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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Catfish who wrote (48994)	3/13/2001 2:40:01 PM
From: American Spirit	Respond to of 57584

The net will soon turn into the medium by which we download TV, movies, music, almost all information and entertainment. The big mistake was the dot-bombs thinking they could challenge the big boys and end up winners. Napster for instance. dead as a door-nail now. The profits going forward from the net will be not only in software and e-commerce (the Amazons and Barnes+Nobles of the world needing to raise prices so they can actually make a profit) but in content delivery, entertainment mostly, as well as yes B2B. The delivery systems (the pipe) will also be where the money is. There are three ways of delivering; phonelines, cable and satellite. So who ends up the winners there? I like the Baby Bells who will own DSL, as well as the cable providers. AOL-TW is just the first in some huge mergers which will take place leaving the world-wide net largely controlled by 4-5 mega entertainment-telco companies. The prices to buy up the missing pieces is now very cheap. T suffered greatly because it pounced first and at way too high a cost. But that will all settle after a year or two or three. LD is another wild card. The big telcos all want in now despite it's bad rap. But this is a global world and we're all talking much more to our brethren overseas. New paradigms will bring new ways of profiting from this. The problem the past few years for LD as well as e-commerce was that many companies were willing to lose money to gain market share and it was an escalating financial whirlpool. That's already changing. Companies I see as the mega powers of the near future: VZ, SBC, NT, T, AOL-TW, Disney-YHOO or VIA-YHOO, maybe SNE and DT and of course MSFT. IBM is in a position now to do massive gobbling up to control services. And will compete with EMC in storage. Finally don't count out ORCL, SUNW, JDSU and CSCO either. In all liklihood FON, WCOM and maybe even Q will cease to exist on their own. LU might even get bought out. Likewise Amazon, Yhoo, Elnk, Coms. Satellite wars should also start brewing. LOR being taken over is a foregone conclusion. Just a matter of making a deal. None of these takeover targets can survive on their own going forward but all have tremendous assets which other bigger companies can maximize profitably. All this will take time but my point is the collapse of the dot-bombs will eventually be of great assistance to the big boys in taking over the net-telco-entertainment-info world which will all be one. Wireless phones of course will also be a part of this. Personal communication systems. Expect NOK, ERICY and a few others to rebound. I don't know enough to comment on QCOM and the various next generation systems, winners vs. losers. One of the keys to all this consolidation is for interest rates to come down and stay down. That will allow the mega-corps to re-finance debt and take on additional debt. As deflation not inflation seems to be the problem now, look for Greenspan to finally cut down to historical lows. If you can borrow 10 billion bucks for 4.5% interest that's a huge incentive to start gobbling up the troubled little guys with the under-utilized gems in their vaults. In fact the takeovers will pay for themselves in many instances.