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    • Fri Oct 10th 14:44 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      General Discussion on DELL

      Yes, possibly quite soon. Why is Dell desperate to sell their last assets for cash? Perhaps this endgame has been planned for more than two years. There certainly have been signs consistent with such a scenario.

      See also Phillip Jains comment below to understand why it's not a particularly good stock to own even in good times. Michael Dell et al have taken out more than all the profits Dell has ever made since it started by the expedient of awarding themselves stock; selling that stock on the open market, and buying stock back for cash into the business to keep up the share price. All the hard earned cash is neatly transferred via the markets from Dell Inc to M Dell.

      To be fair, I have always despised Dell as no more than a screwdriver and financial smoke and mirrors operation, so perhaps you shouldn't take my word for it, but I'd sell now and swallow the loss. If you really imagine it might go back up, put some money into 2010 call contracts, but I wouldn't do that myself.


      On Oct 10 12:25 PM User 258448 wrote:

      > I just left Dell last year and I have watched my savings, which was
      > stock that I had bought over the last 5 yrs. go from 19K to 8K.
      > I'm not a rich person so this is Huge for me. I have 400 Shares
      > bought then at the lowest 22.00 and the highest 31.00. Of course
      > they are upside down, do you think Dell is going to go bankrupt?
      View forum topic »
    • Sat Oct 4th 16:58 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Does Apple Need an Enterprise Strategy After All?
      Clueless article. Apple will be one of the last to feel the pinch from the consumer. It's the latte's, eating out, new cars and extra vacations that are going, not the new Mac or iPhone.

      Apple has an enterprise strategy. One that's lightweight on costs both for Apple and for the enterprise. Expect cost cutting by eviction of Microsoft and its parasites inside and outside the organisation in favor of Apple's better, simpler product. You're about to witness a landslide. Wouldn't surprise me to see Dell fail in the next 3 months with no tangible assets, unable to pay suppliers.
      View article »
    • Fri Sep 26th 15:05 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Don't Let the Times Stop You from Taking Action
      There is nothing to recommend Dell. Business model that used to be unbeatable but doesn't work any more. So they're tearing up the floorboards and selling them for "cost savings". Product design, manufacturing, support, everything sold off and rented back. Last quarter accounts payable $15.5B; net tangible assets $0.3B. That's one low flying jumbo you're recommending. With undisclosed sub-prime exposure, apparently (see last conf call).

      Dell never was a computer company, just the biggest screwdriver assembly and financial smoke and mirrors operation in the market, crucially dependent on growing sales and negative cash conversion cycle to milk the business of delivering Microsoft's monopoly to the world. Microsoft monopoly is dying; netbooks are killing revenue growth, and Apple is taking most of the high margin business.

      Far from Michael Dell turning the company round, it was the CEO and CFO who bailed out, who had created the financial smoke and mirrors for Dell, and they set him up with a 2-year cushion to execute his fantasy of a turnaround. Time's up. Expect more bad news.
      View article »
    • Sat Sep 13th 14:48 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Consortium To Standardize Digital Rights Management, Take On Apple
      Apple's Fairplay DRM is an optional service to content owners. Since it is proprietary, Apple can both make guarantees to content owners (if security is breached, Apple can force an update to every device wanting to load new Fairplay content), and offer consumers a fair deal (DRM'd content never dies; there is no "keep alive" callback to headquarters required, unlike other systems with guarantees).

      The problem with a shared open standard is that once it's cracked, it can't be repaired, and content owners can't be compensated. Therefore it can't compete with Fairplay as an attractive DRM for content owners.

      Apple does not in fact demand a monopoly on distribution; but only to distribute on its own terms.

      The final solution some years hence may be that Fairplay is licensed broadly by means of Apple chips embedded in devices from all manufacturers.

      The paradox for content owners is that no-one wants content until they are aware of it. An owner will pay to get his song on radio, yet wants paying for a consumer to hear it on demand. An industry wide "open" DRM is destined either to be cracked and bypassed (like DVD), or its protected content to be ignored and forgotten by consumers.

      The industry needs to cut a long term deal to license Fairplay, in exchange for giving Apple distribution of its content.
      View article »
    • Fri Sep 12th 04:53 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple's 3G iPhone: Q4 Sales Estimates Are Encouraging
      The market share figures are just that: share of total browsing, not absolute iPhone browsing level. The spike/volatility in share during August is likely due to a fall in general browsing from PC's during Olympics, vacation time & labor day in favour of watching TV or having fun. Level iPhone browsing and falling general browsing creates a peak in share.

      It's almost as though Apple has deliberately issued BBY with demo units from early production runs to conceal the run rate data that IMEI numbers initially revealed. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if Apple obfuscated this IMEI covert information channel in future.
      View article »
    • Mon Sep 8th 10:12 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Nokia Is the Smart(phone) Bet - Barron's
      Carriers no longer want to subsidize Nokia's high end phones when iPhone still sucks subscribers away and Nokia has a declared intention to become a competing service company ("comes with music"); thus Nokia has lost pricing power at the high end, which damages earnings.

      By giving exclusive carrier deals, Apple has avoided this fate.

      I suspect China (Nokia's biggest market) wants to give its volume business to domestic handset makers in preference to Nokia. This hits both unit and dollar sales.
      View article »
    • Fri Aug 29th 14:17 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Record Companies Starting to Shun iTunes
      I'll believe the labels when they won't let the radio stations play individual songs.
      View article »
    • Fri Aug 15th 18:19 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      How Apple Stock Should Be Valued: P/FCF
      The subscription accounting is in part connected to Sarbanes Oxley. You are not allowed to recognise revenue when you have not delivered 100% of the associated deliverables. Microsoft has also exploited SOX to count XP sales from before the release of Vista as Vista sales (with free temporary XP license), by deferring the revenue recognition until a Vista download was available to the XP customers.

      The end-user benefit of a cellphone is experienced over the life of a service contract, and carriers subsidize the handset and receive relatively uniform payments from the user for the handset and service over the life of the contract. Carriers therefore use subscription accounting for the handset subsidy over the life of the contract. Apple's accounting is simply matching this carrier accounting; recognising revenue in step with actual end user payments, rather than doing its accounts like a subcontract manufacturer. Major cellphone brands doing their accounts like subcontractors is just one aspect of their ceding control to carriers.

      One argument for the subscription accounting is that the carriers are an intermediary between Apple and their true customer, the end user, and if Apple ever removes that intermediary and provides the service too, there is no earnings impact on the handset business despite the loss of the massive carrier handset subsidy.
      View article »
    • Thu Jul 31st 07:31 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Why Is Dell Trying to Compete With the iPod?
      It can't be about the music player; it's about the desktop. Dell can pre-install an iTunes alternative on every consumer machine it ships ( the delLife suite?), and hopes this large number of pre-installs can bootstrap an ecosystem the way Apple bootstrapped the iPod/iTunes using Mac users. Dell need a music player to make their ecosystem look plausible. They can't believe they have a chance to sell better than, say, Zune.

      Dell has a hard lesson to learn - marketing efforts in a market where you don't dominate create more business for the market leader than they do for you. The people who were only thinking "Dell" start thinking "music", then they actually look at the alternative.

      This just re-emphasises that the Dell/Microsoft era is over, and consumers will realise they need to widen their horizons.
      View article »
    • Mon Jul 28th 13:12 PM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple's 3G iPhone Has Some Kinks to Resolve
      Mr Bober: You must explain what you mean by asserting Infineon's baseband solution is "subpar". Please identify the population of solutions whose average is higher, and what metric you are using to evaluate, and how the user of a phone could possibly tell the difference between a TI and an Infineon chip inside.
      View article »
    • Thu Jul 24th 02:09 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Time to Stand Up for Steve Jobs
      Buildings don't fall down when their architect dies.

      for crappletv:

      Like most commentators, you're wrong; Steve Jobs' health IS a private matter unless ill health is affecting his role in the company. When a board member says, on the record, "Steve's health is a private matter", that statement alone tells you that there is no known issue with his health. Even SJ doesn't know more than that. If there is a known problem with SJ's health affecting Apple, this statement by Oppenheimer could put him in prison later.

      Steve Jobs did not conceal his cancer from the board. The board concealed it from the world, because there was plenty of time to make a succession plan, and to defer drastic medical intervention while SJ worked on unaffected as CEO. When Apple was fully prepared, further medical action was evaluated, surgery performed and immediately reported to the public. The SEC has investigated the sequence of events and found it to be proper. I'd say it was exemplary.

      Your Macbook sleep problems are to do with the software you are running. Other people don't have this issue. It's just laziness to simply blame Apple. Have you for example got HP printer drivers installed that didn't come with MacOS?

      Steve Jobs does not "cultivate the cult of personality". He appears only twice a year, and makes a very professional product focussed presentation crammed with factual detail. He restricts his activities ruthlessly to doing his job. It's the media and followers that create the cult. SJ is a private person. For example he does not go in for the attention seeking public charitable contributions and activities popular with the rich and self-obsessed.
      View article »
    • Sat Jun 21st 07:08 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple: Confusion Reigns Over iPhone Sales Projections
      You're right, we don't know for sure, but you're wrong to deny 10M in calendar Q3. It's a subtle but important distinction: Apple has publicly aspired to (like a competitor), but never forecast (like an analyst) 10M in 2008. In fact in recent conf call, 10M was almost stated as a plain fact even as iPhone 1 supplies dried up. That tells us that real expectations are higher. 3 million a month for the rest of the year, is the most likely, IMO, with the timing of availability in each of the 78 countries being adjusted as required, and maybe there's even time to ramp up for the fourth quarter.
      View article »
    • Wed Jun 18th 10:23 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Sandisk: Will Samsung Help or Will Intel Hurt?
      "Apple, on the other hand, needs a constant string of innovations every year . . ." shows you have not understood Apple. This is a single minded, integrated and very ambitious 10-20 year plan, not a string of disjoint fashion-powered innovations. Keep watching; more stuff will be happening soon.
      View article »
    • Wed Mar 5th 07:24 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Fortune Can't Make Up Its Mind on Apple's Steve Jobs
      When you hop on a soapbox, you get to slant things any way you want. If that's all the badness Elkind can make about Steve Jobs, Apple are in good shape.

      The only significant new data is that the Apple board decided to keep his cancer secret, even though Steve Jobs had disclosed it. Reviewing the known facts: At that time, it was not known to be operable, and presumably not known to be growing. When a scan revealed it was growing, the issue became urgent, leading to immediate biopsy, diagnosis as the rare curable kind, surgery and disclosure.

      Personally, I find Apple / Steve Jobs these days to have very high standards of integrity. That doesn't mean business isn't a ruthless game that has to be played hard.
      View article »
    • Wed Feb 27th 06:28 AM | Rating: 0 0
      Commented on:
      Apple's New MacBook: Favorable Price Comparison to Dell
      The two take-home points from any proper comparison are (a) Microsoft's hardware partners in general choose not to offer valuable features that Apple products have, because, at the point of purchase, customers don't notice them and choose the cheaper product, and (b) when a branded computer from a Microsoft partner is properly configured as nearly as possible to match an Apple product, it is almost always more expensive, usually by $100-300. (This isn't an accident - Apple carefully evaluates competitor pricing and makes sure it is so).

      In this case, Apple simply doesn't make a laptop as poorly specified as the $1119 M1330, let alone one of Dells high volume cheapies.
      View article »
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