neutrino23

How Apple's Market Share Will Propel Stock to $500, Part 2

I can't do the arithmetic to say that AAPL might reach a particular target, but I can see that Apple is a very unusual company. They have no debt, a huge amount of cash, no legacy technology holding them back, they own their own technology and designs. They now have this fantastic machine for developing new tech products. They are not limited to PCs, iPods and iPhones. Any consumer product that involves software is a potential target for Apple expansion. This will be fantastic to watch.

Can Apple Remain the Unique Innovator It Was, Without Steve Jobs?

It is really hard to quantify the effect Steve has on Apple. My take is that he brings discipline (being able to say no to distractions) and he keeps the company focused on the product, not on the bottom line. A couple of years ago Apple replaced their best selling iPod mini with the iPod nano. If there had been a timid CEO in place or if accountants and lawyers ran the place that never would have happened. They would have run that cash cow into the ground before starting on a new product. Before that Steve, on the strength of his personality, pulled the customer base over from PowerPCs to Intel CPUs. Apple has great financial and business people, but they don't manage Apple by watching the stock price. That would be death for Apple.

My take is that Apple is about excellent personal and industrial design. Fitting the product to the use. That makes it hard for pundits to evaluate Apple products. Time and again some will look at an Apple product and count the gigabytes and megabytes and clock cycles and pixels and give the product low marks. Yet the customers love them.

One other point is the interconnectedness of Apple products. It adds value to an accessory to have it connect to the computers to and to the online stores. Yes, the iPhone is tied to your Mac, but those are golden handcuffs. The iPhone and iPod are better, more useful products because they can connect to your Mac.

So when someday Steve does retire from Apple the danger for Apple is not a lack of creativity or engineering or design talent but having the discipline and courage to stick to their path.

With a King's Ransom in Cash, Why Still No Buying Spree in the Tech Space?

Last year Apple bought P.A. Semi. That probably was a good indicator of their thinking. They didn't buy them simply to get bigger or because they were cheap they bought them because they wanted the talent and IP.

Going forward I'd expect more of the same. They'll buy a company if they identify it as owning some IP that they think will help them accelerate the main business.

Certainly price would be important if they were to look at trying to ingest Adobe. However, if they want to acquire a smaller company owning critical IP what difference does it make if the price is $50M or $100M if the end result is they can increase sales by 10% (about $4B/year now)?

End of the Line for Apple's FireWire

Firewire is well entrenched and is increasing in speed. I'll speculate that Apple didn't include FW on the low end models as a way to differentiate them from the higher end products. Just as their is no matte display version of the iMac as a way to make it less attractive to professional users.