Apple–buy on the blip?
Well, actually on two blips.
The first is the blip—cost to investors about $6.3 billion on a $6.93 a share drop in Apple (AAPL) shares on July 13—created by research from Consumer Reports that argues that the iPhone4 dropped call issues are the result of a hardware problem.
The second—less visible in light of the furor caused by the Consumer Reports story—is a loss in market share for the iPhone in the three months that ended in May 2010. Research in Motion’s (RIMM) Blackberry was the leading smartphone in the period with a 41.7% share according to comScore. Apple’s market share fell to 24.4%, down from 25.4% in February. Google’s Android platform picked up 4 percentage points to a 13% share.
The cost to Apple of replacing iPhone4 phones, if the problem is a hardware issue, is about $100 million, Sterne Agee estimates. That seems like a small bite of Apple’s $13 billion to $15 billion quarterly revenue run rate
But a bigger problem than replacement costs is the effect that the bad publicity might have on sales just ahead of the back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. Apple will need to scurry to get the problem resolved in that time frame, especially given the complexity of Apple’s out-sourced supply chain for the iPhone.
The drop in market share, on the other hand, is likely to fix itself.
Apple has completely disrupted the technolgy sector: Can anybody else play this game?
It’s war. Full out war. Savage your former allies war. To the victor go the spoils war. To the death war.
It’s Google (GOOG) against Hewlett Packard (HPQ) against Microsoft (MSFT) against Dell (DELL) against Lenovo (LNYGY) against HTC against Amazon.Com (AMZN)—and, of course everybody against Apple (AAPL).
Apple hasn’t left competitors any choice. Its iPod and iPhone and iPad have completely disrupted the Windows/Intel model that once ruled the computer world. The disruption has been so thorough that Apple has replaced the old model with its own. Now it’s compete on Apple’s terms or become irrelevant.
Need some proof? On April 28 Hewlett Packard bought wireless phone pioneer Palm (PALM) for $1.2 billion—a premium of 23% to the share price. For its money Hewlett Packard got a phone maker headed to bankruptcy with a revamped product line that no one was buying—and what is by all accounts a really good operating system, webOS.
For all intents and purposes Hewlett Packard, a long-time partner with Microsoft that had for years built everything from PCs to lap tops to note books on Microsoft’s Windows operating system and that was set to roll out an iPad killer tablet built on Microsoft’s operating system , spent $1.2 billion to buy an operating system.
The other war between Apple and Google
There are two fronts in the increasingly bitter war being fought between Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG). And while the contest between the iPhone and Google’s Nexus One (and other Android phones) is getting most of the ink, it’s the apps battle that comes with the biggest stakes.
Update Qualcomm (QCOM)
One chip in. One chip not quite in but closer. Between the two maybe this stock has finally achieved some upside momentum.
Two big announcements in the tech world with Qualcomm (QCOM) near the center of both.
Apple’s iPhone to go to T-Mobile and not Verizon in 2010
When AT&T’s (T) exclusive deal expires in 2010, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone is most likely to find a second home with T-Mobile and not Verizon (VRZN). That’s the conclusion of a note published by analyst Doug Reid of Thomas Weisel Partners and picked up and amplified by AppleInsider.
