Apple under performs the index

The nerds of NASDAQ managed to only add 6 odd points, but is still the outperforming market in the US year to date, up 23 percent plus. And without the help of Apple inc. which is nearly 13 percent lower on the year. Apple has a market cap of 422 billion Dollars, twice the size of food giant Nestle. Wow, that is sizeable. On the list of global businesses listed in the US, Google is in third place and within a whisker of 300 billion Dollars in market capitalisation.


No wonder that "investors" only want to pay less than a 8 times multiple for Apple inc. on a less cash basis. That certainly sounds too cheap, even if the Apple 5C (is C for cheap?) does not to the same very clever analysts. They are clever, I do not mean that facetiously and would hate to suggest that the collective have got this one wrong. But the point that I made last week about the newer entrants to the emerging markets is important. And even in the US, the original market for Apple, they are not the dominant force. There was an interesting article in the Business Insider (Apple Made One Thing Clear: It Doesn't Care At All About Winning Smartphone Market Share) that suggested that Tim Cook was either greedy or shrewd. He is greedy because Apple has so much cash, why should he (and by extension the company and their shareholders) care so much about the margins now. Should they not be chasing market share?


The one thing that Apple has that is very different from all of the other phone manufacturers is that they own the whole lot, from the start all the way through to the end. And they (Apple) lock you as the user into their ecosystem. Once you enter those credit card details, you are on a one way track to enjoying some fabulous applications and songs, and sharing (across your devices of course). Not to say that the Android user experience isn't great, but the truth is that Google doesn't own all of it. I would prefer Google to own it all, but for the time being their beautiful phones are are coming. I am not too sure what a Google branded beautiful device would do to Samsung, or Apple for that matter. For the time the smartphone devices (profits) is a two horse affair. Of course we will wait and see what transpires, I suspect consumers will adopt the lower and higher end products. You cannot lie about the quality of the product to the customers.