Comments on: Beyond iPhone – Apple (AAPL) is a long term buy

By: Journey To Financial Freedom

Journey To Financial Freedom — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:52:06 +0000

Carnival Of Investing # 57 is UP!!!…

PS : First of all, I would like say sorry for the late posting for this week’s Carnival of Investing due to the internet connection problem with my PC. But now everything is clear.

Below is the submission for this week:

What Increases Your Home&…

By: Frugal

Frugal — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:57:29 +0000

The power of Apple is its consumer appeal. Apple has leveraged its power on iPod and made the iTune the dominant music download site. Both powers from the physical platform and the website are actually reinforcing to each other.

I expect them to use similar strategies to strengthen their business.

Their pricing strategies will need to account for iPod too.

Certainly, to get the latest and the coolest products you always need to pay up. I expect Apple’s phone to go down in price. In fact, if you look at their iPhone, there is no components that will be very expensive relative to competitors’ solution. LCD screen of that size is dirt cheap. And whatever default memory that comes with iPhone, they will probably make it as one of the pay-up distinction between different models. Eventually, they probably will add the SD memory slot, but only until the competitors come in strongly. The rest of the components in the iPhone are pretty much standard (except 802.11). So Apple will have an extremely sweet profit margin from iPhone like iPod. Even when priced at the same price with yet-to-be competitors, Apple will come out ahead due to its consumer appeal.

Can’t wait the stock market to correct. I truly think Apple is a long term buy.

By: Andy

Andy — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 15:27:02 +0000

While I do think that Apple is a good long-term investment, I don’t foresee the iPhone becoming the next incarnation of iPod. There are a couple reasons why I don’t think the iPhone is going to become the cultural sensation that is the iPod, here they are:
1) High price, even after a 2-year contract. People think they should get their phone for free, and I don’t think it will be easy to convince them to spend the extra cash for features that they may or may not care to use. Also, the industry treats cell phones as disposable devices (my last attempt to get a Verizon tech to look at my phone resulted in no less than 5 “you should upgrade”s before they even took the phone from me). How are they going to convince people to throw away a $500 device every year or two.
2) Cingular. By choosing an exclusive provider, Apple has limited their customers, many of which aren’t going to be sold on switching their cellular service just to be able to use a cool phone. I know I won’t be switching to a GSM-based service anytime soon.

I love Apple, but they are dealing with a completely different beast (the cell phone industry) this time around. And if there is any industry as corrupt (if not more) than the music industry, I would say it’s the cell phone industry.

By: Youngcash.

Youngcash. — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:16:27 +0000

As a student of economics and media i found this very useful to improve my knowlage of this market.
I find it interesting that you talk of the stratagies apple may use to possible enhance the iphone as the ‘portal’…over the new year i will be interested to see what apples stratagies may be and how other companies respond to theses.

By: moneymonk

moneymonk — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 21:07:54 +0000

I also think apple is a good buy.

Steve Jobs/Apple always stay ahead of the game among their competitors. Apple has never disappointed me, they always have good products.