WTF MARKET?!?

Adios, dear friend. You invented the concept of the smart phone, and alas you only have enough cash to last 3 more quarters. It’s a sad story, and there are theories to why it’s happening but that’s not why we’re here. We don’t ask “why is it failing,” we ask “how can we profit off this?”

Well, it’s a long shot but it may be possible. If Palm (PALM) gets bought out by someone, you can always get in on that all-stock purchase. It’s possible… Someone like Research in Motion (RIM) can use a brand boost. Or one of the many electronic conglomerates with horrid smart phone operating systems can standardize their line with Palm OS. Hell, even Microsoft (MSFT) can use the brand to help promote Windows 7 Mobile. I personally think that one of these will happen, but when and by who is anyones guess.

In order to profit from this monumental tanking, you’ll have to guess what the sale price will be and try to buy in on that. It won’t be too bad though. I’m betting Palm will be a penny stock on the Pink Sheets within a year and you can always gamble when its 20 cents a share. You’re call, but I’ll probably wait until around then to pull the trigger and hope I didn’t miss my shot or waste some money.

Apple’s (AAPL) Snow Leopard was the talk of the town a few months ago. Good price point, nice updates, I can see why mac users were so happy. But I’m not too sure it converted many Microsoft (MSFT) Windows users over. I think they were waiting to see if Windows 7 was worth all of the hype, or better said, could make up for Vista’s flaws. And sorry to say to the Apple fan-boys out there, but it can.

The speed is great. I have it on a low powered Intel (INTC) Atom netbook and it boots up faster then every copy of Snow Leopard I have seen. The requirements are so low that the same copy can run on a NASA super computer, a netbook or your average desktop PC. The interface is finally on par with a mac, and best of all, you don’t have to move all of your over to a Mac (regardless of what the Mac commercials make it seem like, upgrading from XP to 7 was easy.)

It also costs a lot less. Yes, Snow Leopard IS CHEAPER THEN WINDOWS 7. But if you are converting from PC to Mac, you won’t be spending the $40 for the OS. You will be spending between $1,000 and $2,000 on an iMac, iBook, or something iExpensive. If you have a PC, you can buy Windows 7 for the $100-$300 price point depending on what you are looking for and that is that.

Its not that I hate Apple or Mac’s or anything of the sort, I just think Windows 7 is a killer on their campaign to bring over bitter Windows users.

So Microsoft (MSFT) recently banned about 1 million XBOX 360 consoles from their highly popular XBOX Live network. But can you guess how many XBOX Live accounts were banned? The correct answer is the big goose egg, 0. So that leaves 1 million XBOX Live users without XBOX 360′s to play on. What a shame! Those poor users will be without any gaming just as the biggest game of the year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, comes out AND the holiday season!

If you are like me, you are probably a touch excited right now. Calm down, there’s still time. Plenty will benefit from this well orchestrated attack. Obviously the head conspirator, Microsoft will benefit… probably a -ton. Who sells these consoles? Best Buy (BBY), Amazon (AMZN), Wallmart (WMT), Target (TGT) and Toys R Us (TOY) to name a few. 1 million consoles will most likely be repurchased at these retailers. These are the gamers who were stealing games too, so expect an influx of games to be purchased as well. Ohh if only Gamefly was public…. that would be nice.

That also leaves 1 million hacked XBOX 360′s for sale. Look on craigslist or ebay… its slammed with “Banned XBOX 360″ listings everywhere. And they are moving. So that is about 1 million NEW XBOX 360 owners that don’t intend on playing online. Maybe its for their kids, maybe its for a basement party room with no internet, I don’t know. It doesn’t really matter. That’s 1 million new people ready and rearing to buy games, even if they can play copied games I can guarantee you that about 75% of them will have no idea how to do that. When they get bored of playing that stack of old games their hacked console came with, they will be buying more games. I like Electronic Arts (ERTS) for this since sports games are great single player games and great for kids.

Now I must address this class action filed against Microsoft. What they did was perfectly legal and they probably won’t lose. It’s a subscription based service with a clear set of rules. You violate, you’re done with no questions asked. They didn’t disable the console, just prevented it from using their service. Yes, this probably will cost Microsoft some money to make it go away as they will probably pay a small settlement to shut people up. Hopefully, this will drive them down a few points making for a nice slope to start your buying in.

So all in all, very smart move for Microsoft and whatever other players were secretly involved in this. It may have pissed of 1 million gamers, but plenty of investors will be rolling in cash come first quarter 2010. I’m hoping some of them are said angry gamers but as long as I make a quick buck, who cares.

It’s official:  Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) are no longer an item.  Google has been cheated on and then dumped.   What a shame.   Que Suerte.  The real shame may be how if Apple’s hot new replacement turns out to be shallow and empty, they will be ed.

It started with the long awaited arrival of Google Voice.  Then that lead to either AT&T (ATT) or Apple banning it from the app store.  No one knows why it happened; we just know it sucks (http://mashable.com/2009/07/28/google-voice-banned/.)

A scorn Google is no one to mess with. Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt leaves the board at Apple (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2009/10/arthur_levinson.html.)  This is starting to get ugly.  Crime-drama ugly.

Now Apple buys Placebase, a mapping company (http://www.maclife.com/article/news/apple_buys_placebase_internet_speculates_use) finalizing the breakup.  But does Apple really need to do all of this?
Yes, they have plenty of cash on hand to stay through the down times, and yes, they are solvent enough to take on a fully fledged battle with the Google juggernaut.  But I believe their former alliance with Google played a big part in OSX taking ground on Windows Vista.  Even if people didn’t know it existed, it still gave Apple a big usability, speed and performance boost.  Now with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 7 launched, I predict Apple will have a huge WTF?!? moment on the horizon as shares take a tumble with a probably newer, lower baseline.