Here are some things going on this morning in your world of tech:
The Nasdaq Composite Index is down half a percent at 2,995.71 following the U.S. holiday break yesterday, slightly underperforming the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the Dow.
One of the strongest performers this morning is�Research in Motion�(RIMM), up 79 cents, or over 7%, at $11.40, on no apparent news. In the last 48 hours, images surfaced on MobileSyrup�of what might be a forthcoming touch-screen�BlackBerry running the�BB10 operating system, which is to debut formally on January 30th.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster�was back this morning with another update on how the holiday shopping season has panned out. Shopping trends “remained under pressure” in the week ending December 22nd, writes Munster, citing data from ShopperTrak, with national retail sales estimated to have slipped 2.5%, year over year, versus a 14.4% rise in the same week a the year prior. That may have to do with there having been an extra two shopping days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year, writes Munster. Full holiday season shopping is off 0.9%, year over year, which is worse than in 2007, which had the same calendar of shopping days, writes Munster.�Cotton Timberlake�of�Bloomberg�had an article citing similarly downbeat retail sales data�from�MasterCard.
Shares of Zynga (ZNGA) are up 5 cents, or 2%, at $2.38, perhaps a result of the continued anticipation of an online gambling offering. TheFlyontheWall noted earlier in the week that the company had posted a brief item online about something called “Zynga Plus Casino,” licensed in the U.K., coming in “early 2013.”
Since there isn’t much in the way of actual news and analysis today, let’s take a look at some of the gossip.
DigiTimes’s Daniel Shen and Steve Shen reported yesterday that Nokia (NOK) and HTC (2498TW) are both considering making tablet computers based on Microsoft‘s (MSFT) “Windows RT” flavor of Windows 8, with Nokia contemplating a 10-inch model and HTC a 7-inch model, they write, citing multiple unnamed “industry sources.”
Also via DigiTimes, Apple (AAPL) may ship 8 million�units of its iPad mini this quarter, fewer than it might have, because the supply of touch-sensitive panels for the device is lagging the rest of the manufacturing process for the mini, write Aaron Lee and Adam Hwang, citing multiple unnamed sources in the supply chain. The authors write that sources say shipments of the mini could increase to 13 million next quarter.
Apple shares this morning are down $6.84, or 1.3%, at $513.33.
The New York Times’s Quentin Hardy yesterday reported that productivity apps from Google (GOOG) are becoming increasingly popular among business users, in part because of steeply undercutting Microsoft‘s (MSFT) Office suite. Google’s $50-per-year seat license compares to a $400 tab for each licensed copy of Office, Hardy notes. Hardy quotes at least one analyst, Melissa Webster, of IDC, as saying that Google’s “good enough product has become pretty good.”
Speaking of Google, The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Lessin, Greg Bensinger, Evelyn Rusli and Amir Efrati teamed up for a year-ahead article yesterday, writing that the battle will between the search giant and Apple and Amazon.com (AMZN) and Facebook (FB) will escalate this coming year as they each make challenges to the others’ turf.
Google shares are down $4.27, or 0.6%, at $705.23, while Microsoft shares are off 29 cents, or 1%, at $26.77.
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