From Silicon Alley Insider, Sept. 25, 2008:

Update: For LIVE coverage of BlackBerry maker Research In Motion's Q2 earnings release and analysis, click here.

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion posts Q2 earnings this afternoon. Join us for LIVE coverage and analysis, beginning at 4 p.m. ET, including a live blog of their conference call, beginning at 5 p.m. RIM's look ahead will be the most important: With several new models launching this quarter, investors will be paying more attention to Q3 guidance than Q2 results.

RIM has forces working for it and against it: On one hand, it's selling its gadgets into a rapidly expanding smartphone market, where it's the top U.S. player. On the other hand, the economy is wobbly, Wall Street is dissolving, rival Apple (AAPL) has stolen a lot of recent attention with its new iPhone 3G, and the U.S. launch of RIM's latest, the 3G BlackBerry Bold, has been delayed until next month.

A marketing push behind the Bold at AT&T, the forthcoming Pearl Flip at T-Mobile, and the touchscreen Storm at Verizon Wireless should help RIM out in the November quarter. The company needs to guide around 3 million net subscriber additions and 7 million device shipments for Q3 or its stock will get clobbered. Anything above 3.5 million net sub adds and 8 million shipments would be upside.

Key Metrics:

Q2 Revenue: $2.60 billion consensus
Q2 EPS: $0.87 consensus
Q2 Net Sub. Adds: 2.6 million (RBC, AmTech), 2.7 million (Citi)
Q2 Device Shipments: 6.1 million (AmTech, Citi), 6.3 million (RBC)
Q3 Revenue: $2.95 billion consensus
Q3 EPS: $0.98 consensus
Q3 Net Sub. Adds: 2.9 million (Citi), 3+ million (RBC), 3.3 million (AmTech)
Q3 Device Shipments: 6.9 million (Citi), 7.4 million-7.5 million (RBC), 7.8 million (AmTech)

See Also:
Survey Says: BlackBerry To Keep Dominating Microsoft, Apple For Corporate Mobile Email
Say Hello To The $520 BlackBerry And The $600 iPhone

From Silicon Alley Insider, Sept. 23, 2008:

Google's launching the GPhone at 10:30 ET this morning. Click here for live coverage from SAI.

We're on our way to Guastavino's under the Queensboro Bridge, where Google (GOOG) and T-Mobile will unveil the first Android-powered 'GPhone', the 'G1', around 10:30 a.m. ET. (It looks like T-Mobile will offer live video of the press conference here, too.) A few last-minute rumors:

• An Amazon (AMZN) music/video store built in. This seems plausible, as Google doesn't sell media now, and the G1 could use a media store.
• That GMail access will be offered free, even without a data plan. This does not seem plausible to us, as we doubt T-Mobile will allow people to buy the phone without a data plan; it's required for most other smartphone purchases, a G1 without the Internet is pretty worthless, and if someone accidentally got online without an unlimited data plan, the overage charges would be obscene. A cheap data plan -- $10-$15 per month -- seems like a better offer.
  

Preview: The wait is almost over: This morning in New York, Google (GOOG) and T-Mobile will unveil the first Google Android-powered 'GPhone', which should probably go on sale in a few weeks for around $200.

Updated from 2:32 p.m. EDT

The stock market tumbled Thursday as traders fixated on the negative implications of falling crude: a slowing global economy.

Update: In the worst decline since June 6, the Dow fell 345 points, or 3%, to 11,188. The S&P lost 3% to 1237 and the Nasdaq fell 3.2% to 2259.

The decline was significant and suggests the S&P will break 1200 before long, says John Roque, senior technical analyst at Natixis Bleichroeder. After being "tremendously oversold" in mid-July, with an accompanying, historic spike in new lows "you shoulda rallied good," Roque said.
"We didn't. [The S&P] couldn't get through 1300. That's bad."

Thursday's surge in weekly jobless claims and weak same-store sales data were cited as the primary catalysts for the slide -- and strength at discounters like Wal-Mart is evidence of a struggling consumer, not a strong one.

Adding to the anxiety, Pimco's Bill Gross is warning about the potential for a "financial tsunami" if the U.S. government doesn't do much more to bail out both lenders and borrowers alike: "If we are to prevent a continuing asset and debt liquidation of near historic proportions, we will require policies that open up the balance sheet of the U.S. Treasury -- not only to Freddie and Fannie but to Mom and Pop on Main Street U.S.A., via subsidized home loans issued by the FHA and other government institutions," Gross writes.

In addition, a series of other developments in recent days have offset stronger-than-expected reports on ISM services, productivity and factors orders, as well as last week's GDP report, including:

• The ECB's downgrade of growth expectations, and a rate cut by the Australian central bank.
• Warnings from Corning and Ciena about slowing spending, and cautious comments about the cell phone market from Qualcomm's CEO.
• Terex's warning about waning demand for construction equipment from Europe and the U.S.
• Sluggish auto sales, most notably from Ford while GM's 49% owned financing unit, GMAC, slashed workers and announced cutbacks on mortgage lending.
• Snags in Lehman Brothers talks with the Korean Development Bank (KDB) over both price and KDB's potential partners in a consortium.

Given all that, on the heels of last week's cautious comments from Dell, Toyota, Diageo, and others, and it's no surprise traders are coalescing around the "slowing global economy" theme.

Typically reporters have the regular weeks of run up to Apple's World Wide Developers Conference or MacWorld to speculate on exactly what wonder device Steve Jobs will unveil. But Apple has sprung an event on us next Tuesday called "Rock On." It's not a stretch to think it's iPod themed and indeed some schematics of new iPod Nanos and Touches have been making the rounds. ZDNet has a catalog of past iPod announcements and the current speculation here. As the post notes, well known Apple fan boy and Digg co-founder Kevin Rose in increasingly making predictions that include iTunes software updates as well. One example is a program called "Genius" that puts together playlists for you of like-songs.

So what's a stake for Apple? As Kevin Maney of Portfolio points out Apple has been so dominant that it's growth of the music market is slowing. He goes so far as to say the Zune and a forthcoming competitor by Dell are threats, but I'll frankly believe that when I see it.

The bigger question is whether Apple has stolen its own iPod thunder with the iPhone-- complete with an app store that supports a free version of wildly popular Internet radio site Pandora.

One thing is for sure: Given all the recent health rumors, articles and Bloomberg's premature obituary leak, all investors will be eyeing not only what Steve Jobs says, but how he looks.

From All Things Digital, Aug. 29, 2008:

If you’re the owner of an iPhone 3G and you haven’t already updated to the iPhone 2.0.2 firmware, do so today–for your sake and that of all iPhone 3G owners.

Why?

Well, according to sources at AT&T (T), the reception problems that have plagued the device won’t be resolved until you do. iPhone’s running 2.0 or 2.0.1 firmware mistakenly demand too much power from 3G networks. And when they do this en masse, they can cause the network to refuse new requests for 3G bandwidth. That in turn causes the reception issues we’ve been hearing about since the device first arrived at market in July. And those issues will persist as long as handsets running iPhone 2.0 and 2.0.1 continue to strain the 3G networks.

That’s the story, anyway. And it does sound plausible. Although, you’ve got to wonder why this issue is specific to the iPhone. Presumably, there’s a multitude of other 3G devices out in the world requesting a 3G signal from the same networks the Apple (AAPL) iPhone is overwhelming. Why aren’t they suffering similar problems?

As consumers start to understand the ramifications of ISPs monkeying with their Web access, a blog-driven grassroots movement has turned Net Neutrality into a populist issue. Most major democratic Senate candidates have come out in support, and Barack Obama has assured voters it's something he'll actively pursue. That's one of the reasons techies have supported him.

Former Google executive and angel investor Chris Sacca notes the pro-Net Neutrality rhetoric is even starting to cross the aisle, as seen with this month's bi-partisan FCC decision that Comcast was unfairly routing traffic to customers. In the second part of our interview on Net Neutrality, Sacca and I discuss where the Net Neutrality battle lines are being drawn, and what voters can expect after November.

For the first part of my discussion with Sacca, click here.

Cisco shares jumped Wednesday as traders embraced the company's fiscal fourth-quarter results and better-than-feared comments from CEO John Chambers.

On the company's conference call, Chambers noted signs of recovery in the U.S. enterprise market and reiterated his "very strong" confidence in the firm's long-term revenue growth target of 12% to 17%. He also said the current slowdown is a "relatively short-term challenge."

But the bottom line is the top line in this case: Cisco only gave guidance for the first half of its fiscal year, and that guidance -- for 8% year-over-year sales growth in Q1 and 8.5% in Q2 -- was below expectations and well below its long-term goal.

Given the broader macro trends and Cisco's recent history, Henry Blodget says it's wise to "apply healthy skepticism" to those forecasts.

Skepticism was in short supply Wednesday, although traders may also be embracing Chambers' comments on CNBC about Cisco's not having "any negotiations with any large companies at this time."

EMC, often rumored to be a Cisco buyout target, was recently down about 3%.