Biz Break: From Apple, $458 iPads; plus: more Black Friday in... - San Jose Mercury News

Today: Apple has cut prices on the iPad for today only. In Silicon Valley, malls are crowded, but consumers say they're being careful with their spending. Plus: More Apple news, Del Monte, Silicon Valley tech stocks.

Black Friday deals

It's the day after Thanksgiving, and (as is our holiday weekend custom) we're glad we're working today and not battling the Black Friday crowds at Silicon Valley's favorite malls, big-box retailers and shopping districts.

If we wanted an iPad (hey, we've contributed a lot to Apple's revenue stream already this year), we'd be super-stoked to know that the Cupertino maker of Mac computers and "i" devices has included the new tablet computer

among its own online Black Friday specials.

Apple has reduced iPad prices by $41, the iPod touch by $21 to $41, the iPod nano by $11 to $21, and computers including the iMac, MacBook Pro and the 13-inch MacBook Air by $101.

If you want a new flat-panel TV, this is a good time to buy, according to our friends at The Associated Press. A supply glut will bring prices down sharply from last holiday season, according to the AP report.

Here in Silicon Valley, shoppers were up early this morning. The Merc and our Bay Area News Group siblings have a small army of reporters tracking the frenzy.

While consumer hot spots such as Westfield Valley Fair, Santana Row and Stanford Shopping Center have been busy, many shoppers say they're being careful with their spending this season.

"It's getting crowded earlier," Valley Fair shopper Debbie Fumia of Los Gatos told a Merc reporter this morning. "I think it's the hype. I have a 17-year-old. He left at 7:30 -- a half-hour before me. He said he and his girlfriend want to experience Black Friday. They are not shopping. They are coming for the experience."

Holiday headlines

Here's some Bay Area business news you may have missed since Wednesday afternoon:

Apple: The rapidly growing company has bought more land in Cupertino, according to a Merc report. A spokesman confirmed that Apple bought a 98-acre site on Pruneridge Avenue from tech giant Hewlett-Packard, which is consolidating employees at its Palo Alto headquarters.

The land is adjacent to a 50-acre site Apple bought last year. Both properties are just a short drive from Apple's Infinite Loop headquarters campus off De Anza Boulevard.

"We now occupy 57 buildings in Cupertino and our campus is bursting at the seams," Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told a Merc reporter. "These offices will give us more space for our employees as we continue to grow."

Neither Apple nor HP revealed the purchase price, although HP reportedly had sought as much as $300 million.

Del Monte Foods: The San Francisco company agreed to a $19-a-share buyout by private equity firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Vestar Capital Partners and Centerview Partners. The deal is valued at $5.3 billion, including $1.3 billion in debt.

Del Monte Foods' stock finished trading today at $18.83, up 84 cents, or 4.7 percent, from Wednesday's closing price.

Silicon Valley tech stocks

Up: Apple, Cisco Systems.

Down: Google, Oracle, Intel, HP, eBay, VMware, Gilead Sciences, Yahoo.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index: Down 8.56, or 0.3 percent, to 2,534.56.

The blue chip Dow Jones industrial average: Down 95.28, or 0.9 percent, to 11,092.00.

And the widely watched Standard & Poor's 500 index: Down 8.95, or 0.7 percent, to 1,189.40.

The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq ended regular trading early today.

Check in weekday afternoons for the 60-Second Business Break, a summary of news from Mercury News staff writers, The Associated Press, Bloomberg News and other wire services. Contact Frank Russell at 408-920-5876. Follow him at Twitter.com/mercspike.

View the original article here

Apple: 35000 iPads Apps Gives iPad the Advantage - The Mac Observer

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer announced by way of his statement in Monday’s conference call with analysts that Apple now has more than 35,000 dedicated iPad apps in the App Store. The company said in its September media event that it had some 30,000 iPad apps, meaning that Apple has been approving roughly 1,000 new iPad apps per week since then.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs also referenced those 35,000 apps when he said that Apple’s app edge was an advantage for the company as competitors start bringing Android-based tablets to market. Mr. Jobs

“Most of the video on the web is available in HTML 5,” said Mr. Jobs. “Having the iTunes media store and over 35,000 Apps on the App Store for iPad dwarfs anything else, and we think we have a very good product here that’s going to be hard to match.

He added, “And we’re not done.”

In another part of the conference call, he said, “iPad now has over 35,000 Apps on the App store. This new crop of tablets will have near zero.”

That combined with a 7” display that Mr. Jobs argued passionately was not big enough for a proper interface — he called such a form factor a “tweener” device that is too big for a smartphone and too small for a tablet — and that they will be DOA (dead on arrival) when they come to market.

View the original article here

Apple's iPads Now On Sale at Target - PC Magazine

For those with some kind of allergic reaction to Apple's main retail stores, take notice: The company's flagship tablet, the iPad, has jumped ship to yet another retailer in the United States… and it's a big one.

Target—starting today—is the largest chain of brick-and-mortar stores to sell Apple's iPad, and it joins Best Buy as one of only two non-Apple retailers that actually sell the device, period.

There's nothing too fancy about the announcement, however, save for the fact that Apple is ever so slowly diversifying the places you can pick up its products. The same six models of iPad at Target are available for the same six price points that you'd otherwise find at an Apple store itself.

Although, there is one interesting caveat in terms of what you can actually purchase through Target. For starters, no iPads are on sale via the company's retail web site—all iPad purchases must be made and picked up in-store only. Yet, a number of iPad accessories are sold via Target.com instead of actual Target retail locations.

Target is hoping to bolster its holiday sales by using the iPad as a hook to drive more feet into its retail establishments across the United States. And given the relatively high demand for the device—sales estimates hover around 3.27 million units for the iPad's first three months of existence—it's certainly possible that "iPad fever" could work in Target's advantage.

"We hope to sell a lot more later this week, once people are more aware that we carry it," said Chetna Parikh, a Target electronics team member, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Analysts estimate that total iPad sales could jump to 21 million units in 2011.

View the original article here