Steve,
You are missing two gigantic points as to why your logic is somewhat flawed, at a minimum for the next 3-4 years.
1. Yes, people will continue to subscribe to AOL, even if there are clearly better alternatives. What do they have, 14 million subscribers? AOL's software is so simple to use compared to MSIE and Netscape. With the growing illiteracy of this country, and the remaining old people over 35 who did not grow up using computers, AOL will remain as the Internet for Dummies. They will not want to change their software that they know. They will not want to have to change e-mails. It is strictly the technically literate who will change out of AOL, or not subscribe in the first place. There should be plenty of room for growth in this area, and also plenty of reasons to maintain their subscriber base, especially among the older folks and non-technical folks.
2. So DSL is 25% of the Net by 2002. That's still 4 years away, and is still a minority of the market. If that was the case, this stock should be good for at last 3-4 more years, possibly longer if they don't start losing market share/profits until 2002/2003.
Regards,
G |
