It is finally coming, the iPad. Not anywhere near us down at the Southern tip of Africa, 12833 kilometres from New York, 16935 kilometres from the suburban city of Cupertino, where the Apple Inc. headquarters are. South of San Francisco. OK, so that is where it was thought up. Will the iPad replace the laptop eventually? I don't really know, will we start writing again on touch screens?
Everyone going lady gaga for the iPad, April 3 is the release date for the device. Check it out here on the Apple website. The company has a market cap of 213 billion Dollars. More than one and a half trillion Rands. Estimates are for the company to make around 11.80 Dollars worth of earnings per share this year. What would you pay for a company on that basis? Well at current levels, the share price is 235.32 Dollars. The stock trades on just less than twenty times forward earnings. Wow. 2011 EPS are around 14 bucks. Phew. And is the iPad that much of a revolution? Perhaps, we will see.
On the edge of the tea cup. The other understated handset maker is RIM, Research in Motion. Tea Cup RIM? They are the folks that make the Blackberry. You get Apple folk, Blackberry folk and then others. This company is 41 billion Dollars in market cap, massive hey? Yech, RIM with Q1 guidance that missed analysts expectations and the stock is down 4.6 percent as Byron fumes after dropping his Blackberry and it's screen broke in pre market trade. Yech. Poor Byron.