officials have yet to confirm reports out there but jon fortt is with us. maybe he can. jon, what do you think about all of this? >> i think that this is a really exciting potential announcement. we'll have to see the details. it's subject that i raised with with satya nadella before, before he became ceo. he's not as window centric as steve was. the key is how much they make available on the ifripad for fr. they're a bit late to the party. >> for free? >> yeah. you expect to see some available for free and then they're going to try to pull you into office 365 into upgrades to pay. they have to make something available for free for this to be much of an opportunity at all. apple's productivity software is already free on new ipads. >> apple's productivity software there is not excel, it's not

jon fortt is joining us now with more. jon, i think pandora, i think spotify when i hear this kind of announcement. >> yeah, that's right, scott. we got two contradictory trends butding heads here. one is overall download sales are down a bit year over year for the first time since the itunes era kicked off. digital album sales are out-pacing physical cd sales. so apple is trying to move in, take more of that business. there are some data out just over the past few hours showing that itunes radio, apple streaming play, is actually gaining some momentum. beyonce spotify in the u.s., taking on iheart video, pandora -- >> jon? forgive me for interrupting. hold that thought. breaking news at the bottom of your screen. courtney reagan is going to bring it to us. >> that's right, scott. we do have a deal. men's wearhouse is awaring joseph a bank for $65 a share. values it at $1.8 billion. this is the company expects a 100 to $150 million worth of annual synergies. this is deal we've been expecting for some time. if you were josep

. ♪ >>> let's get on earnings flash on adobe with jon fortt. jon?re having some difficulty. >> he can't hear. >> it was interesting because adobe's release was before the bell. and as it turns out, internal mistake. it was a beep. >> it was a big beep. but the stock action -- you had a huge run-up to 70 bucks. and spent the lest of the day shifting lower on big volume. adobe is rich valuation-wise. if you had an opportunity to get out of it today, not short, but get out and take profits, that was the right thing to do. >> let's go back to jon fortt. apparently we re-established our connection, jon. what were the highlights? >> we know they beat on the top and bottom. talking on the call about the strength in the creative cloud business. that's the switch to the cloud subscription model. they're now getting more revenue from cloud subscriptions than the old perpetual license model. they're about 52% on that. and the cfo just finished speaking a few minutes ago. actually, a few moments ago. he said they are not only reiterating the past targets for th

jon fortt interviewed john chen at the top of this hour.able to be cash flow positive by the end of the year, fiscal year, and being profitable the next fiscal year in some quarters, it's still right on. and what this release have shown that we're definitely right on our track and maybe slightly ahead of it. >> point out short interest in the name continues to be quite high. >>> previous management made a couple of critical mistakes to prif vot from. one was bes ten which wasn't back word compatible with a lot of the blackberries out there. john chen saying that now we've got bes 12, more competitive and enter operable but it doesn't show up until november. trying to shift from selling handsets and getting out there to software to trying to sell software now and at least break even on handsets. >> you look at the stop just trading negative at this point. certainly a big move and investors will have to wait several quarters until that profitable benchmark chen is pointing to. >> $9 is the key level. it's a relative victory considering the do

jon fortt joining me here on the floor of the nyse and matt mcilwain with us as well. both jon and matt correctly called early in the race as mr. nadella being mr. balmer's replacement. you scored the big sitdown with mr. nadella as well. terrific to have you both here. matt, start with you. what are you expecting and how significant will be the office 4 apple event, if indheed does occur? >> i think we'll see announcements around the ipad and more importantly, the idea that microsoft's applications and services need to live on lots of different types of devices. because we're in a world of mobile and cloud, which is a world of mobile and cloud. i think that under satya's leadership they understand that in a way that maybe hasn't been fully embraced in past. the other thing you should expect to see is not just talking about mobile and cloud from the consumer perspective, something that gets all of us excited about it, but what about the developer perspective? what about the perspective of -- >> right. >> -- people having to manage all of these devices that live within e

. >> jon fortt, thank you. >>> what does it mean for apple shareholders. do you see this as a game-champk? >> i don't know if it's game-changer, it's certainly necessary, we already alluded to the fact that apple clung to the idea that their smaller handset was the way to go. i used to own an iphone, i bought a larger android phone. this is a very, very cheap stock. that said, i don't think an iphone 6 is going to take this thing back to double-digit revenue growth. this thing is trading probably 8.5-times its earnings when you take out the cash. so, the stock is absolutely cheap. but it's no longer a growth stock, so don't expect that. microsoft has proven that you can keep these low multiples for a long time if you lose the growth that you once had. >> what is the trade on apple? >> you need to think about it in a different way. because in general, i want to own technology, i have been doing all year. one thing you have to take a look at, the market feels a little frothy. this is some exciting news for apple. to go along with thigh kro soft -- microsoft

jon fortt, anything come out of these meetings? >> very little ever does. trying to tweak this to ensure that the government doesn't succeed in hacking them. it's a big issue not just in the short-term and for consumer privacy, but politically down the line, these are folks who have been writing big checks, particularly for the democratic party. >> many of them, as you pointed out, many of these ceos including schmidt, have been very friendly to this white house, cindy? >> absolutely. i think, certainly, the white house has seen a few stumbles lately, so i think they would do well to listen to some of these tech ceos on how to handle this going pardon. i'm kind of with john on this one. i'm note sure we'll see anything. but i would kill to be a fly on the wall. >> time warner cable's ceo may score an $80 million severance package if and when the deal goes through. it works out roughly a million a day for the six weeks that efs h on the j he was on the job before agreeing to sell to comcast. this is, i guess a change of control kind of provision in mr. marcu

jon fortt joining us with more. re. what's your take on this? >> calling a top, kayla. calling a top in end user facing tech. i'm talking things that, you know, the technology that people actually look at and feel having in their hands. includes things workers in the office might use. box that really face that way whatsapp. the valuations, everybody knows they're crazy but the question is will they go higher? i look at this king ipo and its performance. look at facebook buying oculus as opposed to other things they could have bought. oculus isn't shipping a product yet and it's about the fundamental technology there more than it is about the end product that shipping today. i think the bloom is starting to come off of that rose. it's been going up for a while. going t bought ways for a billion dollars. facebook, instagram for a billion dollars. looks like a bargain. then we have whatsapp at $19 billion. we have nest at $3.2 billion. remember snap chat, all that $3 billion talk about snapchat, i would be shocked if sn

jon fortt's here with more on their latest bet. jon, what do we have?t an 18% stake value in $4 billion. think of cloudera they make this framework for the big data era, allows you to analyze, comb through data a lot more quickly, a lot of big companies, a lot of fortune using it. they compete with horton works, compete with emc's pivotal division. really important as we're getting all this data to be able to understand what it does. the scale of this though it's similar to the wind river systems acquisition that intel did five years ago. that was close to $900 million. but this is a lot of money for them to put into something. it's important for them because their server business is increasingly important as the pete sea flattens out and declines. big data gives people reason to use the line. but this shift toward enterprise we started to talk about a bit continues to happen. we have s-1 looking to raise a couple hundred million dollars. so lots of interesting activity. >> i hope their commitment is stronger than it was to television which lasted about

watching facebook, jon fortt, thanks for that.s to talk about the future of his company, plans to go public and much more. an important programming note here, tomorrow on "squawk on the street" david faber's interview with masayoshi son, the chairman and ceo of softbank, the parent company of sprint. hear what he has to say about the mobile phone wars in the united states and much more. that is tomorrow morning here on "squawk on the street." you make a great team. it's been that way since the day you met. but your erectile dysfunction - it could be a question of blood flow. cialis tadalafil for daily use helps you be ready anytime the moment's right. you can be more confident in your ability to be ready. and the same cialis is the only daily ed tablet approved to treat ed and symptoms of bph like needing to go frequently or urgently. tell your doctor about all your medical conditions and medications, and ask if your heart is healthy enough for sexual activity. do not take cialis if you take nitrates for chest pain, as this may ca

jon fortt joins us this morning if we can get him off of his phone. jon, good morning to you too.eportedly in talks with comcast about a joint streaming tv service using an apple set top box according to the journal. the deal supposedly in the very early stages and would involve comcast providing special treatment on its cable system to make sure video could in fact stream at very high speeds. we want to note of course comcast is the parent company of nbc universal. you love this story, jon. >> i love the story. it's like the eve of itunes being announced. the future of the record store was written in the stars, they were going to be done. it was a matter of time. we've had so much movement in the past week along. sony, amazon. you've got amazon as well. it's endless and endless all the stuff that's happening right now. >> is this going to be as transformational as i itunes was? >> if it's going to be is the question. with the iphone you had a few key things in the place, web in your pocket. it was the first time you really got that. you had visual voicemail. particularly with the

our jon fortt joins us this morning as well.nd we have a content sharing partnership. it feels like they are trying to circle the wagons around ebay. what effect has carl's opinion had? >> they have decided to go after him like a shark in jets and reid is on the sharks, obviously. >> right. >> but you know, i think we will see a lot more than that. list people involved with p paypap. so i think they will probably be going quite a bit of that. it's typical for silicon valley to stick together against icahn. they've done it before. >> there's the split question and the conflicted question. are we dealing mostly with the first or the latter? >> i think maybe it's pivoting more towards the first question right now. i found that reid hoffman's argument about meeting the payment volume from ebay to really stand up against coming threats from apple, google, and others was an interesting one. what i think they haven't answered yet which will probably come up is why t not do the vmware emc thing. spin out 15%, say, of paypal, maintain a

with more on that is jon fortt joining us on the fast line. jon? >> hey, melissa.an interesting s1 document. this looks to me like one of those companies that could only go public in an environment like the current one, where people are really hungry for ipos. that's just because there's no sign of profits anywhere in this bid. i like aaron levy. i think he and his team are smart. it's impressive they built the business, nearly $130 million in annual revenue, based on the cloud, which is a hot area. but look, also, sales and marketing spend more than $170 million as of the end of january, is more than revenue. and in a pure raw dollar basis, sales and marketing spend grew more than revenue over the past year. so, i think if you're looking at this company and investing in it, you've got to question how long do they have to spend at that rate in order to acquire their customer base they want to acquire? how profitable is the storage, the cloud storage business going to be? or what adjacent areas will they be able to grow into with their customer base, considering the

jon fortt just obliterated your entire piece. >> exactly, exactly. clearly, there are exceptions but if you look at the overall numbers the skew is decidedly youthful. >> thank you. more breaking news on the other side of this break. we know we're not the center of your life, but we'll do our best to help you connect to what is. youthful. if you have moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis, like me, and you're talking to your rheumatologist about a biologic... this is humira. this is humira helping to relieve my pain. this is humira helping me lay the groundwork. this is humira helping to protect my joints from further damage. doctors have been prescribing humira for ten years. humira works by targeting and helping to block a specific source of inflammation that contributes to ra symptoms. humira is proven to help relieve pain and stop further joint damage in many adults. humira can lower your ability to fight infections, including tuberculosis. serious, sometimes fatal events, such as infections, lymphoma, or other types of cancer, have happened. bl

speaking of, let's head over to jon fortt who is on the other side of the floor with a little more detailsber of interesting things, concerns i see here. you talk about a portfolio of games. that's true in a sense, but they're really only three games that king is successfully selling. three games make up 95% of gross bookings in the most recent period. i think it's safe to think of the other 177 as mostly being development and marketing costs. they're able to use loyalgames.com, that's in-the-browser website a farm team for games where they see people are playing for free and how the mechanics work and decide from there which games they might put forward onto mobile and put some of their monetization goodness and give people a chance to buy this or buy that and see how it will work. where right now it seems at the peak for candy crush their most successful game to date, that as you guys have mentioned has been 78% of gross bookings in the most recent period. now, the ceo also mentioned the gold bars that people are buying in essence they're paying more up front for money that they're going

i'm really liking how we're doing. >> hey, carl, jon fortt here.place in the cycle of manufacturing and construction. people often buy your software when they're planning a large product or project. what do you see from the macro prospective? how much are people spending on manufacturing, on construction, particularly in some of those emerging geographies where we've had mixed signals lately? >> we're usually a pretty good leading indicator. as you correctly pointed out, jon, at the beginning of a product or project, people ramp up and they retool. and right now we're seeing really good signs, kind of all around the globe. you know, probably the one exception is southern europe. really hasn't returned to the pre-recession levels. but with the exception of that and particularly in emerging economies business is doing well. >> carl, are you going to be all things to all men depending on how this develops or are you clear about what the vision is? because on the one hand along with the move to cloud-based products is also, of course, the move towards

and he did nail it with 175. >> is jon fortt going to put the hat on? it after it's been worn. he should be the first. >> i think that's a great point. >> meantime, dow managing to get back some positive territory. we went negative for a while again as our winner pointed out. people are beginning to look at the ten-year. >> yes. and europe closed. that is giving us more of an upward bias. you will have to stay tuned to the trading day later to see what happens. >> i think it's a three. >>> let's get to steve liesman with breaking news. >> thanks, carl. new york fed president speak in brooklyn at this hour saying a highly stance in monetary policy is appropriate for a considerable time to come. this is the first fed speaker in the wake of the jobs report this morning. he believes growth will be strong enough to lead to improvement t in the labor market and the unemployment rate declined over states the labor market improvement because of discouraged workers. he sees diggs discouraged workers eventually returning to the workforce. on growth, he expects su

jon fortt joins us now with his take. so what do you think zuckerberg is up to here, jon, if you look at the spending spree. he's opened his wallet like $20 billion in five weeks. now the drone thing and others. what's going on? >> i wouldn't be too worried about it. think of it in terms of research and development. tech companies, the big tech companies have a long history of doing both. research is ideas and projects that are further out. they higher police departments, brings in hoards of ph.d.s that won't become products for five to ten years. facebook is a young company. they've got to acquire that kind of talent. i think that's what here doing here. for emerging markets, planning largely they're targeting people in emerging markets who could get internet access. they're covered by a wireless signal that has data but either they can't afford it or they just don't see the need for it. but this project will allow them to reach that minority of people who also just don't have courage in remote areas. that's important for

jon fortt is here with the ceo of airstrip.ecific market as a place you could instantly impact? >> first, i think it's very important to look at the moment in time that we are living today in health care. if you look at the shortage of caregivers, primarily physicians, the fact that through affordable care act we're bringing more patients into the system, approximately 40 million patients, the fact that we had reimbursement rates going down and also because of care going up, what we need to do right now is virtualize the caregivers and now we're moving more into a patient centric, we have to follow patients whatever they go. so the importance of really monitoring patients remotely is more important than ever. >> so costs are going down in general but what has the uptick of your product been like so far? >> so what happens is in general the cost of health care are going up because we're adding more patients to this system. if you have now in the challenge of monitoring patients outside of the four walls of the hospital, what you

jon fortt joins us. >> it looks like a mistake. i have gotten this statement from adobe.error caused the investor relations data sheet to be accessible from our website prior to scheduled publication. just got that statement. i'll note the revenue and earnings both came in above expectations as did creative cloud subscriptions. numbers spiked when the numbers leaks. but it's trading down a little after hours. >> thanks very much. >>> straight ahead, the golden years for americans may be tarnished. a new study from the employee benefits research institute gauging how confident americans are about retiring and it's not looking good. >>> also today russia's vladimir putin says he has no other design on the rest of ukraine and the stock market seems to believe him. what do you think? your thoughts coming up. s comin, i've learned that when you ask someone in texas if they want "big" savings on car insurance, it's a bit like asking if they want a big hat... ...'scuse me... ...or a big steak... ...or big hair... a new study from the employee your thoughts coming up. houghts. ge

jon fortt joins us now with the latest. if you can't beat them, join them? is that what this is about? >> yeah. we were talking about hope with hp. i think there's a lot of hope going on here, too. i don't expect microsoft is going to make huge gains financial li with this move to the ipad. a big part of the reason why is apple just a few months ago made its i works suite free. you've t got word processing. you've got spread sheets. lots of other things. the equivalent of power point. free on the ipad already. but office is still the gold standard. you're going to get some traction. it mostly gives you hope that microsoft culture internally has not changed so it's not all about windows. willing to consider launching major products on other platforms. if they had done that a couple of years ago probably making lots of money. >> you if you read the reports you would hear about internal divisions over whether this should have happened earlier. and it leads you to believe or at least wonder whether a new ceo really brings in a new culture of change or whether it

do people really showroom at staples, jon fortt? >> seem to be and buying online from staples.ir revenue now comes from online sales, but you know, they've got to move quickly. seeing the same thing happening at radio shack. you know, it's unclear how much people really want to shop in-store if buying a staple. easy button right at home, why go anywhere? >> robert? >> yeah. this is one store that really lends itself to buying everything online. you don't have to try on a piece of paper. or, you know, a printing machine. the staples in my neighborhood in new york city, there's just never anyone there. i'm the only person there when i walk in. this is by a lot of colleges in downtown manhattan. this is all moving online. they're smart to try to get ahead of it. >> going to staples? >> i love staples and all of those office supply stores. i'm a pen junkie, frankly. >> and the red staplers. >> the truth of the matter, the whole country is overstored. too many of them in my view. guy, thanks very much. >>> the biggest winners in today's trading when we return here. we're at about fo

want to go to jon fortt who joins us on the fast line.eresting that marc andreessen of andreessen horowitz, as well as formation eight, have banded together on oculus. they've done some deals together in the past. >> yeah. that's interesting. i think for the shareholder type issues, the management issues, it's a little different because mark zuckerberg controls how facebook -- he is the final word. to piggyback on what josh lipton was talking about. he was talking about sony's platform. and what it could be used for. i think it's important for us to remember that facebook is very much about advertising and marketing. it's about personal experiences. it's about targeting. you can imagine putting on a v.r. headset in the right environment, and feeling like you're actually inside that car that you might want to test drive. being able to potentially look at different interiors, the way they look. also, walk through a home that you might be interested in actually literally walking through. walk through it virtually, wearing one of the headsets

jon fortt, what's their strategy? >> yahoo!nges that will require its users to log in to yahoo! if they want to use its services. starting with the ncaa march madness brackets, it will expand from there. official explanation but here is one that makes sense. the ceo decided to make strategic sense for yahoo! to have more control over its user data. that's potentially important for ads, personalization and the move to mobile. the two main targets here, facebook and google log-ins which people can now use to log into most yahoo! services. once the change rolls out completely, that will no longer be the case. on the down side, some yahoo! users might abandon the services rather than go through the hassle of creating new log-ins but the upside is yahoo! will have a clean data base of its own users, a clear way to transition those folks to mobile and since we don't know how many yahoo! users log in using facebook or google, it's hard to say what the impact might be, but it suggests she wants to strengthen yahoo!'s hand as a tech pl

join me jon fortt at post 9 and the ladder's job expert, amanda augustine. welcome. was your beat, still is your beat, but you were in silicon valley. to me, that was a depressing article. basically, if you've hit 30, you're not good for any of the tech companies. please tell me it's an exaggeration. >> i think it is an exaggeration. looking to pitch the next snapchat, yes, being over 40 will hurt you. looking for a job in enterprise, tech, certainly the very best at what you do, particularly in you're a coder with experience in mobile technology, it doesn't matter how old you are, they want you right now. so if you're into the consumer end, mobile, trying to be cutting-edge, it hurts to be older but lots of other areas where you'll be fine, particularly if you have connections with bcs and executives who know your skills. >> note to self, do not apply in silicon valley. amanda, is it just silicon valley that tends to have a certain age bias or are you finding it in other industries as well? >> unfortunately, no. i think age discreme nation is real and prevalent in t

more now from cnbc's jon fortt and re/code's liz gaines.oup is a minority stake holder in re/code with whom we have a content sharing partnership. what are these companies and their executives alleged to have done, and by whom? >> they are alleged to have e-mailed each other and agreed and sometimes over the phone but there is e-mail evidence, and agreed to not recruit from each other in order to not drive up the price of their own employees. this happened quite a few years ago but the documents are just coming out now as part of the lawsuit which some people have already settled and more this week. >> this is fundamentally i guess, jon, a restraint of trade, in this case the trade not being a product unless you consider labor a product which i guess it is. >> yeah, tyler. what makes this especially interesting is in california, noncompetes are not enforceable. in other words, it's supposed to be especially different in silicon valley and in california in general, you are supposed to be able to hire freely away from each other. steve jobs w

let's bring in business insider chief correspondent nick karlsson as well as our own jon fortt. to you, what do you make of this deal? >> i think this is about facebook making a small bet on a long-term growth plan which is to really be interwoven into developing countries across the world. >> it sounds to philanthropic. we're going to bring connectivity to millions of people, but they are going to make a buck out of this, too. >> they are. i don't think the developing market is what this is about. zuckerberg was just out appealing to international carriers. the drones are interesting. you can certainly do communications with them by mounting repeaters on these things, but it's not going to be carrier grade. it's not going to be scalable. i wonder if it's a security play from facebook. they have facilities all over the world that they need to keep an eye on. they have teams going out into emerging markets trying to figure out how to deliver internet access. it seems more a technology that's targeted for internal teams or small-scale projects than a big, big roll out. >> what do

jon fortt, josh lipton, and dom chu., i thought we were going to have a glamour shot. he sent one over this morning. clearly they used the cnbc head shot instead. >> i am not yummy and i am darn happy about that. >> what would you be if you weren't a yummy. >> sum said i was a retrosexual because i grow a beard and cut firewood on the weekend. >> vf a good weekend everybody. >> "the closing bell" is next. >> and welcome to "the closing bell." i'm kelly evans here at the new york stock exchange, bill, and what a ride it's been already as we enter the final hour. >> crazy day. i said this is wall street's version of march madness. i'm bill griffeth at cnbc global headquarters. it seems like ancient history but the s&p early on today was on track to close at a record high. but shocks have turned lower. you had dallas fed president richard fisher apparently he has a calendar, and he figured out that at

. >>> bring in our own jon fortt as well as stephen yakman from the five star yakman fund. microsoft, one of their biggest positions. great to have you on the show. certainly office for ipad was well expected, nonetheless, how pleased are you to hear about this? >> we're as investors very pleased to hear about it and pleased you're hemping promote it. we're shareholders. but we think that this is one of the things nadella has to offer, it's bringing new ideas to microsoft and helping break the culture that was more protective and is looking more towards opportunity in the future. >> steve, wondering what you think of the stock's move since nadella has taken over this company as the new ceo? up about 8% since then. do you feel that's justified? i can't help but think to the yahoo! hail oh over marissa may mayer. a show-me story. isn't it? >> microsoft is the a good story before nadella stepped in. it's a material change to the positive, we feel, and so i can see why the stock would be up. obviously, he needs to perform, given that the stock has moved higher, but i think that

henry blodget, our own jon fortt. wapner is up next, what a hour, cuban and a lot more. >> last trading day of the quarter, talk about the rally on the street today, snapback we're seeing as well and mark cuban will be coming up to talk about high frequency trading. you have a great rest of the day after a great few hours there down on wall street. welcome to "halftime report". >>> today's game plan, fair markets, stock markets. >> the united states stock market, the most iconic market in global capitalism is rigged. >> do high frequency traders really have an edge over all of us? mark cuban joins us exclusively on what should happen now. 5 billion worth of advice, baron's top final advisor is here with where the best place to invest is right now. top dog, it's been a rough first quarter for stocks, but not so for joe taran o, va. he leads the playbook playoffs. what moves they're making now as competition heats up. steph, pete, josh and joe are here with us today. along with ubs wealth manager rob seech em. a baron's

jon fortt's on the case and he's being very vocal once again. >> he is, sue, but in a different way. in this latest missive carl icahn is advocating for e bay spinning off 20% of paypal. a different position than the attacks on the board members and recommendation to spin out, all of it. this is interesting because it's a little bit similar to what emc did with vmware back in 2007, spun off 15% to the public markets. icahn argues this would unlock some shareholder value, would enable paypal to pursue more talent and attract a board of top-notch people as well. i think what's missing in his argument but e bay hasn't articulated yet as i've said in the past, paypal has had some management challenges and some product challenges to get into order. i think some at e bay might argue nernltly maybe it's not quite ready to do this this sort of a spin in the way they would ideally like. but we'll have to wait and see how e bay chooses to respond, sue. >> and e bay is basically flat on the day right now. we will see. thank you, jon. up to ec and dominik chu with a market push. >> one of the be

jon fortt joins us with more on mark zuckerberg's strategy.ure they got money and they can buy stuff that might end up working out because a lot of the other leading tech companies didn't seem to diversify when they had the chance. >> reporter: well, speaking of ceos taking risk, right? here's mark zuckerberg doing exactly that. he doesn't have to worry shoch about shareholders because he's got control of the company. here's what he's doing with a virtual reality company. $2 billion. $400 million of that in cash. the rest in stock. he's really betting that this is going to be the thing after mobile. we had screens on our desks, screens in our pockets. he's thinking now we're going to have screens on our faces, but not in the way that google has been pushing with glass. of course, sony is also pushing on virtual reality. the way oculus works, you put on these goggles. thief got a couple of lenses in them that create this immersive illusion because they're so close to your eyes. the l.e.d. screen so high quality it looks like you're in a differe

. >> henry's here for this morning's squawk feed along with jon fortt. be big news on facebook's coo sheryl sandberg. she's planning running for a senate seat in 2016, seat currently held by barbara boxer who won in the 2010 election. henry still onset, jon fortt is here too. do we believe this? >> we do not. we talked to two sources close to sheryl sandberg who say it's completely bogus, not happening. that said, at some point sheryl sandberg in politics, i hope so and expect so. >> there was some expectation when last year it was the opening saga for a potential 2016 presidential run or an otherwise very large political appointment. what do you think about that? >> again, i think she's perfectly set up to go into politics. and i think it would be great for a lot of people if she did. the response though from her inner circle now is that this report is untrue. >> and this just smelled wrong right off the bat. she's been a reliable fundraiser for the democratic establishment in california. to throw a stink bomb like this in the middle of the party wouldn

they can see that, you know -- >> jon fortt, let me ask this question.ternet conglomerate, as much as they can play around with supply to effect the demand for the shares, we are still talking about a huge company that's effectively to amazon of china along with investments across a wide array of industries. there's a fundamental value here is there not. how do we know at what point this offering starts to look like more evidence of froth as opposed to a business maturing. >> i don't know exactly how to determine what that fundamental value is. is it the ebay of china? is it the amazon? how much have they invested in infrastructure? what about this issue of people in other countries trying to do transactions, through alabibaba? not needing middle men to do that in order for it to translate? what about the issue of counterfeit goods. how are they going to deal with the increased scrutiny? >> and the key is the price. there's absolutely fundamental value. it's incredible, it's growing super quickly, but the growth is decelera decelerating, the profit margi

. >>> kara swisher joins us today, coexecutive editor of re/code and, of course, our own jon fortt.ckerberg, as we said, of facebook frustrated over the u.s. government spying program. calling the president -- calling it a threat to the internet. he's taken to his facebook page to vent to president obama saying the u.s. government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. they need to be much more transparent about what they're doing or otherwise people will believe the worse. he noted that he did call the president to express his frustration. kara, what's the thinking over there about all of this today? >> well, you know, this is just the frustration of what's happened with the government spying and the impact abroad. all these companies are global companies. i think what the problem is now a lot of european countries, asian countries are thinking do we want to use u.s. technologies given the level of government spying that keeps coming out through these documents. he's expressing a frustration a lot of companies have. it's not just them, it's google, it's amazon, appl

and jon fortt is here with us at post 9 as well.ion, what does this do to membership, this price increase? >> our guess is that it's going to lead to extremely modest churn. less than 2%. it's a relatively modest price increase. first time they raised fees since they announced the program about seven years ago. in that time the number of prime products that have been covered has gone from a million to 20 million. amazon is not a company traditionally grown through price increases. this is a bit of a surprise. none the less, we think this fee increase will stick on prime. >> mark, what does this do to amazon's media ambitions which are under the prime umbrella? if it doesn't affect prime membership itself that much, we also guess that it won't affect media or might it affect the growth in media? >> jon, it could affect the growth in media. key thing is why thigh did the price increase. they have seen substantial demand in prime service and it's led to infrastructure cost that they needed to make sure they cover going forward. you are

and as jon fortt indicated, a lot of context in the release today to make sure people didn't get they he's leaving. >> right. but a long-term cfo. >> those are important jobs, make no mistake. particularly when you have 142 billion in cash. >> there's a look at the opening bell and the s&p at the. t topof your screen. and over at the nasdaq, the israel dealmaker summit a day after netanyahu paid a visit to the white house. just i guess we mentioned at the top might as well keep our eye on radioshack. we've made the point here at the table market cap doesn't make it a news worthy name but rather the brand and the broad recognition of the name, right? >> and that continuing focus on retail with jcp as well. that's -- and do watch hilton as well. we got a buy upgrade from -- goldman came up with a buy upgrade on hilton yesterday which is something of a contrarian call. they're talking about the clarity with which it's using its cash. a big disappointment in lodging that some of the hotel chains are decelerating their return of cash to shareholders. they are saying that they're going to

jon fortt joins us with the details. jon? >> yeah, kelly.s deal between dish and disney is big mainly because it could allow dish network to do something a lot of other tech giants have tried in vain to pull off. create an internet based tv subscription. important to note dish hasn't actually launched a service like this but it's now got one of the key pieces of the puzzle it would need in order to pull that off. dish and disney didn't talk about the financial terms but disney's ann sweeney called it one of the most comprehensive disney has ever undertaken. on dish's side the company agreed to bust the kneecaps of its hopper dvr that allows viewers to fast forward through commercials. it sure looks like some interesting content deals could be in the offing for 2014, guys. >> sort of undercuts the technology in that regard. thanks, jon. see you later. >> and we're not frozen on markets. 226 points on the dow. the s&p 500 looks to be aiming to make another record close, bill. i think that would be the fourth or fifth one of the year. we should

jon fortt joins us. >> the tennis match between icahn and ebay continues.y have been pushing to separate the pay pal. icahn said maybe spin off 20%. it had echoes of what emc did. let me read you some of the most important parts here. ebay says a partial separation of pay pal is not a new idea. we're glad to see mr. icahn now seems to agree that a full separation of pay pal is not a good idea. our board regularly evaluates ogess for the company looking for ways to accelerate growth and deliver shareholder value. we're fully committed to always acting in the boston long-term interests of shareholders. in the end they say not now to a partial spinoff. in the future we will continue to evaluate all strategic options. so basically it sounds like they're coming together a bit but ebay is saying while this isn't a new idea, we're not going to spin off pay pal in the very near future, kelly. >> all right, jon. another chapter. thanks very much. >>> up next, former fed governor randy kroszner joins me to offer thoughts on janet yellen. and a big announcement from s

. >> jon fortt, thank you, sir.baba's choice to file its ipo in new york? joining me for more is jim le camp, senior vice president of investments from ubs. the panel is we me as well, jim. there are two issues here it seems. one the case about whether alibaba is the right investment general lie speaking. the second about whether the share structure in new york is something that will offer investors enough protection. what do you think? >> well, i think so. it shows that the u.s. -- they're probably the lead horse in the global financial community. the fact they chose new york is a change from what we've seen. we've seen a lot of big ipos go to london, hong kong. this is a chinese company coming over here. i think this is a real positive and a positive sign that the u.s. market is again seen as more resilient, more innovative, more nimble than the rest of the global community. could you make an argument we're the lead horse because all the other horses are running to the glue knafactory but that's not true. we're se

as always, our own jon fortt. ngo. what is alibaba doggetting into messaging, jon? >> i think they're continuing their push to try to be in the consumer space. trying to position themselves in mobile. tango, a little more than a year ago past the 100 million user mark. we're kind of giving them new platforms on mobile, particularly emerging market that might not be so browser friendly and alibaba needs to continue momentum. it makes sense. >> lance, we have tango between 1 and $2 billion, roughly 200 million users. whatsapp had 400 million users. $19 billion. walk us through the differential there. >> well, small service. it's growing. you know, i think that the market that they're going into, for us sometimes feels like ali baba. no matter how you look at this, the mobile investment is a smartest way to go because that is where everyone is spending their time and it's also this big shift from traditional calls to data centric calls. they have to own something. this company has to own something that puts them on th

jon fortt is joining us on the other side. start with apple today.iced to iphone 6 could renew growth in 2015 and push the stock price above $600 a share. my favorite line, jon, they call it a call option on new product categories. of course, it's been that way for a while, you can argue. >> yeah. i don't know that i would personally get that excited about just an iphone 6 that maybe costs a built more though a loornlger screen would be interesting. you know, i think i'm interested also in the numbers that came out on itunes radio which you were just talking about yesterday. turns out they're beating spotify in the u.s. growth momentum is there. not anywhere near pandora territory but they have new features in ios 7.1 that came out yesterday that could help to spur that growth on further. >> the pacific crest argument is basically with the new version of the iphone 6 it would go from a four-inch size to close to a five-inch size. 4.7 inch. this is smaller than the cross between the phone and the tablet but it would get $100 more to apple at the subsi

as always, we have jon fortt with us here at post 9.t a emt no, but first, we want to get your thoughts on reid hastings, the netflix ceo blasting internet providers, particularly comcast, which is this network's parent company, hastings says netflix shouldn't have to keep paying what he calls internet tolls. of course, this comes just weeks after netflix and comcast inked a deal to maintain some of the higher speeds. kara, what did you make of this blog post when you read it? >> it's right now net trneutraly is being debated. i don't want to pay the toll but i paid the toll in order to have the good consumer experience. the idea, i will do it for now to preserve my business but is this the right way to go. and so it's part of a larger lobbying effort. >> kara, what do you make of the fact that he made this net neutrality argument about something that's arguably not part of net neutrality. comcast on papers will hard committed to the net neutrality rules. this is about interconnect. why is he mixing these two issues? >> these are going

joining us is jon steinberg and president, coo and cnbc contributor and jon fortt has moved from thisrs to sign into its various web properties using facebook or google login credentials. it will require them to register with a yahoo! id. jon, is this how you drive traffic? >> it's an antiuser thing. people do not want to login with yahoo! accounts. they want to be able to login with accounts on hand and consume video on youtube. you can lean into what the user wants or you can fight them for what you want. ultimately yahoo! wants the login user data and they are target more aggressively with advertising and starting with the sports. they're starting the college fantasy sports during march madness. from there they will work their way down to less coveted media areas. >> yahoo!s that to do this. the question is whether their content, whether their service to the consumers is good enough that users are going to put up with this. they need the data. if they want to be a repository for information that people click on every once in a while, they have to have this rich data to know when pe

wonderful from "shark tank" and jon fortt joins us was well. is unprofitable plans to raise $250 million as it tries to ward off growing competition. we talked to box ceo aaron levy on this show and he talked about what sets his company apart from the competition. >> we have very healthy competition in the market. i think our unique differentiation is we're probably the only company that has a focus on the end user and consumer from a delight and user experience standpoint that can also deliver their technology into large enterprises. >> kevin, i can't wait to get your take on this. they are not making money. they don't expect to make money any time soon but they're in a business, online storage that is going to go 300 fold over the next few years. >> i look at it this way. this is a capable ceo. been basically working for the venture capitalists that have been in it a long time. they would like to cycle out of it now. i would never thought an ipo would do a strategy for this business. this is a commodity by any metric. cloud storage is a very,