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business newsMust Read Financial Blogs: AT&T Generates 20 Percent of Apple's iPhone Sales
Minyanville's daily roundup of some of the best financial commentary from around the Web.
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All Things D
Link: AT&T Generates 20 Percent of Apple’s iPhone Sales
"This was the quarter AT&T had to swallow that big, ugly $4.2 billion charge over its failed bid for T-Mobile. But strip out one-time hits like that, and the telco’s quarter looked okay: Q4 adjusted profits of $0.42 a share, and revenue of $32.5 billion. Analysts were looking for $0.43 and $32 billion.
AT&T says it was particularly happy with smartphone sales, and says it had a record quarter for both Apple and Android handsets. It said it activated 7.6 million iPhones during Q4, the majority of which were iPhone 4S models, which didn’t go on sale until two weeks into the quarter. That means AT&T, which once had the worldwide exclusive on iPhones, now accounted for 20 percent of Apple’s quarterly handset sales." (See also AT&T Gets Apple, Android Revenue Boost.)
Capital Gains and Games
Link: Legalize And Tax Marijuana?
"It was several years ago during the Q&A portion of a presentation I was giving about the federal deficit in a VERY socially and fiscally conservative suburb of Detroit that I was asked a simple and very sincere question: Why doesn't the federal government legalize heroin and crack and then tax the sales? I was stunned both by the question and by the people who were asking it. They were asking about the mechanics of how it would work, how much revenue legalization would bring in, etc. They were specifically asking about heroin and crack. And they were completely serious."
Ecnomix
Link: Newt Gingrich, Gold and Property Rights
"Newt Gingrich wants to broaden his primary appeal by invoking traditional conservative values and by extending his list of recommended policy changes. Unfortunately, he has chosen to follow the lead of Ron Paul inmoving toward the gold standard, rather than pick up on the ideas of Jon Huntsman — who emphasized the need to re-establish property rights in the United States. Ron Paul is right to question the balance of power that lies behind our monetary system (as I wrote here three weeks ago). And he is also correct that the current operating principles of the Federal Reserve tilt the playing field far too much in favor of very large banks. But proposing the gold standard — or a commission to study how to reinstate the gold standard — is no kind of solution to these issues. The imbalance of power in the United States at the end of the 19th century, under gold, was just as extreme as it is today." (For related content, see 5 Things You Didn't Know About Newt Gingrich.)
Real Time Economics
Link: Housing Help Will Run Up Against Lending Standards
"Both monetary and fiscal policymakers share one mutual problem: housing’s drag on the economy.The lack of new construction is cutting economic growth and payrolls. Falling home prices are reducing household wealth, a drag on consumer confidence and spending. The ideas coming out of Washington aren’t new but mainly extensions or continuations of previous efforts to help homeowners, especially those with underwater mortgages, and to keep mortgage rates low to attract new buyers. Those past moves have helped homebuilding find a bottom, but that bottom is well below boom levels. Housing starts are less than a third of their record highs of 2006, and home prices are almost 18% below their peaks of 2007, according to Federal Housing Finance Agency data released Wednesday."
Epicenter
Link: Netflix Subscriber Numbers Up, but Streaming Still Short on Profits
"Netflix’s fourth-quarter earnings show that the company has staunched the bleeding of total domestic subscribers that sent it into a tailspin last quarter. But gains in streaming subscriber numbers in the U.S. and worldwide can’t hide that the bulk of the company’s profits still come from its U.S.-only DVD-by-mail business, where subscribers are sharply down. Netflix’s letter to investors contains even more information than last quarter’s, when the company wasfirst able to separate out domestic streaming and domestic DVD customers. (Before its controversial pricing change, all Netflix subscriptions included both DVDs and streaming.) Total domestic subscriptions are now 24.4 million, up from 23.79 million last quarter (and 19.5 million a year ago). But total domestic subscriptions don’t actually offer a terrifically helpful picture of Netflix’s business. It’s a little like if Apple only touted how many total device customers it had, without breaking down sales of iPods, iPhones, iPads or Macs."
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