Constable Odo

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

I hate to say this, but these articles are way over the top. Apple can barely hold $200 a share. Even Amazon is making Apple stock look like nothing special. I don't care how good a company Apple is, investors don't really care that much for it. All the talk about accounting changes, reserve cash and ultra-high iPhone demand is doing nothing for the stock. Do you think investors are going crazy that they opened a store in the Louvre? Hell, no. Apple share price is about the same as it was before earnings. Apple would have to sell about 20 million iPhones just to hold the stock over $200. I positively enjoy my Apple products and I think their quality is way above average, but investors just don't care about those sort of things, apparently. Maybe Apple isn't making enough profits the way Amazon is. Apple is really starting to pile on overhead with those retail stores and maybe that's what is making investors angry. $500 is a pipe dream. Maybe $250 and even that will be hard to come by.

E-Reader Wars Heating Up: Apple May Have Edge with Younger Generations

All those textbooks require a lot of trees to be cut down to make paper. Isn't that one of the main reasons eReaders should be used? We are looking for greener alternatives. Apple will most likely win the race because it has the best content delivery platform in place which is iTunes. Once Apple's server farm is completed, there will be no stopping them on storing everything one could possibly imagine in the form of electronic information. They'll just have to make some deals with publishers and such and then it's "stop the presses".

I also think that in 3 to 5 years many more schools will be well into giving mobile electronic devices to students. If anyone can push a tablet, Apple can. With creative programming of apps, students would even be able to carry out experiments on their Apple tablets.

Microsoft: Whistling in the Dark

I'm a Mac user and can tell that Apple is enjoying some fairly decent growth in the smartphone sector and notebook sector, but I really don't see Microsoft and Windows dying. There's nothing to replace Windows and those consumers (the average cheap ones) and businesses (practical ones) won't be buying Macs in any large quantities. I've been looking closely at Windows 7 and it doesn't seem all that bad visually and the UI seems easy enough to use. I need to test it with some hardware and see how it stacks up against Windows XP Pro. I need to decide what I want to run in BootCamp once I move to Snow Leopard.

Anyway, if Windows 7 doesn't totally suck, then companies and consumers will definitely be upgrading over the next year and Microsoft will be still sitting pretty with at least 89% of market share. It's a given. It's just the easiest route for Windows users to follow. Every new computer, as usual, will have a nice copy of Windows 7 on it and MS will just sit back and collect loads of money. I hardly call that a collapse of Microsoft. Arrogant or not, there is nothing that can topple Microsoft without crippling the whole computer industry.

AT&T: The (Apple) Brand Destroyer

If it hadn't been for AT&T, the iPhone might never have gotten off the ground or the iPhone might have been stuck on the Sprint network. Apple will eventually leave AT&T and that will be the end of it. AT&T is definitely falling behind the curve, but that can be the fault of the iPhone just sucking up bandwidth. 3G is probably just not up the the task in heavily populated areas of iPhone users. I think Apple should protect AT&T while they are still partnered. Screw the GV app as it's probably one of a few apps that may have a conflict of interest. Apple and iPhone users should just put up with it for awhile and enjoy what they can get with the partnership. No network is perfect.

Should Apple Be Worth More Than Google?

Who made Google price drop from around $750 to $500? Investors. Analysts had pegged Google to be a $1000 stock. Then they suddenly decided Google wasn't worth the higher price. It's only worth what investors feel it's worth. I'm beginning to wonder if investors even care about company fundamentals. Maybe Google just isn't fashionable enough anymore. What's Apple's worth? Could be anything. If Steve Jobs gets sick it's worth a lot less. If they sell 20 million iPhones this year, it'll be worth a lot more. Who the heck knows. It's probably in the hands of media types like Cramer. If the media pushes a stock it's worth more. If they say a stock is crap, then it ends up being crap. Investors don't think for themselves anymore. It's easier to listen to the shills.