Tag Archives: amzn

Amazon Alexa Seen Topping Apple Siri, As Voice Commander

Siri, the virtual assistant Apple ( AAPL ) released nearly five years ago, may be topped by  Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and its own spin on said tech, Alexa, an analyst says. MarketWatch cites analyst James Cakmak of Monness, Crespi & Hardt as saying that Alexa could overtake Apple’s assistant Siri because of its integration with Amazon’s Echo speaker that takes voice commands, and its integration with other home brands. Cakmak sees Alexa increasingly looking headed toward industry-standard position, the report says, especially with the opening of third-party device interoperability. On Jan. 4, Cakmak had  downgraded Amazon from a buy to a neutral rating, citing competitive pressure in 2016. Amazon.com stock was up more than 1%, around 565, in afternoon trading on the stock market today . The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 73, where 99 is the highest. The stock touched a six month low of 474 on Feb. 9, but has since rallied nearly 20% since. Amazon Echo’s Killer App: Alexa Amazon’s Alexa is able to hail rides from Uber, play music, set timers, and manipulate smart devices in homes, such as the Nest thermostat from the Google unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ), among other functions. On Friday, Capital One Financial ( COF ) announced that it was adding a “skill” — what Amazon calls features — to Alexa, that would let its customers interact with their financial information with voice commands. Capital One said in a statement emailed to reporters that their customers can do things like check their credit card balance, and make payments via Alexa. Several Amazon devices offer Alexa : the original Echo speaker, the smaller Echo Dot with a scaled-down speaker, and the Amazon Tap that requires pressing a button before Alexa can respond to requests. Google and Microsoft ( MSFT ) also offer voice-controlled virtual assistants. Speaker Rival Sonos Slashes Jobs Faced with rising competition from Amazon, Wi-Fi streaming speaker maker Sonos is cutting staff and pivoting to work on voice-controlled features, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Sonos is a partner to Apple and other music providers. “ We’re fans of what Amazon has done with Alexa and the Echo product line,” Sonos CEO John MacFarlane said in a blog post Wednesday. “Voice recognition isn’t new; today it’s nearly ubiquitous with Siri, OK Google and Cortana. But the Echo found a sweet spot in the home and will impact how we navigate music, weather and many, many other things as developers bring new ideas and more content to the Alexa platform.” He called Alexa/Echo the first product “to really showcase the power of voice control in the home” and said Sonos will “invest what’s required” to bring voice-controlled music experiences into the home and to market “in a wonderful way.”

Finisar Stock Jumps, With Q3 Profit Beating As China Demand Grows

Shares of  Finisar ( FNSR ), a supplier of fiber optic networking devices to Google and Verizon Communications, jumped to a seven-month high after the company posted fiscal-third-quarter earnings late Thursday that topped views and forecast current-quarter revenue above the consensus estimate. A pick-up in demand for fiber optic devices from China could boost Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Finisar, analysts say. China Mobile ( CHL ) and other wireless firms are building out new networks. And China’s ZTE — the mobile gear maker which was the object of a U.S. government export ban this week for its sales to Iran — is not a “material” customer of Finisar, analysts say. Verizon ( VZ ), meanwhile, is among the U.S. telecom companies upgrading landline fiber optic networks in metropolitan areas to 100-gigabit-per-second technology. “Finisar reported solid fiscal Q3 results, with EPS coming in above Street expectations, and the company guided (current-quarter) revenue and EPS ahead of consensus estimates,” said Troy Jensen, a Piper Jaffray analyst, in a research report. “The upbeat fiscal Q3 results and forward guidance were driven by robust demand for 100G telco and datacom optics.” Finisar stock was up 18% in morning trading in the stock market today , near 17, as other fiber optic stocks also gained. Lumentum Holdings ( LITE ) advanced 1.5%, while Oclaro ( OCLR ), Viavi Solutions ( VIAV ) and Applied Optoelectronics ( AAOI ) were all higher by more than 1.5%. And while disappointing results at Ciena ( CIEN ) last week had led to sharp sell-off in fiber optic stocks, Ciena stock was up nearly 3% Friday morning. IBD’s Telecom-Fiber Optics group as a whole rose more than 3%. It ranks No. 81 out of 197 industry groups tracked. While phone companies such as Verizon have been the biggest customers of the fiber optic parts makers,  Internet companies such as Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google, Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and Facebook ( FB ) are also boosting demand as they build new data centers . In its fiscal Q3 ended Jan. 31, Finisar said it earned 25 cents per share minus items, flat from the year-earlier period but topping analysts estimates of 22 cents. For the current quarter ending in April, Finisar forecasts profit  of  22 cents to 28 cents, where analysts had modeled 21 cents. Finisar, which has a relatively weak IBD Composite rating of 45, said Q3 revenue rose 1% to $309.2 million, missing consensus estimates of $311 million. But for the current quarter, Finisar forecasts revenue of $317 million at the midpoint of its range, above the $315 million modeled by analysts. Merger talks between Finisar and Lumentum broke off last year, analysts said. Intensified competition has pressured the profit margins of fiber optic parts makers. “Finisar is seeing growth on a number of fronts; however, the increasingly competitive 100G datacom market holds us back for now,” said Jefferies analyst James Kisner, in a report. He has a neutral rating on Finisar stock. Image provided by Shutterstock .

DOJ Says Apple iPhone Privacy Claims Are ‘A Diversion’

The Justice Department on Thursday accused Apple ( AAPL ) of deliberately raising technological barriers to prevent law enforcement officials from accessing data on its smartphones. The FBI is seeking Apple’s assistance to unlock an iPhone used by one of the two now-dead assailants in the Dec. 2 terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, Calif. It needs to bypass the iPhone’s security to see if the device contains data useful to the investigation. Apple has resisted a federal court order to unlock the iPhone, claiming government overreach. The company says it would have to write software that doesn’t exist to get around the security safeguards on its phones, effectively making it an agent of law enforcement. Once that software is created it could be used as a back door by hackers, criminals and spies, exposing customers’ personal data, Apple said. In its filing Thursday, the Justice Department said Apple and its supporters are trying to alarm the court with talk about network security and privacy. “That is a diversion,” the DOJ said. The court’s order is “modest,” “narrow” and “targeted” to a single iPhone, the filing says. “Apple deliberately raised technological barriers that now stand between a lawful warrant and an iPhone containing evidence related to the terrorist mass murder of 14 Americans,” the DOJ filing said. “Apple alone can remove those barriers so that the FBI can search the phone, and it can do so without undue burden.” The Justice Department criticized Apple’s argument that unlocking the iPhone would be an undue burden. “As Apple Inc. concedes in its opposition, it is fully capable of complying with the court’s order,” the DOJ said. “By Apple’s own reckoning, the corporation – which grosses hundreds of billions of dollars a year – would need to set aside as few as six of its 100,000 employees for perhaps as little as two weeks. This burden, which is not unreasonable, is the direct result of Apple’s deliberate marketing decision to engineer its products so that the government cannot search them, even with a warrant.” Last week, a host of technology companies and civil liberties groups filed legal briefs in support of Apple’s position. Companies backing Apple included Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google, Facebook ( FB ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ). The next court hearing on the case is set for March 22 in the federal court in Riverside, Calif. RELATED:  Tech Rivals Unite To Support Apple In iPhone Privacy Case Vs. FBI