Parchayi.com – Personal Finance Simplified

As soon as the event started the stock started dropping but picked up steam as the event went on, especially after the pricing was announced. As a stockholder I am happy with this device. It is everything that was expected at a cheaper price than expected. The most expensive version is $829, well under $1000 and the cheapest starts at $499.

However I’m slightly disappointed that there were no announcements other than the iPad. No new iPhone. No news about ending iPhone exclusivity. The good part was that the iPad is unlocked so you can use it with any provider, not just AT&T and the web browsing deal with AT&T is good.

As a consumer, I would wait for the iPad 2.0 because this version has no webcam, no real connectivity except wireless (aka not so hot for presentations, connecting to TV etc.) and no integrated memory slot.

I’m not sure how serious a competitor this is to the kindle because I’m not sure how many people use the Kindle’s data connection to download books. If the data connection is not that often used, then the $499 version is a serious threat to the Kindle because it is full color, has a bookstore and much more than the Kindle or other book readers can possibly offer. However I’m not sure how the display does while reading (it is 1024*768 = blah) as compared to the eInk display on most book readers.

Overall I’m happy with the pricing and options and I think the stock is headed up. But not up as much as if Apple would end exclusivity with AT&T and bring in Verizon (or Sprint, or even T-Mobile if they want to stick with GSM) on board for the iPhone and the iPad.

Oh and the device uses Apples brand new 1GHz A4 processor, a result of their acquisition of PA Semi. From the demo it seems like this is a perfectly capable processor maybe more so than the other 1GHz processor out there – Qualcomm’s Snapdragon. Maybe the next iPhone will run on one of these? If they can make this processor maybe they can switch Macs to their own processors in the far future?

Apple adopted new accounting standards so it took some back of the hand math to come up with expectations etc.

Computed Avg Expectation with new accounting: $2.45/share

Actual:  $3.67/share

My eyes popped out of my head (almost) when I saw the number. Luckily I added a few more shares just before trading was halted at $204. Trading resumes at 4:55pm. I would expect atleast a $10 jump if not a jump to $250.

Apple reported 15.6 billion in revenue way over the 12 billion expected. So Apple beat in both revenue and earnings and by a wide margin.

Apple Stock is up over 4% today after the company sent out official invites to an event on Jan 27. The invite only said “Come See Our Latest Creation”.

Speculation is that Apple plans to release a tablet PC, possibly called iSlate. However rumors are that Apple is also planning to sell eBooks on the device and is in talks with Harper Collins. Also rumors state that Apple’s terms will be better than the terms offered by Amazon on the Kindle.

Analysts already have predictions on the earnings potential of a so far not announced device at $1/share.

Apple is probably the only company that can create so much hype about an unknown future product. For all you know it could simply be an ebook reader. It is also expected that Apple will announce a new iPhone OS and a new version of iLife.

Should you buy Apple stock now? Maybe you should wait to see how revolutionary the new device is.

Disclaimer: AAPL stockholder here. But no Apple products.

Google (GOOG) announced yesterday that they may shut down their Chinese operations completely and the feeling amongst analysts is that this is more likely than not to happen. The Chinese search engine market is dominated by Baidu (BIDU) with Google a distant second. The announcement has caused Google’s stock to drop and Baidu’s stock to rise significantly because if Google drops out of China, Baidu will have nearly 95% of the Chinese search market. Yahoo operations in China are completely run by Alibaba, which is 39% owned by Yahoo and is a very small player in the search market.

In the long run this might hamper Google’s growth over the long term because China is the largest market in the world with significant growth potential for Google. However in the short term the effect on Google is minimal – a loss of somewhere between 300-600 million in revenue.

With their current position Google has really established their “Do No Evil” policy. Their reason for leaving is a connection between successful hacking attempts to steal intellectual property, censorship and targeting of human rights activists by the hackers.

Most multinationals don’t want to ignore the Chinese market inspite of rampant theft of intellectual property, blatant cloning of popular items and tight government control on everything because China is where the growth is. Maybe others will follow suit but it is unlikely.

As an investor, buy Google (I own 2 measly shares), buy Baidu.

I recently was in Bombay for a month. After 4 years Bombay is a totally different place. There is even more construction everywhere – the airport is being expanded, new flyovers, new metro under construction, new skyscrapers advertising everywhere, fancy highways and more giant malls than one can possibly imagine. 4 years ago there already seemed to be enough malls and no more space left for anything else but somehow the space existed. All good but this has caused Bombay to be significantly more polluted and congested. But pollution and congestion aside, you can see economic growth happening right in front of you. 4 years ago the airport was as bad a mess as a local train in Bombay and now it was a breeze getting through immigration.

It’s no wonder my investments in India were amongst the better performing in the last few years. I could see no signs of recession any more. There is still extreme poverty and it is even more visible when right next to a fancy glass mall and I don’t expect that to go away anytime soon. But more people can afford more things and I saw more fat people that I have ever seen in India – a definite sign of prosperity.

In fact I found a lot of things in India very expensive when compared to the US but that didn’t seem to stop people from buying things. No wonder so many multinationals want to be in the Indian market. Just major metros are giant markets and there is the whole rural market to grow into.

For those of you looking to Invest in India now you have at least four easy ways – IFN, IIF, INP and EPI.