Just as Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) releases its new iPhone 3G to consumers today, the deal for Activision Blizzard, Inc. (NASDAQ: ATVID) has been finalized and rumors emerged that the combined game maker could create a digital music store to service its series of Guitar Hero games and challenge iTunes. The Financial Times reported Thursday that the company has a new service in the works as part of a "natural evolution" of the series and looks at Guitar Hero to become a "credible alternative to iTunes" via a majority ownership by Vivendi, which also owns the Universal Music Group.

The development of an online music store from the makers of Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft would be a profitable development for music publishers and investors, since downloadable content rakes in more money than simply offering music on game discs, according to a follow-up by Billboard on Friday. Part of this is due to continued spin-off games, especially the Guitar Hero franchise which saw Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: On Tour released in June. The fourth game in the main series is also due this fall and a Metallica-based game for next year.

Unfortunately, while any new music based digital store might offer a viable and intriguing challenge to Apple's iTunes Store, to date it still remains the industry leader despite previous attempts to dethrone it. No matter how much the music industry and other retailers dislike iTunes and Apple's hold on music and other downloadable media, the company still manages to maintain positive consumer relationships. This was made obvious today by the commotion over the new iPhone, which saw another price drop and technological advance.

"Rivals may be creating a buzz in the market for navigational technologies, but Garmin Ltd. (Nasdaq: GRMN) will fight off its rivals as it always has, with product breadth and innovation," says Ian Wyatt in Top Stock Insights.

"Garmin, which first started selling products in 1991, has been on a run. Since 2001, the company has compound annual revenue growth of 30%; net income has grown 29% compounded annually.

"Through sound financial execution, Garmin has become a worldwide leader in providing navigation, communication and information devices, many of which carry global positioning system (GPS) technology.

"The automotive and mobile division, which represents the company's portable navigation devices (PNDs), dominates the company's business. PNDs are the fastest growing, most competitive and most consequential market for Garmin and accounted for 71.2% of revenue in third quarter of fiscal 2007.

"In the North American PND market Garmin's share is more than 50%, and its PND share in Europe is 20%. Itss market share is greater than 60% in aviation and higher than 30% in marine electronics. The company's main geographic market is North America, followed by Europe, and then - to a much smaller extent - Asia.

It used to be that all tech companies wanted big footprints in the US market. Asia-based PC firms, lead by Lenovo and Acer, have been trying to get into America for years. Their efforts have been hurt by big domestic operators, especially Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), Dell (NASDAQ: DELL), and, more recently, Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL).

Perhaps it is lucky for Lenovo that its efforts here have not worked out so well. It is set to announce profits which will be double what it did last year in the same quarter. The company should have a better year than its US rivals because of its strength in China and the rest of Asia.

"The biggest concern is the slowdown in the PC market this year, but Lenovo is best-positioned within the sector since it has the least exposure to the US market," said CLSA analyst Jenny Lai, quoted by Reuters.

The news also underscores that fact that US PC companies are still behind where they would like to be in Asia. This is especially true of Dell, which is only now making deals with retailers in the region to sell its PC.

For once, having trouble getting into the US market may be a blessing.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

The Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone is not selling up to expectations in the UK. According to the Financial Times, "O2 said shortly before the iPhone's UK launch on November 9 that it expected handset sales of 200,000 in the first two months, but people familiar with the situation said the actual figure for the first eight weeks was about 190,000." But, a number of analysts viewed sales estimates from O2, the exclusive iPhone reseller in the UK to be very conservative. Estimates by research firm Gartner were as high as 400,000.

The reason for the slow sales may be the pricing of the iPhone and its calling plan. The handset plus a minimum contract cost about $1,700.

If the news were in a vacuum it might not sting. But, just a week ago China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) said it had cut off conversations with Apple over distributing the product in China, the world largest cell market. The price of the calling plan Apple wanted to market in the world's most populated nation may be been a sticking point.

If sales in the UK and Europe do not begin to exceed expectations and an Asian roll-out is slow, that leaves the U.S. to carry the burden of Apple hitting its 2008 sales targets.

That may be a little too much to expect.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) much-anticipated release of its new operating system, Leopard, is being met with some lukewarm reviews. Said Tom's Guide, a review site of both software and hardware and typically an Apple fan, "[this] Apple operating system, Mac OSX Leopard, was released before it was ready."

Cited as one of the most troublesome bugs is a glitch with the Finder program, the Apple equivalent to Windows Explorer. Again, Tom's Guide put it succinctly: "In Leopard, when Finder moves a file from one drive to another, it deletes the file from the originating hard drive, without first checking to see if the file arrived safely on the destination hard drive. If anything goes wrong during the file transfer, such as a momentary power glitch on the destination hard drive, the file would then be destroyed on both hard drives."

Apple has already issued an update on its website to fix some of the problems. There are a lot of bug fixes there: everything from email to iCal to Finder.

Are people on Wall Street and Main Street living in the same economy? Sometimes it's tough to tell.

A whopping 65% of Americans now believe that a recession is coming in the next year and 51% believe the economy is doing poorly, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times survey. Wall Street executives predicted a 37% chance of a recession, according to a Financial Services Forum survey released last week by the Financial Services Forum.

The differences aren't shocking. When average folks look at the chart of the Dow Jones industrial average, they probably think it looks like an EKG of someone who is having a heart attack. The market moves up and down in triple-digit increments with an alarming regularity. The housing market is horrible. Many people aren't sure if their job will be the next to be shifted overseas to a low-cost country.

Veteran investor Jim Rogers recently told London's Telegraph that the U.S. economy is "undoubtedly in recession. Many parts of industry are actually in a state worse than recession. If it were not for (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) Bernanke putting huge amounts of money into the market, the stock market would probably be down much more."

Of course, Rogers is correct. The lowered interest rates gave the stock market a needed confidence booster, which may explain the optimism of the Financial Services Forum survey. Retail sales in September rose at a higher-than-expected rate. Consumers, at least some of them anyway, continue to spend. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: APPL) reported outstanding results, showing that people are confident enough to shell out big bucks for iPhones and iPods.

So, the question for the Federal Reserve and Chairman Ben Bernanke at next week's meeting is whether the glass is half-full or half-empty.

Bits highlights an interesting detail from Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) earnings conference call -- according to its Chief Operating Officer, Timothy Cook, Apple sold 250,000 iPhones to people who want to use them on networks other than AT&T's (NYSE: T).

Cook said that the bulk of those appear to have occurred after Apple's $200 price cut. Bits estimates that at least $100 million was spent on phones that Apple is doing its best to disable. If Apple succeeds, these iPhones will become iBricks. Why does Apple care so much about iPhones not running on AT&T's network? Cook confirmed that Apple does not receive payments from AT&T for iPhones that it sells but that are not activated on the AT&T network.

I think it's ironic that Apple is trying to kill hackers who want their iPhones to run on a network other than AT&T's. After all, Steve Jobs got started in in 1975 by building a blue box that enabled him to steal AT&T network access. (On one occasion, Jobs's partner, Steve Wozniak used the blue box to dial Vatican City, identified himself as Henry Kissinger -- imitating his German accent -- and asked to speak with the sleeping pope.)

But now that Jobs is part of the establishment, he wants to pull the ladder up behind him. What do you think?

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Apple or AT&T.

"Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is hot," says breakout specialist Leo Fasciocco. The editor of The Ticker Tape Digest notes, "With a breakout above $147, we are now targeting a move to $170.

Fasciocco explains, "We have seen extremely strong accumulation in Apple since late on Friday and a nice gap move higher on Monday on the breakout. Our momentum indicator on the stock is also bullish and the accumulation - distribution line is in a solid up trend."

The advisor notes, "This fiscal year -- ending Sept. 30 -- AAPL should post a big 61% jump in net to $3.71 a share from $2.31 a share a year ago. Next fiscal year 2008, AAPL's net should rise 17% to $4.35 a share from $3.71 a year ago."

The past three quarters AAPL has surprised big on the upside, he observes. It topped the consensus by 21 cents, 24 cents and 36 cents a share the past three quarters. Says Fasciocco, "We see chances for an upside surprise."

He adds, "The stock's valuation is high, with the shares selling at a 40 price-earnings ratio. The key will be to see if AAPL can come up with another big winning product. Thus, a lot will depend on the firm's forecast of earnings and product development news." For now, the advisor has set an intermediate term target of 170 and recommends a rotective stop near 140.

Each day, Steven Halpern's TheStockAdvisors.com features the latest stock picks and investment ideas from the nation's leading financial newsletter advisors.

Downloadsquad reports that AT&T's (NYSE: T) AT&T Wireless has dropped Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone from the main page of its web site. What does this tell us about which company is driving the partnership.

It looks like Apple has the better end of this stick:

• Apple negotiated an unprecedented deal for a percentage of every iPhone customer's monthly contract,
• The iPhone lacks any integration with AT&T's profitable video, audio and ringtone services -- siphoning those profit opportunities through its iTunes Store or -- in the case of ringtones -- potentially through a future software update.

And AT&T Wireless -- which lost much of its marketing power back in 1984 when AT&T was broken up -- was eager for a bit of Apple's star power. Unfortunately, AT&T Wireless has realized that what matters most to Apple is keeping Steve Jobs happy. And Jobs probably sees AT&T Wireless as a dumb pipe.

While AT&T Wireless is benefiting from an unprecedented five-year deal -- most such deals are six to nine months in duration -- it may be that Jobs' long-term vision is to use AT&T Wireless to make the iPhone a de facto standard which will ultimately work on any wireless network anywhere in the world.

Update: The commenters on this post are correct and I am wrong. I did not -- and should have checked out the AT&T Wireless site myself. But I took Downloadsquad's word for it. This takes some of the wind out of the sail of this post. But I still think it's worth thinking about whether Apple will try to minimize the importance of AT&T Wireless as the iPhone gains further acceptance.

Peter Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He also teaches management at Babson College and edits The Cohan Letter. He has no financial interest in Apple or AT&T.

Michael Ashbaugh, editor of The Marketwatch Technical Indicator, considers the market's recent move a legitimate breakout. He explains, "Each of the major U.S. benchmarks -- the Dow, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq -- has broken sharply to multi-year highs, and in the process, notched consecutive closes above its 20-day bands."

Further, he adds, each major U.S. benchmark cleared its June high. He states, "That means technically speaking, the latest rally carried the earmarks of a valid breakout. As the major U.S. benchmarks extend higher, the potential upside from current levels is still significant."

Meanwhile, as to specific market sector, he notes that "We have chosen to highlight some names that are well positioned technically. These are intended as radar screen names -- sectors or stocks positioned to move near term."

While the lines weren't as long as in New York City and San Francisco, in other cities around the country the faithful waited patiently all day long to buy an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone. We visited a few stores and found that the wait, while long, brought happiness to geeks everywhere.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) to buy Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)? There are rumors and then there are RUMORS. This one fits in the latter category, with a bullet.

The rumor apparently started with a New York magazine biography of Steve Jobs, penned by John Heilemann, in which he quotes an anonymous friend of Jobs as saying "I think that Google is going to buy Apple. It would be a victory for Apple; they'd get major-league partners, money, and engineers. And it would be a victory for Steve -- a huge win that lets him leave the stage."

According to this anonymous source, Jobs' recent health issues would be the driving force behind this sale. Heilemann also suggests that Apple's corner on the music download business has seen its peak, as it and others jump into the DRM-free market, and as wide-ranging internet access makes the idea of buying tunes obsolete.

Therefore, the iPhone, he concludes, is crucial to Apple's continued success. Depending so heavily on the success of a single product would make any company nervous, and perhaps thereby interested in bringing on partners to share the risk.

Apple currently has a market cap of $105.13 billion, Google $158.88 billion, so such a deal would be beyond huge. However, I question why Google would want to take on a hardware company, unless they intend to declare an all-out war with Microsoft.

I think this is more fantasy than rumor, frankly. However, it's great grist for summer poolside conversation.

Apple Inc.'s (NASDAQ: AAPL) shows no signs of slowing down.

It hit a new high Monday of $104.35. The volume was more than 30 million shares, which is about 25% more than normal. Individual investors and professional portfolio managers have been dissecting the March quarterly results and concluding that Apple's momentum is still understated.

Apple crushed estimates for earnings by $0.21, reporting $0.87 versus estimates of $0.66. The bulk of the upside came from favorable component pricing from the semiconductor vendors that sell to Apple. The "real" upside to the quarter on an apples-to-apples (forgive the pun!) basis was $0.06-0.07 to what should have been $0.72-0.73. However, word on the Street is Apple may have the same favorable component price advantages carrying through the next 3-9 months. If this is the case, the earnings per share numbers are vastly under-stated for 2007/2008.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Ericsson (ERIC), Hiland Holdings (HPGP), AVX Corp (AVX), Tibco Software Inc (TIBX) and UPS (UPS) were some of today's notable downgrades:

• UBS downgraded shares of Ericsson (NASDAQ: ERIC) to Neutral from Buy following the company's Q1 report that showed weaker than expected operating cash flow.

• Hiland Holdings (NASDAQ: HPGP) was cut from Wachovia to Underperform from Market Perform.

• AVX Corp (NYSE: AVX) was downgraded to Underweight form Neutral at JP Morgan.

• Goldman cut Tibco Software Inc (NASDAQ: TIBX) to Sell from Neutral, citing valuation.

• Stifel downgraded United Parcel Service (NYSE: UPS) to Hold from Buy at Stifel, after Q1 showed a slight decline in U.S. Ground parcel volume...

OTHER DOWNGRADES:

• AG Edwards downgraded Cigna Corp (NYSE: CI) to Hold from Buy.

• Covad Communications (AMEX: DVW) was cut to Hold from Buy at Stanford to reflect the postponed profit growth.

• Citigroup downgraded Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to Hold from Buy on valuation.

• LongBow Research cut LSI Corp (NYSE: LSI) to Neutral from Buy; Wedbush cut shares to Hold from Buy on their disappointing Q1 report.

Analyst summaries provided by TheFlyOnTheWall.com (subscription required).

While many advisors and investors focus on the iPod and the iPhone when assessing the outlook for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), Nate Pile has a different take.

The editor of Nate's Notes explains, "As often happens following the release of widely anticipated news, Apple has drifted lower over the past few week -- and it would not surprise me at all to see this downtrend continue for another several weeks while analysts and investors alike fret over 'slowing iPod sales' and debate over the merits and the potential of the iPhone."

And while he expects that the iPod and iPhone will remain in the spotlight for the next several quarters, he adds, "These products are not our primary reason for being in the stock. That honor goes to the company's iMac line."

Indeed, based on the expanding markets for the PC/digital world, he believes we will see an "unexpected surge" in iMac sales.