Tuesday Apple Rumors — Apple Dividend Under Cook?

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tdp2664 InvestorPlace Here are your Apple rumors and AAPL stock news items for Tuesday: Apple Dividend Could Bring in $4 Billion in New Investment: Apple has caught no small amount of flack over the years for not paying a dividend, but now that Tim Cook is steering the good ship out of Cupertino, Calif., that policy might change. International Strategy & Investment Group analyst Brian Marshall believes the company will begin paying out a dividend in 2012 as part of a wider plan to maximize the efficiency of the company’s capital structure. An Apple Insider report said the analyst’s thinks Apple can “easily” pay a dividend of around $2.40 per quarter , or a roughly 2.5% yield on current AAPL stock prices. That would tie up some of Apple’s free cash flow by as much as 25%, but Marshall also believes yielding such a dividend could bring in $4 billion in new investments. With more than $76 billion in cash stockpiled, Wall Street has been calling for Apple to begin paying out a dividend or initiate an AAPL stock buyback for months. As of now, though, with the Apple machine generating consistent and impressive growth, investors shouldn’t count on broad changes to the company’s business operations. Android Still On Top, Apple Still Making More Money in Smartphones: Research company Gartner released its report Tuesday on the global smartphone market for the third quarter of 2011. According to a report at Mac Rumors detailing the firm’s findings, Apple’s share of the market shrank, but it’s still running off with the greatest profits. By platform and not manufacturer, Google ‘s (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Android led the market with 52.5% of phones sold over the third quarter running that operating system. Nokia ‘s (NYSE: NOK ) Symbian came in second with 16.9%, down from 36.3% during the same period in 2010. Apple took a 15% share, down from 16.6% in 2010. As a study from the Oppenheimer firm found, though, Apple’s iPhone accounts for 65% of total smartphone profits . Netflix Making New iPad App: Sure, users and investors still are angry at Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX ). The company is at least making amends with iPad users, though. A Tuesday report at 9 to 5 Mac quoting a Netflix blog post said that the streaming video company will deliver a new version of its app for Apple’s tablet with a “much more immersive” design sometime in the next few weeks. Part of the impetus for the redesign is to cater to new tablet users not just on the iPad, but on Amazon ‘s (NASDAQ: AMZN ) Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble ‘s (NYSE: BKS ) new Nook Tablet. As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the aforementioned stocks. Follow him on Twitter at