Kris Tuttle

Motorola Keeps Destroying Value

Motorola management may be changing. They key to how well they can do from here depends on what they do going forward.

What You Don't Know About Gaming Could Make You Obsolete

Agreed. I wish more of the content would help instill social skills and limit the time of play. Kids need physical activity and lots of it. Unfortunately video games (other than Wii Fit and the like) don't help at all with physical activity. Your picture above talks about 60 minutes of active time. The real figure is more like 6 hours if you have boys between 2 and 14. 60 minutes.... Ha, ha, ha.

Atheros' Impressive Earnings: Time to Get Back in Cheap

I share your interest in this one. Their purchase of Intellon is smart. We have more work to do on the company from a research standpoint but it looks well positioned.

Microsoft Hides Poor Services Performance from Investors' Eyes

Ultimately all we care about is return on invested capital versus their funding costs. It will probably never be as good as it once was given the margins of the new businesses versus the old.

However if Microsoft can add SaaS features to their core software products to make them work better consumers and businesses will continue to buy them. Because the business has a very large scale it can generate extremely strong returns.

Microsoft management has been very very poor in the last few years and many of their acquisitions, development efforts, product plans and marketing tactics have been pathetic. However they may be flirting with a move up to mediocrity.

Our analysis of the company suggests the shares are worth $30. This makes the stock a bit interesting but won't be exciting unless they can figure out more ways to grow. Getting more products right will help but they have a long way to go.

Verizon's Droid Is the Real Deal

Steve Jobs is said to be a pretty polarizing individual. That's good and bad sometimes. Apple seems to have made an enemy of Verizon which is an important member of the ecosystem. AT&T is a good partner but is that what Apple really wants?

If Verizon can execute well (a big question I know) they can create a pretty powerful "not the iPhone" choice for consumers, particularly Verizon FiOS customers.

Until recently Apple has had an "easy schedule" of games to play. Microsoft has been crippled by their own lousy execution and Vista, Google hasn't had a mobile offering, Nokia has been MIA on smart phones forever and RIM is great but too tied to business users to get in their way.

Now we have what looks like a decent platform with Android coupled with good phones from Motorola and others and a Microsoft that may have a decent product cycle in front of them.

Doesn't have to be a bad thing for Apple to have some decent competition. Maybe their products will get even better, even faster. Everyone should love a challenge.

Will Cheaper Laptops Snuff Out Netbooks?

A smartphone, netbook, laptop for every user. Or in cases like me for every use case, I bring a netbook sometimes when on the go but need to take notes, use cloud apps and so on but still need a powerful laptop to run applications on a larger screen (plus usually an external display as well.)

I bet netbooks helped the laptop makers get more serious about lowering price points. It's also made it easier to buy computers for kids or interns which often went without.

My guess is that this puts some pressure on the high-end laptop prices given what you can get for $1000 there. But I'm no PC analyst.

Web Sector Megatrends: The Golden Triangle

I'd say mobile + 3-D/RealVR + Semantic Web. Just my 2c.

How Big Will Android Get?

Everyone should just do their own market forecast. Then if we aggregate them we'll know the future!

Palm's Oprah Moment

Sounds fairly bold and encouraging. Certainly more open and an interesting choice versus Apple. But I wonder how the open/closed comparison will look between WebOS and Android in Q4.

Palm Slashes Mobile Platforms: What Exactly Is Its Problem?

Palm needs to put all their wood behind the WebOS arrow. They probably would have done it late in 2008 but would have lost what few sales of older generation devices they did make.

The biggest issue Palm faces now is lack of resources. Going against Apple, Research in Motion, Motorola/Google to name a few is just not going to generate high operating margins.

They don't need another $100M, they need $1B. The only way to do it is either with a service-provider partner like Verizon or a system vendor like HP or Dell.

Unfortunately that looks risky and potentially embarrassing so the odds don't seem very good. Palm has run up quite a bit so hard to buy here, plus there is a already a big short position so it's similarly hard to sell it or be short here.

Will Windows 7 Resurrect IT Spending?

I think you're right about the new mobile computer.

Netbook form factor + laptop power = nice device, nice price.

Combines best of both worlds, you can see the popularity in the stores now.

Intel Facing a Formidable Foe in ARM

You are probably right about ARM but for the wrong reasons.

Motorola Looks Far Better than Other Mobile Internet Players

We all look forward to seeing better offerings from Nokia. We've been waiting or years. Last year, despite looking silly in front vis a vis the Blackberry and the iPhone, management insisted that they were a "global leader" in this space. I think they really believe it.

Overbought Stocks

Truly silly stuff! Amazing.

RealNetworks: It Can Get Worse

Helpful commentary. It's important to get behind the story. Don't know if it's all factual but the analysis is good.