Tom B

How Apple And IPhone Blew It In China

"Why change your phone number and take the risk of bad signal strength when you can buy a cracked iPhone and keep the same number and operator?"

Good article. This is why the "official" sales numbers for iPhones in China is largely irrelevant. No worries; the iPhone HARDWARE is doing fine in the East. Having said that, per capita GDP in China is well below the West, on average, so I think expectations were unrealistic.

Apples to Apples: Will History Repeat Itself as Android Gains on the iPhone?

The grass is always greener on the other side. You won't find too many happy Verizon customers, let me tell you! Awful customer service and primitive CDMA network. Besides, a device like the iPhone can tap into wifi, if you're in a city, and side-step the carrier issue.


On Nov 03 10:05 PM Geddy wrote:

> For me, it has to be a trade-off between device and carrier. I don't
> care how fancy or practical your device is, if it's on an inferior
> carrier it doesn't work. All I see on ever blog is consumers love
> the iPhone but hate the current carrier.

Apples to Apples: Will History Repeat Itself as Android Gains on the iPhone?

"The result of this war was the survival of the fittest, rapid evolution that improved the breed."

Gotta hand it to you, Bruce: you don't understand game consoles, computers, OR evolution. All the "war" accomplished was making the term "PC" synonymous with "cheap plastic junk that crashes all the time". No INNOVATION. None.

The Aftershock: Where Does the Next Investment Opportunity Lie?

Good post. Education is TRYING to move in the direction you say, but it's been the football of stupid, ideologically drive programs, like No Child Left Behind.


On Oct 30 09:56 AM User 353732 wrote:

>
> I suggest that it is more than a bubble economy but a bubble culture
> or bubble social pathology. In my view, its organizing principle
> was and, for most, still is: “I am special. I am entitled to the
> undeserved instant gratification of appetites. I can take without
> merit, work or means. I transcend moral, economic and natural laws
> precisely because I am so special”. From this come all manner of
> sequential and parallel bubbles, inflating on fantastic vapors of
> vanity and greed.
>
> Of course, we know that there are laws that cannot be transcended
> or defied. If we ignore or break them, it is we not the law that
> will break. This is true for a person, a polity and a global power.
> The fake dollar and the fake US regime will, I think, both break
> but no one knows when. The dollar will be exposed for the fraud it
> is and be treated as frauds are and the Regime reformed or purged
> and maybe exiled. It may not be years away, however, so, thinking
> about the post collapse investment world is not a completely academic
> exercise.
>
> The investment thesis may be constructed by answering the omnibus
> question: “Post collapse, what will Americans do to reclaim prosperity,
> security, honor and high national purpose?” Different people will
> have different answers, naturally assuming they do not dismiss the
> notion of a dollar and regime collapse as a point of departure.<br/>
>
> One response is that “Americans will have to make real things and
> provide real services for real people all over the world and create
> real value in a big, competitive and sustained way”.
>
> These big things (and therefore investment areas or sectors) for
> Americans include:
>
> 1. Food, especially, protein. As the Global South rises above deep
> poverty, its demand for concentrated and appealing calories will
> rise faster than both population and income growth.
> 2. Energy. America has the greatest and most diversified endowment
> of energy resources in the world. America can and may well have to
> become one of the world’s major exporters of energy. If done, this
> will, literally create millions of jobs and transform both the economy
> and the structure of American trade, capital, talent and technology
> flows. Energy will be another great global growth industry and it
> offers a remarkable opportunity for American renewal
> 3. Life Sciences. As the Global South rises above subsistence and
> as the world ages, the demands for health preservation and life extension
> will soar. Goods and services based on advanced life sciences will
> increase dramatically.
> 4. Globally deployable, on scale, technologies based on bio-info-matics,
> robotics, and nano-engineering , improving and even transforming
> dozens of industries and adding value to millions of companies.<br/>5.
> National security, anti-terrorism and anti piracy goods and services.
> As America retreats it may be decades, even generations, before a
> replacement hyperpower
> emerges. The world is likely to be dangerous and fragmented. America
> can have a very large market share in providing defensive, reactive
> and preemptive goods and services.
> 6. Aerospace and space. The global demand for mobility, remote monitoring,
> analysis and intervention from a distance and rapid deployment of
> goods, people and force will also increase as the world is not only
> richer but more dangerous.
> 7. Practical education. Once again Americans will need to learn and
> keep perfecting practical skills in making real things. There will
> be a tremendous need for formal and quasi formal classroom (physical
> and virtual) as well as work based education, training and testing
> that is directly relevant. The current system of high school and
> college education is largely a failure in providing these skills
> and creating the right habits and attitudes for doing real work that
> the world values or will value. The legacy model of high school and
> college education will either collapse as the dollar and Regime collapse
> or will be greatly transformed ---or hugely replaced---- to make
> it much more responsive in terms of content, process, and cost to
> the new needs of a new America.

George Soros: The Guru Outlook

Until people are working again, there will be no "real" recovery. Gov't stimulus can't last forever.

Yahoo / Microsoft: Not Yet - Deal Delayed

Carl: good to hear from you.

I am VERY disappointed with Bartz; she should step down. I was initially impressed with her resume, but anyone who willingly enters big deal with MSFT is an idiot.

Google's Android vs. Apple: History Repeats Itself

Android will fail because Google lets any monkey (MOT, HTC, etc) make the handsets. How can they insure good user experience? Same problem you have with Windows PC's; even if MSFT DID have capable programmers on staff, their job is much harder because they have a lot of extra hardware configurations to support.

Google's Android vs. Apple: History Repeats Itself

Apple did "lose" the PC wars; they just lost the first skirmish.

The iPhone costs about the same as other smartphones and does way more.


On Oct 29 04:39 AM parv wrote:

> apple will lose if it makes bad products with expensive prices. It
> lost the pc wars because of bad products in the 1990s and expensive
> prices. So far the iphone has been a good product with reasonable
> prices (as compared with its rivals).
>
> Why couldn't one argue that Android is like Linux and the iPhone
> is like windows? And what has happened there?

The Problem with iPhone Killers

" No firm can be a leader by standing on yesterdays competitive
advantage. "

Absolutely correct. But, it's funny how people still expect MSFT to be king of the roost in OS's 5 or 10 years from now.

With regards to phones, I don't see Android as compelling. Yet. If the platform starts looking credible, maybe I'll trim back my AAPL and increase my GOOG.... I'm already convinced Pre, RIMM, and WinMo are no threat and probably won't be in the future.

On Oct 28 01:44 AM Joseph Sherman wrote:

> IBM once dominated the computer market, Microsoft dominated software,
> and Yahoo lead search engine pack. Apple cannot fall into the same
> trap of thinking that it will always dominate the market. No firm
> can be a leader by standing on yesterdays competitive
advantage.

The Problem with iPhone Killers

"RAZR was the iPhone 5 years ago."

I had two friends who had RAZR's; they both hated them. Like Peter Lynch, I believe first hand exposure to products can really help inform buying decisions. I'm not SURPRISED the Palm RAZR sucked; I owned an early Palm and two later iterations. Basically, the quality (in terms of OS bugginess) went to poo very quickly after a VERY promising start-- and they self-destructed by licensing the OS to other vendors; cannibalized their own market.

BTW: When Apple launches a new product, EVEN THOUGH I'm a fan, with lots of confidence in the company, as an INVESTOR, I go to the Apple store and give it a spin, in person, to see if the reality matches the hype. I was convinced by the iPhone when Andy ikhnatko got to play with the prototype for 10 minutes at MacWorld-- the launch was still 6 months off-- and the PROTOTYPE was working well. I went to the Apple store that June and my 5-year-old was able to get on the web using the iPhone on display-- it was THAT intuitive.

" Music store and App Store are not moats. "

Moats aren't moats, if you are a great long jumper! They app store and music store DO present large barrier to entry to competitors, though. Amazon's music store, though good, did NOT hurt the iPod. Bing, though semi-decent, couldn't match Google. The Zune HD, though having OK hardware, had lousy software and no apps. With the iPhone, you get over the moat and there's still the castle wall to breach; redundant security!

I think the iPhone is still way low on the growth curve.


On Oct 27 01:05 PM HH123 wrote:

> There is no iPhone Killer but the "Me too" products will eventually
> kill Apple's profit margin on iPhone. RAZR was the iPhone 5 years
> ago. Where is it today? The key for all Cell Phone makers, and all
> Technology companies in general, is to keep innovating. One product
> hit won't last. Music store and App Store are not moats. Competitors
> already launched similar services. It will take time, but they will
> eventually catch up. Again, the key to success for Apple and other
> Technology companies is to keep innovating. There is no other "moat"
> in the hyper competitive Tech world.

The Problem with iPhone Killers

This article proliferates a number of myths:

1)"Essentially, early on in the history of personal computing, the Mac was king. "
Distortion of history. The Mac was NEVER a majority platform. The Apple II (non-GUI; preceded the Mac) was pretty popular with CONSUMERS around the time of DOS. DOS was widely used in business; IBM used DOS. Apple made the first Mac in 1984; MSFT built a GUI on top of DOS in 1985-- and that's what businesses adopted because they were already familiar with DOS-- simple as that. Many consumers liked the idea of "borrowing" software from work and bought into Windows.

2) The "quantity" argument. The PC market "looks" like it offers lots of "choice". In fact, the differences between a Dell and an HP are minimal--basically the same parts. If you "build" a PC, you can get more choices on hard drive size and brand, and on video card. The problem is, no matter what you pick (unless you are technically inclined and go LINUX), if you buy a PC, you are stuck with an inconvenient, annoying, 3rd rate OS-- Windows. What kind of "choice" is that? Quality platforms, past and present (Mac, Sun, SGI, Amiga, Palm in its earliest days) make the "whole widget"-- hardware and software. In insures everything has the best chance of working together. And there's more choice among Mac that PC people think. You have a few configuration choices at the Apple store, but, beyond that, you can install more memory or a different hard drive yourself, if you want- I've done it.

With the iPhone, there's basically a limited handful of hardware options, but enormous variation in capabilities, because of the software upgradability and 3rd party apps.

3) the religious metaphor is unoriginal and tiresome. People use Macs because they WORK WELL. If you do work more complex than simple word process, a Mac is probably what you should use: graphics artists; scientists, programmers. About half the people coming to Apple stores are new Apple users-- not "returning cultists". Most iPhone users are on Windows (at least, they are NOW...). This all makes sense in view of the fact the Mac is the minority platform for largely HISTORIC, no longer APPLICABLE reasons (see point 1). In fact, going forward, Apple looks good: the MSFT Zune has not caught on; WinMo is a wreck-- and DIFFERENT from Zune OS AND Windows; MSFT can't seem to write a modern OS (Win 7 is still not UNIX-based-- Apple got to UNIX 10 years ago); computing is more and more in the platform-agnostic "cloud"; and (on the phone issue again) Google Droid is on a mess of different hardware.

How to Value Amazon?

AMZN presents a very convenient, easy buying "portal" for all kinds of stuff. I love the company. I hate the stock-- 78 P/E-- NO thank you! And they should drop the Kindle. I like the idea of E-books, but their device is pretty lame compared to the competition-- and overpriced.

How to Value Amazon?

Salient point, but I can't see Red State Walmart-ians lobbying for NEW TAXES; I mean those guys are basically Government-haters.


On Oct 26 07:26 PM 2contango wrote:

> Amazon's primary competitive advantage is that is doesn't charge
> sales tax. If it becomes too successful, tax-charging competitors
> like WalMart and local businesses will press legislators to even
> the playing field by enacting some type of online sales tax. Cash-strapped
> governments won't be too hard to convince.

Verizon: iDon’t Not Want the iPhone

You nail it; good article.

Carl Icahn to Resign from Yahoo Board

Now if Bartz would resign, that would be two fewer LOSERS holding Yahoo back...