Ovum Holway Hotnews 21st Dec 06

Reproduced from Ovum Holway Hotnews
21st Dec 06
What I’d like for Christmas 2007

Many readers will have attended the annual Techmark Review debates between myself and Richard Kramer at Arete Research which were organised by Deloitte. Unlike Arete, I’m not a “stock picker”. Indeed we at Ovum are not regulated to give any kind of financial advice.
At the end of the debate in Jan 04, we are both asked for our stock picks for 2004 and I rather rashly (and with all the legal caveats I could muster) suggested that I’d put my money on Apple whose share price then was $10.

At the next session in Jan 05, Kramer and I had some interesting public repartee about this as Apple had risen to $32 by then. Was it too late to name Apple again as a Stock Pick for 2005? We settled on Kramer buying a lunch for the Ovum team if Apple rose still further in 2005.
Apple ended 2005 on $71 and Kramer royally entertained us!
It really seemed to be pushing my luck to suggest Apple as a Stock Pick for a third year. But that’s what has happened with Apple now on $85.

Interestingly I note that analysts are now setting a target of $110 for Apple for 2007.
I really will leave the stock picking to others better qualified than me. But as a life long Apple fan, I have to admit that I can see few rivals around that are likely to knock Apple off its unrelenting growth path right now. I see no rival to the iMac in my living room. Indeed as an entertainment centre in the Holway household, powering our 50 inch plasma screen where I show my photographs and videos all edited by Apple’s iPhoto and iMovie and playing my iTunes music around the house, it always provokes envy from our visitors – many of whom have gone right out and bought the same setup. Next year we will see iTV being shipped which seems to me to be the right product at exactly the right time. I don’t see Microsoft’s Zune being even making a dent in the iPod market. Apple reports continued growth in iTune downloads and the video part of this is only in its infancy.

Personally what I’d really like for Christmas 2007 is an Apple iBlackberry. I might then get my ultimate Martini Moment; doing everything I can do with my Apple setup at home “Anywhere and Anytime”