Microsoft’s (MSFT) recent debacle with its Sidekick device is the ugliest user experience we may have ever seen in wireless. The Sidekick device was the first one to backup and synchronize over the air (the “cloud”) to a central server starting already several years ago. The company behind the device was acquired by Microsoft 18 months ago, and after that point the Sidekick platform fell behind the competition – Blackberry (RIMM) and iPhone (AAPL) to begin with, and more recently also Palm/WebOS (PALM) and Google/Android (GOOG). Yet, the remaining Sidekick users appear to have lost all of their data as a result of Microsoft’s server failure.

What this saddest of technology sagas illustrates is that while cloud sync may be convenient, it is no replacement for making your own daily local backup on your own PC at home. Supplement, yes – replacement, no.

Our government has settled on a new formula for regulating industry, and they are applying it to one industry after another. While they haven’t yet made it to the restaurant business, at this pace we may not have to wait too many years for the following to happen: Every restaurant is mandated to only offer food in the form of an all-you-can-eat buffet. The government decides on what needs to be served on this buffet, at a minimum, in order to be compliant. No restaurant is allowed to deny a customer service, and all customers must be charged the same price. After all, eating is no longer one half of an exchange of private property, but a “right” entitling a consumer to his neighbor’s property.

What would happen to the restaurant industry if it were regulated this way? 300 lb people would pay the same as 100 lb dieting models, all while abusing the buffet’s contents. The restaurant owner, unable to discriminate or restrict, would have to raise the uniform price to reflect the heaviest consumer, at which point the price becomes unacceptable to the lighter consumer. Unable to reduce cost because of the requirement to provide a minimum level of content, the restaurant would under-invest in other areas such as kitchen and furniture; yet profitability would suffer despite the higher price. Eventually the government steps in to limit the price restaurant charges for the buffet. Cost then exceed revenue. Bankruptcy follows.

We all have numerous good reasons to love our iPhone. It revolutionized the handheld business with its AppStore and ease of use interface. Apple (AAPL) will continue to gain ground, and further innovations to its iPhone product portfolio could accelerate its growth even further. The synergies with the Mac computers and the Apple Stores themselves, are real and material.

The advantages of the iPhone are mostly immediately visible. Its differentiating characteristics are extroverted, shouting them right into your face. For the casual observer, these iPhone advantages are very compelling when comparing it to its main rival to date, the Blackberry. However, Blackberry also has numerous advantages, almost all of which are “behind the scenes” and therefore often beyond the comprehension or attention span of most consumers to fully analyze before a purchase decision is made.

This is a comparison of prices between the five major cellular carriers. It focuses on one specific scenario: Unlimited-everything service for a Blackberry, purchased by a regular individual consumer – not an enterprise. I have divided the comparison into three parts:

1. Unlimited US domestic voice+SMS+email/Internet on the Blackberry handheld.
2. Having your Blackberry serve as a modem for your laptop.
3. Blackberry data roaming outside the US.

Let’s start with the cost of Unlimited Domestic Service:

“Maybe you're better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

President Obama (June 24, 2009) – on the topic of health care for elderly people

First Qualcomm (QCOM), now Apple (AAPL). Remember the GSM vs CDMA phone standards wars some 15+ years ago? The European Union [EU] at that time turned against Qualcomm in favor of the Nokia (NOK)-Ericsson (ERIC)-Alcatel (ALU)-Siemens (SI) backed GSM standard, mandating it in Europe and therefore limiting what would have been an even greater potential for Qualcomm.

Fast forward some 15+ years, and they’re baaack! The EU is now mandating that all cell phones be compatible with 3rd-party MicroUSB chargers by January 1, 2012. I first wrote about this subject on SeekingAlpha on December 24, 2008, and this development is now reaching its final stages of lawmaking in Europe.

With the Blackberry app store launching by the end of March 2009, a dramatic new problem will emerge with full force: Where is the application memory to run these new applications? In order to understand the magnitude of this problem, we have to look at the mother of all app store pioneers: Apple (AAPL) and the iPhone.

Ask almost any iPhone user what excites them about the iPhone, and almost all of them answer immediately that it's the app store, with many thousands of apps available. Many iPhone users have page after page after page worth of applications that they have downloaded. It seems like iPhone users install dozens and dozens of applications, and I don't see any signs of abatement. We may be entering a situation where most iPhone users love their platform so much because they have hundreds of applications running.

American memories are apparently becoming shorter and shorter. Various misguided references to the alleged causes and cures of The Great Depression aside, people don't remember that we once upon a time, less than 100 years ago, didn't have a Federal Income Tax, that drugs were legal (and then alcohol prohibited), and that inflation and interest rates were double-digits less than 30 full years ago.

Among the most recent things to be completely forgotten are the high gas prices, peaking in July 2008 with nationwide averages over $4 per gallon and people in California paying $5 on occasion. Politicians and pundits blamed this on "speculators" and called for the government to "do something." Toyota (TM) Priuses were selling at MSRP or higher.

We all have the same problem: At least one drawer full of obsolete and duplicate chargers for cell phones, digital cameras, music players, gaming devices and similar gadgets. Almost every time you switch or upgrade your cell phone, you need a new wall charger, a new synchronization cord for your PC, and a new car charger. The average American upgrades the cell phone once a year, and replaces it even more often because of lost/stolen/destroyed phenomena. The end result is that we end up with several obsolete chargers every year.

This massive waste and expense is about to end. Most cell phone brands agreed in September 2007 to standardize on MicroUSB for wired connectivity and chargers. Other devices such as photo cameras, video cameras and gaming devices are likely to follow. The first MicroUSB cell phones started hitting the stores approximately mid-2008. I conducted a survey in a few cell phone stores in recent days, and came to the following conclusion: Sprint (S) and Verizon Wireless (VZ) have already implemented MicroUSB in over 50% of their cell phones. AT&T (T) and T-Mobile remain under 20%. I estimate that we will be at 100% MicroUSB by the end of 2009, perhaps with the exception of the iPhone.

By now we have heard about Bernie Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme, where the life savings of at least hundreds of people – perhaps thousands – went up in smoke. We are all being told that this represents the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, by a wide margin. Right?

Wrong. Madoff's Ponzi scheme isn't even close to the biggest one ever, by far. The biggest Ponzi scheme is one in which we are all victims, to the tune of close to $50 trillion – not billion. It's the unfunded liabilities of the US Federal Government, particularly Medicare and Social Security.

For those of you who wonder how our country will play out after November 4, look no further than Ayn Rand's 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. In that book, anti-business policies in the form of higher taxes and more regulation caused the major captains of industry to go on strike, shutting down wealth-creation as we know it. That's the essence of Atlas Shrugged, and that is – at least directionally – what we may face if such policies are enacted in coming months and years.

Actually, "shutting down" isn't the only option for investors and businesspeople anymore. Back in the 1950s, when Ayn Rand authored Atlas Shrugged, the US constituted an extremely large share of the world economy. In 1951, the average American ate 50 percent more than the average European. Americans controlled two-thirds of the world's production, owned 80 percent of the world's electrical goods, and produced more than 40 percent of its electricity, 60 percent of its oil and 66 percent of its steel. America's 5 percent of the world's population had more wealth than the other 95 percent, and Americans made almost all of what they consumed: Over 99.9% of new cars sold in the U.S. in 1954 were U.S. brands. By the end of the 1950s, GM was a bigger economic entity than Belgium, and Los Angeles had more cars than did Asia.

His other forward-leaning arguments aside, McCain has been playing defense on the recent decline in the stock market. His defensive posture, insofar as he doesn't have much of a posture at all on the stock market, can subconsciously be interpreted to mean that he feels a bit guilty about it, and therefore avoids the issue. It's become the millstone around his neck.

This is the wrong tactic for McCain! The argument he should be making is that one contributing reason for the market's decline this year is that the market participants dislike Obama's plans for taxes, spending and regulation. Imagine the political narrative if at least half of Americans had come to believe that this is a reason for the market decline?

At the center of Senator Obama's tax policy argument is that by raising taxes on the top 5% of income earners, we are only returning to President Clinton's 1993 tax increases. Let's for a moment leave aside that Obama really is looking to raise taxes on social security (above incomes of $103,000) and on everyone's capital gains, regardless of income. Rather, the Obama argument goes that because we had a relative economic boom following the 1993 tax increase, it's perfectly safe to raise taxes in 2009 as well.

Wrong. There is a major difference between 1993 and 2009 that Obama and McCain alike are both failing to articulate. In 1993, the U.S. was one of the world's lowest-tax countries, with Europe mostly at much higher rates, and most of the Asian economies too underdeveloped to be alternatives for investments and businesses. Eastern Europe was under a cloud of uncertainty and instability following the rapid demise of The Soviet Union on Christmas Day 1991. The 1993 tax increase left the U.S. as the leading free-market economy, albeit at a smaller margin than before.

1. Why did the financial meltdown happen?

2. Who is to blame for it?

3. What, if anything, can be done to fix it?

Following eight trading days when Nextwave Wireless (WAVE) stock shot up 35%, we find out why, and the reasons are multi-fold:

1. WAVE sold $150m worth of AWS spectrum, primarily to T-Mobile USA. My preliminary analysis suggests that approximately 600m MHz POPs were sold, implying an average price of $0.25 per MHz POP. This price, while significantly lower than the recent prices paid in Canada, was still materially higher than the price suggested by short-sellers (see SeekingAlpha article “Why I’m Short NextWave Wireless” from May 16, authored by an anonymous source). This would leave WAVE with 347m MHz POPs in the AWS band to be sold at a future date, perhaps at higher prices resembling the recent Canadian auction.

Spending a lot of my time with tech/telecom executives – many in smaller companies, and private companies – I have recently begun to notice a major trend, which had been present in other corners of the market for about 6-9 months earlier, but is now reaching new ground. What I am talking about are asset sales targeted for 2008 closings, in order to avoid higher capital gains taxes in 2009 and beyond.

Specifically, CEOs and board members especially of smaller and private companies have expressed to me a desire to sell their companies in 2008, as opposed to infusing more capital and/or look to IPOs for exits. You may have noticed an almost complete absence of venture-backed IPOs in the first half of 2008. Instead, acquisitions are becoming the only exit of choice – er, necessity.

If you are a Blackberry (RIMM) user, you are familiar with the fact that emails containing HTML links (graphics) don’t display the graphics, but rather cause you to have to scroll down past that jibberish HTML text. It’s ugly and annoying, but those of us who are engineering-minded know the reason we have to suffer through this sub-optimal experience: bandwidth. By stripping each email of all of those colors and pictures, less bandwidth is utilized.

This goes to the heart of Blackberry’s main argument to the carriers, such as T-Mobile USA and AT&T. Unlike other email-capable handhelds, Blackberries provide for a more predictable – and lower – bandwidth utilization, putting less strain on the already-congested cellular frequencies. This is why the price of unlimited Blackberry use, which can mean many hundreds of emails every day, is very low compared to many other devices. In the case of T-Mobile USA, unlimited Blackberry email is $10 per month and in some places in Europe it’s 5 Euros per month.

One year ago, when the first iPhone hit the market, investors sought a highly leveraged derivative play as an alternative to buy the obvious Apple (AAPL) stock. At that time, the answer appeared to be Synchronoss (SNCR), which went from under $10 to $30 at the time of the iPhone launch, and $45 shortly thereafter. At that time, the driver was a new provisioning system, because the iPhone – just like the GSM-based Blackberries (RIMM) – was only equipped with an EDGE radio. Thanks to WiFi, this induced people to stay away from utilizing the slow cellular frequencies for web surfing, including mobile search.

This time around, the new iPhone 3G launching on July 11 will spur at least one other derivative play, and that's the bandwidth play. For the first time on a handheld, the iPhone 3G combines the standout handheld browser with an HSPA radio fast enough to yield a decent web browsing experience -- including mobile search – when you're not on WiFi.

Is the value of NextWave Wireless (WAVE) greater than a stock price of approximately $6.00? 

At $6.00 per share, the market cap is, at a minimum, $618m
based on 103m shares. There is also a convertible redeemable preferred
share class, which is currently close to $375m including accumulated
interest.