chano

While Rivals Jockey for Market Share, Apple Bathes in Profits

And there I was for years under the impression you and TC were committed Apple haters. From a business perspective, this is a fine article. You should reflect a little on your (presumably) sane penchant for the word 'insane'.

Five Reasons RIMM Will Continue to Fall

If you are talking about just the lowly folkphones or even the heady heights of schmartphonedom, I might agree with scenarios that allow a fair future for RIMM. It's a good phone. But it is just a phone after all by modern metrics or by market expectations.
I don't know what kind of ambitious vision the Googlers have for the gPhone. It could be much more than just a phone, but they have only a partial ecosystem at present with Cloud computing and Search. Just possibly they will have an Apps channel too, but it all depends on the quality of what they offer in their (as yet) non-existent store. Open may be fine in computing but risky in telephony, without quarantining measures in place.
Apple otoh has a broadening ecosystem, and a very rich business franchise that goes well beyond telephony alone. They have a super-sophisticated, feature-rich, rapidly evolving, ultimately stable and demonstrably scalable OS. They have total hardware/software optimisation. And ITMS. The best mobile web. A real and immediately successful Apps store. A whole family of independently successful products. The best software in areas where it competes etc etc. And who knows what else is to come? A mobile teleporter perhaps to hammer transportation and commuting costs and (finally) render the car obsolete? I am waiting. The next iPhone killer app perhaps.
But perhaps most importantly, it has two more truly winning attributes. Firstly, since 1997 Apple has a corporate vision to add to its legendary marketing imagination. Secondly, it is the only company that I know of in the fields of computing, mobile entertainment and telephony that thinks about its users wants and satisfactions as its first, middle and final priorities. Apple has learned from its many many cringe-making corporate stewardship and marketing mistakes, pre 1997.
As for its competitors, in telephony or in computing, ask yourself this question. What are the unintended consequences of a lack of vision and imagination and the absence of a user-centric focus in a savvy marketplace with high expectations? Mediocrity, declining results and likely failure, no? Complacency and a tendency to favour the same-old same-old approach to business offerings and to customers. In a word ... WYUTIWYG or what you're used to is what you get.
Whether or not it succeeds as well as it deserves to, Apple has given every player in its many markets a well-deserved rude shock of awakening. The music industry will never be the same exploitative biz it has always been, selling mostly crap tracks to powerless fans and groupies - each CD containing a little wheat and a hell of a lot of chaff. I'll admit there are very very few but notable exceptions to this. But this is down to the rare but talented performers who never put crap music out there. It is not due to music companies who will sell any cruddy (wheat and mostly chaff) mix to fools willing to pay for it.
Smell familiar? Reminiscent perhaps of many bad mortgages and a few good ones being pulped into a CDO mix and then touted as good stuff and sold to the dummies in the financial sector who think they know a good deal when they see one? he he. Really, r$ally schmarrrrttttt! CD ... CDO... Hmm.
In the telephony market, I think the Apple effect will serve to wrest market control from the grasping telcos and unimaginative (same old same old) phone makers and place it fully in the hands of the customer where it belongs. I mean if you're a customer, don't you want to call at least some of the shots? What are we? Willing doormats? I don't think so. Come on now you Applephobes, exactly what would be so bad a deal about getting great phones and fair mileage plans? Just wait and see. You'll love it.
Finally, it's the same, but even more so, with the computing marketplace - I mean who else makes a computer that runs its maker's proprietary OS (OSX) but also provides the very best hardware platform for its chief rival's OS (Windoze)? Name me just one other PC maker. Come on now all you Apple doubters and naysayers. Just one name is all I want. And just what is so bad a deal about getting a dual platform computer for the price of a dreary, low quality, arthritic one trick pony .... errr .... I mean donkey?
And if you can't find that name (he he), then do the brave but ssshcary thing, step up to the plate and ask the logical next question. If no one but Apple can offer this, a true USP after all, why would anyone buy anything but a Mac? Duh!! I mean what is the average IQ in America?
At it's leisure and with the usual perfect timing, all Apple has to do is to sell some new, slightly under-specified, Macs (let's call them Schmacks say) at prices that no PC maker can match, quality standard for quality standard of course ie wheat for chaff. And by 'under-specified' I mean by Mac standards. By PC standards, they just have to slightly better the very low specs of any PC format they choose to compete with. Where would be the objection from PC die-hards? I mean, Apple's Schmack offerings would easily (also) be the best of breed in each class of PC format they choose to challenge.
Also, what is the likelihood that, in the markets it operates in, an Apple product could ever be described as having succumbed to commoditisation?
Short Apple whydontcha? I am buying.
Apologies for the length of this post. I guess I'm just a Daniel Eran Dilger wannabe after all. Hmmm. Sob sob.

AAPL's Time For Greatness Is Now

Oh dear. Blah2 is back even though all know he hasn't even the money to buy a photo of an iPod, all the words are mere fantasy trading for the penniless. I give up on these people who piss in their drinking water.
Apple is wise to adopt SOX, mandatory or otherwise imho. The reason is that by booking only 1/24th and feeding forward to the future, the remaining 23/24ths of each month's earnings on affected products, it hurts current revenue figures yes, agreed, but 24 months after July 2007, Apple will be reflecting 1/24th of revenues for each of the preceding 24 months. For Apple then, it will prove to be a happy, if unexpected consequence of adopting SOX that, this measure will have the effect of smoothing the bookable earnings EVERY quarter because, from July 2009, by recognising 1/24th of the current month and each of the preceding 23 months, the seasonal see-saw revenues pattern will be largely smoothed away. After the full two years, any single bad month will only have 1/24th of its impact on that month's booked earnings. Damn good. But wait, there's more. By June 2009, the picture will be full-on full throttle and each month thereafter, the effect of 1/24th slices of an ever-growing installed base will rapidly accelerate the recognisable revenue. Eeesh. NOW go figure this.
The economy is headed into serious trouble and it could take what?? 24 months or more to return to normalcy....maybe longer? Is Apple happy to have that accumulating backlog of unrecognised earnings just waiting to mature and hit the books, just when actual sales may be hurting a little. I damn well think so. Yes it hurts like hell right now to defer recognition of hugely significant earnings. But without adoptin SOX, Apple would have to downgrade forecasts for the next 8 or more quarters. So while all the Dells and Acers etc face devastating PC revenue declines (due to instant earnings recognition) Apple will have a SOX smoothed revenue stream that augments its reported earnings even though the relevant sales occurred up to 23 months earlier.
Sorry for the length of this post but even those who understand the phasing effect of SOX on reported earnings might benefit by seeing the marvellous effect of the deferrals over the full 24 months and the way the smoothing effect adds great buoyancy to reportable results in otherwise turbulent times. Put this into Numbers and see the graph. It's worth the effort and you will likely be borrowing to buy AAPL.
So I disagree that it would be advantageous to abandon SOX, even if possible. In these times of economic gloom and sales downturns, it will be a godsend to Apple's earnings reports.
Phew, I had better quit posting and write another report on Apple or on the inadvisability of drinking polluted water......

Don't Close the Line on Nokia Just Yet

Err. I am an outright Apple fanboy since 1978 and I don't live in the USA thanks.
Nokia is a great company in its way but how can you compare Symbian with OSX when Nokia beds with others eg first with Linux and now MS?
If they want to thrive in the future, and to be sure the market is large enough to support more than one winner, they have got to understand that what used to be good enough (pre iPhone) just won't cut it in the future. Their problem is similar to the dilemma that MS faces. IT will take the best part of a decade for any player to catch up with OS X and where will the Apple ecosystem be by that time. 7 years ago there was no iPod. A year + ago there was no iPhone. Whither next in the years to come?