Apple on a tear : shares zoom past $500 and TV rumours circulate again
Thumbing its nose at its critics, Apple shares zoomed past $500 yesterday for the first time since January. Fuelling the rise was Carl Icahn's billion-plus investment and news that Apple had bought a Mountain View startup that could boost Apple TV .
Apple TV: something cooking?
The shares moved as high as $504.25 before falling back to end the day's trading session with a 1.8 percent advance at $498.50. Apple stock has now gained 10.2 percent in the month of August after advancing 14 percent in July.
The start-up is Matcha.tv, which offers a service that would guide users to video content across several different services, such as cable and different streaming options such as Netflix.
Although the price was a modest $1to $1.5 million, The San Jose Mercury News reported that the technology seems like a perfect fit for Apple TV, the company's set-top dongle that lets users stream video content to their television sets.
Amid rumors about Apple developing an all-in-one TV set, some thought Apple had fallen behind in the race for users' living rooms, with Roku more popular according to a recent survey. This move suggests that Apple does indeed have something up its sleeve
Cisco Systems is laying off 5 percent of its workforce - 4000 people - beginning next year - it revealed during its earnings conference call on Wednesday. Cisco stock fell in late trading to less than $24 after it ended the regular session with a 0.2 percent gain at $26.37.
Despite record quarterly revenues of $12.4 billion, a profits gain of 18 percent and sales up 6 percent, analysts had expected slightly stronger profits.