Here is your daily Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) stock news and rumors for Sept. 30, 2010. More television providers lash out at Apple over their aggressive TV rental pricing, with Time Warner’s CEO claiming that 99-cent rentals put traditional television sales in danger. A rumor out of Taipei says that Apple will be putting baseband chips made by Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM) into the iPhone 5 and iPad 2. Those chips may just be of the CDMA variety. Finally, MacBook Pro owners are eligible for compensation as part of a settlement package in a lawsuit against graphics chip manufacturer NVIDIA.
99-cent TV Rentals on iTunes “Jeopardize” Sales, Says Time Warner: Last week, Viacom (NYSE: VIA) openly derided Apple’s new television show rental model. CEO Phillipe Dauman said that the new 99-cent rentals available on iTunes devalued TV producers’ content. Today it’s Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) joining the chorus of discontent surrounding Apple’s new television initiative. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said that other media executives should beware of low cost iTunes rentals as they represent a significant threat to television companies’ brands. Bewkes advised caution at the Royal Television Conference in London. “How can you justify renting your first-run TV shows individually for 99 cents an episode and thereby jeopardize the sale of the same shows as a series to branded networks that pay hundreds of millions of dollars and make those shows available to loyal viewers for free?” Bewkes went on to say that digital providers of television content like Apple, Hulu and Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) need to balance their delivery model with traditional outlets like broadcast television networks. During the address Bewkes also called his company’s merger with AOL (NYSE: AOL) the “biggest mistake in corporate history.” Time Warner would do well to not dismiss digital delivery methods for television, lest they make the second biggest mistake in corporate history.
AAPL Finalizes Component Suppliers For iPhone 5 and iPad 2: A new report from Taipei-based paper the Economic Daily News claims that Apple has finalized the supply chains for both the fifth generation iPhone and the second-generation iPad. Many of the components (and their respective suppliers) will remain the same as those in the current models of both devices: The audio chip from Wolfson, power management from Texas Instruments (NYSE: TXN), touch-screen controller by Broadcom (NASDAQ: BRCM), Bluetooth from China Security and Surveillance Technology (LSE: CSR), CPU from Samsung, Flash memory from Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), and WiFi from Marvell Technology (NASDAQ: MRVL). The biggest change however will be the new baseband chips. Current iPads and iPhones have baseband chips made by Infineon, but Apple’s mobile devices will now sport chips made by Qualcomm (NASDAQ: QCOM). Qualcomm is the creator of the CDMA baseband chipset, which would indicate that Apple is indeed going to be creating CDMA mobile devices like the long-rumored Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) iPhone.
MacBook Pro Owners Receive Settlement from NVIDIA Lawsuit: MacBook Pro owners who purchased their laptop between May of 2007 and 2008 are eligible for compensation as part of NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) settlement with the claimants in NVIDIA GPU Litigation, Case No. 08-cv-04312-JW. The lawsuit claims that NVIDIA sold defective graphics chips to Apple, Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), and Hewlett-Packard (NASDAQ: HPQ). MacBook Pro owners who have seen distorted video on their laptop or have no video support whatsoever on their screen are eligible to get either a replacement graphics chip from NVIDIA or reimbursement for any repairs they’ve personally made to the device. The compensation is something of a moot point since Apple themselves extended warranty coverage to their customers using MacBook Pro laptops with the defective chips.
As of this writing, Anthony Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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