Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of PIMCO, the world’s largest Bond Fund, recently declared, “We’re Witnessing the Death of Equities.” Contrarians should take note as Gross made a similar calling 10 days before the previous major stock market bottom on March 9[SUP]th[/SUP] 2009. For Entrepreneurs and Venture… Read More
Author: Ed McKernan
"Death of Equities" = A Silicon Valley Revival
How the Apple-Samsung Duel Will Lead to Wintel 2.0
The High Tech Trial of this Century: Apple vs. Samsung may end up being the catalyzing event that advances the established PC Monopolists known as Wintel (Microsoft and Intel) into leadership positions in the new era known as the Mobile Tsunami. Not a chance you say? Consider that the Apple, Samsung War is one that will not be settled… Read More
The Coming Battle for AMD’s x86 Hidden Cache
Not yet a year into Rory Read’s term and the AMD board must be considering that the value of the x86 patents and engineering talent is worth much more than the stocks $3B valuation and easier to fathom putting on the auction block than continuing to sell $25 processors into the back channels of China and the Developing World. As I read… Read More
Qualcomm’s Moment to Re-Align Globally
Qualcomm has a nice problem to have: too much demand for its Snapdragon and 4G LTE baseband parts. How Qualcomm realigns its manufacturing strategy around this problem will determine whether or not they can breakaway from the ARM camp and go toe to toe with Intel. Last week Malcolm Penn claimed TSMC was too big to fail. Really? The … Read More
Intel Opens a New Front with ASML
Behind great humor often lies irony. In the midst of a struggle by the European Union to extract $1.3B from Intel in an ages old Anti-Trust case, the latter makes a strategic move to embolden the Dutch firm ASML to accelerate the development of 450mm and EUV and thus save a continental jewel. What now say EU? When disfunction and bankruptcy… Read More
Intel Goes Vertical to Guarantee PC Growth
A Bloomberg article from early July caught my eye as it portends further changes in the competitive mobile market landscape. Intel is now in the business of paying Taiwanese panel suppliers to ensure the supply of touch-screen panels for PC ultrabooks. In essence it says that to win in the PC market, Intel has to mimic Apple and go … Read More
Will Microsoft Go Thermonuclear?
Microsoft is in trouble. Many of you already know that. Steve Ballmer has one last opportunity to set the company on a growth path or they will retreat into IBM legacy mode… ala the post 1990s Lou Gerstner era. And so they introduce a large tablet-convertible in direct competition with their PC partners Dell and HP. The End Game is coming… Read More
The Black Swan that Catapulted Intel into 2012
Black Swan Events are not to be embraced, they are to be feared, if conventional wisdom holds true. And yet, the 2011 Black Swan that slammed the PC market (i.e. the Thailand Floods that wiped out a large part of the disk drive market) has turned out to be the key catalyst for reshaping the semiconductor industry in 2012 and 2013. Instead… Read More
The Apple and VMWare Alliance Threatens Microsoft (and Fabless ARM Camp)
The speed with which The Mobile Tsunami engulfs the old PC Market is just incredible. 18 months ago the tablet and smartphone markets were considered a Green Field of Opportunity for PC OEMs and chip suppliers to graze in for the next decade. The fences, however, are closing in fast as Apple continues to drive its iOS empire into new… Read More
Apple Will Build In America
As Apple races towards $200B in revenue, sometime in 2013 and perhaps $300B by 2015, Tim Cook knows it is in Apple’s best interests to start building a sizeable percentage of iPhones and iPADs in the US and soon. At the All Things D conference this week, Walt Mossberg asked Cook about Apple’s manufacturing presence in China and “if … Read More
Ncredible Nvidia