows-powered computers were more portable and less expensive than traditional laptops, so there were lots of predictions for huge growth...
I can’t help but notice that Google+ is gaining momentum, and Android is a big part of the cause. My own use of Google+ is up since switching to Android about a month ago, but it’s also clear that the network is growing globally. Late last month at a special event to announce new features, Google disclosed that Google+ has seen 58 percent growth in its user base, from 190 million in May...
Third-quarter earnings show Wall Street pleased with Google's continued growth Google’s third-quarter results were published on Thursday, and I had a chance to look into the results this morning. Some of the key financial figures were already covered in Thursday's brief post on this, so I’d like to focus on what I thought was interesting out of the conference call. As the headline...