Today’s Bulldog wrap-up:
- What will Red Hat report today?
- Lenovo’s price snafu in Canada may trigger class-action lawsuit
- Cisco tops HP in latest “cloud” report
- YouTube’s new music service
- ‘Nest’ detectors back on sale
- Apple reaches a deal in ebook case
- Red Hat earnings
Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) reports quarterly earnings today after the markets close, and the Linux software leader is expected to report earnings of 33 cents a share. MarketWatch reports that analyst firm Raymond James reitered an “outperform” rating on the stock on Monday.
Journalist and investor Joe Panettieri, writing at SeekingAlpha, says he wants to hear Red Hat executives address five points in the report:
- “Simplified cloud strategy, built on OpenStack, is a must.
- “Potential virtualization gains vs. VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V.
- “Cloud Providers : How many are official partners?
- “Storage Revenues: Are they taking hold?
- “How much growth can RHEL 7 generate?”
Read his full analysis online.
- Lenovo faces off with Canadian consumers
In May, an error in a coupon offering led to potential savings of some 80 percent on some Lenovo products. Lenovo corrected the error and offered a discount instead of honoring the coupon.
That move has not satisfied some Canadian customers.
“A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed against Lenovo Canada following an online price error that left thousands of customers with cancelled orders,” reports Global News in Canada.
Report the full report online.
- Cisco keeps lead in cloud infrastructure
A new report from research firm Synergy says that Cisco is the leader in “cloud” infrastructure gear with a 14.8 percent market share. HP is right behind at 13.7 percent. IBM is third. Cisco’s share is at an “historic … high,” Synergy says.
The data is for the first quarter of this year.
“Cloud infrastructure leadership is becoming a bit of a two-horse race,” said Jeremy Duke, Synergy Research Group’s founder and chief analyst. “IBM will of course remain strong in many segments, but declining server sales and divestment of some product lines means that its cloud infrastructure revenues no longer match those of Cisco and HP. Meanwhile Chinese vendors will continue to take up some of the slack, with Inspur already featuring among the bigger server vendors and Lenovo soon to make a much bigger impact — providing that the IBM/Lenovo server deal gets the required regulatory approval.”
More details are available online.
- YouTube to launch music service amid indie dispute
YouTube will launch a new subscription music service, the company acknowledged Tuesday after being dragged into a public dispute over royalties that will result in the blockade of some independent artists’ music videos.
The Google Inc.-owned video site said in a statement that it is “adding subscription-based features for music on YouTube” and that “hundreds of major label and independent artists” have signed on.
The paid service — to be launched within a few months — will likely allow playback of videos without ads and allow for offline playback on mobile devices. That’s according to two people familiar with the matter.
The people weren’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
- Sales of Nest smoke detector resume at lower price
Google’s Nest Labs is resuming sales and lowering the price of a high-tech smoke detector that was pulled from the market after malfunctioning.
The new price for the detector, called “Nest Protect,” will be $99 when sales resume late Monday following a two-month moratorium. That’s a 23 percent discount from the alarm’s original price of $129 when Nest released it last fall.
Nest designed the device so an alarm warning of smoke could be turned off with a wave of the hand after a user determined there was no danger. But other kinds of hand gestures also could turn off the alarm, raising the specter that the device might remain silent when a fire broke out.
The defect prompted Nest to halt sales of the detector in early April.
- Apple settles on damages in digital book case
Apple has reached a settlement on the damages owed to consumers for orchestrating a scheme to drive up the prices of digital books.
Terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed in a document filed late Monday. More details will emerge in a filing due by July 16 in a New York federal court.
Lawyers representing consumers across the country had been seeking up to $840 million in damages. A trial on the damages claims had been scheduled to begin Aug. 25 in New York.
In another trial last year, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote ruled that the iPad and iPhone maker colluded with several major publishers to boost electronic book prices from April 2010 to May 2012.
Apple Inc. has appealed Cote’s decision. The Cupertino, California, company has steadfastly contended that its deals with several major publishers helped foster competition by giving consumers more choices in an electronic book market that had been dominated by Amazon.com Inc.
If Apple prevails on the appeal, the settlement on the damages becomes moot.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
