Apple at 2013 high on China Mobile, holiday hopes

SAN FRANCISCO -- Apple shares closed at another 2013 high Tuesday on hope that the company will strike an important deal with China Mobile and optimism about holiday sales of its gadgets.

China Mobile is the largest wireless network carrier in China, with more than 700 million subscribers. The company does not carry Apple's iPhones yet, but expectations for a deal between the two companies is rising.

UBS analyst Steven Milunovich upgraded Apple shares to buy from neutral and lifted his price target on the stock to $650 from $540, partly on optimism about the benefits of a China Mobile tie-up. When NTT DoCoMo in Japan began offering iPhones recently Apple's share of that market got a healthy boost.

"The imminent support of China Mobile along with NTT DoCoMo could aid the seasonally weak summer quarters" in 2014, Milunovich wrote in a note to investors.

A China Mobile deal would more than double Apple's addressable market in China, according to Brian Colello, an equity analyst at Morningstar.

"This is perhaps the largest avenue for Apple to reach out to new customers and achieve iPhone growth among first-time buyers," he added.

Apple shares rose 2.7% to close at $566.32 Tuesday, leaving them up 6% so far this year. The stock has lagged tech rivals such as Google and Amazon.com this year on concern a lack of new products is denting its growth prospects.

However, the company upgraded its iPhone and iPad product lines before the holiday shopping season and these gadgets seem to be selling well.

Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, analyzed how often the words iPad and iPhone were mentioned on Twitter along with the hashtags #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday.

The iPad was the top-mentioned item for #BlackFriday while iPhone was the most mentioned for #CyberMonday. That suggests those products are among the top gifts for 2013, Munster said.

Apple products were the most-wanted devices on Black Friday, according to data compiled by InfoScout.

App! le's 16GB non-Retina iPad Mini tablet was the most preferred device by the shoppers at Walmart, which sold the tablet with a $100 Walmart gift card, InfoScout reported.

Apple's latest full-size 16GB iPad Air tablet was the most popular Black Friday item at Target, which offered it at a $20 discount along with a $100 Target gift card, InfoScout also said.

Facebook storms into second decade

MENLO PARK, Calif. — Facebook steams into its second decade in the week ahead, flush with record revenue and profit, an all-time-high stock price, 1.23 billion members and unbridled optimism.

So what does it do for an encore?

"Add the next billion (users)," Sheryl Sandberg, the company's chief operating officer and best-selling author, said in an interview with USA TODAY at Facebook headquarters here Friday. She mentioned Africa and Asia as fertile territory for the next wave of growth, which is sure to please advertisers who increasingly are buying space on the social-networking giant's site.

A clearly pumped Sandberg, whose treatise on women in the workplace, Lean In, has sold more than 1.5 million copies, says she has no intentions of going anywhere — be it politics, as rumored, or as a CEO.

"I love my job. I love my partnership with Mark (Zuckerberg)," she said. "The idea of connecting the next billion users is really exciting."

Sandberg's infectious attitude is clearly imbued by Facebook's announced earnings last week, in which it reported better-than-expected net income of $780 million on $2.6 billion in revenue for its fourth quarter. The news sent the company's stock over $62 a share, giving it a market value of $154.7 billion.

For a company dismissed or derided by so many as a fad over the years, Facebook is clearly headed in the right direction. Its main source of revenue, advertising, soared 76%, to $2.34 billion, from the same quarter a year ago. And mobile, where industry heavyweights are betting the future, represented half of its total revenue. Some 945 million people use Facebook each month from a smartphone or tablet.

"Facebook has been successful because it is not afraid to change often," says former chief technology officer Bret Taylor, who from 2009-2012 oversaw the rollout of Open Graph, a software platform for developers to write apps on Facebook; Facebook Camera; and the Like button.

Speed has been the axiom at Facebook. Zuckerbe! rg doesn't hesitate to shape the look of the popular service in a constantly evolving quest to gain more users who will spend even more time on the site. By contrast, the look and feel of Twitter has remained relatively stagnant.

"We knew we had something," says Ezra Callahan, Facebook's No. 6 employee, who is now in the hospitality industry in Los Angeles. "I remember when we passed 1 million users. To see where it is today, it was amazing to have been a part of it."