scutchen

Six Attractive Stocks with Hidden Gems

The Hidden Gem for Apple is the iPhone App Store.

Everyone is missing the forest for the trees. The iPhone is not a phone any more than a PC is an eMail box. The iPhone is broadband in your pocket, available anywhere, that happens to include a phone (unless it is an iPod Touch, with whatever broadband communications protocol develops there in addition to WIFI). With OSX, Apple has the software power and sophistication to do things with this class of device that are far, far beyond the capabilities of anyone else. Not Palm. Not RIM. Not Nokia. Not Windows CE. No one can touch the iPhone operating system capabilities. So they can create a mimic phone, but not a mimic device. Every review on someone's iPhone fighter say that they are beautiful, but don't have the iPhone's user interface and applications suite. Duh.

Now think about moving the iPhone beyond the software that Apple has put on it. Think for a moment about what kind of software applications capabilities are available to the iPhone hardware platform and OSX. Think about where the iPhone software development and distribution model may go. Don't think of porting Mac apps. This is a new device class. Open your Big Branes. This is as big as the original move from mainframes to PCs. And the stuff we do with an iPhone-class device will be as different from what we do with a PC that PCs were from IBM-3270 terminals. Imagine if the original Apple computers had the kind of development and applications distribution model and lead on the competition that the iPhone has, and the kind of technology and OS advantage that the iPhone has. Who can compete?