I have one word for you, Tablets!
I have a home office and spend my mornings working at home with the Financial News on TV in the background, as I day trade stock.
Microsoft has been stuck in the high $25 low $26 per share range for a couple of years now — going absolutely no where. Use to be when they’d release something like Windows 7 (remember when everyone upgraded from 95 to 98 and 98 to XP within weeks after being released), Microsoft would make a fortune. Dell hasn’t been doing to well either — and I use to make a fortune day trading both.
On the other hand — Apple (which use to be holding at $18 a share for years) is the stock I day trade most. It has gone from $185 to over $360 a share in six months.
Yesterday I heard a pretty good explanation for why the old guard is losing ground — and Apple is becoming the new bad ass in technology. Tablets.
Apple started its comeback years ago with the iPod — putting the Sony Walkman in the grave almost immediately. Then the iPhone was their next deal — merging a phone, Internet, and iPod into one device. My wife, I, and four of my five kids have iPhones — as do most of my 29 nieces and nephews. It is a pretty hot device. I had lunch with my wife the other day at a Sushi Bar — and about half of the people in the restaurant had an iPhone in their hand — doing something or another with it.
However, even though iPhone has just opened the market with Verizon and is no longer being an AT&T exclusive — Apple’s money maker is really the iPad tablet. There are other tablets — but they can’t equal the new iPad. Plus Apple has cult status with young people, who are the big spenders.
I bought my wife an iPad for Christmas. Since she’s severely technology challenged, I set everything up for her and played with it for a night before wrapping it. It is too cool. It handles 99% of what most home users have a home computer for. Internet, email, games,… plus reading your books. My wife spends 10 hours a day on the damn thing — and her iPod sure gets a Hell of a lot more action in bed than I do.
The new iPad announced yesterday is 30% thinner and lighter, faster, has a better screen, a protective screen cover that puts it to sleep, front and back camera for “Face to Face” communications, video editing, and a lot more. My birthday is in June — and that’s just enough time for me to feel comfortable that it isn’t “Bleeding Edge”, and that any bugs are worked out.
The point is that just like the notebooks replaced the desktops (again, my wife, I, and all five kids have a notebook instead of a desktop) — the tablets will be replacing the notebooks for all but those who use the PC for business — and even many of the business notebooks at that. 90% of what I do can be accomplished on the tablet — but there is a lot a computer is still required for me as I’m a computer geek — but not so for anyone else in my immediate family. For them, a tablet can completely replace a PC for all of them. I suspect in another year of two — with application software and data residing on the cloud, and a little Blue-tooth keyboard accessory — the tablet will do anything expected of a notebook.
So between the tablet, the Crackberry, and people using their Play Station and TV for the Internet — Microsoft and Dell are losing the important home market, and Apple is gaining it. I see Apple’s stock hitting $450 a share by Christmas.
