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trains, planes, iPads and MacBooks
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I?m typing this on my MacBook Air at 37,000 feet. It?s a coast-to-coast journey and I am watching CNBC as AAPL flirts with 400, AMZN breaks out to an all-time high, and NFLX and RIMM crater.
No insights, none whatsoever, from the CNBC talking heads. (?Can RIMM come back?? ?Will AMZN tab beat Apple?s iPad?? ?Can AAPL keep going?) Why bother? I?ll take a short walk instead. Up the aisle to the front, back to the back of the plane, then back to my seat in row 11.
On my Air again. (Gotta love that battery life!) So what did I see?:
Seat 2A: A grandmotherly-type is iPadding. (Let?s make it a verb!)
3 D and E: Two college kids, each on a new MacBook air.
6 E: Businessman on a decrepit Dell.
6F: iPhone-gaming teenager
8C: Kindle-reading Mom
8B: That Mom?s iPadding four-year old daughter
11A: MacBook Pro, with woman in serious business drag
14 B and C: Business guys with Asus and HP laptops
16A and B: Another two iPads.And so it goes?.for a total of 8 iPads , 9 PCs, 7 Macs, 4 iPhones or iTouches being used (countless others in pockets), 2 Kindles. Total: 30 devices, 19 by Apple. Not including my own Air, iPad and iPhone. Make that 31 devices total, and 20 by Apple: my seatmate just pulled out his white MacBook. On a fully loaded A320, seating 156. Originating, of all places, in SEATTLE. (And I didn?t even count the iPods!)
Perhaps as interesting as the numbers are the user demographics. The four-year old, and the grandma, were probably new to ?computing,? and will probably stick with the Apple brand for a while. The college kids, almost assuredly, have a long life of Apple purchases in front of them.
And the business types? They are coming over, slowly but surely. If you don?t think it can happen to the PC, take a look at the Blackberry. Heck, just look around you on any airplane, any airport lounge or waiting area, any commuter or long-distance train. (Esp. the Acela). Any college library, or high school, or elementary school, What do you see?
Do I travel in rarified circles peopled by the upper-middle class and the wealthy? Undoubtedly. (The non-iPod Apple device-to-people ratio among my circle of friends is probably above two to one, and climbing.) Will this trend take hold in middle and Wal-Mart America? I imagine so, or perhaps it already has.
And then there?s what the analysts so US-centrically call ROW ? rest of world. China. Brazil and Latin America. India. Europe. Thailand, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Israel, Egypt, the Emirates. Africa. (Sneer, then visit Capetown or Lagos or Nairobi.)
?We are only scratching the surface? in China, says TC. And they?ve barely begun in many, many other rapidly emerging economies. (Hello, Brazilian iPad plant.)
So here are my survey questions: As you travel the world or just commute to work, what are you seeing? On trains, planes, and cruise ships; in college libraries; in schools, in any place other than offices. Heck, even in offices.
?We are in the early innings of the mobile internet, and Apple holds the pole position,? says Morgan Stanley, mixing its metaphors but, uncharacteristically, nailing it on the big picture.
A mobile internet that has, and will continue, to create and destroy unprecedented and vast amounts of wealth. And this is only the beginning.
So whenever you are tempted to take profits on your APPL shares, remember this: MSFT?s market cap topped out at $640 billion. CSCO?s at over $500 billion.
Consider our AAPL, at $360 billion. Its growth is ACCELERATING.
Try to time and play those 5 or 10 or 20 or 50 point swings. Play the iPhone 5 invitation game, or the quarterly expectations. Look for that big score on options. And pay those regular income tax rates on your short-term gains or option profits.
No judgments here. Me, at least today, I?ll buy, hold, and sleep at night.
Good luck to all.
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One trillion or bust
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Great idea. I hope that as the member’s of the AFB travel, they contribute their observations as well.
[ Edited: 16 September 2011 11:01 PM by FalKirk ] -
So, your in-flight Wi-Fi’s good enough to actually let you watch CNBC online? Not too shabby.
Same for the Apple-using demographics. Nice observations.
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The Summer of AAPL is here. Enjoy it (responsibly) while it lasts.
AFB Night Owl Team™
Thanks, Steve. -
I do a lot of traveling. Just from casual observation I see a lot more of MacBooks and Airs these days than even a couple of years ago. Of course iPads are everywhere.
I also travel to Asia. The potential upside there is way under estimated by analysts. Apple products, not even counting what may be in the pipeline, has a long way to go to even approaching saturation. I am staying long.
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John Molloy
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Nope, Mav. was watching CNBC on JetBlue Direct TV.
JetBlue (is this a blessing or a curse? depends) doesn’t offer airborne wifi.
i uploaded this upon landing—along with the “My First AAPL investment” post ( which i heartily recommend. ).
Like I said, being on the cusp of a new high makes me nostalgic.
Falkirk, judging from the length of my recent posts, you may have found yourself a long-winded rival ! You are very smart, Maybe we should go in together on that blog!
[ Edited: 16 September 2011 10:27 PM by Xtra ]Signature
One trillion or bust
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You can watch cnbc live through the ameritrade app.
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Falkirk, judging from the length of my recent posts, you may have found yourself a long-winded rival ! You are very smart, Maybe we should go in together on that blog!
I’d love to! PM me.
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PurpleApple
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So here are my survey questions: As you travel the world or just commute to work, what are you seeing? On trains, planes, and cruise ships; in college libraries; in schools, in any place other than offices. Heck, even in offices.
I travel a lot in the U.S. I’m seeing iPads as >90 percent of the tablet market, based on airports and meetings in various cities.
I’m also seeing a spike in MacBooks and MBAs, but not as pronounced.
Anecdotally, I’m hearing from lots of professionals in other companies that they recently have switched to the iPhone and/or that their company recently began approving the iPhone as a company device.
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Great idea. I hope that as the member’s of the AFB travel, they contribute their observations as well.
I have commented about this in the past. Airports are an interesting place to just pay attention. I fly out of Atlanta and see Apple products on every flight. Whenever I pull out my Air I am always asked about it. I will engage in conversation if I overhear someone talking about buying an Apple product. I consider myself a traveling salesman who is compensated with yearly bonuses. :-D
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Adversity does not just build character, it reveals it.
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On his most recent podcast, Gruber was reflecting on an observation he made 4-5 yrs. ago about the prevalence of MB Pros (and later Airs) in tech conferences and gatherings. This happened even in non-Apple related confabs.
Scoble has also been saying this for some time and commented recently on G+ that Microsoft was going to have a hard time “getting them back”. Apple definitely has major mindshare among the technorati.
Even at Microsoft’s BUILD conference this week the iPad was given place of prominence as “the tablet that shall not be named”. At least Thurrott & MJ Foley along with Laporte didn’t dance around avoiding mentioning the iPad, but apparently Microsoft folks did. It was funny to hear a number of the developers say they immediately went out to buy iPads so they could better understand what they were competing against.
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At least Thurrott & MJ Foley along with Laporte didn’t dance around avoiding mentioning the iPad, but apparently Microsoft folks did.
I forced myself to listen to the Windows Weekly Podcast. Not bad. If you have any observations, it would be great if you’d share them on the thread discussing Microsoft’s new proposed Windows 8.
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Really, it did? Must be one of those protoypes!
iPad 3, The Ultimate Digital Lifestyle Companion - It Even Sits Down Next To You.?
:innocent:
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The Summer of AAPL is here. Enjoy it (responsibly) while it lasts.
AFB Night Owl Team™
Thanks, Steve. -
You be careful during that plane ride.
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The Summer of AAPL is here. Enjoy it (responsibly) while it lasts.
AFB Night Owl Team™
Thanks, Steve. -
Saw some old friends last night, and their soon-to-be 3-yr-old son was operating my iPhone like an old pro. Scrolling through photos and videos, navigating through the iOS, he can even change ringtones. I couldn’t believe it, seeing this little tiny finger do all those things. They said he’d been able to do that for quote some time.
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We filed for over 200 patents for all the inventions in iPhone and we intend to protect them. — Steve Jobs, 2007
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I just got back from a trip to Thailand and Cambodia. One thing I noticed was just how many people had iPhones and iPads. I didn’t see too many non smartphones, and just a few Androids or Blackberrys. In fact, one of the people I saw with a BB, pulled out a personal iPhone.
At a number of the tourist sites, I saw people taking photographs with their iPhone. At some, I even saw them using their iPads. As a photographer, the latter made me cringe. I’ve never thought of the iPad as a good device to take pictures.
Over all, I was quite surprised at the number of Apple products I saw. I also saw an authorized Apple dealer in the town in Cambodia (Siem Reap) where I went. A little ways up the street, was a large ad for an iPod Touch.
I made a few friends along my way…
To see my album of my trip, go to:
Thailand and Cambodia
