chano

Volatility Driving Microsoft Trades

Or better still, buy a Mac. There is no longer any reason not to and many reasons to make the switch.

When the Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get an Apple

Thank you for an intelligent and insightful post. Being an Apple user over the last 30 years has given me an edge and allowed me to skate into areas of endeavour that I never thought I would even look at, never mind enjoy success in.
When you're right sir, you are right, as Jeremy might say.

Apple: Not All Smooth Sailing Ahead

Agree entirely with mollytjm. Apple's success has always been due to the loyalty of its customers even through the manic, near-failure days of the late 80s and early 90s. Then there were relatively few who knew what Apple really stood for. Today that number is growing towards the billions - and the reason for this? Yes it's the products but the real reason goes far deeper with actual users. It is an addictive culture. It is about empowering the user and saving them money and giving them products that cause buyer's joy rather than buyer's remorse. It is about serving the customer in every way and even new customers realise this championing role pretty quickly. It works. It endures. It makes for lasting growth.
Which other tech company can match even one of these threads of customer-centricity?
Hint: You won't need even one finger to count them.

Apple: Set to Double Again

And did I forget to mention turning the whole mobile communications and computing markets on their heads and setting the bar higher than ever before. And this is before they start to put the squeeze on the TelCos to offer much much better services and value for money packages to their customers .... to bring down the cost of mobile comms to a fraction of what the average customer pays today. It will happen and the winner will be the customer and the agent of change will be Apple.

Apple's Hoard

And this is worth posting Paul?

You are becoming truly yawn-worthy and it gives me no pleasure to tell you that.

Chandra Coomaraswamy

Apple: Not All Smooth Sailing Ahead

You are articulate, I will grant you that. But your article lacks merit. You clearly do not understand Apple's true franchise. It's not about the products. It's about where Apple's true focus is centred. In that arena, they cannot fail, no matter the recent volatility in prices.
To say 'What makes a stock great is a price' is nonsense. It is about the scope of its future operations and that seems to have little to do with Macs, iPods and phones.
Even visionaries will visit an optician fttt.
You are no visionary but you do need to have your eyes tested.

Chandra Coomaraswamy

Apple: Set to Double Again

Apple will continue to thrive for as long as Steve Jobs is there.

I say this because Jobs will never allow himself to become lazy, comfortable or complacent with Apple's MO and its present arc of ascendancy.

If the Innovator's Dilemma is a factor to insert into the Apple success equation, as Skeptic suggests ... and it is a valid suggestion, then so too must allowance be made for Jobs' influence as the 'Innovator's Solution'. He has been a disruptor and he has been rather spectacularly disrupted by the thief Gates and the wimpish Sculley.

Now,we may all be wowed by Apple's results and its products, and why not my dears - they are wonderful. But that would be to miss the point of focus. Consumers will continue their love affair with Apple for reasons most of them may never understand. The world is falling in consumer-love with Apple. It is a heady experience for them. The thing is, they are just not used to being empowered rather than screwed by a vendor. They don't realise it yet but it is there in their unconscious understanding. That is a raw and very powerful place for any company to position itself so firmly. It affects our paradigm of life as consumers. And we like that soooo much.

I see it like this.

Yes, yes, yes .....the products are great. They call to customers like sexy sirens and appeal as must-have items in most cases. They are the Merc or Omega offering in a market with too many GM and Timex offerings.

But the products are merely the easily visible shell of Apple's strategy for 'never' being disrupted out of business by another, greater, upstart of an innovator. It is less and less about the products my dear bedazzled ones.

The hidden kernel of the Apple strategy is full of goodness. It is about empowering the customer. It is about democratising whole marketplaces. It is about being recognised (in time) and remembered (in perpetuity ... maybe) as the one Company, the ONLY significant champion of the ordinary Joe, to win back for the consumer the power of choice and free access to common wants at a fair price with less and less room for vendors to gouge their customers. What am I talking about?

Excellence in COMPUTING at a fair price to quality ratio. I mean, if you want the Proton car experience, go buy one and don't complain to me later as I wipe your saliva off my Merc.

Liberation of the MUSIC market away from the grasping record companies to the huge benefit of new bands/musicians and giving the consumer back the right to buy only the songs that were wanted, soooo easily and at a fair price.

The same for the MOVIES market in time. Everything from AppleTV to Mac to iPod/iPhone video.

Ditto the domestic GAMES market. AppleTV anyone? !!Danger!! Falling prices!!! Mind-boggling choice!!!!

The same for the PUBLISHING market in 2010 onwards. Newspapers, magazines and books at a rock bottom price because you will buy only the news or articles that interest you and not have to stomach what an editor decides you should HAVE to read. There will be an explosion of new writing by authors who stood no chance of publication under the existing model. Journalists of merit will gather a following of people who will pay for genuine news or informed comment, rather than biased opinion.

The same for the TV VIEWING market in 2015 onwards. Pick the programs you want to watch. New production houses and groups will spring up all over the world. A huge choice of non studio-sourced viewing that is non-homogenized, not dumbed down gutless goo sanctioned by advertisers etc. In short a diversity of content beyond the wildest imaginings.

EDUCATION for all by bringing the best curricula from around the world to a global audience for free or for a small charge. No more student loans anyone? Build your own MBA from Harvard, London INSEAD and Yale whydontcha? Learn to program an iPhone from home. Learn whatever you want, whenever you want at your pace, in your place without going broke.

RETAILING GOODS AND SERVICES Create an app store like marketplace for STUFF. Manufacturers/Providers offer their wares and drop shippers/fulfilment operators do the rest. Prices may tumble.

HEALTHCARE SERVICES
Access to the best professionals, clinics and hospitals without the traditional routing processes and billing roller-coasters that often kill - death by dollars.

And so on.

And so on

You get the picture.

It is a nice picture because it puts you in charge of your choices and the value for money you deserve.

So.... tell me:

How do you disrupt the ace disruptor?

How do you displace the champion of consumer interests?

How do you undermine the one who destroys traditional business models across so many markets to the customer's advantage and completely democratises them in the process?

Amazing Apple.

An American treasure.

I can say that because I am not an American.

I can say that because I have been a customer since 1979.

Thirty years' easy loyalty.

And Apple is just getting started.

Think Different

I rest my case.

Chandra Coomaraswamy

Apple: Three Battles Won, Nicely Positioned for the Fourth

I don't see any stock hyping. It is time there was more commentary on Apple's business franchise(s) going into the future. I see its position as unassailable ascendancy for say 5 years. In computing, music, phones and true handheld computing/surfing, they have no competition. Before anyone challenges these assertions, let me say:
The market does like premium products eg: Omega, Merc' Benz......
In its market sectors no one offers products of comparable quality.
In computing, no one offers a quality tri-OS capable device.
The iPod Touch is a new class of product-the true HHC/Surfer
The rise of the iPhone cannot be stopped. It's the Apps stupid!
iTunes is still in its infancy. It is a model that can be expanded beyond media sales.
In its markets, Apple software is without competition.
I could say more but you get the idea

What Happened to Dell?

Irrelevant, short-sighted article from someone off-planet, it seems to me. The best future for computing lies in the cloud. For most businesses and many netbookers, it's all in the utility office and 'net browsing software spaces stupid. And Dell has none in any space. And it is way too late to do anything about it now.
Boo hoo.

Apple: Like Starbucks and Whole Foods, A Trend That's Past Its Prime

Clearly you celebrate cheapness. You probably drive a cheapo American car (is there any other sort?) and look for feature-poverty in the things you buy. Surprising that Seeking Alpha gives you a voice. If there are more contributors like you, Zach Bass and a few others, SA will rapidly decline and deservedly so. Why would any sentient person visit a site with disinformation artists like you on board?

Exploiting the Downside of the Markets

Where did you learn English? In America? What does 'would of... mean? Even K-12 kids in far distant lands know better than this.
Otherwise, quite a good article, if a rehash of widely understood basics.

Nvidia Finally Wins Apple's Heart

Surge? What surge?
Oh you must be talking about Iraq, I guess.
NVDA is tanking again, after a brief blip.
You're an analyst and you come out of hibernation to report a transient blip as significant?
Where I sit, we call transient blips noise.

Chinese Paper Reports Reduced Apple Notebook Orders

If Apple caused Think Secret to cave because of its rumour accuracy, I don't see why they don't light a fire under their outsource producers for revealing damaging confidential data about orders to a newspapers.
A good way to ensure supplier integrity is to rotate suppliers every so often or in the event of a serious breach, such s this act of commercial client disloyalty.

Apple's Next Big Content Push?

You miss an important point despite your 'long history' with Apple.
I posited the same idea several weeks ago concerning Podolny's extraordinary move to Apple. I was the first to do so at a time when all the so-called experts struggled to understand this inexplicable departure from academia and arrival at Apple.
Jobs may be committed to profit, quelle surprise? So, this is bad?
He is also committed to exceptional value.
Even more, he is committed to democratising content distribution. Lowering the cost of ownership while allowing consumers to choose only the items they want, not a track more. In this way, especially with CD tracks, a lot of wheat is being bought and a lot of the chaff remains, rightly, unsold.
In education, iTunesU provides the same model. Take the content that owners want to publish and sell it for a very low price. It provides Academia with a way to repurpose their content for sale to an otherwise inaccessible market. Each U makes more money than it could imagine from a resource it never thought of repurposing for sale. Apple makes loadsamoney ($3+ billion in 2008 anyone?). Buyers get content of (sometimes) inestimable value for a small outlay.
I would call that Win-Win-Win.
It is possible to make a lot of money doing good and democratising a market like higher Ed.
I can see millions of people lining up to subscribe to such a new service floated out of iTunes and made fully commercial.
Did you say you elsewhere that you were an MBA? Is that for Maximum Bullshit Artist btw?
I would call your article simplistic. I've made the same observation about you before. Hmmm.

An Alternative Perspective on Apple's iPod Growth

You are right. But until we get some answers on just how AAPL shares are manipulated, the volumes and tactics involved, by whom and to what effect, nothing will change Apple's rocky road to growing market cap.

This is a problem that has gone on too long with no analysis, finger-pointing or remedy. Wall Street has always hated Apple as a company. WS is full of reactionary people who cannot dislodge a way of looking at things once a given perception has lodged inside their heads. They cannot learn to look at Apple as it is. They only remember Steve's (perceived) reckless days pre the 90s.
How would you go about effecting a change Mr. Miller? It is time to stop fretting about and to start building counter-strategies. The market and its manipulators are too big and too well entrenched. Only continuing stellar results can cause the share price to rise significantly. And this is not the time, realistically, to look for stellar results, given the hurting economy worldwide.

A final point. I agree that it is not valid to compare Apple with say, Sony because culturally they are vastly different. But Sony has one strength that Apple has not yet achieved. It has a very broad range of products. It's like holding a broad portfolio of shares, rather than just one or a few, as a defensive investing strategy. One or two lines in the portfolio may under-perform or even fail, but that is not a liquidating killer. My point is that, among the other strategic pre-occupations that Apple's board members are surely pondering over, they should pay attention to diversification within the consumer electronics space. They can do it in a way that no other company can. A range of products based around Mac OS X. Without hesitation, I can think of about half a dozen broad interest devices. And who am I but a committed shareholder?
Let us have some discussion on issues like these too.