Kris Tuttle

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.

I Have a Bad Feeling About This Market

The comments here generate some good discussion for SA to consider. SA is basically a distribution platform that also builds and offers some of their own content (like transcripts.)

Regardless of qualifications nobody has ever been very good about predicting the stock market, especially in the short term. The same is true with big sections of the market and generally individual stocks.

Readers of SA can put the more credible and experienced contributors on their "watch list" and just read their stuff. I do this because there are a few people on SA that really know their stuff. You can also often take their original content from the blog and bring it into your feed reader. So generally speaking users should be able to easily filter content and read what they want.

However the Yahoo Finance thing is more problematic. It's true that you really don't want total junk going up there. SA doesn't and neither does Yahoo. (The same is true for Google Finance where the "discussions" end up being absurdly useless.)

The question is should SA be more aggressive at filtering what they push "up" to sites like Yahoo Finance. I think so. First of all I think that an obvious one is first time contributors with no verifiable identity and background probably don't belong. But I think SA can do more filtering, top-down or collaborative, to upgrade the public view of content in places like Yahoo.

The last point is that people who are on the system and posting inane content or comments should probably be removed. I notice that especially when people have stock positions that run counter to a post they are very quick on the trigger to post some negative comments.

I've had it happen quite a few times and have contacted some of the people. They often then say "Ah well I'm sorry I understand what you are saying. It's just that this is my biggest position and when I saw your note I really saw red."

If you are feeling angry it's probably a good idea to not hit the Publish button.

6 Elements to Steve Jobs' Bold Prediction for 2010

This is an excellent post. It also makes me revisit the thinking that maybe Microsoft needs to go into the hardware business (buy Dell, it's actually quite cheap and still has very high returns on investment capital) and get into retail more aggressively. Of course we've already said they need to buy RIM. That seems to be growing more urgent by the day.

Overbought Stocks

Truly silly stuff! Amazing.

Is Rambus the Next 27 Bagger?

At some point I would expect SA to change their system so that only validated users could contribute content to the site.

The New Palm Is Gonna Bomb

What a week for Palm. They have at least gotten themselves a ton of free publicity for this thing. It is after all just another smart phone, gotta remember that.

That several other carriers have come out and said they would be offering it is solidly good news for Palm.

I would tend to agree that based on what we can see now Palm may be just a bit too late with this to change the game at all. The momentum behind the iPhone is huge and it's tied to applications and content that are "sticky" w.r.t. Apple.

An interesting question is whether or not there is a significant segment of the market that might go for the Palm. There are the iPhone types, the Blackberry types and maybe to a lesser extent the Android and Samsung types.

On Day 1 I'm not sure Palm will be different enough but there are probably more than enough people who just have decided they want to try one for it to sell out quickly. But what new form factors and development tools they will offer to turn their new OS and devices into a platform remains to be seen.

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.

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.

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.

Expecting a Sell-Off: 35 Ways to Protect for Less

If you are concerned about the general market but still wanting to stay long the individual stocks that are most attractive one could short the closest index: SPY, QQQ, SMH to provide a cushion. If they underlying stock selection is good then even if the pullback doesn't come you should stay in positive territory. Then you can adjust your short position in the index as you see fit. Covered calls are also okay but they cut both ways and you can still lose quite a bit of capital with them. Unless you set up a stop loss with a buyback of the (much lower) call options at a certain threshold.

TGIF: AT&T's Really Bad Week

I'm pretty sure every major new technology adoption cycle goes through the same performance and support issues as user demand and activity runs ahead of all ability to deliver it from time to time. Then the resources "catch up" and along we go. It's normal.

Will Palm Roll Out the Pre the Day Before Apple's WWDC Keynote?

It could work if Palm had some really big things to announce. More than just "hey it's here and we love it!"

If there are more service providers to announce and a new WebOS license like Motorola or HTC then it could create some standing waves.

The momentum around the iPhone as a platform is the real problem for Palm. It's probably past the tipping point which means that no matter how "superior" WebOS may be as a platform there will already be so many developers focused on the iPhone that they won't be able to get enough mindshare to succeed.

I like the Palm device and software and they should do well enough to survive. However the stock seems to discount a good deal of that already. The large short position in PALM should help the shares move higher if they can be forced to cover.

The Short Case for Amazon.com

I've heard that AMZN is "just a retailer" arguments for about a decade now. It's true of course but if you're going to analyze the stock from that perspective you are likely to get your head handed to you.

Amazon has fundamental differences from typical retail stocks as well as big differences from raw technology names like RIMM, GOOG and AAPL.

A simple-minded approach to these names just doesn't work very well. We agree that valuation matters and over the long term these companies are judged on their long-term returns on invested capital.

The disruptive theme can push the stock fairly high. If the market comes to believe that books are ready to go the way of the newspapers (I'm not sure I agree) then the leaders in the eBook segment will do very well. Because Amazon is in the book and media business they stand to gain or lose the most from the move. (Sony is strong in the technology but it won't move the needle either way there.)

So if you want to play in AMZN I think you need to do A LOT more work, including understanding their cloud-based technology and service businesses.

The move from $50 to $66 was pretty abrupt so I can understand the desire to put a short on but it's really a trading call.

If Apple Does Correct, It Will Do So Soon

Reminds me of one of my first experiences on the sell side. I was in a training program and was covering for a senior person. Dick Hoey called in to ask about a stock. I ran to an office and was sweating bullets as I gave him all our best research insights on the name. He was able to summarize it all simply by saying "So the stock may go up from here, or down or may just stay right about where it is?" He said it in a nice way, I'm sure he realized I was a total rookie. He as patient enough to listen.

Have a clear opinion, point of few and facts to back it up adds value to the discussion. The only times I've made major returns in when the call was clear. Everything else is wasting time. Keep looking.

How the iPhone and Poor Management Contribute to Apple's Downfall

Good material for discussion. The Street always plays games with decisions like this. If you are conservative you often don't get the credit and if you are not the results get discounted as being "not sustainable." We're in a negative sentiment period so Apple is probably getting little credit for what they have deferred. However it sets up an appealing investment opportunity for those who do the work and can look out more than a quarter or two. Speaking very loosely the stock probably "belongs" at $100 these days and has considerable upside from there... that's our research view at least. If the shares trade off sharply into the report it may even be an opportunity for traders. Apple has done some amazing things recently as far as technology innovation goes and they have built a very good business from it. In some ways they've created more value than Google in the past two or three years.