[geeks] Article: Sun's not so cheap trick doesn't work

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 09:22:35AM -0500, Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
>Look at all the times Apple have had to tell their board and stockholders
>to kiss off so that they could release something new and different.  A
>company without that sort of history usually can't pull that off, so
>they're cornered into doing stupid things to make short-term profits and
>bounce the stock price.

It's funny that you mention Apple. IMHO Apple has a big problem. The
computer divison used to be it's big profit division, now it's small
compared to the iPhone/iPod/iTunes business.

So if Apple is going to invest a $1 in R&D it is likely to see more return
on investment (ROI) for a $1 spent on the iPhone, etc divison than the computer
division. Eventually the stockholders will realize that force managment to
concentrate on those products and their Windows support.

iPods and iTunes work fine under Windows and I don't know if iPhones interface
with it or not. Expectation that people buying iPods, iTunes and iPhones would
convince them to buy a Mac, and either convert some or all of their functions
to MacOS has not been realized. 

If Apple wants to be continue being a computer company it will have to
split off of the iPhone, etc company. 

>Unfortunately, being a great creative company (like Sun used to be, and is
>trying to be again) means swinging from feast to famine and (hopefully)
>back again.  Wall Street doesn't seem to understand that you can't
>consistently duplicate, for example, the demand of UltraSPARC-II servers
>in 1999 whenever you want to.  No one saw that coming.  Because it isn't
>happening again doesn't necessarily mean Sun is doing something wrong; it
>may, in fact, mean that Sun needs to do something completely different[0]
>to ride the next big wave.

Wall Street is too busy panicing about the free fall in stock prices, mostly
caused by the panic about the free fall of stock prices, to think. It's
hard to predict what they think or panic over, most hi-tech stocks have 
gone down, but not "tanked", while some have "tanked" and a few have gone 
up or stayed stable.

Personally, I think this will be good for startups. As more and more 
"blue chip" stocks become speculative in value, speculative investments
such as startups become more attractive. If you think that there is a good
chance a $100 stock will be worth $5 in a year, you will be more willing
to invest $100 in 20 different $5 stocks, and hope that one will pay back.
And the numbers are with you, the failure rate of start-ups is around 19:1.
(3 out of 4 in the first year).

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM