Online Real Estate Sector Still Sluggish

The economy may be recovering, but there is still a long way to go before the housing sector returns to its pre-recession boom. As the April deadline for the home owner tax credit expired, sellers have responded by reducing their house prices. U.S home prices are estimated to have dropped by $25 billion from March to April – a phenomenal 10% decline, according to real estate reports. The reduction continued in the month of May when 43% of sellers reduced their prices compared with 41% in April. >>>

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Apple Will NOT Buy ARM

The beauty of intellectual property (IP) businesses is that they do not have to wrangle over component prices: A single innovation and they collect royalties for years. ARM Holdings (NASDAQ:ARMH), InterDigital (NASDAQ:IDCC), and Tessera (NASDAQ:TSRA) are examples of such IP businesses in the smartphone sector. And all three have benefited from the market coming their way in recent years. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Marvell And Infineon: Two Sides Of A Coin

Apple is selling a million iPads a month, reports Om Malik. The iPad is galvanizing the mobile device market. According to a new forecast from IDC, worldwide media tablet shipments will grow from 7.6 million units in 2010 to more than 46 million units in 2014, representing a CAGR of 57.4%. Chipmakers such as Marvell (NASDAQ:MRVL) are benefiting from this trend. However, Infineon (NYSE:IFX; IFX.DE) is not as lucky: It is looking to sell its wireless arm. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Naukri.com And Facebook As A Job-Seeking Tool

Across the globe, economies seem to be recovering. The latest Job Search Index by the Indian recruiter Naukri.com (NAUKRI.BO) reported that May hiring activity was up 29% over the year. Growth is returning across all sectors with key industry sectors such as IT–software, banking, and auto returning to pre-downturn levels. For these three sectors, the May 2010 job index grew 56%, 47%, and 40% respectively over the year. Similar positive sentiment is reflected in Naukri’s final quarter results reported earlier. >>>

Optical Networking On The March

Cloud computing, social networking, video and music streaming, and HDTV are some of the trends driving the need for increased bandwidth. The existing network infrastructure based on copper cabling cannot withstand such bandwidth pressure, which is why fiber optic cabling is fast replacing it. Optical networking companies JDS Uniphase (NASDAQ:JDSU and TSX:JDU) and Finisar (NASDAQ:FNSR) are seeing steady growth and improving profitability due to this trend. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

PLD Market Marching Ahead

In my most recent post on the programmable logic device (PLD) sector, I discussed speculation that Intel would acquire Xilinx (NASDAQ:XLNX). Programmability in chip design has become a key factor that is driving a large portion of the semiconductor business at the moment. James Detar of Investor’s Business Daily reports that after a decade of slow growth, programmable chip makers are on the march. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Blue Nile, WebMD Holding Steady

According to the latest SpendingPulse report, the U.S. retail sector continued to grow, with e-commerce sales reporting their tenth consecutive month of double-digit growth. For the month of May, e-commerce sales grew 13.7% over the year. Overall luxury retail sales grew 9.7% in the period, reporting a sixth consecutive month of growth. Within the segment, one of the fastest growing sub-segments was jewelry with growth rates of 13.7% over May of last year. >>>

Dolby Eyeing Apple

Dolby (NYSE:DLB) has transformed itself from an audio IP licensing company into an entertainment technology company. As we saw in the previous quarter, it is eyeing the 3D market and is now turning to the mobile market with its Dolby Mobile technology. Let’s take a closer look. >>>

Rough Summer Ahead For Solar Industry

The solar market is preparing for a tough summer. Despite growth in demand, the industry is worried about the feed-in tariff cuts to be imposed by Germany, the world’s biggest solar energy market, from July 1. Following the Greek economic crisis, governments across the continent are cutting subsidies and expenses to manage their budgets. Benefits being given to the renewable energy projects are being trimmed back to keep spending in check. The Italian solar industry expects that country’s government support for renewable energy projects to be reduced by 25% or more in the coming quarter. Spain is also talking of reducing feed-in tariff levels. The falling euro is making matters worse: Input wafer prices and cell prices are increasing while the euro-dominated module sale prices are depreciating, thus impacting reported margins. China remains a strong competitive factor; according to a Pew research report, China is the leader in clean energy investments with $34.6 billion, and the United States follows far behind with $18.6 billion in public and private investments. The Chinese government is still deciding on feed-in tariffs, and many expect the decision to come by next summer, making it difficult for foreign players to invest in China. Meanwhile, Chinese players are continuing to flood the market with lower-priced options, causing worry among local U.S. players. >>>

4G And Smartphones Drive Carrier Markets

Last quarter, we saw how the four leading carriers were placed in the 4G race. Last week, Sprint (NYSE:S) released HTC Evo 4G on its high-speed WiMax network, and its launch day sales were three times that of the Palm Pre and the Samsung Instinct, its previous best sellers. Meanwhile, AT&T (NYSE:T), whose weak 3G network is overloaded by the heavy data usage by the iPhone and iPad recently did away with its unlimited plans. Let’s take a closer look. >>>