The App Revolution Is Still The Only Sure Bet In The Market
I wrote an article for Seeking Alpha for the first time ever. It’s partly about Seeking Alpha and the new Seeking Alpha RealTime app by my company The IAm App Platform.
The App Revolution Is Still The Only Sure Bet In The MarketDec. 21, 2016 1:36 PM ET
Summary:
Apple and Google aren’t the only ways to invest in apps.
Apps are already a trillion dollar industry.
Apps like Seeking Alpha RealTime are changing the concept of “app”.
People sometimes ask me why I left my old Fox Business TV Show, Happy Hour, which we filmed every week day in the Waldorf-Astoria’s Bull & Bear Bar from 2007-2010. One of the main reasons I quit TV, as I told my viewers at the time, was because I wanted to bet my money and my career on what was just a burgeoning The App Revolution.
And have I ever. I’ve spent the the last six years investing in the App Revolution, writing about each trade and my positions at TradingWithCody.com (yes, we also have an app) and have been especially focused on building The IAm App Platform.
I’d suggest here that you immediately check out and download the The Seeking Alpha RealTime App for iPhone or the Android version to see just how quickly the concept of “having an app” is changing…and why app downloads and usage are once again accelerating.
Yes, just when everybody was trying to convince you it was dead and we’d reached “Peak App” (not to be confused with “Peak Oil” of course), this new acceleration of app downloads and usage is a large part of why the App Revolution is still the only sure bet in this market. Take a look at just how many apps have been downloaded so far, and realize that the last quarter of this year will show another big bump in those numbers.
Let me tell you a little story to illustrate just how crazy the App Revolution is getting. Last week, my company released The IAm Jay Leno’s Garage App and The IAm Jim Gaffigan App among a few others and I started getting emails from their managers about how the apps weren’t showing up in the Apple App Store. I jokingly wrote a few of the managers back:
Hmm see pic attached. Looks like Apple’s App Store servers are down. Never saw that happen before. Probably they’re down because so many people tried to down load your new app at once today! 😉 We‘ll keep checking and will email you when their servers are back up. Thanks, Cody
The app store was back up a few hours later. All jokes aside though, it turns out that it actually was a new app that is so wildly popular that it’s broke Apple’s App Store — Super Mario Run.
This is the second time this year that the app stores went down as a result of the overwhelming popularity of a new app (Pokemon Go, remember that, was the other one). Think about that for a moment, because that’s sort of the whole point here.
The fact that a new app can be so much more wildly popular than any app ever before since the app store was introduced eight years ago, and that even Apple was so unprepared for its popularity underscored why we think apps remain so important. Tens of billions of apps will be downloaded this year and tens of billions of apps will be downloaded next year on more than a billion active iOS and Android devices.
Apps and the concept of “apps” are changing, morphing into something ever bigger, as I’d noted earlier when I’d mentioned you probably should download. How about a meta-app which can take other apps and integrate them into a singularly-focused app based on one celebrity, company or topic? My company recently created just that, as we built The IAm App Platform, which takes anybody’s twitter, social media and websites and puts them into an individualized beautiful app.
For investors and traders, for example, we’ve got the aforementioned Seeking Alpha RealTime App, in addition to the The IAm Jim Cramer App and The IAm Doug Kass App a few others. I mentioned that I’ve not only bet my money on apps, but have also bet my career on the App Revolution since leaving TV and I wasn’t joking!
Apps become ever more important in a smartphone-centric wearables/robotics/voice-controlled/artificial intelligence-dominated world. You’ll still interface with those wearables/robotics and features using apps, after all.
The best way to invest in the App Revolution, as I explained in this 2008 clip that old Fox Business show of mine in the bar, is simply Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). Other great ways to invest include some of the most obvious app companies (which are also some of my longest-held positions) Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Priceline (NASDAQ:PCLN) and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX). Less obvious App Revolution companies are stocks like Zillow (NASDAQ:Z), Lion’s Gate (NYSE:LGF.A) and Sony (NYSE:SNE).
Zillow is still a relatively undiscovered stock but clearly it’s an app company and has become the de facto standard for a growing proportion of the population to shop for real estate. Lion’s Gate is an outright app company with a few apps for its larger franchises like Hunger Games as well as its Starz app. But it’s also a direct play on all the growing video apps like Netflix, AppleTV, etc as these companies compete for content that Lion’s Gate creates and owns. Sony’s Playstation VUE and the Playstation itself is an app platform.
It’s not just apps, of course, though I am about to add a new app-derivative stock to my personal portfolio this week. Regardless, I’m excited because I see a lot of opportunity to invest in ongoing and brand new Revolutionary Themes with several exciting new stock picks and companies that I expect to come public in the next couple years. I’ll be posting some of those ideas, stock picks and more analysis on occasion here on Seeking Alpha and you can often find me interacting with other users on the Seeking Alpha RealTime App too.
Disclosure: I am/we are long AAPL, FB, GOOG, AMZN, SNE, LGF.A, Z.
