Amid CFO Resignation And Intel's Guidance...We'd Stay Away From AMD [View article]
Much of this analysis is based on the past, rather than the future, and is written without truly understanding the market.
AMD has taken action to resolve some of the outstanding issues with the company, namely a lack of an ARM play, and encroaching onto the OpenGL and HPC spaces owned previously by NVDA. AMD is neck and neck with NVDA on GPU performance, and arguably, owning the lower end of the market.
AMD, with their APUs (merging a GPU and CPU) is able to outcompete NVDA for OEM wins, and own the higher end of the "integrated" market, where INTC owns the lower end, or more CPU intensive portion.
Valunteem analysis shows off weakness in the analysis of the key audience of gamers. No serious gamers are expending cash on mobile platforms - no, they are buying PCs with dedicated GPUs, and less so, consoles for the more relaxed gamers. The addition of newer thunderbolt interfaces and external GPUs has created a new, one size-fits-all ultrathin computer (e.g. Macbook Air) that docks via Thunderbolt, and gains a full on 200-300W Graphics card. Many gamers are moving to multi-display setups and this is an AMD strong suite.
However, I am not saying to rush out and buy AMD, merely that the Valuentum guidance doesn't paint a full picture. Whether AMD is near 52 week lows, and if there are potential upsides is a decision for each investor to make on their own.
Nvidia's New Offerings: Aiming For A Slice Of Intel And AMD's Pie [View article]
There are many missing facts that are relevant to those that are looking at NVDA, compared to key competitors such as INTC and AMD.
INTC is increasingly encroaching on NVDA and AMD dedicated GPU terrain with higher performance integrated processors that contain lower end GPUs. This is not so much a threat to AMD with their APU advances as it is to NVDA.
AMD has already conquered the GPU+CPU combination, now called the APU. NVDA isn't even pursuing the higher end x86 market where gamers are willing to outlay cash. Instead it has been focused on the low power areas of mobile computing with the Tegra platform. As AMD enters this market (recently announced), NVDA market share is likely to trend downwards.
While the Nexus 7 may gain some traction, no one takes MSFT tablets seriously.
AMD is more seriously entering the dedicated GPU / HPC arena, and some of the more recent performance tests indicated AMD was extremely competitive with NVDA. AMD also recently acquired SeaMicro and has some of the best tech for pushing out dedicated servers based on micro platforms. This expertise can also be leveraged for the design of ARM based servers, in conjunction with the existing partnerships AMD is already working on.
GPU sharing is not viable for high performance uses - specifically where the highend GPUs with OpenGL capabilities are used. Lowend VDI desktops only. Most VDIs don't use dedicated GPUs anyways, not needed to get adequate performance.
So, I believe the future for NVDA is going to be much more competitive than it is currently, with the following events occuring: 1 - AMD APUs taking from NVDA design wins on OEM builds. 2 - INTC integrated CPUs taking market share from NVDA OEM 3 - Increasing competition on ARM graphics as AMD enters it 4 - Stiff competition from AMD+SeaMicro on microservers 5 - Margin erosion on the HPC space
Consequently, I think you should be posting a much less rosy picture for NVDA in the future.
IBM's New Mainframe Aims For The Clouds [View article]
There are at least three significant inaccuracies in your article.
1 - Mainframe stability has always been far higher than regular PCs, mini & microcomputers, measured uptime approaching 99.999%, even in the 90s and 80s. This is why banks used them. They never "crashed all the time".
2 - Operating system features on mainframes have exceeded the capabilities of almost all other operating systems - advanced features like virtualization, patching without reboots, hot-swapping, partitioning, are old-hat for mainframes. It would be more accurate to describe the user interfaces as minimalistic.
3 - A small army of network engineers was never required to operate a mainframe.
Mainframes are preferred for computing requirements involving massive input/output, high stability, security and redundancy.
An Apple Mean Reversion: Not As Crazy As It Sounds [View article]
Seeking Alpha is plagued with authors that do not understand IT and have revisionist views of IT history. To say this author is unqualified is too generous...
The Macbook pro is really the only solution on the market with the highest performing display (2880x1800), capability of interfacing directly with external graphics cards at full bandwidth (Thunderbolt) and providing an external pciE port on the same cable, and overall highest performance for the form factor.
I recently purchased a 30" monitor that is not capable of displaying the resolution of the new Retina Macbook Pro, but the Macbook Pro is doing it with a 15" screen!
Although I do not buy AAPL computers since I build my own PCs, there is no mistaking that AAPL has really revolutionized the industry yet again.
Windows 8 And The Microsoft Constituency: A Unified Theory Of Everything [View article]
The author of this article makes some serious errors I will correct.
First of all, the C programming language is rarely used in Windows except for writing device driver software. It is primarily used for Linux and Unix where it is used for writing both the kernel (Linux), the libraries (GNU), and the applications. Java is used heavily in both Linux/Unix and Windows but has failed incredibly on the Windows desktop, dying to web application popularity.
Windows 8's metro user interface (UI) may be a good fit on mobile and tablet, but it is absolutely horrible beyond words on a PC, and yes, I know how much it looks on a PC as I'm testing it (to my dismay). Apple perfects and tailors UIs for devices, MSFT tries to ram a horrible UI fit down our throats.
The Cloud is growing primarily on Linux/Unix, not on Windows. Linux/Unix has completely blunted Windows market share growth on the server, cluster, and supercomputer while OS X is increasingly making inroads into the most lucrative laptop space that is growing. Furthermore, iOS & Android have already beaten any MSFT operating system on mobile before it even shows up - there are just too many iOS & Android apps out there for another player to enter the ecosystem.
User interfaces in the conventional sense are already gone away from desktop applications because many mobile applications are merely pointers to web applications with a tiny bit of packaging. If you suddenly think that some metro UI is going to help Windows application developers compete against the millions of web application developers with their supporting web designers, many of which grew up on a fat diet of Adobe products and know usability inside and out - you have got another thing coming.
Finally, I deliver the coup de grace.... OS X's Unix based Darwin is the same core that powers iOS devices. So Apple has a Darwin product with every iPhone, iPad, OS X laptop, and iPad, albeit customizing the UI to the specific environment. Don't talk about operating system market share when you fail to include the mobile market, or embedded devices, both of which MSFT has minimal penetration.
Overall, it seems ATVI just produces better games than EA and that is why I bought them. Of note though, EA's new Battlefield 3 Premium Pass seems to be gaining good reviews too, for a highly rated game
Microsoft's SmartGlass May Be New Gold Mine [View article]
Windows 8 thus far is horrible for those of us *with* Windows experience too - yeah my experience goes back to Windows 3.1 and is current on all Windows operating systems.
Window 8's metro UI is not a good fit for PCs.
Hope techy46 doesn't try to defend MSFT more and dig himself further in the hole, or say that I am biased. After all, I am long MSFT
Strength in OCZ Tech (OCZ +10.2%) is attributed to a report suggesting the computer hardware manufacturer has won Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure business. Among various features added to Azure, sources say new "storage hardware" is thought to include OCZ solid state drives. [View news story]
I don't see any reference to OCZ there.
Also, since when did cloud virtualization suddenly acquire a huge demand for SSDs?
Despite slight indications of Facebook (FB) bottoming out, Wallstcheatsheet.com's Damien Hoffman says to keep selling. Why? Three reasons. First, the company's strategy appears desperate. Second, FB's valuation is absurdly risky. Buying at these levels is a high risk, low reward proposition. The third and final reason, competition is heating up in the social network space, and niche networks are likely the next wave of the future that will overtake the company's one-size-fits-all format. [View news story]
There is not a substantial moat around lower end routing at all - quite the opposite in fact! A google search will reveal an excessive number of software routers and firewalls, both of which perform routing functions. Software routers and firewalls such as Vyatta can easily be put onto lower end x86 servers, or ran from Linux and *BSD virtual machines.
"We heard you loud and clear," says Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure cloud storage team, announcing it is slashing prices by 90% to $0.01 for 100K transactions and adding new features. "Taking the fight right to Amazon (AMZN)," writes Chris Mellor. (also) [View news story]
From Wikipedia "The more specific meaning of the term commodity is applied to goods only. It is used to describe a class of goods for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market"
Someone that describes software as a commodity does not understand IT at all. There is huge differentiation between software, massive integration and labor costs, and in certain cases, a total lack of portability.
The cloud making base operating systems just enables higher quality of service, greater availability, and more value-adding on top of the cloud service.
Bernstein analysts believe Apple (AAPL) could sell 31M iPhones per year in China by 2015 and perhaps 80M by 2017, which would equal an $8/share EPS increase by 2015 and $12.50 by 2017. But the firm says Apple should offer a low-end model in China over the near-term to secure first-time smartphone buyers to answer the high adoption of low-end phones in the country. [View news story]
Let's see...
PE at 14.02, iOS still gaining market share, OS X still gaining market share, iPad selling good, new AAPL laptops scheduled to come out soon, iPhone heading to China, iPhone 5 and an AAPL TV rumors abounding,
Google (GOOG) follows up on its acquisitions of Meebo and KikScore by acquiring Quickoffice, maker of a popular productivity suite for iOS and Android devices. Assuming Google bundles Quickoffice with Android, the acquisition could bolster Android's standing in the enterprise market, where the iPhone (AAPL) is faring better. The deal comes ahead of the expected November launch of iPad and Android versions of Microsoft Office (MSFT). [View news story]
The acquisition of Meebo will be incredibly useful in incorporating multi-instant messenger capabilities into Google Plus and Gmail Chat. Meebo is one of the most cross-compatible Instant messaging portals, interfacing with just about everyone that is anyone.
Amid CFO Resignation And Intel's Guidance...We'd Stay Away From AMD [View article]
AMD has taken action to resolve some of the outstanding issues with the company, namely a lack of an ARM play, and encroaching onto the OpenGL and HPC spaces owned previously by NVDA. AMD is neck and neck with NVDA on GPU performance, and arguably, owning the lower end of the market.
AMD, with their APUs (merging a GPU and CPU) is able to outcompete NVDA for OEM wins, and own the higher end of the "integrated" market, where INTC owns the lower end, or more CPU intensive portion.
Valunteem analysis shows off weakness in the analysis of the key audience of gamers. No serious gamers are expending cash on mobile platforms - no, they are buying PCs with dedicated GPUs, and less so, consoles for the more relaxed gamers. The addition of newer thunderbolt interfaces and external GPUs has created a new, one size-fits-all ultrathin computer (e.g. Macbook Air) that docks via Thunderbolt, and gains a full on 200-300W Graphics card. Many gamers are moving to multi-display setups and this is an AMD strong suite.
However, I am not saying to rush out and buy AMD, merely that the Valuentum guidance doesn't paint a full picture. Whether AMD is near 52 week lows, and if there are potential upsides is a decision for each investor to make on their own.
Long AMD, AAPL
Nvidia's New Offerings: Aiming For A Slice Of Intel And AMD's Pie [View article]
INTC is increasingly encroaching on NVDA and AMD dedicated GPU terrain with higher performance integrated processors that contain lower end GPUs. This is not so much a threat to AMD with their APU advances as it is to NVDA.
AMD has already conquered the GPU+CPU combination, now called the APU. NVDA isn't even pursuing the higher end x86 market where gamers are willing to outlay cash. Instead it has been focused on the low power areas of mobile computing with the Tegra platform. As AMD enters this market (recently announced), NVDA market share is likely to trend downwards.
While the Nexus 7 may gain some traction, no one takes MSFT tablets seriously.
AMD is more seriously entering the dedicated GPU / HPC arena, and some of the more recent performance tests indicated AMD was extremely competitive with NVDA. AMD also recently acquired SeaMicro and has some of the best tech for pushing out dedicated servers based on micro platforms. This expertise can also be leveraged for the design of ARM based servers, in conjunction with the existing partnerships AMD is already working on.
GPU sharing is not viable for high performance uses - specifically where the highend GPUs with OpenGL capabilities are used. Lowend VDI desktops only. Most VDIs don't use dedicated GPUs anyways, not needed to get adequate performance.
So, I believe the future for NVDA is going to be much more competitive than it is currently, with the following events occuring:
1 - AMD APUs taking from NVDA design wins on OEM builds.
2 - INTC integrated CPUs taking market share from NVDA OEM
3 - Increasing competition on ARM graphics as AMD enters it
4 - Stiff competition from AMD+SeaMicro on microservers
5 - Margin erosion on the HPC space
Consequently, I think you should be posting a much less rosy picture for NVDA in the future.
Long AMD
IBM's New Mainframe Aims For The Clouds [View article]
1 - Mainframe stability has always been far higher than regular PCs, mini & microcomputers, measured uptime approaching 99.999%, even in the 90s and 80s. This is why banks used them. They never "crashed all the time".
2 - Operating system features on mainframes have exceeded the capabilities of almost all other operating systems - advanced features like virtualization, patching without reboots, hot-swapping, partitioning, are old-hat for mainframes. It would be more accurate to describe the user interfaces as minimalistic.
3 - A small army of network engineers was never required to operate a mainframe.
Mainframes are preferred for computing requirements involving massive input/output, high stability, security and redundancy.
An Apple Mean Reversion: Not As Crazy As It Sounds [View article]
The Macbook pro is really the only solution on the market with the highest performing display (2880x1800), capability of interfacing directly with external graphics cards at full bandwidth (Thunderbolt) and providing an external pciE port on the same cable, and overall highest performance for the form factor.
Do not trust me, just read this article
http://bit.ly/LO3psv
I recently purchased a 30" monitor that is not capable of displaying the resolution of the new Retina Macbook Pro, but the Macbook Pro is doing it with a 15" screen!
Although I do not buy AAPL computers since I build my own PCs, there is no mistaking that AAPL has really revolutionized the industry yet again.
Long: MSFT AAPL GOOG others
Windows 8 And The Microsoft Constituency: A Unified Theory Of Everything [View article]
First of all, the C programming language is rarely used in Windows except for writing device driver software. It is primarily used for Linux and Unix where it is used for writing both the kernel (Linux), the libraries (GNU), and the applications. Java is used heavily in both Linux/Unix and Windows but has failed incredibly on the Windows desktop, dying to web application popularity.
Windows 8's metro user interface (UI) may be a good fit on mobile and tablet, but it is absolutely horrible beyond words on a PC, and yes, I know how much it looks on a PC as I'm testing it (to my dismay). Apple perfects and tailors UIs for devices, MSFT tries to ram a horrible UI fit down our throats.
The Cloud is growing primarily on Linux/Unix, not on Windows. Linux/Unix has completely blunted Windows market share growth on the server, cluster, and supercomputer while OS X is increasingly making inroads into the most lucrative laptop space that is growing. Furthermore, iOS & Android have already beaten any MSFT operating system on mobile before it even shows up - there are just too many iOS & Android apps out there for another player to enter the ecosystem.
User interfaces in the conventional sense are already gone away from desktop applications because many mobile applications are merely pointers to web applications with a tiny bit of packaging. If you suddenly think that some metro UI is going to help Windows application developers compete against the millions of web application developers with their supporting web designers, many of which grew up on a fat diet of Adobe products and know usability inside and out - you have got another thing coming.
Finally, I deliver the coup de grace....
OS X's Unix based Darwin is the same core that powers iOS devices. So Apple has a Darwin product with every iPhone, iPad, OS X laptop, and iPad, albeit customizing the UI to the specific environment. Don't talk about operating system market share when you fail to include the mobile market, or embedded devices, both of which MSFT has minimal penetration.
Long: MSFT GOOG AAPL others.
Staying Active In Activision [View article]
to add to what you wrote, Diablo 3 is very popular, is putting up good sales numbers and is highly rated.
http://bit.ly/Lm3yWY & http://bit.ly/JXkBdM
Overall, it seems ATVI just produces better games than EA and that is why I bought them. Of note though, EA's new Battlefield 3 Premium Pass seems to be gaining good reviews too, for a highly rated game
http://bit.ly/Lm3zdk & http://bit.ly/JXkBdN
Microsoft's SmartGlass May Be New Gold Mine [View article]
Window 8's metro UI is not a good fit for PCs.
Hope techy46 doesn't try to defend MSFT more and dig himself further in the hole, or say that I am biased. After all, I am long MSFT
Long MSFT GOOG AAPL
Strength in OCZ Tech (OCZ +10.2%) is attributed to a report suggesting the computer hardware manufacturer has won Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure business. Among various features added to Azure, sources say new "storage hardware" is thought to include OCZ solid state drives. [View news story]
Also, since when did cloud virtualization suddenly acquire a huge demand for SSDs?
Not seeing the business case.
Apple: Future Dividend King? [View article]
Despite slight indications of Facebook (FB) bottoming out, Wallstcheatsheet.com's Damien Hoffman says to keep selling. Why? Three reasons. First, the company's strategy appears desperate. Second, FB's valuation is absurdly risky. Buying at these levels is a high risk, low reward proposition. The third and final reason, competition is heating up in the social network space, and niche networks are likely the next wave of the future that will overtake the company's one-size-fits-all format. [View news story]
Are you saying Google+ won't build a way to automatically do this?
Please say you are.
Cisco Systems: Safe Value? [View article]
Long CSCO
"We heard you loud and clear," says Microsoft's (MSFT) Azure cloud storage team, announcing it is slashing prices by 90% to $0.01 for 100K transactions and adding new features. "Taking the fight right to Amazon (AMZN)," writes Chris Mellor. (also) [View news story]
Someone that describes software as a commodity does not understand IT at all. There is huge differentiation between software, massive integration and labor costs, and in certain cases, a total lack of portability.
The cloud making base operating systems just enables higher quality of service, greater availability, and more value-adding on top of the cloud service.
Bernstein analysts believe Apple (AAPL) could sell 31M iPhones per year in China by 2015 and perhaps 80M by 2017, which would equal an $8/share EPS increase by 2015 and $12.50 by 2017. But the firm says Apple should offer a low-end model in China over the near-term to secure first-time smartphone buyers to answer the high adoption of low-end phones in the country. [View news story]
PE at 14.02, iOS still gaining market share, OS X still gaining market share, iPad selling good, new AAPL laptops scheduled to come out soon, iPhone heading to China, iPhone 5 and an AAPL TV rumors abounding,
You were saying?
Long AAPL GOOG
Facebook Can Erase Bad IPO Memories [View article]
This is a key difference between Google and Facebook.
Google (GOOG) follows up on its acquisitions of Meebo and KikScore by acquiring Quickoffice, maker of a popular productivity suite for iOS and Android devices. Assuming Google bundles Quickoffice with Android, the acquisition could bolster Android's standing in the enterprise market, where the iPhone (AAPL) is faring better. The deal comes ahead of the expected November launch of iPad and Android versions of Microsoft Office (MSFT). [View news story]