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Strategies & Market Trends : A.I.M Users Group Bulletin Board -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RFH who wrote (7277)	4/17/1999 9:22:00 AM
From: JZGalt	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 18928

OT, not AIM related <grin> Just don't know who the players are yet! Robert, Since you asked. The answer is simple. The players are the people and products you use. If your ISP is AOL and you are using SI and then get news from Yahoo and shop at OnSale and order books at Amazon or drugs via drugstore.com, then they are the ones to look at seriously. If you connect over a cable modem thru a CSCO router over LU backbone owned by WCOM, then... It may sound trite, but of the 25 million Americans that are online today, that leaves about another 150 million or so that will log on in the next 5 years. (Let's ignore a few billion Chinese at the moment). Do you really think that any one can just startup an internet presence from scratch now? Only smaller niches are yet to be built and things we haven't thought of yet. The internet is one of those wonderful areas where you have an enormous advantage over the analysts, because you use it. Just apply Peter Lynch's rules of buying what you know and use and apply the rule of technology where getting there first gets you the biggest slice of the pie even if you don't have the best stuff. The more interesting question is what is the next new thing that will attract the current users and the next wave of people that log on and what will be the next bricks and mortar company that can squeeze efficiencies out of being online. This week it was internet banking. A month ago it was internet advertising. Before that it was internet video (broadcast.com). Notice that Broadcast.com is already gone! Yahoo bought it with their inflated capital. Two ways to play internet expansion is to buy the AOL's and Yahoo's of the world and hold (not AIM them), or buy the internet infrastructure companies which is a bit more boring, but the winners and losers are already shaking out there. VTSS is a winner, PMCS is a winner, EMC, SUNW, CSCO, LU, UNPH and others are clearly going to be leaders in building the boxes and fiber optics for the internet. Pick your stock, they are all going to thrive for 3-5 years as the explosion continues. That's why they command these extraordinary p/e levels. BTW, my bet is on video over the internet as soon as cable modems and xDSL modems become the norm in high net worth individuals and companies. Why do you think Yahoo! bought Broadcast.com?? They were locking up the biggest player in the field. Consequently, I've started to put speculative money into FVCX (ouch!!), VSVR and VTEL. biz.yahoo.com The other place I've been playing is to buy the companies that make web based tools and digital documents. If everything is going digital, then you have to be able to take paper and create a document, manage those documents, have security of those documents and so on. Consequently I've been accumulating slowly DCTM, HYSL, IACO and MYSW. One last trend to think about. Wireless connections and remote applications. Now that the CDMA war is over and QCOM has won, how long do you think it will take for people to want their Palm Pilot (COMS, AHAA) to connect to the internet and download their portfolios into a spreadsheet which is on a remote server (CTXS), or back up their address book and meeting notes on an internet storage facility (LGTO, VRTS), or send faxes to someones e-mail (DLGC) other applications we can't think of yet. biz.yahoo.com Once you have all those people wireless and wanting digital transmission, then think satellites and information services off of satellites (ORB). Look at the forest, don't focus on the trees right now. ;-) ---- Dave PS, we can talk about e-commerce enablers at some other time. Can you say CHRZ?