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Apple's Long Road To $300
itwbennett writes "Apple shares inched over $300 for the first time Wednesday, nearly 30 years after Apple's initial public offering in December 1980. But it hasn't been a steady climb. In fact, says blogger Chris Nurney, 'Apple's stock history can be divided into two clear periods — the early years, from the IPO through Steve Jobs's long absence from the company after losing a power struggle in 1985, and the modern Jobs era, which began on September 16, 1997.' The bottom line: 'If you had purchased $10,000 of Apple stock the same month that Jobs again began leading the company, your shares would be worth $554,000 today. Not a bad return on the investment.'"
Steve Jobs came back in 1997 and it had a small surge that was crushed in the dot com boom. Up to early 2004, you could acquire shares reasonably close to the 1997 price, it fluctated 1.5-2x, sometimes 3x, but after early 2004 it skyrocketed.
1997-2004 is when they had all those color iMacs and gaudy design (remember those awful clamshell notebooks?) befoe the industrial design. It returned to profitabilty, to be sure, and laid a lot of other groundwork, like 2001 was the release of OS X, to be sure.
And that same year (2001) iPod was released. Think about that. For almost 3 years after iPod's release, you could still have bought Apple at a bargain basement price. It took a long time for Wall Street to shed the malaise it had with Apple after the late 80s and early/mid-90s decline.
Apple has a P/E ration of 22.6. That is about right for a company providing a large annual growth. It's not cheap, but it's not a bubble. Now, Amazon on the other hand has a P/E of 64. For comparison, the P/E of the S&P 500 is around 15 to 16 normally.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
They can go for the best Office/Documents/Outlook integration possible - and who would not love it? .docx file as of now - this is where Windows Mobile 7 can enter the market and capture it.
I have not seen many phones which can properly format a moderately complex
Yeah, but if you've seen the direction Microsoft is taking with Windows Phone 7, that's not it. They are going for "social networking" and "iPhone/Android knock-off," not "Mobile Business Computing."
... and then they built the supercollider.
Read more carefully please. The OP said "That was the reason the original Apple 2 was successful. You didn't have to know how to wield a soldering iron to have an affordable home computer." At the time the Apple ][ was released, the late '70s, that was pretty much true.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.