Apple’s enterprise value

Many investors are puzzled about Apple’s stock price growth. In effect, Apple’s stock price seems to be greatly lagging its earnings growth.  Horace Dediu, writing on his blog asymco.com, offers a possible explanation that makes sense to me. He believes that the market does not understand how Apple has produce and sold its blockbuster products, iPod, iPhone, iPad, over the past few years. Each of these products seemingly came out of nowhere.

A disruptive company is inherently unpredictable. Success and growth are unrewarded because there no understanding of the underlying causes of these phenomena and therefore there is no expectation of repetition.

The entire article is worth a careful read if you are an Apple investor.

Disclosure: I am long AAPL.

Win an iPod Touch via the TSA

This real.

On National Opt-Out day (November 24), opt out of porno-screening at an airport, check in via Loopt, and you could win a free iPod Touch. Just check in and set a Tweet with the hashtag #touchedbyTSA to enter.

And enjoy this from Reason.tv:

David Pogue on the new iPods

David Pogue of the New York Times offers his review of the new iPods, available today in Apple retail stores.

… even though Apple commits itself to churning out new iPod designs every year, the 2010 crop includes a modestly improved model at a better price (the Shuffle), an exciting but risky touch-screen model (the Nano), and a home run (the Touch). (The high-capacity iPod Classic, with a hard drive inside and the last remaining click wheel, is still available, although Apple didn’t say a word about it at last week’s iPod coming-out party.)

Of course, the online Apple bashers will be jumping in with their own annual prose templates. (“Once again, Apple’s arrogance is on display as it forces the _____ lemmings to buy its overpriced ____-ware.”) And it hasn’t escaped the pundits’ notice that the market for stand-alone music players is no longer growing.

But the new iPods are still beautiful, smooth and a pleasure to use. Yes, yes, that’s the consensus every year — but isn’t that a good thing?

Disclosure: I own Apple stock.

Tech quote of the day

Image representing Steve Jobs as depicted in C...
Image via CrunchBase

[People] don’t want a computer on their TV. They have computers. They go to their wide-screen TVs for entertainment. Not to have another computer. This is a hard one for people in the computer industry to understand, but it’s really easy for consumers to understand. They get it.

– Apple CEO Steve Jobs, essentially comparing Apple’s approach to lean-back entertainment to Google’s.

We will see who has the better approach, but I am pretty much underwhelmed with Apple’s new Apple TV offering. I am probably on the industry side and would prefer more power and open options for accessing content. I will stick with a Mac Mini for driving big screen media.

The new iPods look great though and I am glad the iPod classic remains available.

Disclosure: As usual, note that I own Apple stock.

Apple media event today

At 1 pm Eastern today, Apple is hosting a media event to announce new products. For the first time that I am aware of, Apple will stream the event live on the Web.  Note you can only watch with the right hardware/software.

Apple announced that the stream will only be viewable on an OS X 10.6 Mac or an iOS device (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad). The reason for the limitation isn’t entirely arbitrary, as Apple is using a new streaming technology called HTTP Live Streaming which was introduced alongside Snow Leopard’s QuickTime X and iOS 3.0.

Steve Jobs: CEO of the decade

Fortune Magazine has named Steve Jobs CEO of the decade.  And he certainly deserves the title.

How’s this for a gripping corporate story line: Youthful founder gets booted from his company in the 1980s, returns in the 1990s, and in the following decade survives two brushes with death, one securities-law scandal, an also-ran product lineup, and his own often unpleasant demeanor to become the dominant personality in four distinct industries, a billionaire many times over, and CEO of the most valuable company in Silicon Valley.

Sound too far-fetched to be true? Perhaps. Yet it happens to be the real-life story of Steve Jobs and his outsize impact on everything he touches.

Apple slashes (existing) iPod prices (updated)

Apple today reduced the prices on their existing iPod line by $20 to $120, depending on the model.

At 1 pm today, eastern, Apple has a music related event at which new iPods are expected to be announced. I assume that the new models will replace the current models and the pre-reduction price. So, the price cuts are likely to be aimed at moving out the old product to make room for the new. The new iPods are rumored to include new features, including cameras.

Update: Apple’s online retail store is now offline. This is typical in advance of new product announcements such as that happening this afternoon.