Network Effect

Apple, Amazon on to Something Big

Apple has the moat, Amazon does not. It takes a customer base inside your ecosystem to build a moat. Amazon doesn't have one in their ecosystem (I realize that there are manipulators out there predicting Amazon's Kindle sales, but it will be clear in the next year or so that Amazon's Kindle isn't selling). Amazon will lose the hardware game quickly for the eBook industry. You can't be a one product consumer electronics company. Apple will win the hardware side of the eBooks game because they have the biggest ecosystem. Amazon may have the ability to carve out a short term win (3-5 years) on the software side, but eventually they will be squeezed out of that as well because content providers will be connected directly to the customer through the ecosystem (Apple's App Store). Google and Microsoft will also go after this space but eventually, there can only be one middle man - all other middle men get squeezed out. And that middle man is the one who owns the ecosystem - and that is Apple.

Amazon has the ability to win the logistics game. They should focus on being a service provider to the ecommerce industry and start going after companies like FedEx and other logistics players. Retail, in the long run, will only be a loss leader for them, but they can have a great business as a service provider to other retailers. But this will take quite a long time.

Google, I'm afraid, is on the downside of the mountain. They don't control any relationship between the buyer and the seller. They just help them find each other, which is not a business model that has a moat around it. A lead generation business model will always lose to a transaction processing one. If Google's business model required from the beginning that you become a Google customer to use its services, then they might be able to win quite a few games over the long run (eBay, Paypal, etc). But, unfortunately for them, they didn't. Their business model is not a walled garden, so there is no moat around it.

A Second Opinion on Palm Pre's App Numbers

You may be right, for the small customer base that the Pre has, they may be downloading a lot. Who cares in my opinion. The reality is that Apple does have the largest mobile ecosystem and it is now growing itself. The self-perpetuating cycle between buyers and sellers is now in place with the iPhone/Pod/Touch/App Store and it cannot be beaten by anyone except Apple itself. The only thing that will tear this down is poor execution on Apple's part ... and we all know where Apple stands on execution. Unfortunately for a lot of companies and industries, this snowball is going to continue to roll down hill and no one can stop it. Even if Palm or RIMM or anyone for that matter comes out with better technology, it wont matter. The value lies in the ecosystem, and you can't build one when there is already a dominant player in the market. Someone might be able to carve out a niche in a vertical market if they beat Apple to the punch. This is the strategy all these other phones should be going after - build out a mini-ecosystem in as many small vertical segments as they can before Apple gets there.

Palm Pre Shoots to Rival the iPhone Launch

All of this ranting and raving about Kindle, Pre, anything non-Apple is because Wall Street (and everyone else) is scared that Apple is crushing the competition and there won't be anything left. If the waters aren't murky, how can they manipulate stocks?

Palm Pre Shoots to Rival the iPhone Launch

The Palm Pre is selling so well, they fired the CEO a couple days after launch.

Is Apple Poised to Move into the Living Room?

Xmas 06 - iPhone
Xmas 07 - iPhone 3G
Xmas 08 - iPhone as gaming platform via App Store
Xmas 09 - App Store as media delivery platform for AppleTV, Kindle-type device (books, movies, tv, newspapers, magazines, blogs, social networking, etc)

Etc etc etc. App Store is a revolutionary platform and ecosystem. Watch for this latest app (the local restaurant ordering application) to take off. And many, many, many more. Industry after industry after industry ...

Apple Poised for a Near-Term Pop

@ Ara - I like your sarcasm. I agree, this technical analysis has gotten to the point where it is destroying the market. stocks appear to be perpetually detached from the underlying asset, and this is driving away the masses. i'm starting to hear this more and more from the "laymen" - it doesn't matter what you know about a company, just about a stock. this is very bad for the long term health of the stock market as a whole. no wonder no one is going public - if this keeps up for another 3-5 years, I bet you start seeing more companies go private and the drought of IPOs continues.

Apple SEC Investigation: Rotten to Core

I agree. Something stinks to high heavens over at the SEC. Who investigates them?

The iPhone as the Ultimate Study Machine

Education is just one of the many areas that the iPhone will revolutionize. It will become the ubiquitous mobile platform for all things that can be distributed in a digital format, including commerce and payments for hard goods and services.

Apple Analysts Reality Check: Bear Rally Is Over

"The problem is that the Apple analysts’ real job is to get individual investors to buy stock from their firms, and to work the agenda and spread propaganda for their best clients, the institutional investors."

- This is exactly why the stock market is a joke. The fact that people in the business that are regarded as analysts are working the agenda and spreading propoganda for the benefit of their investors rather than saying what they believe to be the truth is ridiculous. We're in a "Let's put some lipstick on this pig" market now - almost 100% pump and dump and smash and grab. In the last 10 years (the actual transition came in the last two years), the most amount of money in the market transitioned from investing to trading. There are still large players out there that invest, they just aren't big enough en masse to influence the price of a stock. The largest group of players are trading, and stocks trade whatever way the most amount of money in the market is trading. When the most amount of money started trading on things other than fundamentals, fundamentals stopped being what determined a stock's price. Things like technical analysis, and outright fraud and manipulation, are what drives stocks's prices today. Until the biggest money in the market transitions back to investing rather than trading, the stock market will continue to be a con man's game. Individual investors are playing with a marked deck. They can only win if they know how the dealer is betting; it no longer matters what they know about a company. It only matters what they can find out about how big money is going to trade.

Apple's Walmart Deal Will Effectively Kill Google's Android

Anyone who thinks that sitting and waiting in this game is an acceptable strategy is missing the point. The entire business model centers on the ecosystem around the phone. The cell phone itself is just the trojan horse to the customer, or gateway to the ecosystem. The key is to develop the self-perpetuating cycle between buyer and seller within the ecocystem. The more people that have these phones, the more companies need to sell / develop products and services for the ecosystem. If Android doesn't have any customers, why would people keep developing for it. Look at Google Base and Google Wallet. These are free - but no one buys through them so early adopters just give up and the spiral starts the other way. The whole key, as evidenced by Ma Bell, MSFT, eBay, PayPal and a whole host of other networks that dominate their industry is the network effect of the ecosystem around their business. Apple won this game a long time ago. This will be yet another area where Google tries to win against an 800 pound gorilla and fails miserably.

iPhone vs. Netbook: Which Will Be the Biggest Gaming Machine?

iPhone will win first. But Netbooks, and then Apple desktops will follow. iPhone will beat Gameboys of the world relatively quickly - by next Xmas, it will start to aproach iPod-like market share. Netbooks and desktops will beat the Wii's and XBox's of the world eventually, it will just take a little longer - 2-5 years maybe. Apple's ecosystem is going to steamroll industry after industry after industry ... the snowball, at this point, may be unstoppable.

Exploiting the Downside of the Markets

he's short already, and he wants people to sell him the stock so he can buy it from them at these levels.

Should Apple Consider Buying Yahoo!?

how about Skype? makes sense on so many levels.

Apple Rumors: Mac Upgrades and iPhone Production Drop

video games will be the Apple killer App for XMas, via iPhone, ipod, touch. parents can get their kid a phone and video game player in one.

RIM Faces a Critical Month As Apple Gets Tough

Does anyone find it interesting that RIM launched the Bold in the US on election day? Seems like an excuse for why people aren't lining up for the Bold to me.