Meet Quadroid
by ilene - November 18th, 2010 2:48 pm
Meet Quadroid
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
Just as the Microsoft Windows/Intel Pentium combo (Wintel) came to rule the PC business, smartphones are starting to standardize around their own Big Two. According to a recent study, that standard is the new Qualcomm chip/ Google Android operating system one-two punch. The cool kids are calling it Quadroid.
CNNMoney’s David Goldman takes us inside the numbers:
But now, for the first time ever in the wireless ecosystem, a standard platform is emerging: At least a dozen handset makers have brought to market more than 90 different smartphones that run Android, and more than three quarters of those handsets have Qualcomm chips embedded in them, according to a new study by consultancy PRTM.
The Qualcomm-Android standard, or "Quadroid" as PRTM calls it, is becoming a parallel to the Windows-Intel, or "Wintel," standard that developed in the 1990s.
Qualcomm held their Analyst Day meeting yesterday and the The Street apparently loved what they heard. Goldman Sachs reiterated their Conviction Buy and raised their target to 58 this morning. Credit Suisse upped their target to 60 and gave it a buy rec as well.
As far as Google, Android is not the engine driving the stock right now but it is obviously of immense importance to the company strategically.
It’s too early to tell if this Qualcomm/Google duopoly is really going to own the space but so far their partnership appears to be the front-runner. If you’re trading technology stocks, wireless plays, chips, operating systems etc, you may want to get up on this story.
Source:
Android and Qualcomm are the New Wintel (CNNMoney)
Qualcomm Upgrades/Downgrades (TheStreet)
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The Coming Apple iOS – Android Wars
by ilene - June 9th, 2010 6:55 pm
The Coming Apple iOS – Android Wars
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…
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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