Posts Tagged
‘Microsoft’
by ilene - September 8th, 2010 11:17 pm
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
And the winner is…Cloud! The tech industry sub-sector with perhaps this year’s meatiest move is undoubtedly cloud computing. Names like Riverbed ($RVBD), Akamai ($AKAM) and 3Par ($PAR) have all been putting up insane numbers this year, performance-wise.
My awakening to the group’s potential back in January came courtesy of a kickass cover story in Barron’s (Sky’s The Limit)- ever since then the cloud computing stocks mentioned (and some that were omitted) have been nothing but fire – in a market that is unchanged year-to-date.
Here’s a peek at the majesty that is Cloud Stock-age thus far in the Twentyten:
Regular readers know that I’ve been hammering away at the cloud theme all year, even hoping for the advent of a Cloud Computing ETF at one point this past spring, albeit in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way (we still haven’t gotten one).
What’s next for the group?
* I have a hard time believing that Cisco has much interest in trailing behind Riverbed in market share for very much longer. Riverbed’s Steelhead product suite speeds up transmission of applications and data from the cloud to the end user, this is a corporate IT Holy Grail as it allows for the efficient decentralization that global entities need. I could see Cisco or one of its rivals making a move for this name as this would give them the number one offering in this crucial space instantly.
* Akamai’s global "private web" video serving solution will probably continue to be the delivery method of choice as Web TV becomes a reality and online streaming continues to be monetized. The wake up call for me on Akamai was when I learned that it was their technology that was the backbone for NBC’s serving of Winter Olympics video to everyone’s mobile devices.
* The bidding war over 3Par (between Dell and H-P) kinda gilds Rackspace’s ($RAX) lilly a bit when you think about it. Rackspace took over an abandoned shopping mall in downtown San Antonio and built an amazingly scaled-up cloud hosting center. Their fanatical reputation for customer service to their cloud hosted customers is the heart of their story, however – anyone can build a server farm.
* Microsoft’s CEO Ballmer said a few months ago that he was "betting…
Tags: Cisco, cloud computing, GDP, growth, Microsoft, Rackspace, RAX, Riverbed, stocks
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by ilene - August 31st, 2010 3:49 am
Courtesy of Michael Snyder at Economic Collapse
Not everyone has been doing badly during the economic turmoil of the last few years. In fact, there are some Americans that are doing really, really well. While the vast majority of us struggle, there is one small segment of society that is seemingly doing better than ever. This was reflected in a recent article on CNBC in which it was noted that companies that cater to average Americans are doing rather poorly right now while companies that market luxury goods and services are generally performing exceptionally well. So why aren’t all American consumers jumping on the spending bandwagon?
Well, it seems that there are a large number of Americans who either can’t spend a lot of money right now or who are very hesitant to. A stunningly high number of Americans are still unemployed, and for many other Americans, there is a very real fear that hard economic times will return soon. On the other hand, there is a significant percentage of Americans who are blowing money on luxury goods and services as if the economy has fully turned around and it is time to let the good times roll. So exactly what in the world is going on here?
Well, in 2010 life is very, very different depending on whether you are a "have" or a "have not". The recent article on CNBC referenced above described it this way….
Consumer spending in the U.S. has turned into a tale of two cities in 2010, with an entire segment of consumers splurging confidently on the finer things in life, while another segment, concerned about unemployment and with little or no discretionary income, spends only on bare necessities.…
Tags: bankers, Barack Obama, bonuses, campaign contributions, competition, consumer spending, corporations, Democrats, Economy, elite, Goldman Sachs, income, Lobbying, Microsoft, middle class, poor are getting poorer, rich are getting richer, rigged game, small business, Taxes, unemployment
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by ilene - August 12th, 2010 8:20 pm
"Creative Destruction is Secular not Cyclical"
Courtesy of Gordon T. Long
What made America great was her unsurpassed ability to innovate. Equally important was also her ability to rapidly adapt to the change that this innovation fostered. For decades the combination has been a self reinforcing growth dynamic with innovation offering a continuously improving standard of living and higher corporate productivity levels, which the US quickly embraced and adapted to.
This in turn financed further innovation. No country in the world could match the American culture that flourished on technology advancements in all areas of human endeavor. However, something serious and major has changed across America. Daily, more and more are becoming acutely aware of this, but few grasp exactly what it is. It is called Creative Destruction.
It turns out that what made America great is now killing her!
Our political leaders are presently addressing what they perceive as an intractable cyclical recovery problem when in fact it is a structural problem that is secular in nature. Like generals fighting the last war with outdated perceptions, we face a new and daunting challenge. A challenge that needs to be addressed with the urgency and scope of a Marshall plan that saved Europe from the ravages of a different type of destruction. We need a modern US centric Marshall plan focused on growth, but orders of magnitude larger than the one in the 1940’s. A plan even more brash than Kennedy’s plan in the 60’s to put a man of the moon by the end of the decade. America needs to again think and act boldly. First however, we need to see the enemy. As the great philosopher Pogo said: “I saw the enemy and it was I”.
THE PROBLEM IS NOT CYCLICAL, IT IS SECULAR.
The dotcom bubble ushered in a change in America that is still reverberating through the nation and around the globe. The Internet unleashed productivity opportunities of unprecedented proportions in addition to new business models, new ways of doing business and completely new and never before realized markets. Ten years ago there was no such position as a Web Master; having a home PC was primarily for doing word processing and creating spreadsheets; Apple made MACs; and ordering on-line was a quaint experiment for…
Tags: America, business models, creative destruction, cyclical recovery, dotcom bubble, fighting the last war, financial bubble, financial markets, Gordon T. Long, growth, IBM, innovation, intellectual capital, IP, Jobs, Microsoft, patents, Politics, secular problem, standard of living, stimulus money, structural problem, tax loopholes, technology, unemployment, Zero Hedge
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by ilene - August 11th, 2010 2:49 pm
Courtesy of Reggie Middleton, writing at Zero Hedge
Sometimes the best laid plans can be put out to pasture due to a lack of foresight in regards to the ever changing, liquid landscape known as the Internet. What fascinates me so much about the Web is that it is the great democratizer, it brings down the barriers to entry and allows for unfettered information flow. For instance, who would have thought that your local public library could lay low the massive aspirations media and retail titans such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Apple? Put simply, why would you buy an eReader from these vendors for several hundred dollars, then go ahead and spend more money buying the eBooks for said reader when you can simply download the books from your local public library’s website into the equipment you already have? Okay, I know why those Apple heads would do it – because they want to spend money on Apple products,,, the eBooks may look cooler with that shiny Apple logo-thingy indicating that you too have donated unnecessarily to the Steve Jobs’ enrichment fund, but how about the rest of the vendors???
As a matter of fact, you can kill several birds with one stone simply by buying one of the recent Android phones. Google is really on to something here, and the growth potential of Android is simply phenomenal. When those Android tablets get moving at Kmart for $100… Whoops, there goes that Amazon Digital eBook business model.
Attention Kmart shoppers: $149 Android tablet on aisle 5 : The Android OS isn’t just powering high end smartphones, it also runs barebones tablets sold at Kmart for the price of an iPod nano.
Think about this! Hundreds of thousands of titles freely and legally downloadable from your local public library to play on your $150 tablet with standard ports, HD video, the whole 9 yards, or maybe just on your cell phone. Android can scale pretty high in the capability department and reach rather low in the price category as well.
NY’ers, check this out from your NYC Public Libraries:
These books use DRM protection administered by Overdrive. Guess what platforms they won’t play on (okay, I’ll spoil it for you – the two front runners in the…
Tags: AAPL, Amazon, AMZN, android os, apple iphone, cellphone, ebooks, free books, IPad, library, Microsoft, paradigm shift, RIM smart phone, RIMM, technology
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by ilene - July 9th, 2010 5:00 pm
Courtesy of Reggie Middleton
This is an excerpt from part two of a multi-part series on the companies vying for dominance during the 3rd major paradigm shift in personal and enterprise technology over the last 30 years. This one will be a biggie (not smalls) and promises to create an investment behemoth out of the winner and relegate the losers to relatively niche markets. This is saying a lot considering the size of the companies participating in the battle for the pole position. I created this series to provide a truly objective, truly informed, and truly analytical (from an empirical perspective) knowledge source on this very important intersection in personal computing and distributed media. This series will end with a full BoomBustBlog style forensic report on the company we feel has the most to gain from these wars from an investor’s perspective.Those who are not familiar with my hard-edged, yet objective analytical work should reference past performance and media appearances for a quick background.
It is imperative that readers first review “There Is Another Paradigm Shift Coming in Technology and Media: Apple, Microsoft and Google Know its Winner Takes All” before moving on so as to get a thorough background as to what is at stake, who the players are, and what mobile technologies are being released into the consumer and enterprise realm. This is a lengthy, meaty, objective and information packed post that was initially intended to go out to subscribers only (click here to subscribe to our research services). I welcome you to compare it to the research you find available from technology, financial and strategic advisory firms, including and particularly Goldman Sachs (click here to see what I mean) and let me know whose analysis is more accurate, in depth and thorough (not to mention less expensive).
Google is Giant, Online Ad Agency Cum Enterprise Software Developer and consumer electronics and media giant! WTF! That’s right…
At the end of 2009, Google earned $22.9 billion or 96.8% of its total revenues through advertising, out of which $15.7 billion was related to its own websites, with the remaining $7.2 billion related to other network websites.
Licensing and other revenues accounted for only 3.2% (or…
Tags: Apple, content wars, Google, IPhone, Microsoft, mobile computing, paradigm shift, web-based ad agency
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by ilene - June 9th, 2010 6:55 pm
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
In my last technology post, I wrote that we are moving to an Internet-centric world where your computing device or operating system are less important because your data will live and breathe in the Internet cloud. Google, in particular, is preparing for this world because it has a dominant role in the Internet through search. But everyone is moving to an Internet-centric service and content delivery strategy.
The telecom providers understand that their networks make them gatekeepers who can extract rents from content providers. Having paid handsomely to build these networks, they are fighting to not become dumb pipes and resisting net neutrality in order to keep that gatekeeper role. This is one reason Google is trying to build its own network and circumvent the telcos. Eventually, I think the land-based telcos will lose and the battle will move to one between mobile operating systems like Apple’s iOS and Android. Although mobile phone operators may still be able to extract rents for a while longer than the fixed-line telcos.
The PC OS landscape
In the past, the operating system has been important in computing because it allowed the same software to be run on different computing devices, permitting users of those devices to transfer data easily as they were using the same software. But, the OS also benefitted as the more installed users one OS had, the more developers created software for the operating system. These network effects made achieving critical mass a defining factor. Going forward, network effects will also be important in monetizing OS-proprietary e-Commerce platforms like iTunes and Google’s new iTunes competitor.
One reason Apple was near bankruptcy before Steve Jobs re-appeared on the scene is because Apple’s Macintosh’s installed base had shrunk. I used a Macintosh from the mid-1980s but was forced to switch to a PC when I bought a laptop in the mid-1990s that I used both at home and for work. As the PC gained sway, millions of users like me were forced to give up the Mac. And, of course, that meant software developers gravitated to the PC platform and the Mac became a niche product.
The Move to the Internet-centric Model
As Internet bandwidth increased, more and more of what had to be done locally or over a local area network on…
Tags: Android, Apple, Google, internet, IPhone, Microsoft, network, operating system
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by ilene - May 26th, 2010 3:25 pm
Courtesy of James Kwak of Baseline Scenario
So, after questioning the iPad, I bought one.* My primary motivation was that I wanted to be able to watch old TV episodes on the commute to and from my internship this summer, and I think an iPod Touch is just too small. I also bought an Android phone, because my three-year-old Motorola RAZR2 v9m (who comes up with these product names, anyway?) developed a crack in the hinge, and because I wanted the best camera I could get on a phone. (My #2 use for a phone is not email — it’s taking pictures and videos of my daughter.)
Anyway, catching up on the last three years of mobile technology has provided ample food for thought. I have a long post on the Apple-Google(-Microsoft) war rolling around in my head somewhere, which I will hopefully write down later this week. In the meantime, here’s John Gruber‘s verdict on Microsoft:
“Three years ago, just before the original iPhone shipped, here’s what Steve Ballmer said in an interview with USA Today’s David Lieberman:
‘There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60 percent or 70 percent or 80 percent of them, than I would to have 2 percent or 3 percent, which is what Apple might get.’
“Not only was he wrong about the iPhone, but he was even more wrong about Windows Mobile. Three years ago Ballmer was talking about 60, 70, 80 percent market share. This week, Gartner reported that Windows Mobile has dropped to 6.8 percent market share in worldwide smartphone sales, down dramatically from 10.2 percent a year ago.”
Steve Ballmer has been CEO of Microsoft since 2000. During his tenure, Microsoft came out with Windows Vista, perhaps the most unsuccessful operating system in modern history (Windows ME doesn’t count, since Microsoft’s core customer base was using NT/2000); it tried a “Microsoft inside” strategy in digital music and, when that failed, launched the Zune, which also failed; it watched Firefox (and Safari and Chrome) eat a large…
Tags: browsers, internet search, IPad, IPhone, iPod, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, Windows Live, Windows Vista
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by ilene - March 31st, 2010 2:42 am
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
Apple ($AAPL) now has a market cap of around $215 billion. Incredible, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving company – they’ve changed the world.
More astonishing than the number itself is the list of companies whose market caps have been eclipsed by the tech king…
Apple is now bigger than Berkshire Hathaway, General Electric, Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Google and JPMorgan Chase.
The only companies larger right now are Microsoft, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart.
One other thing to consider – it all started with a device shaped like a deck of cards that was created to compete with the Sony Walkman - The iPod. Think of how many millions of devices sold as a direct consequence of the triumph and mass adoption of iTunes and the iPod. The dollar value created on the back of that product pairing is absolutely mindboggling.
For the details of who stands where by market cap, click the link below.
Source:
The Most Valuable Companies in America (Fortune)
Tags: AAPL, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, companies, exxon, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Proctor & Gamble, stocks, Wal-Mart
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by ilene - January 12th, 2010 1:16 am
Courtesy of The Shocked Investor
Ernsty & Young has just reported that the top 10 companies in the World by market cap.
On top of the latest list appears Petrochina, with a market value of U.S. $353.1B.
"Investors clearly agree that the next decade will belong to emerging economies. While the industrialized nations will continue to suffer the consequences of financial crisis for a long period ahead, the importance of emerging markets is growing rapidly."
The top include 4 from the U.S, 3 from China, one from Australia, one from Hong Kong, and one from Brazil.
1. PetroChina, $353.1B
2. Exxon, $323.7B
3. Microsoft, $270.6B
4. Industrial and Commerce Bank of China, $268.9B
5. Walmart, $203.6B
6. China Construction Bank
7. BHP Billiton, $201.1B
8. HSBC, $199.245B
9. Petrobras, $199.24B
10. Google, $196.7B
Together, the ten most valuable companies in the world amount to $2.4T, according to Ernst & Young. In 2008, the combined value was $1.8T.
Out of the top 100, 18 now are from emerging nations, compared with 11 in 2008.
For the same period the market value of the 100 most valuable companies rose from $9.3T to $11.9T.
Tags: china construction bank, exxon, Google, Microsoft, petrochina, Top 10 Companies in the World, walmart
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by ilene - January 6th, 2010 3:24 pm
Note to self: see if Joshua wants to head the new comedy section. – Ilene
Courtesy of Reformed Broker, Joshua M Brown
In a bid to catch up with the smartphone market, which has almost entirely left Microsoft behind, the company today released the above mobile product in a bid to regain relevance at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES).
So far only Nickelodeon and Baby Einstein have developed any apps for the platform.
Can stream live baby monitor video and is drool resistant up to 75 meters.
No carrier announced yet, stay tuned.
Tags: Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft, New Smartphone
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site