reinharden

Stocks on My Watchlist: Apple, Google, Cardinal Health

To be fair, you should probably back AAPL's $25 billion in cash out of their market cap. Which gives you a trailing PE of 19.4. Personally, for a company that's growing both top line and bottom line in the current economy while maintaining near record margins, I'd think that they'd deserve a higher PE ratio.

If I didn't already hold AAPL, I'd certainly be acquiring it on weakness.

reinharden

Google Mobile: Winners and Losers

Let's not forget Symbian (and by extension the owners of Symbian).
04.5% - Samsung
08.4% - Siemens
10.5% - Panasonic
13.1% - Sony Ericsson
15.6% - Ericsson
47.9% - Nokia
Their investments in Symbian have arguably decreased in value due to the gPhone consortia.

UIQ and the various companies that invested in UIQ similarly are definitely square in the sights of the gPhone.


There's no doubt that Windows Mobile / Windows CE / whatever the other Windows-based phone OS's are are losers in the sense that they'll be negatively impacted. But it's definitely not clear whether or not they're losers in the sense that they've lost. So I agree that this has yet to be determined.

reinharden

Cingular Hopes iPhone Will Distract Consumers From Unreliable Voice Service

It's a little thing and it's kind of a silly nit to pick...but one would imagine that a "vice grip" would be quite a different thing than a "vise grip".

reinharden

Apple's iPhone Partnership With Cingular Could Drag It Down

At the moment, according to the most recent numbers I could find, 78% of world-wide mobile phone subscribers have access to a GSM/GPRS/EDGE network. However, once you move into the "heading into 3G" environments, it fractures into a dozen 2.5G, 2.75G, and 3G technologies.

As a shareholder, I heartily approve of making sure that you can address 78% of a billion unit market when you go to market.

AAPL should be able to easily make new versions that follow the cellular protocols as they come available. In particular, I don't think there's any way they ship in Asia without moving upscale in terms of protocols. Certainly EDGE won't cut it in Japan and Korea and probably not even China.

reinharden

Apple's iPhone Partnership With Cingular Could Drag It Down

In the interest of accuracy, the latest numbers I found said 29.5 million subscribers for T-Mobile and a touch under 60 million for Cingular. So that's only 2 times the customer base, not the 5 I said before.

reinharden

Apple's iPhone Partnership With Cingular Could Drag It Down

SIP/Skype/VOIP/et al is nice and all but...um...without a service provider providing at least a data layer connection, how do you think the danged thing would work once you're out of range of a WiFi basestation?

To sell world-wide, Apple had to use GSM. That means they're dealing with Cingular or T-Mobile in the United States. Cingular has 5 times the customer base and a substantially larger network. If you're forced to deal with one, the choice is obvious. Although I can't imagine that T-Mobile was thrilled by the decision.

reinharden

Ten Thoughts On The iPhone

> 9. Likely to cannibalize iPod sales.

Would you say that the $499 and $599 iPhones are cannibalizing the $79 iPod Shuffle, the $149 to $249 iPod nano, or the $249/$349 regular iPod?

With a $499 and $599 price point, I'd say they fit the product line pretty well and certainly make me want to move further upscale. I'm not overly concerned about cannibalization at this point.

reinharden