AAPL - Apple Inc - Page 622

I have seen products with that half bitten apple logo on them in the following stores during these past few months. Costco, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Frys (they even had the new mac book pro although they were sold out so there was a wait list. the point is they had the new mac book pro with retina.). Assuming that Sams Club has them too since it's owned by Walmart (no local Sam's Clubs here). This list is at least 75% of the total retail space for tech products in the US. On a side note, competitors don't drive down the prices because they know that people are willing to spend full retail on Apple products anyways. On a side note, Best Buy frequently discounts macbooks for $50-$100 and ipods/ipads at Costco are always $5 lower (lol, $5 can buy you some nice CMG).

Well this I agree with only because Apple is already bigger than Google and IS making fistfuls of money with Google having a different role. In fact, Apple is bigger than Google and Microsoft combined in terms of market cap. Heck you can even add in S, RIMM, NOK and Apple is still bigger than all of them combined. 

Disclaimer: Long AAPL in my long term account but I short AAPL all the time in the my trading account. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by chhansen 

 

I lol'd.

 

I'm going to say this for the 999999th time. Venom, you and 9999999999999999 other people are waiting for AAPL to hit $700 to sell. That's why by the time it gets to $650 it will stall up cause they'll simply run out of buyers. Unless it's because AAPL keeps adding 0's to their earnings reports. Otherwise we'll just see all of the trapped $600+ buyers go weeeeeeeeee sell bots when it eventually gets back up there. 

Fine, I'll sell at $745.

I think in the long term will get to 900$

Quote:

Originally Posted by chhansen 

 

I have seen products with that half bitten apple logo on them in the following stores during these past few months. Costco, Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Frys (they even had the new mac book pro although they were sold out so there was a wait list. the point is they had the new mac book pro with retina.). Assuming that Sams Club has them too since it's owned by Walmart (no local Sam's Clubs here). This list is at least 75% of the total retail space for tech products in the US. On a side note, competitors don't drive down the prices because they know that people are willing to spend full retail on Apple products anyways. On a side note, Best Buy frequently discounts macbooks for $50-$100 and ipods/ipads at Costco are always $5 lower (lol, $5 can buy you some nice CMG).

 

Well this I agree with only because Apple is already bigger than Google and IS making fistfuls of money with Google having a different role. In fact, Apple is bigger than Google and Microsoft combined in terms of market cap. Heck you can even add in S, RIMM, NOK and Apple is still bigger than all of them combined. 

 

 

Disclaimer: Long AAPL in my long term account but I short AAPL all the time in the my trading account. 

1. the iphone was built upon existing technology. icloud is too, what is your point? Apple knows how to put it together and create value

2. apple is very exclusive on its product distribution. You can get some things like ipods and the iphone, but not EVERYTHING. Not just anyone can wholesale apple products, like you can do with a Wintel computer. Otherwise people would flood apple products on ebay and drive down the cost. Yes, people sell apple products on ebay but they were bought quite expensively from the apple store and such. The resale value is quite high on apple, believe me, I tried to wholesale and drop ship apple stuff, there are nosuppliers who can do that to the little guy . It is so hard, even insiders in china try to do it, and they might steal product from the factories of other namebrands, but Apple is notoriously difficult. I own several eccomerce sites and I can get you acer, dell, even alienware. But I cannot get you apple laptops brand new. It's impossible unless you are a huge company and you beg and plead with apple, and cut down your margins significantly. Yes Best Buy and Walmart sells ipods and the base macbooks, they have less bargaining power I bet you. They are not making much money than compared to selling a wintel laptop.

summary: Most of the profit is made by apple and less from the middle man

3. I don't think you get what i am saying when I say "digital hub" or wide economic moat.

4. I hope I explained things a little better, if not, i'll try again

Summary: a wonderful company will always lead to a wonderful result in the long run. I don't really care about price with apple. Every year, a company's economic moat gets wider or narrower, once I see Apple's competitive advantage dissapears I will sell. But I plan on holding as long as Apple continues to be Applish, lol

Quote:

Originally Posted by chhansen 

 

 On a side note, competitors don't drive down the prices because they know that people are willing to spend full retail on Apple products anyways.

 

 

Competition drives down profit margin. An industry with high competition and rivalry will have smaller margins. That is why companies like Apple try to differentiate their products and limit distribution. Any college textbook will tell you that....

Quote:

Originally Posted by epoch707 

 

1. the iphone was built upon existing technology. icloud is too, what is your point? Apple knows how to put it together and create value

 

2. apple is very exclusive on its product distribution. You can get some things like ipods and the iphone, but not EVERYTHING. Not just anyone can wholesale apple products, like you can do with a Wintel computer. Otherwise people would flood apple products on ebay and drive down the cost. Yes, people sell apple products on ebay but they were bought quite expensively from the apple store and such. The resale value is quite high on apple, believe me, I tried to wholesale and drop ship apple stuff, there are nosuppliers who can do that to the little guy . It is so hard, even insiders in china try to do it, and they might steal product from the factories of other namebrands, but Apple is notoriously difficult. I own several eccomerce sites and I can get you acer, dell, even alienware. But I cannot get you apple laptops brand new. It's impossible unless you are a huge company and you beg and plead with apple, and cut down your margins significantly. Yes Best Buy and Walmart sells ipods and the base macbooks, they have less bargaining power I bet you. They are not making much money than compared to selling a wintel laptop.

 

summary: Most of the profit is made by apple and less from the middle man

 

3. I don't think you get what i am saying when I say "digital hub" or wide economic moat.

 

4. I hope I explained things a little better, if not, i'll try again

 

Summary: a wonderful company will always lead to a wonderful result in the long run. I don't really care about price with apple. Every year, a company's economic moat gets wider or narrower, once I see Apple's competitive advantage dissapears I will sell. But I plan on holding as long as Apple continues to be Applish, lol

1. Yes that is why I said "Apple improved upon existing technology". You originally stated that Apple created the technology which was incorrect. <-- That is my point.

2. Again, you said that you can only get the products from Apple store, etc. I was just pointing out that almost every major chain carries ipods and macbooks, so on. Only reason why they can't wholesale/flood the market is because demand is too high for the product. I never said anything about whether or not other retailers were profiting off of it. You can't compare it to windows computers because they are licensed out and anyone can make a windows computer and sell it. Microsoft makes money from licensing only the majority of their money from licensing. Dell, HP, etc and whatever make money from the hardware standpoint. Apple is the ONLY company that is involved on both sides of the deal so they profit more and have better quality control which is why Apple sells them for a higher price as well. This is a good thing, but again your comparison is irrelevant. I was merely correcting your statement about how Apple's products were exclusive to Apple stores and Best Buy which is false.

Competition drives down profit margin, that is correct. However, that is not what I was talking about. I said that competitors are not driving down the prices because people will pay for the Apple name if nothing else. I apologize if that wasn't clear, but for the sake of agreeing with you, I will quote myself from a while back.

"Who is competing against Apple? Who is Apple competing against? You can say Google is competing with iOS. Microsoft with Mac OS X. Dell with Apple Computers. Samsung, RIMM against the iPhone. etc. But no one is competing with Apple."

Summary: I do not disagree with you. I am long AAPL as I previously said, but I will not hesitate to point out misinformed or inaccurate posts. 

Saying why you like a company is fine, but don't get carried away and start trying to pull a rabbit out of your hat. That doesn't end well for anyone 

Quote:

Originally Posted by chhansen 

... but don't get carried away and start trying to pull a rabbit out of your hat. That doesn't end well for anyone 

It ends well for the rabbit. It's stuffy in that hat.

aapl will have to gap up pretty hard to pull a PCLN

Quote:

Originally Posted by mormasa 

I think in the long term will get to 900$

On what growth?  Phones?  The new Samsung phones are coming out in a few months.  Word on the street is that Apple got so uptight with how Siri needed to be managed that the company that powers it (Nuance) went and built a whole new virtual assistant with a lot more functionality that wasn't strictly leased to Apple, and Samsung is on board.  The Motorola phones are going to be coming out with the beta of Project Glass.  It's a minefield there.

It certainly can't be laptops.  I don't care how loyal some consumers are to Apple, the people who have the means to shell out 9 grand for a laptop just because it has a high-res screen aren't large in number.  They've never been a strong player in the desktop field, at least not this century.

That leaves what?  Tablets and TV's?  Samsung and LG are *already* out with the new Smart TV's with the voice recognition capabilities and integration into the rest of the house's voice controlled appliances (I just bought one; it's fabulous).  Apple hasn't even announced they're gonna try to dip a toe into that arena and, unless they're going to get into household appliances too, they've got no chance there.  They dominate the tablet arena, but if you're trying to tell me that you think they're going to reach $900 on tablet sales, I've got some swampland I'd like to sell you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Quintious 

 

On what growth?  Phones?  The new Samsung phones are coming out in a few months.  Word on the street is that Apple got so uptight with how Siri needed to be managed that the company that powers it (Nuance) went and built a whole new virtual assistant with a lot more functionality that wasn't strictly leased to Apple, and Samsung is on board.  The Motorola phones are going to be coming out with the beta of Project Glass.  It's a minefield there.

 

It certainly can't be laptops.  I don't care how loyal some consumers are to Apple, the people who have the means to shell out 9 grand for a laptop just because it has a high-res screen aren't large in number.  They've never been a strong player in the desktop field, at least not this century.

 

That leaves what?  Tablets and TV's?  Samsung and LG are *already* out with the new Smart TV's with the voice recognition capabilities and integration into the rest of the house's voice controlled appliances (I just bought one; it's fabulous).  Apple hasn't even announced they're gonna try to dip a toe into that arena and, unless they're going to get into household appliances too, they've got no chance there.  They dominate the tablet arena, but if you're trying to tell me that you think they're going to reach $900 on tablet sales, I've got some swampland I'd like to sell you.

Wait about 5-10 years until these are in all city public schools...Yeah, Apple's screwed 

Quote:

Originally Posted by johndoejohndoes 

Wait about 5-10 years until these are in all city public schools...Yeah, Apple's screwed 

No one said that Apple's screwed. This is really more of a one times sales thing and it doesn't change that fact that Apple already controls the tablet market. The sales to schools (which are for the most part, one time investments since most schools now have a 10 year upgrade policy on technology. Source: Me, I used to IT for a public school district and the policy was no upgrades for 10 years on working computers acquired after 2008) are just maintaining Apple's growth expectations.

Apple is projected to sell more than 60 million iPad's this year. Assuming that every single public high school in the US bought an iPad for every single student at the school, that would only be a little under 15 million iPads (The last school enrollment census was gathered in 2009 but it's still relevant http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0216.pdf)

So, again, even if every single US high school bought an iPad for each student and kept that set for let's say 5 years since iPads will probably need to be replaced faster than computers, that would only be 1/4 of Apple's sales in one year. And more importantly they'll only make that purchase once every 5 years while Apple is expected to sell 100 million iPad's in the 2013 year due to entry into foreign markets (mostly China) so 15 million sales =/= stock to $900.

I am here to correct misinformed and inaccurate posts. I am long AAPL. Don't be fooled by journalism. Their job is to find stuff interesting, exciting, and controversial. This would probably be the latter since it raises the question as to why schools would buy iPad's and then layoff teachers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chhansen 

 

No one said that Apple's screwed. This is really more of a one times sales thing and it doesn't change that fact that Apple already controls the tablet market. The sales to schools (which are for the most part, one time investments since most schools now have a 10 year upgrade policy on technology. Source: Me, I used to IT for a public school district and the policy was no upgrades for 10 years on working computers acquired after 2008) are just maintaining Apple's growth expectations.

 

Are you saying that schools get 10 years out of a computer? I find that amazing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BobK 

 

Are you saying that schools get 10 years out of a computer? I find that amazing.

It's the policy for new computer purchases after 2008 since you can get cheap hardware that is relatively good enough for school applications (word documents, research). It's not like they're playing 3D games or anything. The computers in one of the labs at a high school were purchased in 2002 and were still there when I left in 2010 so I can confirm that they can milk 8 years out of crappy computers. Who knows, maybe the new computers I set up there will last them more than 10 years. Maybe not.

The one exception was the media lab for AP 3D Art Design, Video Production, AP Comp Sci. That media lab purchased brand new iMac's last year right after I left so I don't know about how long they intend to keep them but at $1000 a pop (after education/bulk discount), I can't imagine them using them for anything less than five years (tech budget was a joke, but as I said, the computers are used for basic applications other than the media lab so it's not like they need the newest/fastest system on the market). 

Edit: Oh yeah I forgot to mention that schools with high tech budgets are already switching to iMac's and Mac Books because they are "safe" and "virus free" (new information to some. old to others). I don't agree with the reason for the switch but it's not my money so yeah, Apple is printing money everywhere. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-suit-judge-samsung-must-042237095.html

summary:  US court is ordering Samsung Electronics Co. to halt sales of its Galaxy 10.1 tablet computer 

Quote:

Originally Posted by chhansen 

Disclaimer: Long AAPL in my long term account but I short AAPL all the time in the my trading account

 

yes you can go on and knit pick, I dont think you understand what I was saying. Anyway, quick question, why are you long and then short at the same time? lol, i will never understand this logic...

If you want to play blips in the stock price just buy puts if you think it will go down and calls if you think it will go up (and you can guess when by the expiration date), lol, are you making good money shorting like that? just curious, I never would be long and then short

Quote:

Originally Posted by epoch707 

 

yes you can go on and knit pick, I dont think you understand what I was saying. Anyway, quick question, why are you long and then short at the same time? lol, i will never understand this logic...

 

If you want to play blips in the stock price just buy puts if you think it will go down and calls if you think it will go up (and you can guess when by the expiration date), lol, are you making good money shorting like that? just curious, I never would be long and then short

I manage investment accounts that have AAPL in them. These are long term investment accounts that are long only and I don't touch them because.... well they are investment accounts, not trading accounts. I play options in my personal trading account and for the last few weeks all of my AAPL plays have been puts and shorting calls which has brought me a some great returns, especially last friday when I called out my short AAPL call spread play in the chat room here at HSM which netted me a nice $2000.

But so, this is why I clearly said long in my long term account and short in my trading account. If you are questioning why I don't sell AAPL and then short it in my long term account and why I am buying puts in my trading account then you obviously don't understand the difference between investing and trading. In this case, the logic will come to you with time and some more learning, but since I am an unassuming person I will just leave it at you were unaware of this situation about the accounts I manage and I did not make it clear enough that it was an investing account vs me playing puts in my personal trading account.

If you believe that I do not understand you that is fine. This is a public board and I have already corrected the inaccuracies in your posts for the viewers here that may have been confused by your FUD. I have already stated multiple time that I agree with you for the most part, but unfortunately your posts are misleading. This is not a pumper board, but I will treat your posts as such and I will not hesitate to correct inaccurate information. It's not just you so please do not take this as a personal attack. You may have noticed the post above where I explained about iPads in public high schools.

Regardless, have a good day.

Well this looks promising. Looks like Apple is the owner of this shape, can't imagine anything else on Earth looking like this besides the iPad, it's a pretty unique shape:

http://www.google.com/patents?id=6BsWAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

Can anyone upload graph?

Like this?