Guess which technology stock has done among the best?
It’s not because of a short squeeze. Only 8.7% of the public float in BBY is sold short.
Someone must actually think that what they’re doing with their boring stores makes sense. And Amazon doesn’t exist.
My rule: When you don’t understand, stay away. Ditto for some other big technology companies, like these.
Meantime, BlackBerry is up for sale, or for something.
Four years ago, BlackBerry had 51 percent of the North American smartphone market. Now it has 3.4%.
Apple and Samsung ate its lunch.
I remember Research in Motion (as BlackBerry was called) from the days I ran a telecommunications publishing empire. One of the things we did was to testdrive new technology. We tried to testdrive BlackBerries. But the company never returned our phone calls and never responded to our emails, or even on a couple of occasions — snail mail letters. We were desperate. They gave arrogance a whole new meaning.
Today they’re downsizing and firing people — not a happy place. It’s hard to predict anything but bankruptcy for them. Their present market cap is $5.7 billion. Much too high for them. Today’s New York Times story in interesting. They head it “BlackBerry considers alternatives to oblivion.” Click here.
I use Lenovo ThinkPad laptops. I love them. The company’s earnings and sales are rising, but their stock sucks:
They’re very late introducing machines with Intel’s third generation i-series. I don’t know why. Their PR (and resulting buzz) is desultory. You get sluggish when you get big.
How Estonia become a leader in technoloogy? It started with a clean slate after the Russians left. It had Vision — we’ll go Internet. And it did something I’ve believed in — it taught all its kids computer programming. What typing was when I was growing up, so programming is when our kids are growing up. They should all be taught it. A lawyer who can program is worth more than a lawyer who can’t. An engineer who can program is worth more than one who can’t. And so on. Read the Economist’s piece on Estonia here.
Harry Newton who still has his nose buried in this totally fascinating book — the one he wrote about yesterday:
Harry-
You neglected to mention that for his excellence in journalism, Michael Hastings was quite apparently murdered. He died in a single car crash in which his Mercedes exploded before it hit a palm tree at high speed and the engine and drive train were found more than 100 feet from the car which became an absolute fireball. These are tough times for whistleblowers.
http://www.sandiego6.com/story/cia-director-brennan-confirmed-as-reporter-michael-hastings-next-target-20130812
-Barry