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That's my observation also @scott. The surrounding stores pale in comparison. There are usually a number of people outside the Apple Store taking advantage of their wireless which will almost always beat the mall's free wifi.
...a company with core products that are so firmly entrenched in the marketplace that every household in America and around the world must have them...no matter what the price...
. "Went by the Apple store and it was wall-to-wall with people buying "
Just by chance, I passed by a authorized Apple Store here in the Philippines this afternoon. We are in a large city to the south. The store was full. This is in a busy mall setting.
Online consumers put a high priority on having a good ecosystem for their online life. Apple provides such a ecosystem.
. "Went by the Apple store and it was wall-to-wall with people buying "
Just by chance, I passed by a authorized Apple Store here in the Philippines this afternoon. We are in a large city to the south. The store was full. This is in a busy mall setting.
Online consumers put a high priority on having a good ecosystem for their online life. Apple provides such a ecosystem.
I still think we're going to be looking at a future where you want to focus on the companies making the experiences (or "ecosystem", I just like to call it "experience", as it becomes creating the day-to-day experience for people using the phone and building its usefulness in various aspects of someone's day-to-day life) for phones. With health and Apple Pay, you're starting to see Apple branch out into the experience more, which I think is a good thing.
The iPhone 6 sold like crazy, I think partly because of the tables turning back from Samsung after less-than-appealing offerings. Apple Pay also probably provided a compelling reason to upgrade, as I can't help but think that NFC will eventually be allowed to be used for more than just Pay. Lastly, I think you're seeing a move towards phones as a priority. Younger people are more focused on having their iPhone then things like fashion - which is why you've seen retailers targeting that audience (Abercrombie & Fitch, etc) do poorly. It's not "this, that and the other", it's this (which is phones/tech) being chosen over that and the other.
Still, I can't help but think that phase one is some degree of saturation for phone sales, while phase two becomes building out the experience/ecosystem more.
I don't know about Apple's ios at this point as I don't use my old Ipod Touch anymore, but I know Google Play is games, junk, photography, exercise, more junk and a ton of various social media. So much garbage, though. I think the app stores have to be curated a little better and possibly some encouragement (how I dunno) has to be made to create apps that are more day-to-day useful. I did find an app called "Word Lens Translator" the other day where you can hover the camera over words in other languages and it will translate them. Pretty neat. Wish I'd had that in high school Spanish.
It's not ios, but again, I gotta say, Android 5.0 ("Lollipop") is a really strong redesign of the user experience. Thankfully the prior Google phones are getting the upgrade, as Google thankfully made the decision for me not to upgrade from the very nice Nexus 5 by making the Nexus 6 gigantic.
@scott, you hit on the "experience" or the ecosystem as I called it and was thinking, if Apple and Android have achieved critical mass in this sector then they would be assured that x number of customers will participate in every upgrade cycle. That is of course all things being equal. These are the two major players with no other competition around.
Samsung is having problems for sure and their real competition is not Apple but Huwei ( I know that's misspelled). Another maker is Xomai ( another misspell) I'm bad on these names. Samsung will have to revamp to get back into the flow. I have heard some decent things about Lolipop.
@scott, you hit on the "experience" or the ecosystem as I called it and was thinking, if Apple and Android have achieved critical mass in this sector then they would be assured that x number of customers will participate in every upgrade cycle. That is of course all things being equal. These are the two major players with no other competition around.
Samsung is having problems for sure and their real competition is not Apple but Huwei ( I know that's misspelled). Another maker is Xomai ( another misspell) I'm bad on these names. Samsung will have to revamp to get back into the flow. I have heard some decent things about Lolipop.
Enterprise is the next stage for both.
The two Asian companies are definitely becoming formidable competition and Qualcomm (which has run into so much trouble lately) has invested (https://qualcommventures.com/investment/xiaomi/)
The other potential major leap is Google's Project Ara, which is a new smartphone with interchangeable pieces - if that takes off, then you're potentially not upgrading whole phones but have the ability to upgrade piece-by-piece as you see fit (new camera, new processor, etc.)
There was a Morgan Stanley report out yesterday saying investors are *massively* underestimating the Apple watch. AAPL is resilience personified. I am beginning to wonder if that will be the case until the watch is actually released around Valentine's Day?
Edit: deleting the last part because of being superstitious.
I love it ..... you noted: "deleting the last part because of being superstitious."
Nothing wrong with being a successful, superstitous investor, eh?
Take care, Catch
I deleted before Scott posted but I guess Scott was working on his post in the meantime. If you say anything positive about your positions, expect to be humbled very soon.
I understand about the anxiety or concern about waving a flag of success too soon into the challenge of stock picking.
As most are here today at MFO; there is something inside of all of us that presents our nature and viewpoint of investing a bit different in our thinking; versus the "lite" investor or typical investor or whatever the proper term.
From this house's first, early days online; beginning with AOL on March 3, 1997, I, as with many others found this whole new world. I didn't previously have this type of access through the company system; although working with computers and related technology always had my head turned towards technology in particular.
We made very good money on all of the following beginning sometime around 1997/1998 and going forward until about 2005. Most of these holdings were sold too soon.These stock holdings averaged about the 5% range of total portfolio holdings:
---AOL..... because, holy crap; there was always busy signals from the dialup modem and AOL was in a scramble to add new phone numbers for access. And AOL was packaged with every pc sales I ever saw.
---EBAY.....we were a very early seller/buyer on the system, before public stock offering. One helluva slick operating site and market niche......I was sold on this format very early. These folks were really light years ahead of this area, at the time.
---Nvidia.....because I liked their market position and there boards/chips were going into pc's everywhere
---Lionsgate.....after watching some of their early productions, we were impressed
---ClickSoft Tech.....CKSW.......I was familiar with this company via their exposure to helping companies streamline field service operations. They had many fits and failures for awhile and I thought we would lose the entire investment. But, they finally got things moving and more companies purchased their services. I don't recall exactly, but we purchased at about $.17/share in 2003. Today's price (adjusted for dividends and splits,etc.) is about $7.50/share.
Have stayed away from stocks since about 2005 (too busy to pay attention). However, and here comes the "hex" @Junkster; a current new holding from two days after its IPO birth is DPLO (Diplomat Pharmacy). I am very familiar with the quality of this organization from its early days in Michigan; and just had to make this move. The past few days have begun to find press releases and monitoring from some of the big houses. Institutional holdings appear to be at a minimum at this time.
Wearable bands are really taking off and there is a huge market for a more upscale version compared to the Fit band for example. The Apple watch is in that market group. This Christmas and the next will be huge for these new gadgets.
Comments
Can you believe that?
Just by chance, I passed by a authorized Apple Store here in the Philippines this afternoon. We are in a large city to the south. The store was full. This is in a busy mall setting.
Online consumers put a high priority on having a good ecosystem for their online life. Apple provides such a ecosystem.
The iPhone 6 sold like crazy, I think partly because of the tables turning back from Samsung after less-than-appealing offerings. Apple Pay also probably provided a compelling reason to upgrade, as I can't help but think that NFC will eventually be allowed to be used for more than just Pay. Lastly, I think you're seeing a move towards phones as a priority. Younger people are more focused on having their iPhone then things like fashion - which is why you've seen retailers targeting that audience (Abercrombie & Fitch, etc) do poorly. It's not "this, that and the other", it's this (which is phones/tech) being chosen over that and the other.
Still, I can't help but think that phase one is some degree of saturation for phone sales, while phase two becomes building out the experience/ecosystem more.
I don't know about Apple's ios at this point as I don't use my old Ipod Touch anymore, but I know Google Play is games, junk, photography, exercise, more junk and a ton of various social media. So much garbage, though. I think the app stores have to be curated a little better and possibly some encouragement (how I dunno) has to be made to create apps that are more day-to-day useful. I did find an app called "Word Lens Translator" the other day where you can hover the camera over words in other languages and it will translate them. Pretty neat. Wish I'd had that in high school Spanish.
It's not ios, but again, I gotta say, Android 5.0 ("Lollipop") is a really strong redesign of the user experience. Thankfully the prior Google phones are getting the upgrade, as Google thankfully made the decision for me not to upgrade from the very nice Nexus 5 by making the Nexus 6 gigantic.
Samsung is having problems for sure and their real competition is not Apple but Huwei ( I know that's misspelled). Another maker is Xomai ( another misspell) I'm bad on these names. Samsung will have to revamp to get back into the flow. I have heard some decent things about Lolipop.
Enterprise is the next stage for both.
The other potential major leap is Google's Project Ara, which is a new smartphone with interchangeable pieces - if that takes off, then you're potentially not upgrading whole phones but have the ability to upgrade piece-by-piece as you see fit (new camera, new processor, etc.)
http://mashable.com/2014/10/30/new-project-ara-prototype-works/
Edit: deleting the last part because of being superstitious.
Regards,
Ted
http://www.bidnessetc.com/29552-morgan-stanley-bets-on-apple-watch/
I love it ..... you noted: "deleting the last part because of being superstitious."
Nothing wrong with being a successful, superstitous investor, eh?
Take care,
Catch
I understand about the anxiety or concern about waving a flag of success too soon into the challenge of stock picking.
As most are here today at MFO; there is something inside of all of us that presents our nature and viewpoint of investing a bit different in our thinking; versus the "lite" investor or typical investor or whatever the proper term.
From this house's first, early days online; beginning with AOL on March 3, 1997, I, as with many others found this whole new world. I didn't previously have this type of access through the company system; although working with computers and related technology always had my head turned towards technology in particular.
We made very good money on all of the following beginning sometime around 1997/1998 and going forward until about 2005. Most of these holdings were sold too soon.These stock holdings averaged about the 5% range of total portfolio holdings:
---AOL..... because, holy crap; there was always busy signals from the dialup modem and AOL was in a scramble to add new phone numbers for access. And AOL was packaged with every pc sales I ever saw.
---EBAY.....we were a very early seller/buyer on the system, before public stock offering. One helluva slick operating site and market niche......I was sold on this format very early. These folks were really light years ahead of this area, at the time.
---Nvidia.....because I liked their market position and there boards/chips were going into pc's everywhere
---Lionsgate.....after watching some of their early productions, we were impressed
---ClickSoft Tech.....CKSW.......I was familiar with this company via their exposure to helping companies streamline field service operations. They had many fits and failures for awhile and I thought we would lose the entire investment. But, they finally got things moving and more companies purchased their services. I don't recall exactly, but we purchased at about $.17/share in 2003. Today's price (adjusted for dividends and splits,etc.) is about $7.50/share.
Have stayed away from stocks since about 2005 (too busy to pay attention).
However, and here comes the "hex" @Junkster; a current new holding from two days after its IPO birth is DPLO (Diplomat Pharmacy). I am very familiar with the quality of this organization from its early days in Michigan; and just had to make this move. The past few days have begun to find press releases and monitoring from some of the big houses. Institutional holdings appear to be at a minimum at this time.
Diplomat Google links
Ok, forget the "hex"........we warlocks have other offsetting abilities !
Catch