Why isn't the iPhone in China yet?

After months of failed negotiations between Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and China Mobile (NYSE: CHL) – the largest mobile service provider in the world in terms of subscribers – the companies parted ways.  And since then we haven’t heard much from Apple with respect to moving the iPhone into China.  Some may have assumed, incorrectly, that Apple was just going to ignore the issue for the time being.

As I was doing my usual bout of “marathon weekend reading” I came across an interesting piece on Warren Buffett’s recent trip overseas.  For those who don’t keep tabs on the “Oracle”, Buffett has been touring Europe for the last week or so in an effort to promote Berkshire Hathaway on the other side of the pond.

Reason being, Buffett’s looking to start buying up “family owned, privately held” businesses on the cheap overseas.

For every industry on the planet, the business cycle is inevitable – start-up, growth/expansion, maturity and decline. Each part of the cycle is characterized by the different levels of economic prosperity and competition of the industry participants.

Some industries go through very long and drawn out cycles – the “maturity” stage could last decades and never show signs of a significant decline (as we’ve seen in the automotive sector). Others flare up and burn out quickly…one such industry is the Internet Service Providers sector. More specifically, the dial-up internet access companies.

For some reason the Microsoft-Yahoo! news got a lot more coverage on Monday than an announcement that came out of the Google (GOOG) camp…an announcement that I’d argue is much more significant to all three companies than Microsoft “possibly” buying Yahoo!’s search business.

Google is announced that it would be opening up its content network (AdSense) to display ads from 3rd party advertisers and networks.

So I see this member’s question on TickerHound yesterday:

“BlackBerry or the iPhone?”

So by now it’s old news that Microsoft (MSFT) has completely called off its bid for Yahoo! (YHOO). After weeks of public battling between both of their PR departments, Ballmer finally raised the white flag and called it quits this weekend.

Yahoo!’s stock price promptly tanked by 15% on Monday, while Microsoft stock continues to tread water.

Well, this was a first for me – a question on TickerHound.com was directed right at yours truly:

"Hey Wayne, what do you think about Hershey now?"

A TickerHound member asked:

“If Microsoft can’t get Yahoo! then what’s next for the company?”

Yesterday on TickerHound.com, a member asked: "What do you think about Monster.com?".

I haven't thought about this company for a long time. But once I started to really take stock of our current economic climate and Monster's business model, I began to see why I needed to tell all my friends to doublecheck their portfolios and make sure they weren't holding onto any shares of this one.

A TickerHound member asked:

What do you make of Google’s latest announcement? Is “App Engine” a new business model for Google or is it designed to help them sell more ads?

I saw this question come up on TickerHound the other day and just had to write a post on it.

A member asked

So there was a pretty interesting Q&A exchange that appeared on TickerHound this week.

A member asked, “If Sirius (SIRI) and XM (XMSR) get approval from the FCC is it time to buy?” – click here to read the entire question.

This weekend on TickerHound.com, a member asked, “Would Buffett really buy Google (GOOG)?”

The question was based on a Fool.com article that quoted this year’s Berkshire (BRK.A) Annual Shareholder Letter where Buffett writes, “It’s far better to have an ever-increasing stream of earnings with virtually no major capital requirements. Ask Microsoft or Google.”

So the talk of the tape last week was obviously Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). The Mountain View search giant has been on a downward spiral since the end of last year and showed no signs of letting up now.

In fact, the stock is down over 33% in 2 months alone – that's over $70 billion dollars in shareholder value completely wiped out in a matter of weeks.

A great question appeared on TickerHound the other day that really caught my eye. One of our members asked:

“Is Hershey (HSY) going to be the biggest value play of the year?

Well, we’ve zipped through the first weekend in this year’s Holiday shopping season, and retailers are pretty happy so far.

Black Friday’s sales were up about 8.3% from the year ago period, hitting roughly $10 billion on Friday alone.

Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has been knocking the cover off the ball for the last three years – showing increasing revenues, profit margins and market share gains, quarter over quarter.

The company can't be stopped ... or can it?