Palmone --- Matt (slow)
>> a management change at coca-cola. daniel paloma is out as chief marketing officer, 13-year coke veteran chuck root is in.% he was recruited by steven heyer who submitted his own resignation on june 9 after the board passed him over and picked neville isnel for the top spot, instead. shares of palmone soared today after the company said profit and sales this quarter will be better than estimates. the stock up 37% at $29.36, excluding some costs. the maker of hand-held computers is expecting to earn as much as 17 cents a share versus expectations for a breakeven quarter from the analysts. driving palmone’s performance is the demand for its trio device.
>> our numbers show it’s continuing to take share and stabilize and provide a platform to grow smart tones from. and smart phones represent enormous growth for us over the next several years. we feel very good about our performance this quarter and optimistic about next year.
>> if you think that palmone shares are overly reliant, the company, on one product?
>> we never give guidance on the products until we announce them but we do an awful lot of work with our customers to understand what do they want, what else can the product do to simplify their lives and make it easy for them to connect to the information they want. stay tuned, we’ll have interesting things coming in all of our products.
>> palmone shares have doubled in value since the beginning of may from $15 to almost $30 a share. this stock used to be $1,000 4 years ago. s.b.c. communications says it will spend as much as $6 billion to build a fiber optic network that offers digital television service. this as the company steps up competition with cable tv providers. microsoft will supply internet protocol tv software for the network to be rolled out over five years. s.b.c. will use the connections to sell fast internet and web telephone calling services to consumers and small businesses. last month, comcast announced it will offer digital phone services by the end of 2006. sprint is stepping up spending to keep up with rivals and says most of the billion dollars budgeted for network upgrades will be spent this year and next rather than spread out over the next two years, trying to keep up with competitors such as verizon wireless and at&t% wireless, both announcing similar upgrade networks recently. the rise in spending could lift earnings for lucent, nortel, ericsson and motorola. president bush reacts to news that a south korean hostage in iraq has been beheaded. mark crumpton has details on that and more.
