Again, however, it was a mixed bag. Solid earnings and outlooks from the likes of Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc., Morgan Stanley and eBay Inc. were offset by disappointing earnings, outlooks or both by Yum Brands, Starbucks, IBM, Goldman Sachs Group and others. This resulted in a topsy-turvy stock market, which should be expected. Not only is that one of the trials and tribulations of any earnings season, but it is amplified by where we are in the domestic economic recovery.

Or not.

While some may cut to the quick and ask, “How can he say that?” I would quickly point to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s semiannual report to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Wednesday. At the heart of Mr. Bernanke’s testimony, he stated that the Fed continues to forecast moderate growth for the domestic economy this year despite a “somewhat weaker outlook.”

Mr. Bernanke went on to pronounce the outlook as “unusually uncertain.”

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For a copy of our full report “Comments on Nokia-Siemens Acquiring Motorola’s Networks Business” please contact customerservice@think2020research.com

Earlier today it was announced that Nokia-Siemens would be acquiring Motorola’s Networks business for $1.2 billion in cash. At first blush, the transaction, which has been the subject of much chatter over the last few weeks, is positive for Motorola and in our view neutral at best for Nokia.

We say positive for Motorola because it eliminates what has been a struggling business for more than a few years and should leave the soon to be stand-alone public-safety business in a much better position. The question that will be asked and will no doubt not be answered until the split between Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions is how the proceeds from the sales will be split between the two entities. We suspect that at least a portion of the proceeds will find its way into Motorola Mobility to help fund its R&D initiatives as well as other corporate activities.

With regard to Nokia-Siemens,…

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To be fair, some sour notes tempered positive news early in the week. Missed expectations from Yum Brands as well as a cautious outlook from Marriott International support the notion that we are not out of the woods.

Unfortunately, it reminds me what I wrote about last week (“With doubts about the recovery, what to do?”) when I touched on reduced expectations for growth. Unfortunately, those sour notes grew as the week wore on.

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The end of the floppy disc. It has been announced by Sony Corporation (SNE) that in March of 2011 they will cease production of the 3.5” floppy-disc, a format first introduced circa 1982.  Long forgotten, and well passed its prime, this diskette format marks the end of an era that introduced us to the disk based storage system.  Certainly this product will not be missed, but it is a milestone of sorts, as the world readies for another phase out of technology, and a revolution in content delivery that makes the floppy disc look prehistoric.

Next up, the demise of the VCR Plus+ code system used to set VCR’s.  ROVI Corporation (ROVI) has decided that it will no longer support and distribute the codes used to program VCR’s to record television programming.  ROVI, who acquired the merged company of GEMSTAR and TV Guide in 2007, contends that the technology is “very very old” seeing “zero support” for the codes.

It’s interesting that these two antiquated technologies have lasted as long as they have, before being sent to the glue factory.

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Without question, there is growing concern that the economic recovery is losing steam. While we can point to several economic data streams over as many weeks, headlines on the Web, in magazines and in other publications are raising the issue if not stoking it. In the past week, some headlines have been: “U.S. Needs ‘Bright Star’ to Stimulate Economy,” “Federal Reserve weighs steps to offset slowdown in economic recovery,” “CBO tells Obama deficit panel that forecast remains bleak,” and “U.S. Jobs Picture Darkens.”

On Thursday, we received several new and unsettling updates, including one from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which raised concern that risks to the speed of the global recovery are mounting.

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As Congress debates an overhaul of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a separate debate related to one of the lesser-known provisions of the 1996 Act is also underway, with the potential to critically impact on future information and communications technology innovation. What complicates this instance of digital post-convergence/pre-chaos/current collision is the highly emotionally charged nature and topic of the debate: ensuring communications and Internet accessibility to individuals or varying ability or disability.

Section 255 of the 1996 Act, implementation of which was debated for many years, requires telecommunications products and services to be accessible to people with disabilities, to the extent that such accessibility is “readily achievable.” The definition of readily achievable has always meant different things to different people, but the FCC, disability advocates and industry players generally agreed it to mean “easily accomplishable, without much difficulty or expense.” Of course “much difficulty” and “much expense” were situational definitions at best.

In any event, per Section 255, if manufacturers cannot make their products accessible, then they are required to design products to be compatible with adaptive equipment used by people with disabilities, again, “where readily achievable.”

For more, please contact customerservice@think2020research.com

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The halfway point, at least for me, tends to be a time to consider where I’ve come from and what lies ahead for the next half. This is true for exercise, long drives like the one to Hilton Head, S.C., last week, or investing and the stock market.

Through the markets’ close on Wednesday - June 30, the last day of the year’s first half - the major indices continued the roller-coaster pattern I have described over the past year - a drop into early February followed by a steady climb into late April and then a series of drops through the end of June.

The net effect is that all the major indices are down by percentages in the mid-single digits for the first six months of 2010, with the largest drop posted by the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which was down 6.2 percent. It will be a few weeks until data from Morningstar and other fund-tracking sources are available and shed some light on how mutual funds and hedge funds have performed for both the second quarter and first half of 2010.

The pullback in the stock market is something I have been warning about for more than a few weeks as more data points have emerged to call into question the strength and sustainability of the economic recovery.

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