Lashou Makes Me Queasy

It is not just technology companies in the U.S. that have been toying with the idea of going public this year. Several international technology companies are also evaluating the possibility of listing themselves on the U.S. stock exchanges. The Bloomberg IPO Index may have reported a decline of 26% this year, compared with a 5% decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, but the recent index by Renaissance Capital shows that the performances of international stocks are improving. The FTSE Renaissance Global IPO Index reported growth of 15.2% during October.

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Bankrate Flourishing Since IPO

The Bloomberg IPO Index, a measure of the performance of stocks during their first publicly traded year, declined 26% this year, compared with a 5% decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. According to Renaissance Capital, 41 tech companies went public this year. However, their stocks’ performances have been underwhelming. Tech stocks lost 18% of their value during the year, making them the worst-performing sector in the economy. However, there are still a few new age Internet stocks that have managed to beat market skepticism. One such stock belongs to financial content aggregator Bankrate. Bankrate publishes information on mortgages rates, credit cards, banks, and other financial data relevant for personal finance planning.

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How Long Will Samsung Reign?

Samsung recently became the leading vendor of smartphones with a market share of 20%, up from 8.8% last year, according to a third-quarter market research report by IDC. It surpassed Apple, which has a 14.5% market share, down from 17% last year. Let’s take a closer look.

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Blue Nile Vs. The Nouveau Riche

Diamond prices have been on the rise during the year. In the first half of 2011, prices rose 40% owing to high demand in the Chinese and Indian markets. Since then, prices have fallen by up to 20% in a six-week period through September. However, the December 2011 Diamond Prices Index of 232.7 was still nearly 9% higher than previous year’s 213.7. The increasing prices are hurting online jeweler, Blue Nile. (Nasdaq:NILE)

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Angie’s List – An Ambiguous Investment

Thus far in 2011, many new age Internet companies have filed their respective S-1s hoping to cash in on the Internet stock valuation hype. For those that have already listed, such as LinkedIn, Groupon, and Pandora, their performance on the stock market has left a lot to be desired. The Bloomberg IPO Index, a measure of the performance of stocks during their first publicly traded year, fell 26% this year, compared with a 5% decline in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

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Nokia’s New Strategy Launches

Early this year, Nokia (NYSE:NOK) announced plans to adopt the Microsoft Windows phone operating system as their primary smartphone strategy and move away from their proprietary Symbian operating system. Nokia recently released the Lumia range of phones, their first phones based on the Windows operating system, and are apparently off to a running start in the U.K. market. Nokia has pinned its hopes on this new strategy to strengthen their increasingly tenuous hold on the smartphone market. Let’s take a closer look.

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LivingSocial Defers IPO

According to Yippit data, this September daily deals player LivingSocial grew faster than the market leader, Groupon. Groupon’s market share of the U.S. daily deals market slipped to 54% in September from 57% a month ago. During the same period, LivingSocial’s share climbed from 19% to 22%. Growth is partly attributed to the $10 million LivingSocial’s Whole Foods deal in which LivingSocial sold $20 vouchers at the cost of $10 each.

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Yelp Can No Longer Rely On Past Success

Local recommendation site Yelp finally put rumors to rest as they filed their S-1 last month. Yelp did not divulge many details, but the proposed $100 million IPO is estimated to peg their valuation at $1.0 billion-$2.0 billion. Yelp’s IPO is expected in the market by the first quarter of the next year.

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Expect Several New Products From Intuit In 2012

For tax software companies like Intuit, the previous quarter may have been a slow one. However, the company is using the slack season to work on improving their mobile presence. Intuit’s connected services include an array of service offerings on Software-as-a-Service, mobile, and other digital devices. Today more than 35 million people use these services, which helped generate 62% or $2.4 billion of the company’s revenues last year. Intuit expects to increase that share to 75% of revenues by 2015 and is therefore aggressively launching newer solutions.

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DeVry And Apollo Struggling, With A Few Bright Spots

According to research by Ambient Insight, the global market for online education at schools and businesses is projected to grow from $32.1 billion in 2010 to $50 billion by 2015. Despite rosy projections, tighter government regulations have slowed new student registrations at many for-profit companies. The government restrictions aim to control some of the ways in which for-profit educators have gotten students to sign up for courses. For-profit courses can be very expensive, and some have failed to deliver on their promise of better employment opportunities. Further, student loan default rates are an estimated three times higher for for-profit school loans compared with loans taken by students enrolling in nonprofit schools.

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