Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 4)

Acquisition Strategy eBay acquired online ticket marketplace, StubHub for $307 million in May 2007. It also acquired social bookmarking discovery service, StumbleUpon, for $75 million. These are mostly acquisitions by eBay to strengthen its verticals and community features. Going forward we could see eBay making many more acquisitions to strengthen its key verticals, but also

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Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 3)

Vertical Strategy & Web 3.0 Framework discussion eBay being an auction site operates in various verticals. Some of the key verticals in which eBay operates are Auto, Real Estate, Apparel, Jewelry, Art, Books, CDs, Consumer Electronics, Photography, etc. eBay has some very good community and e-commerce features, but also lacks some rather vital ones. It’s

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Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 2)

Vertical Strategy eBay is the most popular auction site in the world. It also operates the hugely popular online payment software PayPal and VoIP tool Skype. We will take a look at the Company’s various businesses below. Marketplace eBay.com is still #1 in auctions, after years of competition trying to chip away at its game.

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Nokia’s 28% Sales Growth Underscores Strong Execution

In this post, I will look at recent developments in Nokia and Motorola. Earlier posts were featured in the iPhone series are available here and here. For the record, I own Nokia in my portfolio, as part of my convergence device bet along with RIMM, which I just bought as well.

Web 3.0 & eBay (Part 1)

Introduction Founded in 1995, eBay Inc. provides consumers with Internet platforms for global commerce, payments and communications. Since its inception, eBay Inc. has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including the eBay e-commerce marketplace, PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com, and others. Today, eBay has three operating segments: Marketplaces, Payments and Communications. The

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Good Time to Buy SanDisk

On August 31, just around the time I wrote my last post on Sandisk, it announced the introduction of Memory Stick Micro (M2) flash memory cards that would be mainly used in Sony Ericsson mobiles. The price is $149.99 for 8Gb and $99.99 for 4Gb. On October 18, SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) released its third quarter earnings. Revenue

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Adobe Has a New CEO

Adobe Systems Incorporated offers business and mobile software and services worldwide. Most famously known for its free Acrobat reader software, it is a mainstay in the desktop publishing and photo editing world, and popular among creative professionals. On September 17, 2007, Adobe Systems (ADBE) announced Q3 earnings ending August 31, 2007, and Q3 2007 proved

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Web 3.0 & Yahoo! (Part 5)

Conclusion Yahoo! Inc. is a leading Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide with 460 million worldwide unique visitors. About 88% of total revenues for the fiscal year 2006 came from marketing services. The largest segment of it comes from search advertising. Of late, Yahoo’s financial performance has been mediocre compared

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