rajsekar

PG&E Sued Over Smart Meters, Slows Down Bakersfield Deployment

$200 increase in power bill should raise concern. Isn't the classic electronic voting machine problem? How can L&G prove that the units consumed by the home owner is accurate? Everyone took accuracy for granted with analog meters, just like how manual voting happened. Utilities will have to retain few analog meters along with digital ones for some customers until their confidence level gets comfortable. The two way digital meters are way superior to existing analog meters and consumers may not be ready to trust them.

Not Everyone in China Wants to Buy an iPhone

This sales number was expected but Apple and many analysts thought that China was a different market. Their assessment has been off track. The same problem happened during India launch and similar projections were given by analysts. iPhone is a complete flop in India and China will follow suit. Expect the same low numbers from South Korea launch. Apple cannot replicate its success outside US for many reasons. Everyone says that China has a 700 million mobile phone base and just a small fraction of those users buying iPhones will be sufficient to boost Apple's market share. That's not going to happen. For all the great things written about iPhone, analysts should know that US sales rose after Apple slashed handset price to $199. Apple will see increased sales when AT&T introduces buy 1, get 1 iPhone free for $99. It's not too late for this sales to be announced.

HP's Touchsmart: Sure Its a PC, But It Also Makes a Cool TV

This will be another failure in a series of flops for HP, especially in Consumer Electronics area. What happened to Media Center PCs, LCD TVs, Networked Media Players that were introduced in the past seven years? They were all failures because HP's PC division is so entrenched with guys who have no vision. The PC division sees itself as a hen that lays golden eggs and why to disturb the hen after all. Hence all forays into consumer electronics domain which apparently come under PC division is quietly killed by HP insiders. Carly and Mark Hurd had to retreat on their vision for networked home server and media players that were announced during past CES fairs. If HP can put their complete heart and soul into marketing this Touchsmart PC, it can be a success. I doubt if HP can do it sincerely. Good Luck, Mark.

Five Reasons Apple’s iPhone Will Succeed in China

China is not going to be any different territory for Apple. Good Luck

Qualcomm: A Promising Leader in Mobile Internet

Hello San Diego QCOM Watcher: Your wireless technology knowledge is impressive but a layman like me doesn't care about the nuts and bolts of what each protocol accomplishes. World wide everyone knows about two wireless technologies that are currently prevalent - CDMA (CDMA2000, CDMA 1x, EV-DO) and TDMA (GSM/GPRS, UMTS/ HSDPA, EDGE) similar to PAL and NTSC signal transmission formats. It is also a known fact that QCOM holds majority of CDMA patents. The proof of the pudding is that TDMA is a dominant technology worldwide that most countries have adopted, whatever be the reason behind it. The question is whether QCOM's OFDM gamble will pay-off in the long run. The third candidate here is WiMax which is still nascent and its effect is not felt by consumers. Intel has put all its might behind WiMax and may even succeed. How did CDMA thrive all along? My conclusion is that it's a bit early to throw any weight behind QCOM now.

Qualcomm: A Promising Leader in Mobile Internet

After parsing San Diego QCOM's comments, I am pretty confident that you are either Jacob's or QCOM top employee. This is quite amusing, because just few weeks ago I unmasked TiVo founder in Seeking Alpha who had responded to TiVo's recent patent ruling against Echostar. His writing was so technical and resembled a company's standard press release. Best of Luck to San Diego QCOM in selling QCOM stock to Seeking Alpha readers. QCOM may well become another Apple with a deep moat around them and running a closed ship. If CDMA has to compete with GSM, then hefty royalties tied to CDMA will have to go. Maybe Jacob and Steve Job can share some ideas on how to run a closed company.

Qualcomm: A Promising Leader in Mobile Internet

Brewer - Hey I thought Steve Jobs hired you to sell more iPhones in India and China. Poor Steve, iPhone is a complete flop in India and will be soon in China. Oops, I forgot iPhone launch in S.Korea also - Good luck. Why don't you start writing your own column - I bet you will fail miserably.

Stock Doc- QCOM's bulk revenue comes from selling CDMA processors combined with IP portfolio of CDMA technology. As everyone knows, CDMA is not as widely adopted as GSM in high growth countries like China and India. The Jacobs (father and son) have so far milked all hand set makers with their excessive CDMA royalty, but failed to push innovation within Qualcomm. The Jacobs' excesses led to hefty settlements with Broadcom and S.Korean Trade Commission. All hand set vendors have clearly drifted towards GSM because worldwide adoption of this technology is quite smooth w/o big royalties. Now QCOM's release of its own MediaFLO handset is a big gamble. How many users are going to shell out $250 to buy a dedicated mobile TV handset just to watch television? Jacobs' have got this idea completely reversed. Unfortunately MediaFLO may die prematurely, because of Jacobs' greed. The BREW platform may succeed, but we are now seeing big mobile OS battles between Windows, Android, PalmOS and Symbian, besides MacOS. Can BREW make inroads here? I am not confident. Jacobs can continue to milk Verizon until CDMA is used in US for few more years. The rest of the world would have moved to 4G using GSM technology. Steve Jobs is very clever not to fall for Jacob's arm twisting CDMA contracts and Apple may never release an iPhone on Verizon. iPhone may eventually be a GSM only device.

Is Microsoft's Bing Losing Its Bling?

Can someone remove this spammer MadHedge? What an idiot. This guy is pasting the same comments on all MSFT related articles.

Windows 7 Launch Should Give Microsoft a Boost

Why would you give Windows 7 a big thumps up when it's an extension of Vista? Many vendors like Dell and Lenovo are smarter to launch their new laptops on XP rather than Win7. All analysts are expecting a big turnaround for Microsoft with Win7 release, especially with corporate IT. Anyone who has been testing or using Win7, including me, didn't find any big difference with Win7 performance or features. Users who knew to work around Vista annoyances still applied the same changes to Win7. Win7 is technically a Service Pack 3 for Vista and nothing more. MSFT will not see much sales bounce with Win7 because corporate users are pretty happy with WinXP and may decide to stay put. The bigger question is upgrading to Win7 from XP which is a convoluted process. Poor ignorant home users will shell out $100 to buy a Service Pack for their Vista OS. For XP users, upgrading to Win7 is a nightmare situation.

Will Windows 7 Resurrect IT Spending?

Why would you give Windows 7 a big thumps up when it's an extension of Vista? Many vendors like Dell and Lenovo are smarter to launch their new laptops on XP rather than Win7. All analysts are expecting a big turnaround for Microsoft with Win7 release, especially corporate IT. Anyone who has been testing or using Win7, including me, didn't find any big difference with Win7 performance or features. Users who knew to work around Vista annoyances still applied the same changes to Win7. Win7 is technically a Service Pack 3 for Vista and nothing more. MSFT will not see much sales bounce with Win7 because corporate users are pretty happy with WinXP. Poor ignorant home users will shell out $100 to buy a Service Pack for their Vista OS. Same applies to home users who purchased Snow Leopard OS, which is a service pack for Leopard MacOS.

Toyota Reviews U.S. Ops; Not Profitable Here

Richard - Your analysis is missing some key decisions that Watanabe took during 2004-05 period when Toyota was busy trying to outsell GM and Ford. As I have been commenting, San Antonio plant is Toyota's nail in the coffin. Toyota is currently having overcapacity in all their US plants, especially Indiana and San Antonio. The new Texas plant was a wrong move to assemble Tundras when Indiana plant had spare capacity to handle this. Watanabe was over confident that Tundra can woo F150 and Silverado owners. The next big hype is Prius and this hybrid dominance will be challenged by all electric plug-in cars coming from Nissan, Subaru and Chevy Volt. Consumers will flock to an all electric car, rather than buying a hybrid. For the same price of a Prius, you can buy Nissan's EV car which doesn't use gasoline. So the new Mississippi plant is another blunder. I am not certain if NUMMI closure will help Toyota, since Corolla and Tacoma are assembled in Canada and Mexico, where production costs are lower than Bay area. Moroever the US auto market and sales are contracting like never before and days of 9 million cars are gone. The fight for US auto is going to be brutal and Toyota will be left with excess manufacturing capacity and too many gas guzzlers. Well Watanabe wanted Toyota to beat GM, but he never expected that one day Toyota will become GM.

T. Boone Pickens' Epic Wind Fail

Will any sane individual, leave alone billionaire, spend two billions to buy wind turbines for an unplanned wind farm? Leave aside all calculations and numbers favoring wind and natural gas. Boone Pickens has a basic credibility problem. Anyone trusting this guy with his Pickens Plan will lose his shirt? US needs to take a hard look at current energy hogs (cars and coal fired power plants) and make tough decisions. There is a platonic shift taking place in auto sector and all automakers who have setup manufacturing in US is going to end up with excess capacity. Our oil consumption can lower only by producing less number of cars. This number will have to settle below 5 million units. There is nothing that guys like Pickens can do about it

The Pickens Plan: Where Are We One Year Later?

Leave aside all calculations and numbers favoring wind and natural gas. Boone Pickens has a basic credibility problem. Anyone trusting this guy with his Pickens Plan will lose his shirt? US needs to take a hard look at current energy hogs (cars and coal fired power plants) and make tough decisions. There is a platonic shift taking place in auto sector and all automakers who have setup manufacturing in US is going to end up with excess capacity. Our oil consumption can lower only by producing less number of cars. This number will have to settle below 5 million units. There is nothing that guys like Pickens can do about it.

Boone Pickens Retreats on Wind Power

Pickens has a basic credibility issue. Why is Congress listening to Pickens and his plans? It's a well known fact that US is dependent on foreign oil for many years now and Pickens thinks that Congress realized it just last year. Picken's lean towards Natural Gas is surprising and I don't think our automotive or industrial sector is geared towards using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). Countries like India, China and Singapore have invested money to run fleet vehicles using CNG, while US is lagging behind on usage of CNG. Storage of natural gas is a tricky issue unlike oil. Pickens is dead wrong on his plan. I wouldn't trust anything that Pickens talks. I wish some billionaire swift boats Pickens for his Natural Gas strategy and flip-flopping. Boone's wind plan is "Gone with the Wind". So what's next up in Boone's sleeve?

Pickens: World’s Biggest Wind Farm No Longer on Drawing Board

Pickens has a basic credibility issue. Why is Congress listening to Pickens and his plans? It's a well known fact that US is dependent on foreign oil for many years now and Pickens thinks that Congress realized it just last year. Picken's lean towards Natural Gas is surprising and I don't think our automotive or industrial sector is geared towards using Compressed Natural Gas (CNG). Countries like India, China and Singapore have invested money to run fleet vehicles using CNG, while US is lagging behind on usage of CNG. Storage of natural gas is a tricky issue unlike oil. Pickens is dead wrong on his plan. I wouldn't trust anything that Pickens talks. I wish some billionaire swift boats Pickens for his Natural Gas strategy and flip-flopping. Boone's wind plan is "Gone with the Wind". So what's next up in Boone's sleeve?