Constable Odo

Speculating on the Emergence of an iConsole

Wall Street and the news media are always calling Apple a high-tech toy manufacturer. This is not an unusual thing to hear. Apple is not taken seriously as a company that makes business products. The magnificently engineered Mac Pro doesn't count since they don't seem to sell in high enough numbers to offset the strictly music-based iPods that teenagers play with.

Even Leopard Client and Server are considered home OSs. Nothing a really large corporation would consider using despite their robustness and low price tags.

Even now that Apple is setting up the iPhone and iPod Touch platform as a major gaming platform, it only reinforces WS into believing the company is merely a bigger toy company. Apple is basically a joke to WS and that's why it stays undervalued. Apple is doing nothing for the enterprise and that's reinforcing it's image as a toy company. WS sees it as: If you want to play, buy Apple. If you want to get some serious work done, buy RIM. Geez, if Apple released a home gaming console, they might as well call the company Apple iToys-R-Us.

Supposedly, Apple makes almost no money from the App store and it's not driving sales of iPhones to compete with BlackBerry sales. Since WS and investors don't give a damn about deferred revenue or huge cash reserves, it doesn't make Apple draw investors to itself any more than, say, RIM, Google or Amazon with far less cash capital.

I'm really puzzled about where Apple is going. They seem to be just scattering devices all around with no particular focus.

Why Apple Stock Is Poised To Go Flat - At Best

The stock is already devastated. From $200 last year and despite the fact that rumors indicate millions of iPhones are being sold around the globe and notebooks and iMacs are being sold at a fast enough rate to increase market share, Apple's stock has been going down faster than ever to rest under $170. And the more products they sell and the more Apple retail stores that open, the stock price can barely tread water to stop from drowning in a sea of red.

This has nothing to do with Apple failing in strategy or missing opportunities. It's all about the general economy. Apple is part of it and is lumped in with every other tech company. Even if Apple does marginally better than the Three Horsemen of Tech, WS won't even notice it and Apple will get downgraded even further. It's just Apple and investors unlucky fortune that global expansion and the iPhone came about at the wrong time.

I suppose WS is more interested in oil and solar power. Apple will be ignored and considered no better than Dell or HP or any other computer company. Apple fans see the company as something special, but WS barely notices Apple at all. Just another company that can only sell a few underwhelming number of computers in a slumping economy. Indicators look bright for Apple to sell many products this quarter and they will do better than other computer companies, but being better isn't going to matter enough for WS to move the stock up.

My comments have nothing to do with me hating Apple or wishing for it to fail. I'm only looking at how it is right now. I think that if the company was that much better than it's peers, it would have broken out of it's funk some time ago. So although I disagree with the author that Apple will do worse than it's peers, I believe Apple will do slightly better, but that about it.