Research in Motion (RIMM) – 06-30-2010
Another big name, RIMM. I don’t see their business being in a very strong position with all the competition out there now, so this could be a decent short look. It’s kind of overextended already (already 10%), but it’s something to watch for entry points in the near future.
Research in Motion (RIMM) – 09-25-2009
RIMM has been under attack from AAPL, GOOG, MSFT, and PALM in the smartphone market and it’s finally starting to show in their numbers. Their days of complete domination appear to be over, so now they need to come up with a way to keep their current user base or expand the market. Fortunately for them, the market is rapidly expanding, but they can’t afford to rest on their laurels or they’ll end up needing a huge comeback like AAPL in 2000 (completed successfully) or PALM right now (TBD).
The volume of the drop today outpaced the breakout that brought us here, so it will be interesting to see what happens. If the market follows through with its correction, RIMM may be a nice short play. If not, it should at least be interesting to day trade on some bounce back days. Either way, all of these stocks are interesting to watch if you like tech stuff for the long run too.
Palm Inc. (PALM) – 06-19-2009
The first stock screen beginning investors implicitly learn is to think about the products and services they really like in their lives and look up whether the companies are public. Palm happens to be one of those companies for me now after spending some time with a Palm Pre. If you want a phone that lets you play games and listen to music, the iPhone is probably the only thing you should be looking at. However, if you’re like me and you want something as a personal organizer, email, messaging, web browser, etc. device, I don’t see how you could live without the multitasking Palm Pre.
I know I’m abnormal, but I always have at least a few different web pages loading and a couple conversations going on at the same time, which the Pre allows me to do seamlessly. Surfing the internet on the iPhone feels like going back to pre tabbed browser days. Is the Pre going to take over the smartphone market? Probably not — at least not in the immediate future. As much as the AAPL fanboys will hate me making this comparison, the iPhone is essentially the Windows of cell phones, and the Pre is a little mix of Ubuntu and OS X. Each have their technical advantages and disadvantages, but if you aren’t leaps and bounds above the competition it’s tough getting people to switch, as Apple has found out in their PC war. Fortunately for Palm, the turn over on phones is a lot quicker than on computers.
If Apple decides to stay AT&T exclusive, look for this race to get a lot closer much quicker. Also, pay attention to GOOG’s big surge of Android phones coming later this year, MSFT’s WinMo 7, and RIMM who’s starting to become a bit of a dark horse after dominating the market for so long. Of these companies, as a trader I would selfishly prefer that PALM or RIMM win the war, since dominating the mobile phone market would make a much smaller impact percentagewise to the bottom lines of any of the other gorillas. Other companies that are interesting are ARM and Imagination Technologies, since they make the chips that all of the phones are using right now, so any expansion of the market would be good for them. However, they’re both on the London exchange (ARM has an ADR under ARMH though). Expect more posts on the subject in the future…
Stock Market Analysis – 04-02-2009
Volume picked up a bit on a decent up day, showing that the bulls have some buying power left. A weak close left a little uncertainty for tomorrow, but that’s expected while we’re building a base. There’s a definite upwards creep, but we’ll have to see how the rest of this consolidation period goes. If it’s any indication, RIMM kicked off the earnings season with a great report, but the banks are the going to be the interesting ones to watch.