Intuit’s Edge Challenged By H&R Block This Tax Season

Intuit (NASDAQ:INTU), the maker of QuickBooks and Turbo Tax accounting software, last week reported its second quarter results that missed its revenue guidance due to a delay in electronic tax filings. Intuit expects the delay to shift about $60 million revenue to the next quarter, and its shares are trading about 8% higher after the earnings report. Some analysts, however, say that Intuit is facing stiff competition from H&R Block.

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Verizon iPhone A Game Changer Only With New iPhone

The iPhone has come to Verizon after a long wait and will definitely benefit the mobile carrier. But the initial response to the iPhone 4 on Verizon has not been enthusiastic. Meanwhile, AT&T, which no longer has exclusive contract with Apple is looking to bring in more Android devices including HTC’s Facebook phones. Let’s take a closer look.

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New Threats Bring New Opportunities For Websense, Symantec

According to the Websense 2010 Threat Report, the number of malicious websites increased 111.4% over the year in 2010. What’s more, 79.9% websites with malicious code were legitimate sites that had been compromised. As cybercrime continued to grow, 52% of data-stealing attacks were conducted over the Web and 34% of malicious Web/HTTP attacks included data-stealing code. A staggering 89.9% of all unwanted e-mails in circulation during the past year contained links to spam, malicious sites, or both. The United States and China led in cybercrime, remaining the top two countries hosting crimeware and receiving stolen data in 2010. As social networking gained prominence, malicious links on such sites also grew. The report estimates that 40% of all Facebook status updates have links and 10% of those links are either spam or malicious. Online security players are thus having to come up with newer products to keep themselves ahead of cybercrime.

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News Corp, NYT Eyeing More Digital Subscription Revenue

According to ComScore and the Newspaper Association of America, 62% of all adult Internet users in the U.S. accessed newspaper sites last quarter. Worldwide, 105.3 million unique visitors went to U.S. newspaper Web sites in the fourth quarter of last year. The visits accounted for an average 4.1 billion page views per month and 3.4 billion minutes spent online by viewers, compared with Nielsen’s estimate of 3.2 billion page views and 2.4 billion minutes in the same period in 2009. As the focus on digital content sharpens, newspaper giants are doubling their efforts to address this market.

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What’s Next For Motorola?

Gartner’s latest report on worldwide smartphone operating systems (OS) puts Android in the No.2 position, overtaking RIM and iOS. From a 3.9% share in 2009, Android has leapt to a massive 22.7%. Its success comes from being part of the smartphone strategy of multiple vendors, including Samsung and Motorola. Motorola has managed a successful turnaround based on its Android phones and recently split into Motorola Mobility Holdings (NYSE:MMI), which will sell mobile handsets and television set-top boxes, and Motorola Solutions, which will supply wireless technology to governments and enterprises. >>>

Is Cisco Losing Focus?

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) this week reported second quarter results that beat estimates, but the company gave a disappointing outlook because it expects public sector spending to worsen over the next few quarters.

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Cognizant, Genpact Expanding In Latin America

According to the Everest Group, global transaction volumes in the fourth quarter of 2010 for outsourcing deals reached a three-year high. The annual contract value of outsourcing deals signed during the quarter grew 44% over the previous quarter to $4.9 billion. Outsourcing giants Cognizant and Genpact are also enjoying the good run.

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ARM Eyes Computing

For an IP licensing company, ARM Holdings (NASDAQ:ARMH) is doing extremely well. ARM licenses its low-power chip design to over 230 chip manufacturers, and more than 90% of the mobile phone chips are based on its low-power design. With the design for Apple’s iPad under its belt, it has carved a niche for itself in tablets. As the line between mobile and personal computing blurs, ARM is eyeing the traditional computing industry as well. Meanwhile, rumors abound about its possibly being taken over by a large U.S. group.

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Virtualization Reigns

According to IDC, more than 23% of all servers shipped in 2014 will actively support virtual machine technology, and more than 70% of all server workloads installed on new shipments in 2014 will reside in a virtual machine. The researcher estimates that more than $19 billion will be spent on server hardware in support of these applications, with shipments of virtualized servers growing at an annual rate of 14%. In a recently conducted survey of over 2,000 CIOs by Gartner, the CIOs said that their priority investments in the coming years will be in cloud computing and virtualization. Both EMC and VMWare are already benefiting from this trend.

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Concur Becomes A Consolidator

Last quarter, we saw how SaaS companies Concur (NASDAQ:CNQR) and NetSuite (NYSE:N) were on a growth track but had yet to get on to the consolidation path. But where there is growth, consolidation follows. And sure enough, Concur recently announced plans to acquire TripIt, a mobile trip manager, for about $120 million.

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