Apple Stock Expert Clem Chambers walks us through the market gyrations of the Nasdaq's leading performer...
Following the Leader
When you're one of the biggest companies on the stock market, you're not so much influenced by the market, you become the market itself. At two hundred dollars a share, Apple's market cap is $180,000,000,000. Even in the era of credit crunch and trillion dollar bailouts, this is a lot of money. Apple's price is zigzagging with the market as a whole. To get towards $300 a share will take a new wonder product to add to the stable of smash consumer electronic hits it's already had. Apple, like sister Job's company Pixar has to do the impossible and roll out mega hit after mega hit. So far it's done what no other company has managed to do: keep them coming.
Reinventing the Wheel
Is the Apple tablet going to be yet again another gadget so good you'd believe it was alien tech beamed into Cupertino? On the face of it, another touch screen netbook doesn't sound promising, but then neither did a solid state walkman, or yet another chunky PDA phone. The Apple formula is to transcend the basic tired idea and produce something that redefines the object and reinvents the agenda for that device type.
One of the ways it does that is with iTunes. Only Apple really understands paying for content. Most hardware companies pillage software people. Only Apple welcomes them and offers them a generous cut of the action for their product. Mobile companies don't get this at all.
Know When to Hold 'Em
So with the Apple tablet plugged into a verdant jungle of iTunes content fuelled by empowered and remunerated software developers, Apple could once again be onto a monster hit. If this happens the stok could head on up to $300 and past Microsoft in marke capitalisation. Yet it will be a fragile vertiginous price. Holding on until the release of the table would be the pro's move.
Clem Chambers is CEO of stocks and investment website ADVFN. For free real-time stock prices go to: www.advfn.com
