Steven Towns

Gadget Watch: 7 Consumer Electronics Stories

Thank you both Useful Link Man and Lisa, for your comments. I have updated the title.

Survey Shows There May Be Hope for Microsoft's Zune After All

There's a lot of emotion in shopping for electronics and other higher-priced goods. Not to mention all the emotion behind the marketing of these products. Anway, I am not the ideal consumer for electronics firms because I tend to buy something and get my fair use out of it (notice it was 5 years between music player purchases) and do a lot of homework before I make my purchases (not that others don't!). I walked in to Best Buy during Thanksgiving holiday and there was a promotion by Samsung offering 40% off the above players, which I would have bought anyway at retail price. I picked up two of them. They are great, exactly what I wanted, and support my three file types seamlessly: personally ripped MP3/WMA and subscription music.

Survey Shows There May Be Hope for Microsoft's Zune After All

I have to disagree with you on this Carl. I know there's a lot of Zune bashers out there for obvious reasons, but I was presenting the survey's findings from a market share expectations and growth perspective. Setting the guidelines of the survey aside, the respondents' responses showed that 80% of them are first-time buyers, and among those 69% indicated they'd likely (or very likely) be buyers (or gift givers). That bodes well for all market players because it is an expanding market. I do admit the 7% who said they'd choose Zune is not very promising for MSFT, but I'd still argue the potential exists for new buyers). For instance, I recently purchased my first MP3 player in about 5 years and I went with the Samsung YP-K5J. I'd never buy an iPod for myself -- don't want to be like the crowd and don't want to deal with the proprietary format. Also, in the summary above, I pulled in a report from USA Today that showed NPD's data lacked coverage of Wal-Mart, Amazon and the Apple Store. The latter two, I'm aware experienced heavy traffic and reportedly strong sales.

Apple iPod Elevates Game: Six Airlines to Add Connectivity

Right and that's pretty cool how you'll be able to watch video/tv on the seat-back monitor, which ought to boost sales on iTunes. I'd be tempted to buy content, especially for longer flights. Now that iPod has "cornered" autos and airlines, I wonder if they are looking at rail (w/ Amtrak) and sea w/ cruise ships?

'Dumb' Americans Stuck With Simple Interfaces (AAPL)

Citibank's response: "All shares of Samsung must be purchased and sold through a broker of your choice. The Samsung shares only trade in the US on the Portal exchange which is only accessible through a broker. The ticker symbols for Samsung are below: SAMPP- Samsung Corp SACPP-Samsung Corp SAEPP-SamsungElectroni... SEEPP-Samsung Electronics SASDI-Samsung SDI Co."

'Dumb' Americans Stuck With Simple Interfaces (AAPL)

Unfortunately Samsung doesn't seem to have shares traded in the U.S. (However their IR site says to contact Citibank as an option to purchase shares for investors residing outside of Korea). I think the best option is to go with iShares MSCI South Korea Index (ticker: EWY). As of the end of Sept., it consisted approx. 22% of Samsung Electronics and about 7% of other Samsung businesses. It is often said that "Samsung is Korea" or "how Samsung goes, Korea goes." Nonetheless, EWY may be preferable to trying to buy Samsung directly because you also get some of POSCO (steel) and Hyundai Motor, which just invested in a billion-dollar plant in Alabama. EWY also holds shares of LG Electronics and LG Philips LCD and a small ~1% position in Kia Motors. I emailed Citibank about the Samsung GDRs and I'll let you all know what I find out.

'Dumb' Americans Stuck With Simple Interfaces (AAPL)

And it looks like Samsung is only getting started. See this article from today's Financial Times that says Samsung has just unveiled a $45 billion investment plan over the next 5-years. The bulk of this R&D will be in its 13 "growth engines" including high-capacity memory chips, next-generation display devices, mobile telecommunications and digital TVs. The only worrisome thing (but impressive at the same time) is that Samsung is said to account for about 15% of S. Korea's GDP!