Agree: COST EFFICIENCY gives birth to the NEXT BIG THING all induced by the 2nd Greenspan earnings recession. The question is, what can we see out there that we know creates efficiency and productivity gains that at the same time is CHEAPER and thus COST EFFECTIVE to the way we do business now? I just can't imagine anyone wanting to be tied to a telephone cord anymore, that means wireless or cordless and that is still a wireless LAN local Area Network or Wireless WAN wide area network or just plain WIRELESS cellphone. Cutting the Cord, cutting the cable, creates MOBILITY and INCREASED FREQUENCY OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION, this with or without a study to get the actual measurements is just common sense more productive...you do not have to run back to that desktop telephone to answer it, TIME IS MONEY even if its just measured in footsteps and not yards, or miles. The same with the desktop or even booting and lugging aroung laptops and notebooks. That is why just seeing the SAMSUNG 1300 PALM enabled smartphone for $500 like the Kyocera PALM Smartphone for $400 on CNBC I can see this productivity and cost effectiveness. While I still see a market for complex software, CRM and databases like Oracle and the like, I think networking and operating systems may still move to the free stuff, like LINUX and APACHE (I currently do not own any of this stuff, did, but now don't) which means tougher times ahead for MSFT and SUNW and IBM I beleive as the SERVER becomes more and more a dinosaur and client server, that is slave master CENTRALIZED computing becomes extinct. Outsourcing and plug ins, network appliances whether SUNW can make more JAVA virtual machines and appliances out there is the question for them, and I think they will, but not on their server end. Same for IBM. So what else can be outsourced? STORAGE like NTAP and still EMC but the price point favors NAS networked appliances and that means NTAP. I think CRM will emerge big, but so far I do not think America at least will go for rented software and see no immediate future in Application Server Platforms ASP and the like, we like to own, not rent, but we like to own cheap at rental price levels, with upgrades. That is the psychology. So while I think SEBL and the like will do well, I am not buying in to them yet, nor ORCL yet, nor SUNW yet, not MSFT but not RHAT either, or at least not yet. What else is out there, well that depends on how the multinational CPA firms do, on offering additional banking and professional services, but they could all be replaced by the right software, which is not really 4G yet. On the recovery, there is the issue of CSCO, COMS, and NT and the like. After seeing the CA proxy fight I am glad I dumped CA last year.
This brings up my last point: SHAREHOLDER VALUE. I would avoid any stock that has a large CONTROL BLOCK since after the recession there will a temptation, quite human, for loss value CEOs to regain their loss opportunity options at shareholder expense or dilution, if you know what I mean. This alone will make me do some more DD or at least EDGAR SEC R&D, insiders can cannibalize their own companies on the road to M&A which activity will increase once the value, which is plainly there and VISIBLE now, drives consolidation and M&A, which is the other caution now. So I would stay with GROWTH Techs or GROWING new "lockup" techs.
I am,
Truly your$,
-Crystal Ball |
