Thousands buy iPhones

Via Reuters

Thousands of U.S. gadget fans made an orderly pilgrimage to stores on Friday to be among the first buyers of Apple's iPhone, a music- and video-playing device expected to reshape the mobile industry.

Crowds outside some of Apple's outlets cheered as their doors opened at 6 p.m. local time, while smaller groups waited outside AT&T stores. AT&T Inc. is the phone's exclusive wireless carrier for the first two years.

"It's the best day of my life. It's Christmas, birthday, New Year's all rolled into one," said Kristian Gundersen, a 23-year-old graphic designer from Norway who flew to New York just to buy an iPhone.

Gundersen was one of the first to walk out of Apple's Fifth Avenue store with a device. Within two hours of opening, several hundred people had completed purchases at the outlet.

The iPhone melds a phone, Web browser and media player, and costs $500 to $600, depending on how much memory it has. Technology gurus praised it as a "breakthrough" device, but question whether users would be unhappy with its lack of a hardware keyboard and pokey Internet link.

The svelte gadget is a gamble by Apple Inc. co-founder and Chief Executive Steve Jobs to build upon the company's best-selling iPod music player and expand the market for its software and media services.

"They want to extend the dominance they have in terms of their ability to create really elegant hardware and software integration," said Mark McGuire, analyst with research firm Gartner. "This is the next big business unit for them."

Apple aims to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008, which would amount to a 1 percent share of the global market. It has not given a sales goal for the launch, but some analysts said it could sell up to 400,000 units in the first few days.

What is less clear is whether sales will hold up once the initial excitement has waned.

Piper Jaffray said this month Apple could sell 45 million units in 2009, putting the iPhone on par in terms of revenue with its two key businesses, the Macintosh computer and iPod.

Many analysts say Apple stock could rise another 30 percent in the coming year if the phone catches on, but some cautioned that the shares are already richly valued.

"Apple shares have already benefited from a powerful hype cycle," Cowen & Co. analyst Arnie Berman wrote in a report.

Shares of Apple rose 1.2 percent to $122.04 and have gained more than 30 percent since Jobs unveiled the phone in January. AT&T shares rose 1.9 percent to $41.50.

SHAKING UP THE INDUSTRY

Friday's launch was seen as a test of wider U.S. demand for advanced phones, which have already caught on in parts of Asia and elsewhere.

It has already whipped technology lovers into the sort of frenzy usually associated with a new video game console.

Judging by its first customers, the iPhone seemed to draw an older generation of gadget geeks rather than young fans who may have been put off by the price, including a required service contract that starts at about $1,400 for two years.

"The phones out there are just garbage. I've gone through several phones, even the expensive ones. This is different," said Albert Livingstone in Chicago. "It's the newest toy. I'm 62 -- I don't have much time left to buy toys."

Some aimed to make a profit on the iPhone by selling it or getting paid to wait.

"I'm definitely a mercenary," said Kyle Laurentine, outside a San Francisco Apple outlet, where the doors had yet to open and about 200 people were waiting. "I am 17 years old and I don't need an iPhone. I have an iPod and a cell phone."

The phones quickly popped up for sale online at inflated prices. On online classifieds site Craigslist, most listings ranged between $750 and $1,500, with one optimist asking for $10,000. One iPhone offered on auction Web site eBay had 23 bids and a price of $1,325.

Apple's online store posted a message reading: "We'll be back soon. We are busy updating the store for you and will be back by 6 p.m. PDT."

Apple is expected to sell the iPhone in Europe later this year in the run up to the holiday season. It has not disclosed the price or carrier, though speculation has mounted it may reach a deal with Britain's Vodafone Group Plc.

Sales in Asia are expected to begin sometime in 2008.

But the iPhone's effect has rippled through the wireless industry before even a single unit has been sold.

Rival Palm Inc. has said the iPhone could hurt demand for its Treo smartphone, at least in the short term.

"It's likely that as people try (the iPhone) out, there may be some stall in our sell-through," Palm Chief Executive Ed Colligan told Reuters on Thursday.

Goldman Sachs & Reuters - Infosys

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Indian shares seen slipping on weaker Asia

Indian shares are likely to ease on Monday, tracking weaker Asian markets and as investors consolidate their positions after a record run the previous week.

But the downside is likely to be limited by strong foreign fund flows, which have topped $7 billion so far this year.

Tokyo stocks fell to their lowest level in 1- months on Monday, while weakness in major miners dragged Australian shares lower.

In India, cautious retail investors could depress shares.

"The indices have closed at the upper end of the intraday band and the market breadth and traded volumes indicate strength in the undertone," said Vijay Bhambwani, chief executive of BSPLindia.com.

"But a large portion of the retail segment lacks clarity and conviction in the markets."

India's benchmark BSE index <.BSESN> climbed to a new record close on Friday, off a new peak of 13,303.85 points. The index gained 1.2 percent last week and is up 41 percent so far this year, making it the best-performing index in Asia-Pacific.

Templeton Asset Management's Mark Mobius says the Indian stock market looks expensive in comparison to others, but there are still some bargains to be had for long-term investors. For details, double-click on [ID:nBOM35965].

STOCKS TO WATCH

* Usha Martin Ltd., after the wire rope maker said its joint venture with Germany's Gustav Wolf will start manufacturing tyre beads and expand its steel cord capacity.

* Grasim Industries Ltd., after its plans to invest 12 billion rupees to set up a cement plant with a capacity of 3.5 million tonnes a year in the eastern state of Orissa. For details, double-click on [ID:nBOM150736].

* Binani Industries Ltd., after it said its subsidiary Binani Cement Ltd. has filed initial papers with the securities market regulator for a public offer of shares.

* Suit and apparel maker Raymond Ltd. , after said it would form a 500 million rupee joint venture with Grotto S.p.A. to sell the Italian firm's "Gas" brand in India. For details, double-click on [ID:nBOM133625].

FACTORS TO WATCH

* Indian federal bond report [IN/]
* Indian rupee report [INR/]
* FOREX-Dollar falls again on forex diversification talk [FRX/]
* Oil slips towards $59, traders look to winter,

* GLOBAL MARKETS-Asian stocks, dollar, oil pressured

Premium News - Eveready to raise battery price

Dry cell battery maker Eveready Industries India Ltd. plans to increase battery prices by 10-15 percent from Dec. 1, due to a rise in the price of key input zinc, a senior official said.

"Zinc prices are rising steeply and we have to pass it on to the consumers to an extent," Director Suvamoy Saha told Reuters.

The company, which plans to set up a factory in the northern Uttaranchal state, is now planning another unit at a cost of 500-600 million rupees.

Unitech expects strong revenue - Reuters

Unitech Ltd. India's most-valuable listed real estate firm, expects strong revenue and earnings growth as it doubles construction of houses and offices every year for the next four to five years.

"That's the kind of growth we have, because we are in multiple markets now," said managing director Sanjay Chandra.

"A few years ago we were just a Gurgaon property developer. And we are entering new markets," Chandra told Reuters in an interview. Gurgaon is a suburb of New Delhi.

Unitech, which has a market capitalisation of $7.1 billion, reported a profit of 1.0 billion rupees ($22.3 million) on sales of 3.8 billion rupees for the three months to Sept. 30.

Revenues were set to accelerate as it moved into second-tier cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata, where firms were setting up offices to beat rising costs in major cities, which in turn was creating demand for housing and shopping malls.

Chandra said Unitech expected to meet or beat market estimates for its fiscal third quarter to December 2006.

"Next quarter should be good. The stock market has a lot of expectations from us. Lot of houses are trying to figure out what our numbers will be. We should definitely meet them. Possibly exceed them also," he said, but declined to give specific numbers.

Investment bank UBS expects Unitech to have a compounded average growth rate of 105 percent in sales and 126 percent in earnings over the three fiscal years to March 2009.

Industry estimates show that India's retail real estate market could top $460 billion by 2010, from around $290 billion in 2004.

Chandra said housing, which contributes about 70 percent of the company's revenue, would continue to dominate revenues even as Unitech's developed special economic zones (SEZs) being set up by the government to attract investment and boost exports.

While the revenue impact of the SEZs would be "very big" and "lot of growth" would come from that sector, Chandra said it would be two years before it contributed to cash flows and four years for revenues.

Chandra said Unitech was unlikely to give an equity stake to a real estate fund in the near future, but was open to project-specific funding.

"We don't see any need of external equity right now. But yes, there may be opportunities later, we will see. I think project-specific funding is what we are focusing on. But no private placement at the entity level," Chandra said.

In July, the private equity arm of Infrastructure Development Finance Co. Ltd. invested 750 million rupees in Unitech's International Recreation Parks.