It’s official. Twitter has acquired internet advertising startup AdGrok, founder Matthew McEachen wrote in a blog post yesterday.

AdGrok’s advertising platform simplifies the process of running internet marketing campaigns for small businesses that aren’t very familiar with the web. And while those campaigns focus on Google Adwords, the new focus will be on developing Twitter’s “monetization platform”.

“When Twitter approached us and asked if we’d be interested in working on their monetization platform, we realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we just couldn’t pass up,” McEachen said.

At this point its unknown what shape that platform will take, but its a good bet that it will have many of the same features and statistics found in AdGrok’d “GrokBar”, except tailored to promoted and featured tweets.

As mentioned in a previous report, the purchase of AdGrok may signal that Twitter is ready to start formulating what kind of data is relevant to performance rather than rely on third-party services to do it. One thing that is very certain is that Twitter is looking to create a much more involved advertising platform for clients wishing to promote their messages through Twitter.

Effective immediately AdGrok is closing the service to new customers and will stop charging all current clients. The service will officially be taken offline June 30, and its existing databases will be deleted. Although the company does note that all past performance data and such will still be available to view through Google Analytics.

Twitter purchased the Y Combinator-backed startup for less than $10 million, according to rumors covered by TechCrunch.

Tags: acquisition

Companies: AdGrok, Twitter

People: Matthew McEachen

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

More commentary is coming in as regards Nokia’s (NOK) cut in its outlook this morning, with bears warning that things will get worse before they get better. It’s not just the continued deterioration of the Symbian-based phones, but also some risk still in the company’s ability to make its partnership with Microsoft (MSFT) pay off:

Jennifer Fritzsche, Wells Fargo: Reiterates a Market Weight rating on Nokia, while cutting her range of possible stock values to $6.90 to $7.40, from a prior $9 to $10. “While NOK has continued to say that 2011 is a transition year, we believe today’s announcement highlights how quickly the shift is occurring in the competitive environment. While we believe the Windows phone could be a transitional even for NOK there is still much to prove, in our view and much integration risk that comes with such an event.” Fritzsche cut her estimate for this year to 21 cents from a prior 59 cents per share in earnings, and cut her 2012 outlook to 49 cents from 77 cents.

Alkesh Shah, Evercore Partners: Reiterates an Underweight rating and cuts his price target to $6 from $8, writing that the company is not yet in the “transition trough,” arguing that the stock is “not cheap at 28 times our fiscal 2012 EPS forecast,” or 18 times, when factoring in cash per share. Smartphones are going to be under pressure from low-end smartphones, while Nokia’s feature phones will face competition from “white box manufacturers.” Things may “worsen over the next few quarters,” shah thinks, and “consensus estimates may still not be low enough.” Shah lowered his own EPS estimate for this year to 22 cents from 48 cents, and cut his 2012 estimate from 61 cents to 25 cents.

Meantime, Nokia shares have rallied from the lowest point of the day, now down just $1.18, or 14.5%, at $7.01, versus an intraday trough of $6.79.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

This is a busy week for chip and computer watchers, with the mammoth Computex trade show going on in Taiwan. For Qualcomm (QCOM) fans, it’s double the excitement with the company’s “Uplinq” conference in San Diego, taking place tomorrow and Thursday.

The events prompted some reflections from the bulls on the stock this morning:

Vijay Rakesh, Sterne Agee: Reiterates a Buy rating and a $62 price target, noting that the company is starting to make inroads in winning business for its “Snapdragon” line of processors in devices using the “3.0″ version of Google’s (GOOG) “Android” software, dubbed “Honeycomb,” which is all about tablets. Qualcomm announced some design wins with Taiwan’s Asustek, and also will have its chips in the HTC “Flyer” tablet.  To date, most Honeycomb devices have relied upon Nvidia’s (NVDA) “Tegra” chip. Rakesh expects the bulk of tablets based on Snapdragon to “ramp” next month and that there will be “tailwinds” for Qualcomm in calendar Q3 of this year.

Mark McKechnie, ThinkEquity: Reiterates a Buy rating and a $75 price target. McKechnie observes that Wednesday’s event will feature presentations from Nokia‘s (NOK) CEO Stephen Elop and HTC’s CEO Peter Chou. “We expect Qualcomm to reiterate its optimistic view of smart phones and tablets and the continued treadmill of faster data-rates from HSPA+ to 4G LTE,” writes McKechnie. He’s also hoping to get some confirmation that the company will win more baseband chip business with Apple‘s (AAPL) iPhone — it currenly has just the CDMA iPhone unit that’s at Verizon Communications (VZ).

Qualcomm shares this afternoon are up $1.01, or 1.8%, at $58.36.

Previously: Nvidia: Auriga Resumes At Buy, $24 Target, May 31st, 2011.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Apple (AAPL) shares are getting a substantial lift here this morning from the announcement a little while ago that CEO Steve Jobs will help unveil “next generation software” during the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference on June 6th in San Francisco, starting at 10 am, Pacific.

The stock is up $5.94, or 1.8%, at $343.35.

The event will feature discussion of “Lion,” the next version of OS X, which was previewed already; iOS 5, the next version of the iPhone and iPad and iPod Touch operating system; and also “iCloud,” Apple’s “upcoming cloud services offering,” a rather direct and frank admission by the company of what has been speculated upon for some time, namely, that Apple will host more capabilities in data centers rather than having them be simply a desktop affair.

Clearly, though, the notice of Jobs’s in-person appearance is doing the heavy lifting on the shares this morning. It can’t hurt that smartphone competitor Nokia (NOK) is down almost 15% this morning after cutting its Q2 and year view on smartphone weakness.

Update: Apple shares continued to build on the momentum throughout the session, ending the day up $9.93, or 3%, at $347.34.

Helps to see this morning’s rise in the context of the last two weeks:

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of Nokia (NOK) are down 90 cents, or 11%, at $7.30 $1, or 12.2%, at $7.20 $1.28, or almost 16%, at $6.91 this morning after the company this morning warned the current quarter is tracking much worse than it had expected, andsaid it could no longer off a full-year forecast, citing “multiple factors” that are “negatively impacting” its business.

The “burning platform” to which CEO Stephen Elop famously referred several months ago, is in effect sinking, at least for the moment.

Nokia sees adverse “competitive dynamics and markets trends across multiple price categories, particularly in China and Europe,” the company said. Then, too, it is selling more devices at lower prices and at lower gross profit margin. The company said it is also being subjected to “pricing tactics by Nokia and certain competitors.”

Subjected to its own pricing tactics? Hoisted on its own petard, I guess.

Nokia said it expects Q2 “devices & services” revenue will be “substantially below” the prior range of €6.1 billion to €6.6 billion. Operating margin will also miss the 6% to 9% Nokia had offered. In fact, the operating margin “could be around break-even.”

Nokia removed a target for Q3 devices and services sales to be even with Q2, and to rise in Q4, saying those targets were “no longer valid.”

Nokia said it would accelerate its attempt to trim €1 billion in annual operating expenses, and said that its development of its first phone using Microsoft’s (MSFT) operating system is going well, and that the device should ship in Q4 of this year. That may be somewhat earlier than some had expected.

Update: MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen this morning send a missive to re-emphasize what he’d said a little over a week ago, which is that Nokia is seeing less and less support from some carriers, and that this is leading to “rock-bottom pricing.”

“N8 sales are eroding rapidly and that some of the steeply discounted deals offered by leading carriers imply that this flagship model, launched last October, is now being phased out.”

Basically, it’s the Android invasion:

European rollouts of the Samsung Galaxy S2, Sony Ericsson Arc and HTC Desire HD seem to be proceeding notably strongly over the past two weeks. In our view, even second-tier Android launches like Sony Ericsson Play and Samsung Galaxy Fit are having better launch traction than carriers had anticipated. The Samsung Galaxy S2 seems to be matching iPhone sales at Orange and Vodafone.

Update 2: Jennifer Fritszche with Wells Fargo reports from the conference call with management this morning. She finds it interesting that the real problem Nokia is up against is Android, not Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone.

“Impact seen in both feature and smartphones – but given the fact it called out specific regions of Europe and China, NOK’s CFO indicated that more of smartphone contribution from these 2 regions,” writes Fritszche.

“CEO Stephen Elop indicated that Android players, particularly in CDMA, have been disruptive and are taking market share. While NOK did not mention any specific manufacturers, we note [Motorola Mobility (MMI)] has historically been quite strong in CDMA and has been building its presence in China.”

Update 3: Analysts are starting to adjust numbers — see the note today from Gleacher & Co. Some are warning that things will have to get worse, and that estimates are bound to go lower, before Windows-based devices help improve the outlook.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Twitter may be in talks to acquire contextual keyword bidding platform AdGrok for less than $10 million, according to a TechCrunch report.

While AdGrok aims to simplify search engine marketing campaigns, the platform could be adapted and used by Twitter to help monetize promoted and trending tweets.

Purchasing AdGrok could alleviate some of the criticism many have had toward Twitter, which lags far behind the competition in developing a clear advertising strategy for the site.

However, buying AdGrok could also signal that Twitter is ready to start providing statistics and relevant data to its users, which has traditionally been handled by third-party services like Hoot Suit, bit.ly and several others. The company has already started to distance itself from third-party services by apparently developing its own photo sharing feature and improving notification support — so, adding its own statistics wouldn’t be a complete surprise.

The deal has yet to be confirmed by either company, but TechCrunch’s Alexia Tsotsis points out that the last person Twitter corporate development executive Jessica Verrilli followed on Twitter was AdGrok co-founder Argyris Zymnis.

Tags: acquisitions, advertising

Companies: AdGrok, Twitter

People: Argyris Zymnis, Jessica Verrilli

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals

Folks, my apologies for coming late to the following: Goldman Sachs’s Simona Jankowski today reiterated a Buy rating on shares of Motorola Mobility (MMI), and a $34 price target, writing that the stock is undervalued based on a sum-of-the-parts analysis, and that upside in smartphone sales could boost the bottom line.

On the valuation side, the handset business may be trading at only one or two times projected earnings per share, because the current stock price is almost entirely reflective of the other assets: $8 per share in deferred tax assets, $11 per share in cash, and the $3 to $4 per share that the set-top box business may be worth. (Regarding the deferred tax asset, $2.4 billion, she observes it, “is currently largely offset by a $2.3 billion valuation allowance due to MMI’s recent lack of profitability, thus it does not fully appear on the balance sheet.”)

Of course, the handset business has been losing money, and the question is whether it will finally turn profitable this year.

Jankowski thinks it will, and she assigns a 7 times P/E multiple to the 2012 estimated EPS of $1.61 cents per share for that unit. That would produce a stock value of $11.29 per share just for handsets.

Moreover, every 1 million extra smartphones Moto sells will produce another $50 million in net income, or 17 cents per diluted share on an annual basis, she estimates. She’s currently modeling the company selling 20.4 million units of smartphones this year, out of a total of 42.5 million units, which includes tablet computers (“Xoom“) and feature phones.

Moto shares today rose 30 cents, or 1%, to $24.94.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Shares of Barnes & Noble (BKS) are higher by 41 cents, or 2%, at $19 after the company this morning announced a new version of its “Nook” e-book reader that uses e-ink technology, the same technology used in Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Kindle, and in the first version of the Nook, but this time with the ability to respond to the touch of a finger, eschewing the hardware buttons that had been used in previous models.

The $139 device is expected to ship on June 10th.

This latest Nook is black and white, unlike the color touchscreen LCD-based Nook unveiled last year.

B&N’s announcement follows a similar offering yesterday by Kobo, a private company that offers the “Kobo eReader Touch,” for $129. The Kobo device is also expected to ship in June. Kobo is tied in to e-book offerings from Borders Group (BGP), which is in bankruptcy, and the Canadian chain Indigo.

Both devices feature WiFi, and both are available for pre-order.

Of course, Barnes & Noble is the subject of a buyout offer from Liberty Media’s Liberty Capital (LCAPA) unit, for $17 a share, announced last Friday. And the Associated Press’s Mae Anderson this morning offers an update on that offer.

During a shareholder meeting yesterday, Liberty’s chairman John Malone said he wouldn’t shut all of Barnes’s retail stores, if the deal were to go through, and that he imagined “a physical presence for a long, long time to come,” as a profitable enterprise.

Amazon, meanwhile, is expected to add to its offerings with two fully-fledged tablet computers later this year, as I wrote yesterday.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Microsoft (MSFT) this morning offered up the latest iteration of its “Windows Phone 7″ operating system for smartphones, dubbed “Mango,” which the company promises will make smartphones “smarter and easier,” while adding 500 new features.

The software is expected to be available this fall, Microsoft said.

Engadget’s Tim Stevens, among others, is dutifully chronicling the debut event this morning.

Some of the initial points Microsoft is hammering on: It’s about people you connect with, not about “apps.” The “live tiles” — little squares that appear on the home page of the screen — have updates of developments surfacing on Twitter, LinkedIn (LNKD), and other information sources. Things like seeing people’s “profile pictures” as soon as they’re updated. A “groups” features automatically pulls together photos and other info for individuals you choose to associate together.

Microsoft is also demonstrating a smarter keyboard, with phrase completion. Different threads of conversation, such as Facebook and text messages, can be grouped together, the company said.

Microsoft said the software will be the first code it puts on the first phone developed in partnership with Nokia (NOK).

Microsoft shares are up 6 cents at $24.23.

Update: Business Insider’s Ellis Hamburger offers a video from the event that shows how Mango will perform multi-tasking functions. It is curiously similar to the “card view” used by Palm OS to jump between applications.

Article courtesy of Tech Trader Daily

Startup Impact Dialing has found that it pays to go lean. As the winner of the Lean Startup Challenge run by AppSumo, the company has now received an undisclosed amount of angel funding from the Band of Angels group, and it has also been accepted as a member of incubator Pivotal Labs.

To win the contest, Impact Dialing founder and chief executive Michael Kaiser-Nyman wrote a blog post outlining how his company follows the “lean startup” model, and the post doubles as a nice overview of the company’s beginnings. Kaiser-Nyman said he’d tried to find a predictive dialer (which can be used to automatically call people from a list of phone numbers, rather than requiring the caller to manually select and enter a number each time) for the gay rights advocacy group Equality Now, but was disappointed because existing products were “expensive, difficult-to-use, and not scalable.”

So Impact Dialing built a predictive dialing service on top of cloud computing products. It uses Twilio, the company that helps integrate phone features into Web applications, and runs its software on Amazon Web Services. So the company says it can add servers and phone lines as necessary (rather than limiting customers when there’s a spike in demand), that its customers make calls from an easy-to-use web interface, and that it’s completely self-service.

Impact Dialing says its first customers were political campaigns, but its services are now being used by call centers as an affordable way to add capacity and avoid expensive hardware investments.

Tags: Lean Startups, predictive dialing

Companies: Appsumo, Band Of Angels, Impact Dialing, Pivotal Labs

People: Michael Kaiser-Nyman

Article courtesy of VentureBeat » deals