Stock Talk

Apple's China Factor

By Chris Umiastowski, Sunday, Jan 13, 2013 a 11:31 am

Earlier this week, Asymco’s Horrace Dediu wrote a wonderful post about the huge differences between Microsoft and Apple in China. He makes a very strong case for how difficult of a position Microsoft is in. I encourage you to the Asymco post in detail to understand his arguments. Pretty compelling stuff.

Christmas Day customer activity showing Apple is crushing it, Android strong, Microsoft toast.

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, Dec 27, 2012 a 10:23 pm

Christmas Day is a huge day for mobile device activations, obviously. Once we finish unwrapping our gifts and scarfing down a big breakfast, we all become children and want to immediately play with our gifts. For smartphones and tablets, that means activating your device on a network, and downloading a slew of apps. Once we install these apps (like Twitter), we start telling followers about our new device. Two pieces of research hit my radar today. They’re both quite fascinating and paint a picture of Apple dominating the scene.

Apple is an iPhone stock and growth in China is just beginning

By Chris Umiastowski, Tuesday, Dec 18, 2012 a 10:43 am

As much as it pains Apple shareholders to watch the stock drop to $500 from a high of over $700, we all need to learn to stomach the volatility and focus on the business performance.

The market, the madness, and the Apple television

By Chris Umiastowski, Friday, Dec 14, 2012 a 11:36 am

It seems you can’t read about Apple these days without someone saying that they’re about to make a big splash into the television market. Apple, of course, hasn't and won't pre-announced anything. But that hasn't stopped Wall Street analysts claiming that the company’s TV strategy is flawed. That's right, Apple's unannounced, unreleased, entirely presumed by someone not-Apple, strategy is flawed. But I digress.

In what world should Amazon enjoy more future confidence than Apple?

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Dec 5, 2012 a 1:17 pm

There is no question that Apple has done some amazing things. It has become the largest company in the world, by market value, because it has redefined industries. It redefined the music business, it redefined smartphones and it redefined tablet computing. Apple did not invent these businesses. Most observers would argue that the likes of Handspring/Palm and RIM invented smartphones and stylus-oriented computing devices, including Apple's Newton and Microsoft's Tablet PC certainly pre-dated the iPad. But Apple massively and permanently redefined consumers’ expectations in these markets. While doing so, they built up an incredibly profitable hardware business.

So why is it that Apple’s stock hasn’t actually outperformed Amazon by that much?

Recent studies on iPad mini and Windows 8 are both bullish for Apple

By Chris Umiastowski, Friday, Nov 16, 2012 a 12:54 pm

Now that the iPad mini has been available for a while, we’re starting to see some interesting industry research headlines pop up, based on consumer surveys. Earlier this week, Cowen and Co. made headlines with one particular study that I wanted to bring up for discussion.

Are the risks to Apple's stock as serious as some investors think?

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Nov 14, 2012 a 11:11 am

The equity research arm of Barclays just put out a report on Apple, and it has a handy chart summarizing all of the main concerns investors have with the stock right now.

The concerns are: 1) Long term operating margins; 2) competition for iPhone; 3) competition for iPad; 4) no “next big thing; 5) concerns over maps; 6) management changes; 7) production execution; 8) execution risks in vertical integration

Let’s dive into these a bit, shall we?

Should it bother investors that Apple stock is getting killed lately?

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, Nov 8, 2012 a 10:22 am

Yes, Apple is still the biggest company in the world. But since hitting a high of over $700 in late September, the stock is off about 20%. Putting this in dollar terms, the value of Apple, as a company, has fallen by nearly $140 billion compared to the September highs.

During this 20% drop, Apple’s market value has fallen by 32x the total market value of RIM. Talk about a metric that puts things in perspective! Apple has also lost more value than 60% of Google’s total market capitalization, and more than Verizon’s entire market cap. Why?

If you are an Apple shareholder, learn to stomach the volatility. It’s not going away.

By Chris Umiastowski, Thursday, Oct 25, 2012 a 10:26 pm

Last night Apple reported Q4 fiscal 2012 earnings. In what seems like a case of deja-vu, the stock slipped by a few percentage points in after market trading. What’s knocking Apple down this time? Well, they shipped a lower number of iPads than Wall Street expected in the quarter, and guidance for the holiday quarter is lower than expected. And the sooner we learn to ignore the short-term nature of Wall Street thinking, the better.

Is Apple jamming too much new product into our hands this Fall?

By Chris Umiastowski, Wednesday, Oct 3, 2012 a 2:33 pm

This Fall season, Apple is busier than ever before. Back in 2010, Apple had their product launches spaced out. Spring saw the original iPad. Summer had the iPhone 4 in its traditional spot. Fall saw new iPods. This year, however, they just finished rolling out the iPhone 5 and iOS 6, and they’ve given us impressive new updates to the iPod lineup as well, mirroring many of the updates in the iPhone 5. Soon enough it looks like we’ll be seeing the iPad mini announced.