Andrew Krainin

Running The Numbers: Amazon Looks Expensive

So you used Amazon's revenue CAGR for the last three years, 28%, to project forward two more years to 2010, then slashed that to a 5% terminal growth rate from 2010 to the end of time, comparable to the growth rate of a large industrial company.

I wonder why your valuation came out below the market value?

What Converges Successfully in Telecom & Computing?

Interesting thought ... but one perspective is that it's all in how you frame the question.

One perspective is that PCs and phones have already converged, but not as traditional desktop PCs. The iPhone is a converged Mac and cell phone, and I would argue that such mobile devices over time will overtake laptops as the dominant "use case" for mobile computing.

Internet telephony handsets, such as Cisco's, are essentially mini-PCs, but the primary (almost only) use case for these devices is traditional telephony.

As far as telephony through a "desktop PC" goes, although PC-based IP telephony software is available, usage patterns (the physical convenience of the handset and more importantly the always-on nature of telephony vs. the sometimes-on nature of PCs) have been the reasons why people tend not to do telephony through the PC when available.

It will be interesting to see how this convergence question evolves along as the form factor and user interface for "desktop" computing changes. I doubt that desktop computing in ten years will look like today's monitor-keyboard-mouse setup -- just check out Microsoft's Surface for a preview of one version of what might be.