Just wondering this time around.
-
-
Everybody wake up. I sort of just had a flash. Don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, or if there’s any regularity to it? Maybe some of the stat oriented guys might confirm if there’s an unusual directional pattern phenomenon regarding Rim’s daily trading. Does Rimm predictably go up often enough, as a curiosity, on what are generally down days for the indexes? This is just something that I noticed off the cuff like an odds thing. Thought it might be worth mentioning as an effort to recognize an easy behavioral pattern without necessarily needing to know why, but rather how often by comparison. It seems kind of weird. cheers
-
conshmillo
I considering a possibility that RIMM could be bought by Google. HP snatched Palm. Nokia got together with Microsoft. RIMM had been very successful smartphone maker until Apple showed up. If Google tied up Android to particular hardware, they could escape the headaches of hardware /software incompatibilities, OS version incompatibilities etc. I think it would work well for Android crowd. Not sure how the rest of the Android using hardware makers would feel about it though.
-
Zee
Well I would be prepared to bet you a penny that under any time frame there’ll be no Rim takeover. Rumors of buy out could continue to temporarily drive the stock up like any company. But, during the time of the governmental debate surrounding Potash not being taken over and why; enough related opinions surfaced to inform WS that Rim would also remain beyond reach, because, Rim’s considered a strategic assets like Boeing was when the Chinese were staring at it with fistfuls of money. I think that in itself is why the whole concept re Rim stopped being churned. Yeah maybe on the chart at the time of Potash certain Rim volatility drivers ceased? If you’re ever curious about what the local sentiment is look at the Saturday edition of the Globe and Mail newspaper. Usually the business and tech section will have some comments. The tone supports your sentiment re Apple’s appearance and effect.
-
-
-
Perhaps you know Charles H Ferguson from the 90′s when he was the founder of Vermeer Technologies and creator of the internet’s first website development tool, FrontPage, which was sold to Microsoft for $133 M and integrated into Microsoft Office. Apart from also being a postdoctoral White House consultant for trade and defense he has been a strategic consultant to Apple, Motorola, Texas Instruments, Xerox … and director of the French-American Foundation. Well, he’s also a filmmaker. His film : Inside Job, has been nominated for an Academy Award. The film is about the 2007-10 economic meltdown. The nomination is for best Feature Documentary. The ceremony is February 27th. His other film is, No End in Sight : The American Occupation of Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/charles_h_ferguson
Special hello to nolavabo and conschmilo. W/O you guys the debates on Google Finance just aren’t the same. cheers
-
Zee
I think Ferguson will be a good board member for Apple… especially since the next 5 years will see video making up 90% of the web. Being mit he’s a very sharp cookie. He is cut from the same material as Jobs and Cook…
-
conshmillo
Nothing there for me on Google boards. Anytime I just randomly check what’s going on there, there is some fool having a field day. Few days back I was there and someone was blaming arabs for his temporary loses in AAPL. Apple!!! I am the one taking the responsibility when I enter the trade. No arabs, russians, republicans or democrats are responsible for my choice of security and timing. Period. Traderhood board is worth reading because of guys like Nicu. For Apple traders he is gold, I believe.
-
-
Seems logical to take care of the future sooner.
-
Nicu
it seems there’s problem showing long post titles in Safari
-
GotWake
Ugh, long titles are ugly
There’s few articles talking about Verizon doing a deal were Apple doesn’t go to T-Mobile or Sprint. Personally, I think that the 5 year contract is still intact and we will not see the iPhone outside of AT&T until 2012.
I’m not sure Apple could even support the demand of going to the other carriers. I bet Apple could sell 8 million iPhones on Verizon’s network in a short time. Several of my buddies will drop their Android phones the second the iPhone becomes available on Verizon.
I think the iPad/MiFi deal is probably the “break the ice” for Apple and Verizon. Verizon has 2011 to rollout more of the LTE network. In the meantime, Foxconn adds more capacity and Apple prepares/tests an LTE iPhone for a 2012 release.
-
conshmillo
long titles fixed
-
-
Hot stuff mates. News will follow today… SJ has been secretly working with Britain’s most prolific Architect Norman Foster and Partners. Foster b. 1935 aka Baron Foster of Thames Bank was the designer of Masdar in Abu Dhabi, the first city w/o cars and zero carbon emissions, capacity 50,000.
Apple’s city, for use of a better name, will be on the 148 acres that were recently acquired from HP in Cupertino for the concept of Apple’s future home that’ll house Apple’s engineers and R+D. Apparently much will be underground with grass surfaces. Zero carbon emissions. Check out Norman Foster on Google Images/wiki. I imaging ex Northrup Grumman ceo, the newly appointed Apple board member Dr. Robert Sweet will play a strong role as an over seer of Apple’s finances…
Any worries now about what Apple will do with its $50 B? And any doubts that Apple’s employees will eventually double? Cheers.
-
Rueters repeated a rumor today that’s not new but resurfaced on Barron’s Oct/18th and 0ct/23rd re. Apple acquisitions : SONY… among others.
SJ has commented on Sony / and…, Apple as a consumer electronics co. etc. Sony as everyone knows is very big in Broadcast, Creative Software, Music, and Consumer Electronics. By virtue of Sony’s location, it’s nicely positioned to Asia’s markets. Plus in the sense of Sony’s relationship to Ericson there’s that side of Mobile IP. Ericson claims their IP is second to none.
Perhaps it’s merely a rumor. But no joy lost. However the synergy between Apple/UNISYS/Sony is indeed extremely dynamic. And as an industry presence this synergy is poised to blossom and be the de facto, go to, for ALL Content Creation and Mobile needs. Such a move would sensibly cause enough healthy stress and wonderment to push the stock up as Apple charges towards EXXON, and $4-500+etc a share.
Such a move would also make Android look very fragmented and the mess of messes…
-
conshmillo
I am usually vary of ideas about what Apple should buy with its piles of cash and some ideas are outright ridiculous, but buying Sony didn’t strike me as such a bad idea. I think if Apple would buy Sony, they would leave the Sony brand name in place because it has still strong brand value. Apple/Sony sounds extremely well, not to mention there are some other brand name properties that Apple could benefit from such as PlayStation (poor xbox if Apple gets behind PlayStation). In one of my previous posts on Traderhood I mentioned that I believe Apple is getting ready for full assault on Living Room. I believe AppleTV will become integral part of big ass HDTVs with built in camera for family videoconferencing. People will be communicating with their families all the way from living room via FaceTime to iPads and iPhones everywhere. Sony with their established name in HDTV fills this direction nicely. Aside from Sony’s electronic, business, Sony owns many entertainment properties in which I am pretty sure Steve Jobs would be interested. Namely Sony Pictures Entertainment (ex Columbia Picture combined with ex Metro Goldwyn Mayer).
From all of the ideas I heard about what Apple should buy, Sony seems to me to be most plausible. -
rastard
1) Is there anything that Apple has purchased that they still maintain under another company’s brand?
2) Sony does have a decent brand name (every TV I’ve ever purchased has been a Sony), but in every one of Sony’s markets that Apple has moved into (music players, eBook readers, phones, laptops, etc), Apple is kind of kicking Sony’s a$$. Are there any spaces where both Apple and Sony compete head-to-head that Apple hasn’t yet won?Aside from Sony Pictures Entertainment (entirely different industry not even remotely related to Apple’s businesses, I don’t see what advantage Apple would have in buying vs. building…
@zee: “Such a move would also make Android look very fragmented and the mess of messes‚Ķ” I don’t get the connection. How would Apple buying Sony make Android look fragmented?
-
Senator Gronk
My take:
Steve always tells you what he’s going to do. In repeated responses to questions about their cash on hand, Steve always replies that it’s there to give them the opportunity to do something incredible/magical/etc. I’ve always taken this to mean that he has a plan, where most think it means he doesn’t have a plan (aside: if you think Steve doesn’t have a plan for something you’re Rob Enderle or a total fool).I have to assume that Steve has had his eye on a possible Sony acquisition for years. He’s always loved Sony and basically built Apple around the Sony concept. Time is on Apple’s side here as Sony struggles to compete and Apple continues to grow.
The iPod/Walkman parity, in my opinion, is no coincidence. Steve knew that when people started putting Sony in their pocket, it was nestled next to their wallet.
An interesting note that popped this morning is that Apple was chasing Bungie before MS grabbed them. Clearly Apple has a much more aggressive acquisition strategy than they get credit for. It might have been great if Apple grabbed Bungie, but it also might still be great that they didn’t. I think Apple would have struggled to support Halo in a gamer-friendly manner, and Halo pushed MS into the XBox world where they might have over-exerted themselves. Time will tell.
Apple buying Sony would be an interesting twist. Whether Sony would be absorbed completely is a very interesting question. I can’t think of an Apple subsidiary at the moment, but I can only think that’s what they would do with Sony. One thing is for sure, Jobs would gut Sony’s product line just like he did Apple’s in the 90s.
Some notes I dug up on Steve and Sony, taken from:
http://www.osnews.com/story/23902/John_Sculley_Steve_Jobs_Wanted_to_Be_Sony
“The Sculley interview contains – among other things – another gem: Steve Jobs was in love with Sony. Sony’s products, Sony’s factories, the clothes the workers wore, everything – Jobs loved it. Sony’s CEO gave Sculley and Jobs the first Walkman and tours of the factories that made them, and all this impressed Jobs a great deal.“We used to go visit Akio Morita and he had really the same kind of high-end standards that Steve did and respect for beautiful products,” Sculley recalls, “I remember Akio Morita gave Steve and me each one of the first Sony Walkmans. None of us had ever seen anything like that before because there had never been a product like that. This is 25 years ago and Steve was fascinated by it. The first thing he did with his was take it apart and he looked at every single part. How the fit and finish was done, how it was built.”
The Macintosh factories were modelled after Sony’s factories. “Steve’s point of reference was Sony at the time. He really wanted to be Sony. He didn’t want to be IBM. He didn’t want to be Microsoft. He wanted to be Sony,” Sculley adds.”
-
rastard
Great historical perspective. Thanks for sharing it!
-
Zee
@rastard
Hi rastard. I know you know … Anyway. No doubt in the future we’ll see tons of different devices running on Android. Gazillions of oems using different versions of Android doesn’t seem too tight by comparison re an ecosystem etc. Does it? That’s my impression. Why don’t you help me out dude. lol. And for a minute, rhetorically take the antithetical point of view re your position. Be nice to see what you come up with. Can you argue from both sides? I’ve seen you pick apart a lot of arguments. Can you pick yours apart?-
rastard
If you re-read my prior post, I didn’t take a position or make an argument. I simply asked you a clarifying question:
“I don‚Äôt get the connection. How would Apple buying Sony make Android look fragmented?”
To clarify, I’m not asking why people generally think Android is fragmented, or arguing that Android is or isn’t fragmented. I’m just trying to understand what it is about “Apple buying Sony” that you think would make Android look fragmented, because I really don’t see a connection between the two.
-
-
-
-
Zee
Look. Is this like the Dalai Lama walking into a Pizzeria and the chef says to him, “I can make you one with everything?” Maybe not.
-
Nicu
I think Sony is not a good acquisition idea for Apple, some of the reasons are better explained by those guys
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/31/apple_buying_sony/-
Senator Gronk
@nicu
Great article pull. I gave up on the Reg a while back because their articles can sometimes be wildly off-base while sounding reasonable, but this one makes some sense. It’s a reminder that things are never as simple as buying and selling.Indeed, a counter-arguement to Apple buying Sony is that Apple would have no time to clean up the mess that Sony is in. Apple just barely has time to keep up with it’s own success, let alone the burden of a 20-year and deepening failure.
And yet… Steve might get a little misty at the idea of picking up his hero… I mean, if Steve still has emotions… ; )
-
Zee
@Senator Gronk
Senator you’re always a good read, you know that. Among the senatorial class that’s a frikkin’ exception too. Forgive the expletive. The time of the rumor it was a slow day on WS. To me the market is a form of consciousness. Yet my first random thought is Robert Duvall saying, “Racing is nudging”, and SJ is the best. So on slow days positing a thought in the market’s consciousness is a form of nudging… possibly the rumor was cleverly orchestrated to nudge some life into Sony around its ER.
-
-
-
-
It was announced today that UNIYS will partner with Apple for enterprise/government services. UNISYS will continue dev apps, along with sell and service Apple’s hardware for the non consumer mkt. UNISYS s/p closed today at $33.20 up 1.36%, mkt cap $1.33 bin. 25,6000 employees. Competitors, IBM, Oracle, MSFT, Redhat, Dell, HP.
UNISYS is the resultant merger of Sperry and Burroughs. At one time UNISYS was on the S&P, its share price peaked at $480, peak level of employees, 120,000.
HQ Blue Bell PA
Sperry founded in 1910
Burroughs 1886The Burroughs corp was also the source of Beat Poet William Burroughs wealth. Author of Naked Lunch.
-
Zee
UNISIS seems to have the WOZ on their payroll as one of their “extraordinary minds”.
-
rastard
“Competitors, IBM, Oracle, MSFT, Redhat, Dell, HP.”
I suspect if you were to ask *anyone* at those companies, none of them would actually consider Unisys to be a competitor.
Great in its heyday, Unisys should have been put out of its misery years ago…
-
Zee
In a way that’s good. The listings tossed them all together in the same sector. All I did was regurgitate it. You never said though whether it was a decent move. Maybe if they perform well Apple will see enough evidence to scoop them up.
-
rastard
Unisys reputation isn’t that of an innovative company (it hasn’t been for longer than many here have been alive). It also isn’t a company that comes to mind when one thinks of high quality and great service — it’s middling to low there. In other words, Unisys is the antithesis of Apple in those regards.
Obviously, someone at Apple with direct knowledge of Apple’s goals here sees this as a decent move (lest they wouldn’t have made it), so it’s pointless for me to think differently, since I don’t have the same information as they do (or any visibility, for that matter). But I will hazard a guess that there’s far more upside for Unisys here than there is for Apple.
-
-
We may find everybody desperately wants to be a Mac. lol. I picked up, surprisingly, a discussion tonight about competing tablets running on OSX. No mention of QNX doing that. But the netbook makers like Asus, which are made in the same factory as Apple’s stuff might be the likely devices… and a quick look at eBay shows that the Dell hackintosh is still hanging on… I don’t know what the solution is other than perish the thought. This would be like Psystar part 2.
-
I was checking out the specs for Nikon’s new D7000 dslr camera, announced around the 14th of September.
Historically Nikon and its software partner Fujitsu were associated with MSFT and used the AVI file format for delivering dslr mjpeg video.
I think this means Nikon is paying a licensing fee for using Apple’s Quick Time .MOV.
Normally, Nikon’s competitor Canon an old partner of Apple’s used .MOV in its DSLR’s, like for the Canon 5D MKII.
And a year and a half ago JVC also switched to Quick Time for its GY HM100u.
Possible conclusion : Apple’s online store will be selling the Nikon D7000 when it comes out, which means more manufacturers and users are moving to the .MOV codec and MSFT is seriously losing the battle. Jeez, Nikon sells a lot of cameras.
The is very significant too, because FCP/Nikon users normally required a third party transcoder called Squared 5 MPEG Streamclip for converting AVI to .MOV/QT. But not anymore
-
JPWatkins
.mov is not a codec but a container format (it’s a wrapper ie you can have a mpeg or whatever encoded video in a file with a .mov extension.)
I don’t know about the licensing, but I suspect it’s not real expensive.
Good to see QT gaining strength again. It’s best/easiest for the user, IMHO. It used to be the norm on consumer electronics (even for stills.) My old Nikon CoolPix 9500 used QT files. You can’t keep a superior idea down (for very long.)-
rastard
“I think this means Nikon is paying a licensing fee for using Apple‚Äôs Quick Time .MOV.”
Another possibility is that Apple is letting Nikon use it for free (or even paying Nikon to use it) to increase adoption. Who knows…
-
Zee
@rastard
I agree rastard. I doubt if Apple is paying Nikon though. Maybe in your adventures you might find out what the arrangement is. I thought it might’ve been licensed because that’s what was an occasional concept bantered around as to why certain things weren’t bundled w FCP, which along with Logic Studio were also updated 2 days after the D7000 was announced. It seemed to me that Nikon’s avi usage and pronounced jello effect were what was keeping it from ever being considered for professional video work. This new D7000 has more manual controls with better iq that’s able to shoot video for 20 straight minutes. While VDSLR has been progressing I’ve been concentrating more on the audio and optics side of things. The old Nikkor AI-S manual focus lenses from the 80′s are just excellent. The stuff can be mounted on rails with a follow focus device… Toys, eh. Cheers.
-
-
Zee
@jpwatkins
Hi John. I know what you mean about it being a container. I discovered that w the D90′s avi format. I grabbed one the first week that it came out and realized its limitations w a Mac. Same w the Sony pcm-d50 that came bundled w Sound Forge… I noticed too today the 9500 uses QT. My impression was that there was a strategic pairing w Nikon/msft and that it went way back, like Apple and Canon. Now that Nikon is using .MOV and has reduced a lot of the jello effect from its rolling shutter we may see it taking on Canon’s 5D and 7D re professional video.
-
-
conshmillo 7:36 pm on July 7, 2011 213 days ago Reply
AAPL broke 355 resistance today. And although stochastic on dailies is sky high price is still pushing higher. We may have a little pullback due to that overbought stoch but my impression is next week or week after it will try again to break that 365 resistance it abandoned 2 months ago. When it does, especially if stoch will be low at that time it should pop 15-10 bucks instant. Everything is kind of overbought right now but at same time s&p futures and dia are both at the edge of the breakout.
Zee 5:31 am on July 8, 2011 213 days ago Reply
Yeah I feel the edge there in a nice breakout, or at least the way Apple has historically marched up. The thing about TA is when we’re seeing new historical prices looming, we rarely get people mentioning possible numbers coming up. 400. feels close. How do you feel about Aug 2 ? +/-?