Wednesday, September 12, 2007

iPhone Part 1: the iPhone Portfolio

Yes, I bought an iPhone a few weeks ago. Yes, I paid $599 for it. Yes, I am upset about the $200 price drop. But I couldn’t do without the iPhone, and needed it when I bought it. By the way, if you bought one within 14 days of the price drop, you can get a $200 rebate. If you bought it between 14 and 30 days prior, there is an involved way you can get the $200 back, but the process is a hassle and not really moral, so I'm not going to tell you how to do it (the key is 30 days). I'm certainly not going to do it.

Anyway, why did I get the iPhone? The instantaneous access to stock quotes of course. Is there any other reason to own an iPhone? By pressing the little blue icon with the stock chart on it, it gives a list of stock symbols, current price delayed by 20 minutes, and the increase or decrease from the previous day's close. When you turn on your iPhone for the first time, you automatically get several stock tickers already entered. The first quote on the list is the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Second on the list is Apple Inc. (AAPL), of course. A hacker group called the iPhone Dev Team has just announced that they have a software patch that can be downloaded to the phone which will allow it to communicate with any telecommunications carrier without any hardware adjustment. Apple has a price earnings ratio of 38.7 and a price earnings to growth ratio of 1.54.

Next on the list is Google (GOOG). Google's GMail is one of the featured email services in the iPhone. The Canadian government just announced that Google Maps Street Views may violate California privacy laws. Google has a P/E of 42.47 and a PEG of 1.01.

After Google is Yahoo (YHOO), the provider of the other primary iPhone email service. Yahoo just started publicly testing a new feature called MapMixer, which allows users to overlay millions of maps from the Internet onto the same place on Yahoo Maps. Yahoo has a P/E of 45.84 and a PEG of 2.33.

Last but not least of the pre-installed stock symbols is AT&T (T), Apple's chosen service provider for the iPhone. AT&T just won the 2007 U.S. CXOs' Choice Award for Overall Best Wireless Service Provider, which means that it is the wireless service of choice among top executives, also known as C-level executives (e.g. chief executive officers, chief operating officers, chief financial officers). AT&T has a P/E of 20.5 and a PEG of 1.83. It also pays a yield of 3.7%.

Tomorrow, I will post an article about some of the other features of the iPhone including a way to get free songs to listen to, without having to install or download them, a procedure which is moral and legal. Stay tuned.

Author owns AAPL, GOOG, and T.

By Fred Fuld at Stockerblog.com

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