Technovia

The effect of rumours on Apple's share price

John Gruber takes Duncan Riley to task over his story about an "$800 MacBook", which, of course, proved to be pants. I largely agree with John, although I still think that it's worth asking the question of who benefits from a rumour like that (it certainly wasn't Duncan), but it's worth putting to bed one of John's claims:

"Riley is the one and only source for this $800 laptop rumor, it wasn’t even close to true, and it is dominating post-event news coverage and quite possibly a significant factor in Apple’s stock price dropping 5 points on the day."

While it's true that after the Apple announcements Apple's stock dropped, it's worth remembering that in the aftermath of Riley's story, Apple's stock rose. Take a look at the chart and you'll see that on the 10th, when the NASDAQ was largely flat, Apple rose by five - something that could be attributed to Riley's story and the follow-ups by various analysts.

So, while the expectation of a cheaper product might have contributed to a fall in Apple's share price post-announcement, that fall simply wiped out the gain that the rumour had caused in the first place.

New Apple laptops... nice, but not overwhealming

As usually happens, my first thought when reading about Apple's new laptop range was "hmm... must buy!" And, as often happens, after an hour or two I'm much more ho-hum about them.

Who gained from the $800 MacBook rumour?

Don't you find it interesting that at a time when Apple's stock price was going into the toilet (like everyone else's), a rumour emerged about low-priced MacBooks? A rumour which analysts picked up on, and which thus protected Apple's share price from falling any further at a vulnerable time.

And now it seems that rumour was not necessarily true, but as the whole market has gone up it doesn't matter half as much.

So here's the question: Who would benefit from a rumour like that being spread at that particular time? Someone started that rumour, after all...

Joe Wilcox on Google's potential ace

Apple Watch - iPhone - God Phone Meets the Devil:

"What about the Google focus? The phone offers single sign-on to Google's plethora of online services, including Calendar, Contacts, Gmail, Google Talk, Maps Street View and YouTube. Suddenly, the hodgepodge of Google applications and services has a single point of connection and synchronization. If this mechanism works, and well, then the G1 and other Android-based phones will be powerful data and telephony devices out of the box.

As I've blogged before, sync is the killer application for the connected world. In 2007 I warned: 'If Google gets synchronization right before Microsoft, it's game over.' Ditto to Apple. Google's sync magic requires no PC."

As I've also posted, sync with no PC required is a huge feature. A phone which never has to connect to a PC is much more powerful than one which does.

What matters most about the T-Mobile G1: no PC required

Me, for Mobile Computer Mag:

"This is clearly a window into Google's view of the future – and it's a scenario that probably keeps many Microsoft executives awake at night. Microsoft's strength has always been the PC, and much of its marketing and technology has been geared to the idea of having a PC on every desktop. After all, Microsoft's Office and Windows franchises – the company's cash (sacred) cows – depend on it."

Both Microsoft and Apple see the mobile phone as an adjunct to the PC. Because Google has built the software inside the T-Mobile G1 to sync only with its servers in the cloud, this model is broken. The mobile phone gets set free.

Within a few years, I can see a large chunk of people not having their own "personal" computer, but instead relying on their phone for email, web, social networks, and so on. Oh sure, they'll use PCs - but why would you need your own when all your data lives in the cloud, and you can access that from any machine?

Could Apple's attitude to developers get any worse?

On the day that Google launched something with a rather different approach, this little gemcomes to light:

"Aparently [sic], Apple has now started labeling their rejection letters with Non-Disclosure (NDA) warnings:
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE"

So Apple's solution to the issue of developers being unhappy about their applications being rejected on spurious pretexts is to try and stop them talking about it to anyone?

It's this kind of crap that makes me want to make the Mac I'm typing on my last. There has to be way which supports neither convicted monopoly abusers or control-freak obsessives.

Two reasons why this is NOT an iPod Nano

Jason O'Grady links to a picture of a supposed iPod Nano, but I'm going to call "fake" on this one. First of all, as Jason points out, "why would a screen film manufacturer have a real, live 4G nano to photograph?" Answer - they wouldn't.

But secondly, look a the use of the font on the click wheel. That "Menu" looks out of proportion to the click wheel itself - it's far, far too big. Compare it to the "MENU" on the current iPod nano and you'll see what I mean.

Time to give MobileMe another go

I'm told by people who I trust that MobileMe is now performing as it should, so I'm going to give it another week's trial and see how it goes. Will it really be "Exchange for the rest of us" this time? Tune in in seven days...

Next quarter may be good one for Apple in European smartphone market

While the iPhone has been the big smartphone hit in the US, in Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) Nokia continues to lead the pack, with a market share figure of 71.2% according to the latest figures for Q2 2008 by Canalys.

BlackBerry-maker RIM and Windows Mobile specialist HTC are in second and third place, with 7.2% and 7% respectively. Motorola and Samsung follow these two with 3.4% and 3.2%, while "Others" - including Apple - combine together to reach 8%.

However, it could be good news for Apple next quarter:

"Both HTC and RIM have been making steady progress toward the one million shipments per quarter mark in EMEA and are now very close to each other in market share terms, but it is possible that they will be overtaken by Apple in Q3 following the launch of the iPhone 3G in many countries in the region."

That, of course, implies that Apple will go from a market share of less than 3% to over 7%, which would be impressive growth. It would also be an indication that the iPhone has really arrived as a worldwide competitor.

The two form factors for phones

Davey Winder on the BlackBerry Bold versus the iPhone:

"Having lived with an iPhone for some time, and being in possession of relatively fat fingers, I beg to differ. It is all too easy to slip up on the virtual iPhone keyboard and not get rescued by the often irritating auto-correct system.

The tactile feedback of a proper, albeit shrunken, keyboard makes for more efficient text input even for the fat fingered amongst us."

Davey makes a good point. I'm a small-fingered guy, and I'm now at the point with the iPhone's on-screen keyboard where I can thumb-type as well as I could with my old BlackBerry 8800. But for lots of people, the iPhone keyboard just doesn't work for anything other than hunt-and-peck with a single finger, which makes it much slower than a BlackBerry.

That's one of the reasons that I think the smartphone market will shake out to two main forms, and probably two manufacturers: the keyboard-less iPhone-style design, which focuses on browsing and video; and the keyboard-based BlackBerry-style, which is more focused on email and text. Which is right for you will depend not just on your needs, but also your fingers.