What's All The Hubbub About Over The iPad Mini Pricing? [View article]
Enjoyed the article and comments and must admit at first that I was skeptical that Apple was cannibalizing the more lucrative IPad with a lower price Mini, much the same as Intel did with the Pentium a few years back when they ramped the Atom and lost $1 billion in two successive quarters (read my articles in Seeking Alpha about that). I surmise Apple announced the iPad 4 at the same time to notify investors and Apple diehards that it is still in the drivers seat with anything mobile.
My only complaint with the article is its comparison with Macy's. Remember Macy's filed Chapter 11 in 1992 based on its selling and product strategy (my wife worked for them at the time).
What's All The Hubbub About Over The iPad Mini Pricing? [View article]
I enjoyed both the article and comments. My initial concern was the cannibalization of the iPad by the Mini, the same analogy I made in some Seeking Alpha articles a few years ago that Intel cannibalized the more expensive Pentium chip to make the Atom and lost $1 billion two successive quarters. I suspect that is the reason Apple announced the iPad 4 at the same time as the Mini to alert Apple diehards that they are not giving up on high-margin products.
My only complaint with the article is the analogy with Macy's. Remember that Macy's filled for Chapter 11 back in 1992 based on their product and selling strategy (my wife worked for them at the time so I still remember the issues).
In addition to cost issues, First Solar panels have issues in hot climates which the company is targeting, and its manufacturing issues have already led to a loss in the hundred million dollar range. Both lead to less confidence in the company at a time where there is ferocious competition.
First Solar needs to find a way to get into silicon cells and correct their manufacturing issues to develop low-cost product.
KLA-Tencor's Management Hosts Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology Conference (Transcript) [View article]
Wow, those were extremely important questions asked by Sankar on the 28nm issue -- whether Intel had problems at 45nm, whether it was just a foundry issue, etc, because the future growth of metrology/inspection tools for 2012 will be based on these issues. Lockwood totally dropped the ball, and as head of investor relations should have known the answers. Glad to see that CFO Dentinger took over the conversation, but the really key issues of 28nm were never answered. Too bad Sankar moved to 450mm and EUV, which are beyond 2012 because we need answers for 2012 and he didn't have Dentinger re-address these issues. The Head of IR at ATMI just departed the company. Is something about to happen at KLAC, based on that fact that these questions were well beyond Lockwood? Mr. Dentinger please answer the questions and let me know.
You keep mentioning Intel and the opportunity for Lam. Semiconductor companies choose equipment based on what it will do for production, not how many sales people are involved or what other tools by the same vendor they have for other applications. Intel will not drop AMAT for Lam in the etch business just because Novellus sells deposition equipment to them.
Back to the article, I too started an nanocoating company, SolarPA solarpa-inc.com, after not finding $50 million to start a solar plant. My technology increases the efficiency of solar cells by 1% and uses screen printing to coat. Benefit is it is added to a finished solar cell and is not disruptive to the production of a standard cell. It probably will increase the efficiency of an Innovalight cell as well as it coats the entire cell.
The reason for DuPon't intetest is that ALL non-Chinese solar manufacturers need an edge to keep costs down to be competitive. A 50 MW plant becomes a 55 MW plant automatically by increasing a cell 1%. If you don't need the extra wattage, as is the case now with the surplus of cells, then you can still keep the 50MW output but lower your costs 10%. Read my articles in Seeking Alpha about this.
Samsung Partners With Seagate on $1.375 Billion Deal for HDD Operations and More [View article]
Actually Samsung has only a 9.7% share of the market, if you would have referred to my Seeking Alpha article "Western Digital Wins Hard Disk Drive Battle in 2010" of March 7. It is Hitachi (HGST) that has a 17% share. Please stop cutting and pasting secondary information you get from other publications and get your facts straight. The 9.7% share is CRITICAL to this story and acquisition.
Nova Measuring Instruments' Earnings Show Price Action Is on Fire [View article]
I have been collecting a revenue breakout from Nova for more than a decade for a Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control analysis report we at The Information Network offer. Their main claim to fame has been integrated metrology rather than the traditional standalone tools. Anyway, yesterday I got my annual breakout from Nova and they now combine integrated metrology in their optical CD (OCD) category. In 2009, Nova had $25.2 million in revenues. Their explanation to me as to why they lumped integrated with OCD is unclear, and I wonder if it is because their core business has changed. Nevertheless, overall revenues did increase from $29.5 million in 2009 to $71.8 million in 2010, an increase of 142.5% compared ti KLACs increase of 94.3%. By the way, Nano is in the integrated metrology business and they continue to report the breakout.
Evergreen Solar Saga Continues With Announced Plant Shutdown [View article]
A key factor presented in this article is that manufacturing costs are too high. I mention in several of my articles on SeekingAlpha that my company, SolarPA, has developed a nanocoating technology that can increase efficiency by up to 10% and reduce manufacturing costs by up to 10%. I contacted Evergreen (their CTO) on several occasions (after speaking with their Director of IR) over the past several weeks and no one has returned my call!!! This call was prompted after reading an excellent review by Dr. Duru on SeekingAlpha a month ago. ESLRD's response was "Consensus opinion among the execs that have brought his material up in IR related discussions is that his attraction to the E*Trade intra-day trend riders establish him as more of a menace than as a contributor bringing thoughtfully consider investment recommendations to SA readers." So, instead of responding to my call of offering ESLRD a means to help them in their production, they instead poo-poo negative comments by respected writers. They are evidently in denial in my opinion, which offers little hope for their success. By the way, SolarPA is working with several US and Chinese solar manufacturers with its NanoCoat product.
Do Oil Price Spikes Cause Recessions? [View article]
Bravo sethmcs, but how does one go about initiating a program? Congress. Obama, WTO, UN? Who?
Alternative energy is a hope. I wrote in a blog a year or so ago on Seeking Alpha "What's worse, importing oil from OPEC or solar from Europe and Asia"? This administration is not initiating the infrastructure. Obama stropped drilling in the eastern Gulf, but hasn't implemented an alternative.
Growing Atom Share Adds Little Value to Intel Stock [View article]
Intel will never succeed in the wireless space. They won't be able to compete against ARM Holdings. See my articles about this on this topic.
You state "The Trefis community predicts that Atom’s market share will increase from almost 17% in 2010 to 28% by 2013, compared with the baseline Trefis estimate of an increase from under 14% to 20% during the same period." Show the word all the market shares of all the players in the space you are talking about (by the way, what space are you talking about with this 17%?)
5 Reasons Why Applied Materials Is Undervalued [View article]
Street,
There are a lot of misconceptions you have, primarily from reading too much instead of doing your own research. In Item 3 for example, Samsung is pushing out purchases (halting delivery on equipment booked) because they over ordered on the DRAM miscue. LRCX is the most recent company affected, so what is a $200 million check going to do, get them to buy more equipment they overbought in 2010 (search my Seeking Alpha articles and find the one on the equipment bubble burst). In item 4, what makes you think AMAT is gaining market share to have revenues increase above the norm in 2011? Again, search my Seeking Alpha articles to find out our analysis of that misconception. In item 5, where did you ever get that notion that AMAT being too greedy soured investors. In reality, AMAT was big on amorphous solar cells and their business tanked. That's what soured investors. Again, search my Seeking Alpha articles to find out our analysis of that ill advised comment.
Repercussions of a Deteriorating Semiconductor Industry [View article]
There are several analytics we use in determining the overall health of a sector. We look at the supply side, down to the chip level of production. We speak with these companies as well as use their disclosure statements on earnings calls. We look at overall capacity utilization in the semi fabs. We look at ancillary technologies, such as software. Finally we use secondary published sources of information. One story does not make a complete picture, but when we look at the overall facets of the components that make up an "electronic gadget or personal computer" and all stories from different sources on different supply-chain components follow the same trend, it tells us something. Of course we use our proprietary LI to correlate with the overall macroeconomic state of the world economy. Examples of stories in the past few days are:
Microsoft on Thursday reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue and again declined to offer a forecast for the current quarter. With sales dropping during its second quarter Nvidia's decided to write off a whole bunch of old chip inventory and take a write down against a proposed settlement of a chip packaging lawsuit hanging over it since late 2008. An overnight report from a Taiwan-based newspaper said flat panel makers are cutting orders to LED makers. That echoes concerns last month from Piper Jaffray, which warned bookings in the LED and solar-cell areas may have peaked. Asustek expected to revise down motherboard shipment target for 2010
Call me on my cell at 610-737-7596 if you wish to discuss further
What's All The Hubbub About Over The iPad Mini Pricing? [View article]
My only complaint with the article is its comparison with Macy's. Remember Macy's filed Chapter 11 in 1992 based on its selling and product strategy (my wife worked for them at the time).
What's All The Hubbub About Over The iPad Mini Pricing? [View article]
My only complaint with the article is the analogy with Macy's. Remember that Macy's filled for Chapter 11 back in 1992 based on their product and selling strategy (my wife worked for them at the time so I still remember the issues).
Tablets And Smartphones Are Killing The PC Industry [View article]
What Happened To First Solar? [View article]
First Solar needs to find a way to get into silicon cells and correct their manufacturing issues to develop low-cost product.
KLA-Tencor's Management Hosts Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Technology Conference (Transcript) [View article]
Lam Research: Novellus Deal Benefits Everyone Involved [View article]
DuPont Snaps Up Innovalight [View article]
The reason for DuPon't intetest is that ALL non-Chinese solar manufacturers need an edge to keep costs down to be competitive. A 50 MW plant becomes a 55 MW plant automatically by increasing a cell 1%. If you don't need the extra wattage, as is the case now with the surplus of cells, then you can still keep the 50MW output but lower your costs 10%. Read my articles in Seeking Alpha about this.
Samsung Partners With Seagate on $1.375 Billion Deal for HDD Operations and More [View article]
Nova Measuring Instruments' Earnings Show Price Action Is on Fire [View article]
Evergreen Solar Saga Continues With Announced Plant Shutdown [View article]
I contacted Evergreen (their CTO) on several occasions (after speaking with their Director of IR) over the past several weeks and no one has returned my call!!! This call was prompted after reading an excellent review by Dr. Duru on SeekingAlpha a month ago. ESLRD's response was "Consensus opinion among the execs that have brought his material up in IR related discussions is that his attraction to the E*Trade intra-day trend riders establish him as more of a menace than as a contributor bringing thoughtfully consider investment recommendations to SA readers."
So, instead of responding to my call of offering ESLRD a means to help them in their production, they instead poo-poo negative comments by respected writers. They are evidently in denial in my opinion, which offers little hope for their success.
By the way, SolarPA is working with several US and Chinese solar manufacturers with its NanoCoat product.
Do Oil Price Spikes Cause Recessions? [View article]
Alternative energy is a hope. I wrote in a blog a year or so ago on Seeking Alpha "What's worse, importing oil from OPEC or solar from Europe and Asia"? This administration is not initiating the infrastructure. Obama stropped drilling in the eastern Gulf, but hasn't implemented an alternative.
Growing Atom Share Adds Little Value to Intel Stock [View article]
You state "The Trefis community predicts that Atom’s market share will increase from almost 17% in 2010 to 28% by 2013, compared with the baseline Trefis estimate of an increase from under 14% to 20% during the same period." Show the word all the market shares of all the players in the space you are talking about (by the way, what space are you talking about with this 17%?)
5 Reasons Why Applied Materials Is Undervalued [View article]
There are a lot of misconceptions you have, primarily from reading too much instead of doing your own research. In Item 3 for example, Samsung is pushing out purchases (halting delivery on equipment booked) because they over ordered on the DRAM miscue. LRCX is the most recent company affected, so what is a $200 million check going to do, get them to buy more equipment they overbought in 2010 (search my Seeking Alpha articles and find the one on the equipment bubble burst).
In item 4, what makes you think AMAT is gaining market share to have revenues increase above the norm in 2011? Again, search my Seeking Alpha articles to find out our analysis of that misconception.
In item 5, where did you ever get that notion that AMAT being too greedy soured investors. In reality, AMAT was big on amorphous solar cells and their business tanked. That's what soured investors. Again, search my Seeking Alpha articles to find out our analysis of that ill advised comment.
Will Semiconductor Revenue Growth Continue Till End of Year? [View article]
Repercussions of a Deteriorating Semiconductor Industry
It already has slowed.
Repercussions of a Deteriorating Semiconductor Industry [View article]
Microsoft on Thursday reported weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue and again declined to offer a forecast for the current quarter.
With sales dropping during its second quarter Nvidia's decided to write off a whole bunch of old chip inventory and take a write down against a proposed settlement of a chip packaging lawsuit hanging over it since late 2008.
An overnight report from a Taiwan-based newspaper said flat panel makers are cutting orders to LED makers. That echoes concerns last month from Piper Jaffray, which warned bookings in the LED and solar-cell areas may have peaked.
Asustek expected to revise down motherboard shipment target for 2010
Call me on my cell at 610-737-7596 if you wish to discuss further