Here’s the latest Apple Inc. rumors and news on AAPL stock as of Thursday, July 1. We’ll cover everything from the Apple antenna woes to yet another record-setting price target for AAPL shares.
Apple Calls for More iPhone and iPad Antenna Engineers: With each passing day, it looks like the complaints over dropped calls leveled against AAPL’s new smartphone are more than just hearsay. In addition to the messages about how to hold your iPhone and the advisement to use a protective bumper casing, Apple has quietly put out a call for prospective employees to fill new antenna-related positions. Word on the street is that Apple is strengthening its staff precisely because they need to investigate iPhone 4 signal issues. Positions on AAPL’s careers site include “RF Systems Validation Engineer iPhone” and “iPhone OTA Wireless Systems Engineer” which would certainly indicated an increased focus on improving the iPhone 4’s widely reported signal issues.
Analyst Predicts $390 High for AAPL Stock: With the iPhone 4 and iPad exceeding every sales prediction, not to mention the seemingly unending swell in the price of AAPL shares, so comes the new wave of analyst predictions. J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Moskowitz got in the game this morning, raising his AAPL stock target price from $316 to a whopping $390. Moskowitz has also raised his predictions for AAPL EPS at the end of the September 2010 fiscal year to $14.09, up from $12.91, and $17.50, up from $14.94, for fiscal year 2011. AAPL shareholder should be pleased this morning. Apple stock is up to $254.70/share, 1.3%, or $3.17, over yesterday’s close.
Jobs: Blu-ray Not Coming to Mac: Last week, a Mac enthusiast emailed Steve Jobs to ask whether or not he’d be able to sync his iPhone and MacBook over WiFi. Jobs responded with an emphatic, “Sure, someday. Probably!” Yesterday, Jobs responded to another user inquiry about functionality, this time putting a nail in the coffin of official Blu-ray home movie support on Apple products. Jobs’ comments on the subject: “Bluray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD – like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats. [Free], instant gratification and convenience (likely in that order) is what made the downloadable formats take off. And the downloadable movie business is rapidly moving to free (Hulu) or rentals (iTunes) so storing purchased movies or TV shows is not an issue. I think you may be wrong – we may see a fast broad move to streamed free and rental content at sufficient quality (at least 720p) to win almost everyone over.” Take that, solid state media.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own shares in any of the companies named here.
