understanding the psychology of behavior

RIMM came out w/ 2nd quarterly numbers, and they were good. Not only were numbers good, 3rd quarter guidance was really good too.

But lets take a closer look at the report, and see how it can relate to PALM and the smartphone market in general.

1. RIMM had, and projects, a nice sub. growth. This is all RIM and are doing a great job growing it. (suggests the Enterpise market has many more legs)
2. They claimed they were strong across the board, but mainly due to upgrade of hardware of current subs. (suggests the market is not growing… consistent w/PALM)

3. During the CC management stated lower prices were key to the success of smartphone expansion, and Pearl’s success. (suggesting the smartphone market is not yet seeing expansion, but will… soon… consistent w/PALM)

4. European market for BB connect is growing faster than the USA. (could mean some trouble for MSFT and PALM if the Vodafone push for mobile e-mail is unsuccessful)

5. Mention Software services are going to be a very good potential revenue stream in the future. (Validates PALM Partner’s software strategy… PALM is ahead of the game here.)

IMO, RIM did very good, but the benefit came from their BB connect which lead to greater hardware sales and a really strong quarter and projection. This is where PALM is lacking.

If PALM’s strategy, to be MSFT’s hardware of choice in the European market, the RIMM CC suggests PALM can do well in Europe. Another take away from the RIMM CC, PALM must release its low-cost Treo (and a stylish version) ASAP! I mean ASAP!

The one thing I didn’t like about RIMM’s quarter is a 45% increase toward inventory.

Today, 7-Eleven made public that they dumped Citgo in some 2,000 locations. 7-Eleven is claiming this is not a boycott of Citgo, and part of a strategy to re-sell fuel under its own brand.

Whatever they are claiming is irrelevant to me so long as Citgo does not make money. Citgo is a Texas base subsidiary of Venezuela’s state controlled oil company.

While I’m not obvious fan of Bush, I am a patriot. No one comes into my country and insults my leader. period. I (and anyother American) can call Bush (or anyother American Leader) whatever we want because we are held hostage to their policies. So we have earned the right to say whatever we want.

The only right Chavez has earned is to get a dick up his ass.

Chavez is feeling so high and mighty because of the heavy oil revenue we allow him to have, and yet he feels he can bite the hand that feeds him. Well, I hope we bite, and BITE HARD by cutting off their money. (Instead of feeding his poor, Chavez feels the need to spend billions on military equipment/Airplanes that will do absolutely nothing against any industrialized nation. He is such a moron.)

DO NOT USE CITGO.

As I’ve stated on here before… I’m no hippy, and not a crazed lefty or righty (obviously), but the past few articles I’ve been coming across are suggesting that Bush is failing to stop the cause of creating new terrorists, hence creating new ones.

A NYT article “Waging the War on Terror: Report Belies Optimistic View” pretty much states:

“Three years ago, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld wrote a memo to his colleagues in the Pentagon posing a critical question in the “long war’’ against terrorism: Is Washington’s strategy successfully killing or capturing terrorists faster than new enemies are being created?

Until Tuesday, the government had not publicly issued an authoritative answer. But the newly declassified National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism does exactly that, and it concludes that the administration has failed the Rumsfeld test.” (article)

Now with this report coming to light, as well as the recent write up of the BBC article I posted yesterday concerning Bush’s failure to continue to work with Iran, Bush’s approach is obviously WRONG!

Smart people (as I believe the entire administration is very smart) don’t allow stupid things to happen unless they want them to happen.  The failures of the administration were done by choice… ie Choosing not to work w/Iran after the Afgan fight; Choosing to invade Iraq and control the region through strength (however gaining that strength was outside of their control); maintaining a instability in the region.

I get the sense that the administration is allowing the other side to beef up.

I actually just noticed them today.  (another reason to hate yahoo, i guess) For whatever reason the comments do not appear in the actual blog, but they do appear in my ’site adm.’ pages. I just clicked ’view comments’ w/in the adm. section for the heck of it today to observe it, wasn’t expecting to see much since “No Comments” consistently appear w/in the blog.

I know I have it on a public setting, so the host is messing up.

Just wanted to say thanks for the comments.

Is the Bush Administration to blame for the hard line approach Iran is currently (and has been) undertakiing?

A recent BBC article suggests this…

example… “And just a few weeks after Iran and the US had worked so closely over Afghanistan, Iran was described by President George W Bush as part of an “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address.” (article)

If the administration did not take the opportunity to ally with them, then why?  The article states shortly after we worked with Iran to overthrow the Taleban, Iran was about to sell or distribute arms to Palestinian Groups. (but this is vague at best)

The questions I have for the administration is…

1. why prove the point of the Iranian hardliners, given them more credit w/in the government? 

2. By allowing #1 to happen the administration promoted instability between Iran and US… why?

3. Was the administration seriously considering the “pre-emptive” attack on Iran, once Iraq was secured? (I’m sure once the administration realized the situation in Iraq, the thought of an Iranian invasion went out the window.)

All and all the whole situation reeks of arrogance on the part of the Bush administration. (although i do think American/Iranian -peaceful- ties can exist)

The 10yr rate is falling, and falling hard.

What is causing all this buying of the 10yr? Are we heading toward a recession?

The few things I do know are…

1. Global growth is still here. (see the ‘economy’ tag for previous thoughts)

2. The markets are saying soft landing… as are the inflation numbers.

3. The lowering of the yield is a very telling indicator that inflation is not a worry… not at all.

4. The slowdown in the economy may be more severe than anticipated, and a rate cut maybe in the works.

5. The housing markets may be saved, sort-of. (While growth in the sector has obviously halted, the foreclosure rates may be reduced. Refinancing of their ARMs may save a lot of people.)

I’m getting the feeling we (the States) will be living in a low interest rate environment for some time. (that is good for relatively sustained realestate value, and especially the investment banks) But that will change when the Yaun gets a meaningful re-valutation, and inflationary pressure kicks in from the more expensive imports.

The market decline is soley on Yahoo’s shoulders. period. Let me explain…

Yahoo’s CFO stated that they are seeing weakness in their auto and finance ad demand. Now this is very indicative on a slowing economy, and many trigger happy hedge fund investors are thinking this. So instead of just taking Yahoo down, they are taking the market down too.

BUT… everyone already knows the slowdown is HERE. This is not a surprise. The housing data and commodity prices are telling (i mean yelling) this to us.

What the ‘mob’ fails to see here is that Yahoo’s Ad demand is Yahoo specific. I have been anti-yahoo stock since i started this blog, and I will continue to be until Yahoo changes philosophies.

Yahoo is a great internet company, but THEY ARE NOT USER CENTRIC. So the users are going elsewhere. There is far too much competition for Yahoo not to listen to its users, and their arrogance has yet to allow them to listen.

There user base is in decline, hence demand for their ad space will be lighter than before.

I’ve posted here time and time again, Yahoo is a formitable web entity that is losing its luster. Not because people are bored with Yahoo, but because they are shooting themselves in the foot time and time again.

While they have some +400M page views, and a very enviable user base, they are slowly losing users. They have recently announceed a media blitz (via TV and Radio) to attracted back those users, but what they fail to understand is there own arrogance.

They are not losing their users because they are not utilizing cutting edge technology. By contrast they are at par with any cutting edge web 2.0 company. What they lack is the ability to understand their users. When they did a rehaul of Yahoo Finance, they pissed off alot of people. They effectivitly destroyed my online community, loosely held together by the effecient means of posting and quality conversations on certain message boards. But by making the boards more complicated they promoted far less activity. Now this is just one of many examples. (i’ve sent sooo many eletters to yahoo to remedy their sistuation, and instead of a complete rehaul of an already popular product, a gradual introduction of new services should have occured. But i never even got a response. Although i am aware of other users getting responses like, We know the new service is different, but we know you will like it if you give it a chance… this tells me yahoo does not care for the opinions of its users, hence the deline.)

All yahoo has to do is listen to its users. The web audiance has far to many options for Yahoo not to listen. IMO, the ad blitz will do nothing to sustain long-term user growth, listening to their users will.

TWX has started to unload its AOL Euro Acess biz, while maintaining the AOL.com domain for its free services. (article)

“Under a new partnership, AOL will provide co-branded audience services and content on a joint web portal for all of Telecom Italia’s residential Internet access subscribers in Germany and will handle all online advertising sales.”

So TWX will maintain the high margin ad biz, while dumping the dying biz for about $830M. Not bad.

I must say, it is about TWX started focusing more seriously about AOL on the global scale as a true portal, and not an access biz.

Don’t tell me the US is hard-nosed, self-centered pigs… they have just thanks Syria! that is righ, Syria.

“The US has thanked Syria for foiling an attack on its embassy in Damascus.” (article)