The market remains completely unready for wearables. Samsung was first to market with a smart watch but shipments of the Galaxy Gear have been pathetically low. Business Korea is reporting industry sources admitting to 800-900 units per day with a cumulative total of just 50,000 units. Had this device been available only in Korea, I...
The hype is peaking. Its time to sell. The hype around Snapchat has hit fever pitch this week with constant chatter regarding its spurning of the advances of both Facebook and Google. Snapchat is thought to have rejected an offer from Facebook to acquire the company for $3bn with Google having apparently offered $4bn. Snapchat...
Apps are now available but are they any good? The brave sailors at Jolla are about to start shipping their device and have managed to solve the apps availability problem. In this day and age, a smartphone with no apps is not much better than a paperweight. The number one reason why Microsoft smartphones...
BT’s win over Sky for the champion’s league highlights the crucial nature of sports. The value of broadcast rights is rapidly declining as many users are quite happy to consume content that has been time shifted. There are some emerging exceptions to this rule (see here) but the one real exception is sports. Users...
If Bing and Xbox are to go all the rest must follow. The debate is raging over what the future holds for Microsoft and whether it should become more focused or more effectively use the assets it has. Hence, there is a groundswell of opinion that Microsoft should slim down its activities and focus on...
At this price the highest quality investor should sell. Twitter enjoyed an incredibly strong debut, rising 73% above the offer price to close at $44.90. The headlines are now stating the valuation of the company to be $24.9bn but they are still using the wrong share count. The basic earnings in issue is 544m but this...
More effort is needed if Samsung wants its multiple to expand. Samsung is clearly frustrated that its share price remains flat despite reporting excellent results during 2013. Net profit in 2013 is expected to grow around 34% but the share price remains locked around the KRW1.5m level. This translates into a 2013 PER of 7.9x...
There is now nothing left on the table for shareholders. Expectations are that Twitter will price above the top of the already increased price range. This moves the shares meaningfully above my valuation before it even trades. Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter as a company. I think that it has steady growth secured...
I suspect that Fairfax has no rabbit to pull out of the hat. Close of US business is the deadline by which Fairfax must firm up its $4.7bn ($9 per share) bid to take BlackBerry private. So far no partners have been announced and it looks very likely to that no commitment for financing has...
Richard is founder, owner of research company, Radio Free Mobile. He has 16 years of experience working in sell side equity research. During his 11 year tenure at Nomura Securities, he focused on the equity coverage of the Global Technology sector.
BlackBerry – Hero to zero
BlackBerry’s revenues per user are falling off a cliff. BlackBerry is doing everything it can to preserve its user base but in doing so is killing its own handset business and its service business. Indonesia is a prime example, which is one of BlackBerry’s most important markets. Use of BBM has been very popular here...