• A delayed EC review process of the current proposed acquisition, which may end in a rejection left unchallenged by Oracle
• A renegotiated deal with Oracle, which would likely exclude MySQL and therefore involve a renegotiated deal price
• An offer by IBM (IBM) to buy Sun at a discount to the Oracle offer following a rejection by the EC of the current Oracle deal
• A scrapping of the deal by Oracle

Interestingly, Reid feels this last possibility isn’t as disastrous as it might sound. Sun has $1.8 billion in cash, and while its latest results weren’t at all pretty, they did feature improving gross margins.

“Our current thesis on [Sun] assumes the announced [Oracle] acquisition will close, but risks have increased,” Reid wrote. “There remains a risk that the European Commission will provide a ’statement of objections’ to [Oracle’s] planned acquisition of [Sun] based on concerns regarding [Oracle’s] plans for the MySQL database which [Sun] currently owns. The deadline for such a decision is January 19, 2010 but it is possible that the EC will state objections before the end of the year.”

Elaborating, Reid notes that “Although [Oracle] could likely reduce the risk of a statement of objection–and thus of a delayed or perhaps failed bid for [Sun]–by supplying to the EC an argument to explain why the [Oracle-Sun] deal will not adversely impact competition in the database market, our assumptions around [Sun’s] valuation include increased risk regarding the completion of the [Oracle-Sun] transaction at $9.50….While we believe the currently proposed acquisition by [Oracle] is the most likely outcome for [Sun], we believe other scenarios remain possible, although each is made more difficult by the continued uncertainty around Sun’s fate, and the resulting erosion in customer confidence in Sun.”

And so the company today said that beginning Friday, “select markets” can preorder Windows 7 at a more than 50 percent discount. In the U.S., that means Windows 7 Home Premium will set you back about $50, or Windows 7 Professional about $100. A “screaming deal,” Microsoft calls it.

The promotion runs until July 11 in the U.S. and Canada and until July 5 in Japan, or “while supplies last.” If you choose not to preorder an upgrade copy, you’ll obviously pay a bit more for Windows 7 when it finally ships on Oct. 22. Existing XP and Vista customers in the U.S. will be able to purchase Home Premium for $119.99, Professional for $199.99 and Ultimate for $219.99. New customers will pay $199.99 for Home Premium, $299.99 for Professional and $319.99 for Ultimate.

Pricey, but about 8 to 17 percent less than Vista. Said Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft’s in-house Windows blogger, “Overall, customers will be paying less and getting more with Windows 7.”

For their sake, let’s hope so. Especially if they paid retail for Vista.

The short, and obvious, answer to that question is “a hell of a lot.” In a note to clients today, Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi argues that Wal-Mart (WMT) can sell between 800,000 and 1.3 million iPhones in 2009, though the retailer’s low price mantra may appear inconsistent with the iPhone’s market positioning. And that would seem to be a reasonable estimate. After all, Wal-Mart has some 2,500 retail outlets in the states, through which 100 million customers stream each week.

“The addition of Wal-Mart will roughly double the iPhone’s distribution in the US to nearly 6,000 outlets,” Sacconaghi writes. “We believe iPhone sales will benefit from the added distribution, though not proportionately; in our view, price (for both the device and service plan) is still the biggest hurdle to mass adoption…. With the iPhone already available at 3,000 Apple, AT&T (T), and Best Buy (BBY) stores, Wal-Mart likely does little to expand the device’s geographic reach. However, we believe Wal-Mart will have a greater impact on the iPhone’s demographic reach in terms of raising awareness and availability among lower-end consumers who are less likely to shop at the Apple Stores or BestBuy.”

One last point worth noting here, Sacconaghi puts little faith in rumors that Wal-Mart will offer a $99 4GB iPhone. “Could there be a cheaper iPhone at Wal-Mart,” he writes. “We think it unlikely, at least initially, but the idea is not completely unfounded. In our view, a $99 price point for the iPhone seems too low, but some modest discount is not implausible.”

And the company’s proposed advertising partnership with Google (GOOG) has been delayed due to the Justice Department’s ongoing related antitrust review.

And its lucrative stakes in two Asian Internet firms–Alibaba.com and Gmarket–have lost 22 percent of their value, or $2.1 billion, since Yahoo assessed them in July.

And its quarterly profit and sales are expected to fall short of consensus estimates because of what CEO Jerry Yang likes to call headwinds.

Now that Yahoo is trading at $12.63 in an economy that’s falling Homer Simpson-style down the long rocky slope of economic collapse, some of the company’s institutional investors are hoping to convince it to sell itself to Microsoft (MSFT). Mithras Capital Partners, which holds about 1.9 million shares of Yahoo, has proposed selling the company to Microsoft for $22 a share, a 74 percent premium on Yahoo’s current stock price, but something of a discount over the $31-per-share Microsoft once offered and the $40-a-share for which Yahoo had hoped.

In a letter to the two companies, Mithras suggested Microsoft acquire the Internet underachiever, sell off its Asian assets and nonsearch businesses and extract $3 billion worth of cost savings and $2.8 billion of tax benefits. That would essentially mean that the Software giant would pay $10.3 billion for Yahoo’s search business, $2 billion less than it planned to spend back in July. “It is imperative for Microsoft to act now, while the Yahoo-Google deal is mired in regulatory concerns, and before Yahoo strikes a deal with AOL,” said Mark Nelson, a partner at Mithras. “It is imperative for the Yahoo board to embrace this proposal as the best outcome for long-suffering Yahoo shareholders.”

I suppose. But if Yahoo’s board felt $31-a-share “massively undervalued” the company, what will they think about $22?