If you have some extra money to spend this year, you might be thinking to yourself, “I should buy a Bugatti,” or maybe you want to buy a private jet? Or maybe both are completely out of your price range, nonetheless, you might be interested to know which costs more just in case you win the lottery and need to make a sensible purchase.
So what is the cost of owning a Private Jet and Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport for a year?
Over the past few years social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have given unprecedented access to people’s private lives. More and more personal information is revealed through photos, status updates and conversations that are all being documented online. Last week, the Serious Fraud Office of London (SFO) warned that Facebook and Twitter are being used to harvest users’ personal financial details,
“The public should be aware of the predatory nature of fraudsters and be careful about revealing personal information on social-networking sites, as this has become a primary method of harvesting information and targeting victims,” SFO said.
In a joint venture between London police and Financial Services Authority, over 10,000 people were notified that their names were on a “master list” that contained a range of personal information, that might include: names, address, phone number, place of business, income and relationship status. While this is the only reported list, it’s quite possible thousands more were already victims of this latest cash scam.
I recently stumbled upon an article in North County Times about the surprisingly burgeoning specialty knife sales of Cutco Cutlery, marketed by Vector Marketing. The recent recession has left people as frugal as ever. I know I’ve cut down on a lot of my own spending, only buying things that I deem absolutely necessary, so I assumed that luxury knife sales would be at an all-time low, but Vector Marketing has once again proved its staying power by withstanding the test of time.
Vector Marketing is a company founded on the hard work ethic of their independent contractors working out of their regional offices all over the country. The company is built on a top-notch product perfectly complimented with a direct-sales initiative that enables them to recreate the rapport of a friendly, neighborhood salesperson that knows your family, understands your needs and will happily provide them.
Vector Marketing has recently found success for a couple key reasons. One of them is increased interest in cooking at home. Instead of choosing to eat out at an expensive restaurant, people are choosing to prepare their meals at home, often from scratch, to save money. Additionally, the increasing popularity of cooking shows on Food Network suggests that people not only cook at home out of necessity but people are learning to enjoy cooking at home and desire to expand their knowledge of it. Owning a decent set of knives, then, becomes a priority. Cutco’s “forever” guarantee helps because people feel like they are making a one-time investment that guarantees a sturdy set of premium kitchen knives in their homes for generations to come.
By sticking to a proven formula, Vector Marketing has found success in an unlikely place: the frugality of the battered American consumer. If I didn’t already own a set of trusty Cutco knives, I might even consider investing in a set myself, despite the low balance in my checking account.
Last year sales were down along with the economy, but computers sales and a new operating system by Microsoft have elevated profits in the 4th Qrt of 2009.
For its most recent quarter, Microsoft saw a 60% rise in earnings. Revenue grew 13% to $19 billion USD, lifting earnings to $6.7 billion. Analysts had expected $17.9 billion in revenue.
Microsoft beat the street estimate and reported strong earnings to match other companies such as Dell and Apple. With the launch of Windows 7, Microsoft is expected to continue to have strong sales, but the economy could have other plans. While the overall tech industry is looking better, a full recovery may not be in the cards for 2010.
Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs announced that the company’s annual revenues are now beyond $50 billion, but indicated that even more is in the pipeline to get excited about.
“If you annualize our quarterly revenue, it’s surprising that Apple is now a $50+ billion company,” Jobs said. “The new products we are planning to release this year are very strong, starting this week with a major new product that we’re really excited about.”
Apple sold 3.36 million Macs, including more than 2.1 million notebooks. That represented 33% growth in Mac sales, compared to an industry-wide 17% growth in PCs reported by IDG. Desktop sales reached 70% growth year over year thanks to the popular new iMac models. Apple’s CFO Tim Cook detailed even greater growth rates in Mac sales internationally.
It also sold 21 million iPods and 8.74 million iPhones, a record number of new mobile devices for the company. Apple retained roughly 70% market share in the global MP3 market with iPods; growth in the iPod touch reached 55%, while iPhones amounted to a 100% increase in sales over the previous quarter, comparing very favorably to Canalys’ data showing industry smartphone growth at around 30%.
Apple currently has $40 Billion in cash and grew by $5 Billion from the last quarter alone. This cash is one big reason that Apple has a $180 Billion market value according to Steve Jobs. It also gives Apple more cash than Microsoft and makes Apple one of the richest companies in the world.
Apple has big plans to announce later this week, many expect the announcement to include the Apple tablet that has been rumored for many years.
Starbucks is continuing to prove that it has successfully turned its fortunes around as it sees its latest quarterly profits more than triple. The US coffee chain giant made a net profit of $241.5m (£148m) in the three months to the end of December, compared with $64.3m a year earlier. Buoyed by extensive cost-cutting work over the past year, the firm has also won back customers in its home market. Same store US sales rose 4%, their first rise in more than two years.
Job cuts
Starbucks’ total revenues for the quarter rose to $2.7bn from $2.6bn a year earlier.
Its results beat market expectations.
The firm has cut thousands of jobs and shut hundreds of under-performing stores over the past two years to trim costs.
It has also introduced new, lower price coffees to win back customers temped away by cheaper rivals.
Starbucks chief financial officer Troy Alstead told the Associated Press news agency that the firm was “extremely pleased with the progress we’ve made”.
The company’s turnaround has been led by founder Howard Schultz, who returned to the chief executive role in January 2008.
He admitted at the time that the company had opened too many branches, which had resulted in stores taking business from each other, and the company’s upmarket brand image being tarnished.
The world’s largest chipmaker shot 
past the earning estimates from Wall Steet last week. The publicly-traded company reported a net income of $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2009, up an amazing 875 percent from its $234 million earnings in the fourth quarter of 2008. This more than beat Wall Street expectations.
Since we are not stock brokers or investment bankers, we won’t go into details about the financial numbers, but we do want to point out a few key facts:
- Revenues in Q4 2009 rose to $10.6 billion, a climb of 28 percent from $8.3 billion last year.
- However, if you look at the big picture, Intel had a better 2008 than 2009. 2009 revenues were $35.1 billion, while 2008 revenues reached $37.6 billion. That’s a 7 percent difference
- Intel predicts revenues of approximately $9.7 billion in Q1 2010, above Wall Street estimates.
Intel’s Q4 report is one of the first to come out this year, but it won’t be the last. If Intel’s numbers are any indication though, we’re nearing the light at the end of the tunnel.
RSS Feed
Twitter