Nomura Securities Reiterates Buy on Microsoft (MSFT) Following Conference Call with Comfort Systems

Years in the Making, Microsoft (MSFT) Upgraded to Overweight at Morgan Stanley

(Updated - January 13, 2016 11:34 AM EST)

Morgan Stanley upgraded Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) from Equalweight to Overweight with a price target of $66.00 (from $57.00). Analyst Keith Weiss -- who had Equal-Weight rating on the stock since 2013 -- noted durability of growth, operating margin expansion, and aggressive capital returns, and he has increasing confidence that Microsoft can sustain mid-teens total return.

"For the past 5 years, a struggling consumer PC business, false starts in mobile, cloud... More

IBM granted most U.S. patents in 2015, study finds

(Reuters) - International Business Machines Corp (NYSE: IBM) was granted the most U.S. patents for the 23rd year in a row in 2015, according to a ranking by patent analysis firm IFI Claims Patents Services.

There were 298,407 utility patents granted in 2015, down slightly from 2014, IFI Claims said on Wednesday. IBM gained 7,355 patents last year. Utility patents cover... More

Worldwide PC Shipments Fell 10.6% in Q4; Longer PC Lifecycle Noted - IDC (MSFT) (AAPL)

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 71.9 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015 (4Q15), a year-on-year decline of -10.6%, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC ) Worldwide Quarterly PC Tracker . Although total shipments were in line with already conservative expectations, the news nonetheless ended 2015 as the first year below 300 million units since 2008. The holiday quarter achieved a modest uptick compared to the third quarter, but the year-on-year decline in 2015 shipments was nevertheless the largest in history, surpassing the decline of -9.8% in 2013.

The PC market continued... More

Global PC Shipments Fell 8.3 in Q4 and 8% for FY15 - Gartner (AAPL) (MSFT)

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 75.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2015, a 8.3 percent decline from the fourth quarter of 2014, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. For the year, 2015 PC shipments totaled 288.7 million units, an 8 percent decline from 2014.

The fourth quarter of 2015 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of worldwide PC shipment decline, said Mikako Kitagawa, principal analyst at Gartner. Holiday sales did not boost the overall PC shipments, hinting at changes to consumers PC purchase behavior. On the business side, Windows 10 generally received positive reviews, but as expected, Windows 10 migration was minor... More

PC shipments fall a record 10.6 percent in fourth quarter: IDC

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Global personal computer shipments fell 10.6 percent in the quarter ended in December compared to a year earlier, research firm IDC said on Tuesday, the largest decline since IDC started tracking PC shipments.

Longer lifecycles for PCs, along with competition from mobile phones and tablets, have... More

Google Said to Form Dedicated VR Unit - Re/code

Google is said to have formed its own virtual reality division, according to Re/code.

News comes as Facebook (Nasdaq:... More

BlackBerry (BBRY) Announces New Medical Device Cybersecurity Standard: DTSec

BlackBerry (NASDAQ: BBRY) Chief Security Officer, David Kleidermacher, posted the following to the company's blog on Tuesday:

In 2015, I made a call to arms for improved security standards. Blindly trusting the word of developers and enterprises claiming great security has not worked out so well. Despite massive increases in IT security spending, cyber attacks cost businesses a record half billion dollars in 2015. In the healthcare industry specifically, attackers have found a soft target, with 8 of the 10 largest healthcare breaches in history occurring in... More

Amazon (AMZN) AWS Continues to Capture CIO Mindshare - Piper Jafffray

PiperJaffray recently surveyed 135 CIOs in businesses with revenue ranging from below $100M to above $2B and found that Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) AWS continues to take mindshare and will see increasing levels of spend. However, Microsoft's Azure also gained mindshare, likely at the expense of other vendors.

AWS took an additional 130bps of... More