The reason why Google Glass and Apple Watch matter so much will surprise you
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No trades for me today, but I do think this ongoing sell-off is opening up some opportunities for us to buy some of our favorite stocks and maybe even sneak in a few call options if things were to really get ugly. Not swinging yet though, but let’s start stepping towards the batter’s box.
Google Glass and Intel skeptics alike are in shock today as news hits that “Google Glass deal thrusts Intel deeper into wearables“. I’m looking for Google Glass to sell for $500 or less when it hits mainstream markets in 2015 — down from $1500 that Scutify paid for our beta-versions of Google Glass from earlier this year. Google Glass ain’t got enough believers in it to make this news much of a mover for $INTC $GOOG $GOOGL right now tho. In five years, analysts will be like “It was obvious that Google Glass would be huge” but it’s not obvious to them now.
Remember that “wearables are going to be so much bigger than anybody realizes. What you see and consider a wearable computer today isn’t what the Wearables Revolution is all about.
Google Glass isn’t just about the thing you wear on your head…it’s about a new way of interacting with the web using your voice and gestures…as Google Glass form factors become less geeky-looking in the glasses themselves and as the technology/concept of low-interactivity interfaces become ever easier to use, Google Glass becomes an out-and-out platform built on top of the Android/Java platform that Google dominates already.
The same logic can be applied to Apple’s upcoming Apple Watch, in that the it’s all about the platform. Like Google Glass, the Apple Watch requires a smartphone hub for you to tie into and for heavy interfacing. But for quick interaction with the web and for the things you use your smartphone everyday for, the new less-intensive interface is much more important than just how may smartwatches Apple ends up selling in the next year. You’re not going to sit around tapping your email address and passwords into your wearables — that’s what the smartphone in your pocket or the computer on your desk is for. But you will talk to and motion gesture and otherwise command the apps on your wearables — on the platforms that Google Glass and Apple Watch are creating presently.
While we’re talking Apple, let’s hit on the angst today over the $AAPL flash crash. Seems almost too quaint to expect the new Apple top to be marked with a flash crash, but “being too quaint” is not exactly trade-able analysis. Apple remains my largest position and I remain ready to trim 10% of it, but I remain waiting to do so still. Same as I’ve been saying here on Scutify since it crossed the $100 mark a few weeks ago.
ApplePay and the upcoming Apple Watch could make analysts have to raise their estimates for 2015 and onward. Higher estimates will likely take Apple’s stock higher while a lack thereof would likely be the next downside catalyst over the next 90 days or so.
And anyway, for all the talk of how overloved Apple is right now, I don’t know anybody who’s talking about actually BUYING $AAPL shares…everybody seems to be like me — long Apple and wondering when to (or already did) trim it. Seems like anybody without Apple shares in their portfolio is a bear on it, wanting to short it or buy puts on it. Maybe $AAPL sentiment is as ‘overloving’ as most seem to think it is.
PS. WSJ writes up Scutify and quotes Scutify All-Star @RobertMarcin. “One of the firms pushing away from just speed is social media news aggregator Scutify. Robert Marcin, a well-known value investor who was the subject of a Barron’s profile, doesn’t have a Twitter account and generally ‘doesn’t care’ what is being said on a real-time basis on social media about a company. But he’s been using Scutify regularly, posting investing ideas and listening to the ideas of others…” Sweet!
