Tom B

Under The Radar News - Monday

"Microsoft (MSFT) has for all intents gone silent. All this can mean only one thing: A deal between the two has to be getting ever closer."

Possibly. But not necessarily. People seem to keep forgetting that this merger absolutely DOES NOT benefit EITHER company or their respective shareholders. If it DOES look like it's going forward, expect numerous shareholder lawsuits.

AMD: A Dog Chasing Its Tail

Embedded chips and graphics chips are the markets where AMD can compete. They should just give up on CPU's.

Under The Radar News - Friday

"IBM/AMD tie-up "nothing but speculation.""

Even IBM couldn't be THAT dumb, to buy AMD.

"Interesting that Walt Mossberg, a huge apple fan, gave it a very mediocre review"

Mossberg's a "lawful neutral" (to use D&D jargon); not a huge Apple fan. The MacBook Air is for road warriors ONLY. I'm not in that group, either.

iPhone shortfall: I think they'll make the 10M by the end of 2008 without breaking a sweat. But, they need to hit additional markets. Note Nokia did well by tapping Asia, EU, and Latin America; the iPhone is still mostly US.

Cowen's Top 10 Technology Surprises for 2008

"The first item on telcos threatening cable is obvious. Verizon (VZ) and AT&T (T) are going to be big threats to cable players and plenty of customers–"

I refuse to buy VZ on general principals, as a vaery dissatisfied Wireless customer. T may have legs, and has the added plus of an exclusive on the iPhone and a nice dividend.

Cowen's Top 10 Technology Surprises for 2008

User 139912: you make a few valid points, but don't underestimate all GOOG's app's. GMail is ALREADY way better than Outlook, and probably way cheaper to administer. The other stuff may come up to speed.

I think GOOG is still King of on-line ads-- and will be through '08, easily.

Google Earth and Sketch-up are excellent, but unlikely, I suppose to add to the bottom line..

AMD: The Deep Analyst Divide

Intel has gotten its act together, tech wise. It has more economy of scale. It has an exclusive with Apple. I don't see where AMD has any chance of survival. They can seek to build markets in the 3rd World,Like Ballmer is trying to do with Windows. But your margins suffer, and eventually, even the Chinese will want better.

Intel and the Power of Having a Monopoly

The war against AMD has really changed the landscape. For a number of years, Motorola and IBM's PowerPC chips were humiliating Intel-- and Intel wasn't even noticing, because they were only used in Macintosh's and some servers. In the fight against AMD, they really got their act together, and blew past PowerPC, to my surprise. I didn't think they had it in them. MOT spun off Freescale-- Motorola never really comprehended they were a chip company; they thought of themselves as a cell phone company. IBM, used to servers had difficulties with heat dissipation. The rest is history: PowerPC is largely relegated now to low-margin, low end applications, included embedded processing and game consoles. One imagines the chip will go the way of MIPS, to extinction.

Intel will complete its humiliation of AMD, and has an added wedge: since Apple is exclusive with INTEL right now, and Apple is where the growth is in the PC market, Intel is likely to do pretty well over the next couple of years. Glad I bought at 20. Kudos, Ottellini!

Intel: "Likely To Regain Its Historical 80%-85% Market Share"

INTC is a clear winner. AMD has NEVER had a significant advantage (and often NO advantage) chip-wise, and AMD is getting murdered in terms of profit margin. I think AMD picked the wrong cage to rattle.

AMD's Reality Check: Time To Tweak The Business Model

I'm long on INTC.

Intel Speeds Ahead of Advanced Micro Devices

AMD ceased to be "hip" when they failed to outbid INTC for the AAPL contract. Though less than 10% of the PC market, AAPL gets a lot of "eyeballs". AMD will fail, just like IBM and MOT failed when they tried to take on Intel.