Keith,
It still took me a couple of weeks to get my iPhone from Verizon even though I ordered it very early in the process after it was announced so while there weren't lines with the other phones, there was a decent demand. Probably there were more people waiting for the 4S to be announced since it is still difficult, from my understanding, to get an iPhone through Verizon and the other carriers.
As to Cramer, when it comes to Apple, he seems to be contrary to what the stock does, at least that is what I am recalling. When he says buy, it seems like it is a time to sell and vice versa. He seems to jump on the Apple bandwagon after everybody else has.
Apple has continued to sell more computers when others aren't, their iPhone sales should be excellent this quarter since it is still hard to get by all accounts, the iPad continues to sell well( I see plenty of iPads out and about but have never seen another tablet besides a kindle or nook), they have guided to an excellent quarter and they are lagging the market the past couple of weeks. If they keep this up, I don't worry about the company in the short term. Long term, the things that give me pause is the passing of Jobs and the overall economy. I think another thing weighing on Apple's share price is the high price of an individual share. I think the share price gives a false impression that the shares are priced to perfection where in my estimation they are undervalued on a fundamental basis. Because of this, a stock split may be helpful to counter this impression if this is indeed part of what is holding the share price back. But I don't necessarily see Apple doing anything to help the share price besides continuing to try to grow the company.
With the guidance for a tremendous quarter this holiday season, here is an interesting article from Horace Dediu about Apple's predictions with actual results.
asymco.com
If this continues to hold, Apple is looking at a monster quarter.
The other interesting thing is that Apple is really a company that has an end to end solution for just about everything consumer, especially in mobile which is still growing significantly. It has the stores, retail/music/video, it has the computer with the phone and tablet as well as wireless solutions. It doesn't have the servers that is more on the enterprise end of things.
Neal |
