The Nexus One runs on Android operating system that Google introduced in 2007. This makes Nexus easier to connect to Google’s services and other Web sites away from home or the office.

Nexus touch-screen was designed in partnership with HTC Corp., which made the first Android-powered phone and will manufacture this one, too. Google will handle all sales online and has no plans to let consumers check out the Nexus One in retail stores…mmmmhh is this a good idea? I wonder.

Nexus One’s  is a bit pricey, at $529 aaaaouchhhhhhh, this definitely lessens its appeal in a still-shaky economy.

The move does escalate the budding rivalry between Google and Apple Inc. Apple has sold more than 30 million iPhones in the past 2 1/2 years.

To counter Google, Apple announced a deal Tuesday to buy mobile advertising service Quattro Wireless for $750 million.

Most of the more than $20 billion in ads that Google sells annually are tied to Internet searches, a market that it dominates. But a proliferation of programs that create more direct routes to mobile applications may lessen the need to conduct searches on wireless phones. In designing and selling its own phone, Google gets yet another way to ensure its services remain within easy reach of people on the go.

Google is billing the Nexus One as the first “super” phone in an effort to position the device as a cut above the iPhone  forget Research In Motion Ltd.’s  BlackBerry for a moment.

Nexus appears to be sleeker than other phones, as thin as a pencil at 11.5 millimeters and as light as a keychain-sized Swiss army knife at just 130 grams.

Among other things, the Nexus One  offers more ways to customize the phone’s home page and use voice recognition technology to perform more tasks, including composing e-mails and navigating Google’s mobile mapping products.

“This phone, from a performance perspective, looks a little like your laptop did four or five years ago,” said Andy Rubin, a Google executive who oversees Android.

But most of the features on the Nexus One are already on other Android-powered phones, and it probably will be a long time before it can offer as many different tools as the iPhone, which boasts more than 100,000 applications compared with Android’s 18,000.

Google is asking consumers to pay more so they can select their own wireless carriers. That’s a departure from the usual sales model in the United States.

For the first few months at least, the Nexus One will only work on GSM networks — a limitation that means buyers in the U.S. will have to use T-Mobile USA if they want the handset for high-speed Web surfing. Consumers willing to enter into a two-year data plan with T-Mobile will be able to buy the Nexus One for $179, $20 less than the top-of-the-line iPhone with an AT&T subsidy.

The technological barrier also precludes the initial version of Nexus One from working on the U.S. wireless networks of Verizon Wireless and Sprint, though Google plans a version that will work on those carriers’ CDMA technology this spring and Verizon Wireless plans to subsidize that. For AT&T, the phone’s compatible only with its slower wireless network instead of the 3G one used by the iPhone.

The Nexus One should work with many carriers abroad, as GSM is the predominant technology used. Vodafone’s wireless service in Europe also will begin to subsidize the Nexus One in the spring.

http://www.google.com/phone

STOCKS:

GOOG

AAPL

HTC

Customers keep on fleeing from the worst wireless company in the country. Can this company be saved? What is Dan Hesse doing? Well, I guess he has been seen scouting for better suppliers and partners. But where is Dan Hesse going to get better partners from? The industry has not changed? If Dan Hesse or Gary former CEO couldn’t do it a year ago what makes him think he can do it today?

To address the stock price loss, sprint has to stop the steep customer loss, how, you ask? Get an iPhone imitation–a phone with a touch screen; and I guess they have done it.

Sprint is patnering with Samsung Electronics, maker of touch-screen Instinct, in hopes this hand set will help turn around its fortunes. In addition sprint plans to spend $100 million to market the phone, money the company I believe does not have, three times the marketing budget for any phone release Sprint has done in 2007.

Then question I have for Dan Hesse is, Will this work?

Think about this for a moment, Sprint has a “crappy” network. This is the root of all its problems and it (Sprint) knows it, but CEO has chosen to solve this problem backwards, and down play this problem.

To add an insult to the wound, the instinct is “supposed” to compete with the new, high-speed iPhone model that is supposed to go on sale July 11th for $199.

But why should I buy the Samsung instinct? I pay $230 for inferior quality then have to wait for $100 mail in rebate, and get locked in for 2 years on America’s worst cell phone network? Why?

All in all, whether customers will line up at the doors of Sprint stores remains to be seen, but one thing I know for sure, you will not see me there!

STOCKS

S

T

AAPL

Kyodo News agency reported earlier today that the Japanese electronics maker Toshiba will/ might withdraw its next generation HD DVD format. Toshiba’s decision hinges primarily on U.S. demand for its HD DVD format among other factors.

Toshiba officials did not comment on this issue.

Toshiba HD DVD has been competing against Sony’s Blu Ray disc which is back my majority of the Hollywood movie studios.

Sony has seen an increase in the market share, while Toshiba has been forced to slash prices to sell its HD DVD machines. If Toshiba pulls out not, it will be a complete knock out and an absolute defeat for HD DVD to Blu-ray.

On February 15^th, Wal-Mart announced that it will only sell Blu-ray DVDs and hardware and the multimillion dollar chain will no longer carry HD DVD offering. Wal-Mart announcement comes days after Netflix announced that it stop carrying rentals in HD DVD, and so has Target and Blockbuster inc, made similar decisions.

Warner Bros, rejected HD DVD format last month, by deciding to release movies only in Blu-ray formats.

Both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats deliver crisp, clear high-definition pictures and sound, but they are incompatible with each other, and neither plays on older DVD players. The only player out there that can play both formats is the LG player.

Like the boxing match, only one player has been expected to come out as the winner, just like the VHS trumped Sony’s Betamax in the video format battle in the 1980’s. Good thing Sony learned its mistakes, practiced and now it is supper better.

STOCKS:
SNE

LGL

TOSBF

BBI

NFLX

TWX

WMT

TGT

See the video below! The Battle of the Lions

Flash back, remember George Hotz…, if not, he was the first to make iPhone be usable with any SIM card, back in August 07. His method was the Hardware based unlocking method for the iPhone.

Old habits are hard to die, and if they do, they always find their way back to life; George is at it again. He just released the first software-based method to unlock the iPhone running firmware 1.1.3.

Before you proceed, I want to give you my take, this is not actually an unlock for 1.1.3 as it requires a downgrade to a previous firmware version. Its best not to try it until an actual unlock of version 1.1.3 comes out. I think George came out with this version as a statement to say that he is still the master of unlocking the iPhone because the iPhone Dev team had come up with a way to unlock ver. 1.1.3 before him. Ok, that’s me, what about you, what do you think… still interested in unlocking your phone….read on.

Word of caution! Before running this software to unlock your iPhone, it is very very very important to backup all your stuff, in iTunes so that you can be able to restore your iPhone if  something goes wrong, remember -shit happens. Murphy’s Law, there is nothing that can go wrong that can’t get worse.  This new unlock method is not for the technically challenged and requires modifying your iPhone’s baseband — a procedure that can genuinely brick the device, rendering it (at least temporarily) non-functional. I certainly don’t recommend it.

The steps from the maestro himself:

1.      Download gunlock and the secpack from http://iphonejtag.blogspot.com/ or 4.02.13 fls from http://george.zjlotto.com/index.php/baseband/

2.      Downgrade your phone to 1.0.2. See all the great tutorials online to do this.
Your baseband won’t be downgraded, this is normal. This will probably work on other versions too, but 1.0.2 doesn’t lose wifi on bb access.

3.      Kill CommCenter and run “gunlock secpack ICE04.02.13_G.fls”

4.      Reload CommCenter. For some reason my phone was in brick mode. Use the elite team bricktool to get out.

5.      You are done, your 1.1.2 OTB unlocked iPhone

You can also find more details here: step-by-step instructions

If you have trouble downloading the listed, necessary files, they are also available here.

If you need the iPhone 1.0.2 firmware (required by these instructions), here it is.

What did you find out? did it work?

January 31, 2008

Board of Directors
Yahoo! Inc.
701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089
Attention: Roy Bostock, Chairman
Attention: Jerry Yang, Chief Executive Officer

Dear Members of the Board:

I am writing on behalf of the Board of Directors of Microsoft to make a proposal for a business combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!. Under our proposal, Microsoft would acquire all of the outstanding shares of Yahoo! common stock for per share consideration of $31 based on Microsoft’s closing share price on January 31, 2008, payable in the form of $31 in cash or 0.9509 of a share of Microsoft common stock. Microsoft would provide each Yahoo! shareholder with the ability to choose whether to receive the consideration in cash or Microsoft common stock, subject to pro-ration so that in the aggregate one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be exchanged for shares of Microsoft common stock and one-half of the Yahoo! common shares will be converted into the right to receive cash. Our proposal is not subject to any financing condition.

Our proposal represents a 62% premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock of $19.18 on January 31, 2008. The implied premium for the operating assets of the company clearly is considerably greater when adjusted for the minority, non-controlled assets and cash. By whatever financial measure you use – EBITDA, free cash flow, operating cash flow, net income, or analyst target prices – this proposal represents a compelling value realization event for your shareholders.

We believe that Microsoft common stock represents a very attractive investment opportunity for Yahoo!’s shareholders. Microsoft has generated revenue growth of 15%, earnings growth of 26%, and a return on equity of 35% on average for the last three years. Microsoft’s share price has generated shareholder returns of 8% during the last one year period and 28% during the last three year period, significantly outperforming the S&P 500. It is our view that Microsoft has significant potential upside given the continued solid growth in our core businesses, the recent launch of Windows Vista, and other strategic initiatives.

Microsoft’s consistent belief has been that the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! clearly represents the best way to deliver maximum value to our respective shareholders, as well as create a more efficient and competitive company that would provide greater value and service to our customers. In late 2006 and early 2007, we jointly explored a broad range of ways in which our two companies might work together. These discussions were based on a vision that the online businesses of Microsoft and Yahoo! should be aligned in some way to create a more effective competitor in the online marketplace. We discussed a number of alternatives ranging from commercial partnerships to a merger proposal, which you rejected. While a commercial partnership may have made sense at one time, Microsoft believes that the only alternative now is the combination of Microsoft and Yahoo! that we are proposing.

In February 2007, I received a letter from your Chairman indicating the view of the Yahoo! Board that “now is not the right time from the perspective of our shareholders to enter into discussions regarding an acquisition transaction.” According to that letter, the principal reason for this view was the Yahoo! Board’s confidence in the “potential upside” if management successfully executed on a reformulated strategy based on certain operational initiatives, such as Project Panama, and a significant organizational realignment. A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved.

While online advertising growth continues, there are significant benefits of scale in advertising platform economics, in capital costs for search index build-out, and in research and development, making this a time of industry consolidation and convergence. Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers. Synergies of this combination fall into four areas:

Scale economics: This combination enables synergies related to scale economics of the advertising platform where today there is only one competitor at scale. This includes synergies across both search and non-search related advertising that will strengthen the value proposition to both advertisers and publishers. Additionally, the combination allows us to consolidate capital spending.

Expanded R&D capacity: The combined talent of our engineering resources can be focused on R&D priorities such as a single search index and single advertising platform. Together we can unleash new levels of innovation, delivering enhanced user experiences, breakthroughs in search, and new advertising platform capabilities. Many of these breakthroughs are a function of an engineering scale that today neither of our companies has on its own.

Operational efficiencies: Eliminating redundant infrastructure and duplicative operating costs will improve the financial performance of the combined entity.

Emerging user experiences: Our combined ability to focus engineering resources that drive innovation in emerging scenarios such as video, mobile services, online commerce, social media, and social platforms is greatly enhanced.

We would value the opportunity to further discuss with you how to optimize the integration of our respective businesses to create a leading global technology company with exceptional display and search advertising capabilities. You should also be aware that we intend to offer significant retention packages to your engineers, key leaders and employees across all disciplines.

We have dedicated considerable time and resources to an analysis of a potential transaction and are confident that the combination will receive all necessary regulatory approvals. We look forward to discussing this with you, and both our internal legal team and outside counsel are available to meet with your counsel at their earliest convenience.

Our proposal is subject to the negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and our having the opportunity to conduct certain limited and confirmatory due diligence. In addition, because a portion of the aggregate merger consideration would consist of Microsoft common stock, we would provide Yahoo! the opportunity to conduct appropriate limited due diligence with respect to Microsoft. We are prepared to deliver a draft merger agreement to you and begin discussions immediately.

In light of the significance of this proposal to your shareholders and ours, as well as the potential for selective disclosures, our intention is to publicly release the text of this letter tomorrow morning.

Due to the importance of these discussions and the value represented by our proposal, we expect the Yahoo! Board to engage in a full review of our proposal. My leadership team and I would be happy to make ourselves available to meet with you and your Board at your earliest convenience. Depending on the nature of your response, Microsoft reserves the right to pursue all necessary steps to ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.

We believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to create significant value for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees, and the combined company will be better positioned to provide an enhanced value proposition to users and advertisers. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to a prompt and favorable reply.

Sincerely yours,

/s/ Steven A. Ballmer
Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

Source: Microsoft

Related Links:

Microsoft

Well, today there is a report that fellow French bank Credit Agricole has hired advisers –Lazard and its own investment bank, Calyon, to study SocGen.to study a possible approach according to Les Echos newspaper.

On the other side, on Thursday Frenchs biggest listed bank BNP Paribas confirmed that it would look into making an offer for Societe Generale.

BNP had tried but failed to acquire Societe Generale in 1999. After the news of the trading losses broke there has been speculation of a joint break-up bid in which Credit Agricole would take Societe Genenerale’s investment banking arm and BNP the retail side of its business.

Societe Generele has hired Merill Lynch for advice, but the bank declined to comment. A source familiar with the Societe Generale said that the bank had taken on Rothschild for its bid defense.

BNP has hired Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers for its potential approach.

Societe generale has said that it is strong enough to stay independent—really. Analysts have predicted that aside from the Banks domestic rivals, Barclays’ Bank, Santander, BBVA and HSBC are among other potential bidders.

The French Government leaders have made it clear that they do not what any foreign bidders going after Societe Generele, putting the country on clash with the European commission which oversees competition in the EU.

“In previous banking cases, we made it quite clear that the government should not interfere by putting their national companies first,” Charlie McCreevy, the European Union’s internal markets commissioner, said Thursday through a spokesman. “The rules on free movement of capital and the legislation in place means that potential bidders must be treated in a nondiscriminatory way in the situation of cross-border takeovers.

As this saga unveils all we have to do is waiting to see how this issued will turn out to be…Now the spot light had turned to the government.

The French government vowed to defend the second largest bank Societe Generale against any hostile take over bids.

Christine Lagarde, French minister added pressure on the bank chairman Daniel Bouton over the handling of the $7.15 billion dollar loss.

The government also said that they are very attentive to any risk of destabilization of Societe Generale.

France’s top two banks BNP Paribas and Credit Agricole are said to be eyeing on Societe Generale, France’s third biggest bank by market capitalization. If any of these two banks don’t take the bank over, expect Barclays’ bank to make a move, the question of whether they will succeed remains to be seen.

Kerviel was placed under formal investigation on Monday for breach of trust, using false documents and breaching computer laws. Kerviel was released on bail, but the prosecution is appealing.

Turning the spot light to the Bank’s chairman Bouton for a moment, Bouton should be held accountable for the biggest losses in the history of investment banking. “You cannot escape your responsibilities,” Sarkozy said late Monday pointing to Societe Generale Chairman Bouton—that I agree with. Just imagine how much this guy makes….

Boutons fate lies in the mercy of Societe Generale’s board, per the French finance minister.

Keriviel, if found guilty of breach of trust would face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of $186,000.00

New data today to give clues into the state of the housing market and corporate spending levels

Sears Holdings Corp. reported that its CEO, Aylwin Lewis, will resign from the department store chain on February 2^nd.

Countrywide Financial Corp Chairman and chief executive Angelo Mozilo is to forfeit $37.5 million in pay and benefits.

Stocks to watch:
GLW 

MCD

HAL 

SHLD

Societe Generale Fraud Saga:
Jerome Kerviel to be charged of forgery, breach of trust and fraud; accusations to be filed against Jerome by Societe Generale bank of causing what could turn out to be history’s largest trading fraud by a single person

In Naivasha, at least nine people were killed and other 40 have been killed in and around Nakuru since fighting broke out there on Thursday.

Local media report that ethnic fighters in the rift valley area are attacking each other with bows, arrows and machetes (Panga)

According to Mr. Odinga and his supporters, President Kibaki stole the December elections. Kenya since, for about half a month has been on blood shed, much of it involving Mr.Odinga’s Luo tribe and Kikuyu—president Kibaki’s tribe.

Mr Annan is attempting to get a deal going that will resolve the political dispute and end the violence—that remains to be seen.

At least 1000 people have been killed and a quarter of a million other’s displaced.

Funny, how Mr. Annan brought president Kibaki and Odinga together for the first face to face discussions since the elections and later, both sides accused each other of seeking to undermine the talks—typical African men style.

Kenya’s economy will continue to suffer until this issue is resolved, hopefully the two men can mature and strike a deal for the sake of the country and it’s people.