Julian Ivan-Alexander

Research In Motion: Still the Best Positioned Smartphones Play

Lenny... did you check the date of that report? Its August... 2008... a whole generation of iPhone/iPhone OS ago.
Virtually every issue the BB user complained about has been remedied now.
You're using a 15-month old comparison of a BB user's experience trying an iPhone to try and illustrate why BB users won't switch now. The smartphone world has been turned on its head in the last 6 months, let alone the last 15. This isn't you're grandfather's smartphone world, so to speak :)

Research In Motion: Still the Best Positioned Smartphones Play

Here's your biggest blindspot: You recognise that "not for a minute" do you think RIM will outsell Apple in the consumer market, but you say: "It is also reasonable to expect RIMM to benefit from the return of enterprise spending both in the US and abroad, which has been largely absent from the growth side of the company’s revenues over the past six quarters. This could be a game changer in 2010."
Here's the news you won't talk about: given a choice, virtually every report from executives at Fortune 500 companies offered the chance to switch to an iPhone are choosing to switch. The company standing to benefit the most from a pickup in enterprise spending isn't RIMM, its AAPL.

Research In Motion: Still the Best Positioned Smartphones Play

The blind leading the blind. RIMM is facing its most competitive challenge in its history, has an OS that's about 10 years out of date, and yet chooses to spend money on a stock buyback to support its shareholders/hedge fund shills rather than investing in more R&D to improve its margins and help reduce its costs.
Last sign of a desperate company shrieking of its relevance. Remember DELL's massive buybacks?
Enough said.
Why invest in RIMM, which is losing market mindshare, when you can invest in AAPL, which is growing all over the world, both in mindshare and market share?
RIMM is so 2004.

Google Should Make Apple Beg for Maps Navigation

Fred LA, old-skool "analysts" never research - they just fart brainwaves. Of course he didn't know Apple had just bought its own mapping company. It also stands to reason that Apple knew Google intended to launch turn-by-turn navigation at the outset of the project's development, and made contingency plans to avoid being dependent on Google.
Acquisitions don't happen out of the blue, especially for a company like Apple, so this move, and Apple's reassuring forsight to stay ahead of the game by outflanking Google with its own purchase of a mapping solution, shows just how forward thinking Apple's management is.
Screw Google - Apple doesn't need them.

Apple May Find Itself at Risk in Legacy Core Business

Wow - not so much sour grapes as bitter lemon.

The Google Phone: Blockbuster or Bust?

Google is not positioning itself against Apple. Its positioning itself against Windows Mobile and its lesser competitors. I'm not sure why people find this so hard to understand.

When Bad Strategies Outperform

Sorry mate, but Jill sounds like a sensible girl who identified safe, large cap earnings growth machines and wisely invested her money in them, knowing the Street was undervaluing their growth potential.
Jack sounds like the kind of fool who thinks buying MSFT and DELL is a safe bet because they used to be earnings growth monsters 10 years ago, and anyway, to paraphrase that old saying, "nobody got sacked for buying Microsoft and DELL.".

The worst strategy is to hold onto your losers and not identify new winners.

Go Jill!

Google, Apple, Research in Motion and Amazon: Are "The Four Horsemen" Overvalued?

Laughably low estimates for AAPL in 2008 are responsible for skewing the AAPL numbers. AAPL will earn approx $6 - 6.50 in 2008, not $4+. The smart money knows this, which is why it is letting the stock run up even while most of the blow hard analysts fail to get their collective heads around the impact of iPhone subscriber revenue sharing with the carriers and the $1-2+ on earnings this offers.

AAPL is actually the most undervalued of the lot, relatively, rather than the most expensive.

Apple, Google: Avoiding the Overvaluation Trap

AAPL has grown earnings 70-80% YoY the last two quarters. It isn't going to keep that up forever, and will return to a more "normal" 40% this Quarter probably, but seriously, how can you call a stock which is seeing earnings rocket at this rate overvalued, when its going to look cheap in a few months unless growth falls off a cliff - unlikely with Mac sales growing at 35% and the launch of the iPhone and associated revenues alone likely to add 30-40% to AAPL's earnings over the next 12-24 months.

You should learn to think outside the box, to coin a horrid phrase. Your attitude is all very well when talking about companies with little prospect of maintaining stellar earnings growth, but that's not the case with AAPL, and to a lesser degree GOOG (yes, you hear me right - I think AAPL has better earnings growth prospects than GOOG for the next few years). Here are mega-cap companies with tens of billions of dollars in the bank, no debt, and growing like small cap start-ups.

Crazy to buy them? You'd be crazy not to.

Cowen Advises: Place Your Mobile Internet Bets On Google, Not Apple

The guy is a fool. AAPL isn't baking in any income from the iPhone here, but merely the continued expansion of the Mac (currently growing sales abut 35% YoY and 300% the rate of PC sales growth), the iPod, and services.
The iPhone comes with subscriber revenue sharing, all in all which stands to benefit AAPL to the tune of $6-10B/year pretty soon. If the guy can't do basic maths, he should go back to kindergarten. What a stupid, stupid call., AAPL was at $86 in January - 2006! It was around the same price in January - 2007! So it went nowhere for almost a year almost solely due to two things:

1) Fears that the Intel transition would slow Mac sales (it didn't - they still grew over 30%)
2) All the BS and FUD over the options backdating issue, which proved to be a total canard raised by th bears and doom sayers (as AAPL watchers were saying all along).

With those two issues behind it, and following YoY earnings growth of almost 90$ in Q1 and a similar report for Q2, AAPL finally took off.

What part of 90% earnings growth does this buffoon not understand? AAPL is, at $120, reflecting fair value considering its current sales growth for its existing product lines. The iPhone does not, in fact, even figure in the pps - although I fully understand why people who haven't bothered to do some simple calculations might not understand that.

Lesson for analysts: do the maths before you open your mouths. You're only going to look bloody stupid in a few months time.

Emotion: The Enemy of Every Investor

The iPhone is the most talked about CE item in years - since the iPod in fact.

Which company produces both? Apple.

AAPL is growing earnings by 40% YoY yet trades with a fPE of under 30. And that's BEFORE factoring in the iPhone, and its impact, together with subscriber revenues, which could further grow earnings by 20-30% ON THEIR OWN.

You want to bet against that success? Because I don't.

I think you're letting your emotions cloud your judgement, Mr Sullivan - exactly what you're accusing AAPL investors of doing. If you chose to look at what people are buying, its Apple products. Just because you can't see the appeal doesn't make everyone else wrong - it makes you wrong. Don't let your dislike of the company, its stock, and its products cloud your judgement - you're taking a negative bias on AAPL because you're getting, oh, shall way say, a little to emotionally attached to your arguments.

Good luck with your AAPL short - you're going to need it.