Lockheed Could Gain As Iranian Tensions Escalate

The ominous development can provide a silver lining to U.S. defense contractors that may be see a fall in domestic and European demand in the wake of large spending cuts and austerity measures.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/01/06/lockheed-could-gain-as-iranian-tensions-escalate/

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Toshiba Just Built The Thinnest 10-Inch Tablet Ever, And It's A Real Stunner


toshiba excite x10 940

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Toshiba just announced the Excite X10 tablet, the thinnest 10-inch tablet ever built.

The Excite X10, which boasts a 10.1 inch IPS display, is a mere 7.7 mm thick. The iPad 2 is 8.8 mm thick, in comparison. It sits on the "premium" shelf just above Toshiba's budget Thrive tablets.

Click here to see some huge photos of the X10 >

Perhaps the most killer feature of the X10 (besides its inconceivable waistline) is the fact that it includes a Micro USB port, a Micro HDMI port, and even an SD card slot. There's somehow also room for a dock connector like you might find on the iPad.

As far as other specs, the X10 features a 2 MP front facing camera, 5MP rear facing camera, 1.2 Ghz dual-core processor, and 1 GB of RAM.

We got our hands on the Excite X10 a few weeks ago, and while it's incredibly well built, it's not as sturdy as the iPad 2. It's made out of magnesium alloy instead of titanium, so it's lighter, but not as resilient.

One issue we had with the X10 once we put our hands on it was that because it's so thin, it actually dimples a little bit if you squeeze it. This wouldn't be much of an issue if we didn't fear potential screen damage. When you press your thumb against the X10's screen (with not even much force), the screen gets darker in that spot like you might expect from a resistive touchscreen. 

While the top of the device is iffy, the X10 packs some nice industrial design touches like a metal bezel and a silver ring around the camera. On the whole, the X10 feels super solid to hold. Toshiba did great work here—especially in comparison to its fairly miserable Thrive tablets.

The Excite X10 will go on sale during the "first quarter of 2012" for $529.99 (16 GB) and $599.99 (32 GB). Toshiba hopes to ship the devices with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, but it might come soon after launch as a software update.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/CkrMSDObMpE/toshiba-excite-x10-2012-1

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Dell Starts Making Computers In Western China To Help Profit Margin

It?s hard to say whether the cost benefits will be enough to turn around Dell's PC business or even keep it afloat as there are a number of factors at play, the biggest being the fate of the overall PC market

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/01/06/dell-starts-making-computers-in-western-china-to-help-profit-margin/

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More Proof That We're Going To Need To Build A Lot More Homes


2012 is likely to be the year which thoroughly debunks the idea that America still has the huge pile of empty houses that will doom the construction industry for years to come.

We've made the case here that housing starts almost have to pick up, just based on population growth and a return to normalcy in the patterns of household formation.

Here's more bullish news on the residential construction front.

The apartment vacancy rate has fallen to its lowest level since 2001, per Calculated Risk.

Click to enlarge

chart

Now, multi-family construction has already been on the rise for awhile now, but the trend suggests this will probably continue as A) we're below our recent averages and B) there's probably a secular trend towards more people living in apartment-style units, rather than standalone homes.

On a related note, 2011 was the first year since 2005 that the residential construction added jobs.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/_eywg7YFheo/apartment-vacancy-rate-falls-to-lowest-since-2001-2012-1

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THERE WILL BE BLOOD: Mitt Romney Is In For A Hellish Saturday Night


Mitt Romney Hold On

It is not going to be fun being Mitt Romney this Saturday.

Romney is way ahead in the polls in both New Hampshire, which holds their primary on Tuesday, and South Carolina, where the primary is on January 21.  And all signs point to him being the inevitable GOP nominee sometime shortly thereafter.

However, it's not going to be a pleasant trip.

Here's why:

Saturday's debate in New Hampshire is the first one since Fox News' debate in Iowa in mid-December and the first since any official 2012 voting has taken place.   That means the GOP line-up has been thinned (bye-bye Bachmann!).  And power structures shuffled (hello Rick Santorum!).

It's also the first debate for Newt Gingrich since he plummeted out of his (admittedly brief) tenure in the GOP top spot.  And this is key, because Newt is a very good and very dangerous debater. Romney is neither.  Romney's debate strategy so far appears to be to keep his head low and say nothing of consequence.

Judging by his brutal Iowa concession speech (and his tone in the intervening days) Newt Gingrich has both his rhetorical barrels aimed directly at Romney.  And, as many many Newt watchers have noted, Gingrich is at his most nuclear when he is backed into a corner.

So expect explosions this Saturday.  Newt is not one to play mean on the trail and nice in front of the debate cameras.  Actually, he's the opposite. And Romney does not deal well with confrontation...it throws his bot mode into chaos.

Whether Gingrich can deal a fatal blow to Romney is uncertain (and probably unlikely) but he is definitely going do his best to make Romney bleed, and by the looks of things Romney shouldn't count on any of his fellow debaters to leap to his defense.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/businessinsider/~3/xMle5HlXg_8/mitt-romney-newt-gingrich-new-hampshire-debate-2012-1

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Is the iPhone Killing the Wireless Industry?

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I am almost shocked that I feel this way, but I'm starting to get a little weepy for our country's wireless carriers. In a sense, they are the unsung heroes of our untethered telephony experience, laying out huge sums to build the latest in high-speed mobile networks -- and incurring massive debt in the process.

Yes, I know, when I look at my wireless bill every month, I, too, think that these guys must be making money hand over fist. But consider this: In 2010, the wireless industry spent $24.9 billion investing in infrastructure, according to the CTIA, an industry trade organization. But only two carriers were able to reap more from their network capital expenditures than the cost for that capital, according to Bernstein Research. It's probably no surprise that those companies are AT&T (NYSE: T  ) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ  ) . That leaves Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S  ) , T-Mobile, MetroPCS, Leap (Nasdaq: LEAP  ) , U.S. Cellular, and the rest wondering whether their efforts will ever get rewarded.

The iProblem
But even the profitable carriers are watching their margins getting shaved quarter after quarter, and though they know exactly where the money is going, they are powerless to plug the leak. Why? Because it happens to be caused by their single biggest marketing tool -- the iPhone.

Let's look at Verizon's iProblem. This week, the company announced that it sold 4.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, more than twice as many as in the previous quarter. Yet the company's profit margins dropped 5% quarter to quarter.

AT&T is not immune to this phenomenon. According to The Wall Street Journal, analysts predicted that the carrier's wireless profit margins for the fourth quarter would fall to a four-year low, even though AT&T said it would sell a record number of iPhones and other smartphones during that period.

Nomura Securities analyst Michael McCormack told the WSJ that AT&T's relationship with the iPhone has "really been a wealth transfer from AT&T shareholders to Apple shareholders."

But the iPhone is such a draw that carriers are willing to subsidize an estimated $400 of its purchase price each time a subscriber signs a two-year contract, hoping that customer will stick around.

Sprint was so desperate to get into the iPhone club, it agreed to buy $15.5 billion worth of the phones from Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL  ) -- even if it can't sell them all. One could argue that without the iPhone, the No. 3 carrier would never have a chance of competing with the top two carriers. But on the other hand, such a commitment could doom the company anyway.

Data envy
And here's another conundrum that comes with the iPhone, as well as every other smartphone: how to charge for data usage.

Smartphones have created an increased demand on the carriers' networks to provide enough bandwidth for all the downloading and streaming to and from our mobile devices. But the iPhone 4S causes the biggest downdraft out there, and it's only slightly behind the HTC Desire S for gobbling up data, according to a study just published by Arieso.

To add to the carriers' data problem, the Arieso study also pointed out that 50% of all downlinking is done by only 1% of users. So the question is what to do about those little piggies. The Dow Jones Newswires reported that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told an investor conference that the company deals with overly prolific downloaders by strangling their data bandwidth. So Sprint's solution is to be disingenuous about its advertised unlimited data plans. AT&T and Verizon deal with heavy data users by charging them more through a tiered pricing structure.

Is the tail wagging the dog?
If the iPhone makes it even harder for the wireless carriers to turn a profit, then why have it? T-Mobile may provide that answer. It doesn't carry the iPhone, and it lost 850,000 contract customers through September. Now, some of that may have been caused by other factors, such as theuncertainty over the merger with AT&T, but lack of the iPhone certainly didn't help.

I also can't help wondering what would happen if Sprint can't pay Apple for all those iPhones. Would Apple then take over Sprint and run its own mobile network? I love my iPhone, but I don't think that would be a good idea.

AT&T and Verizon have both been steady income payers for years. It would be a sad day if their profit margins should slip enough to force a decrease in dividend payouts. For some leads on other solid income producing stocks, please help yourself to this special free report from The Motley Fool.

The Collapse of the Euro
Europe is only weeks away from economic collapse, insists a former IMF chief. Yet you probably haven't heard the whole story: You can protect yourself and even profit from this looming catastrophe if you move fast enough...

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Source: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/01/07/is-the-iphone-killing-the-wireless-industry.aspx

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Face The Music, Pandora Stock Isn?t Worth $10

The company came public on June 15, 2011, closing at $17.42 after its first day trading. Since then, the stock has only spent a few days out of the past seven months trading at or above its first-day close.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2012/01/06/face-the-music-pandora-stock-isnt-worth-10/

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