This week in the app revolution

Here's what you have to know if you want to know what's "appening" in the app revolution right now:

Dude Records “Eye of the Tiger” Using Only an iPad - Music video.  Done very well. A modern one man band?  Awesome.  And the music itself ain't bad.

Full review of iPhone 4 after seven weeks of love. Exclusive and very insightful, helpful (and funny) review of her iPhone 4 from AppConsumer's own Nathania Johnson. Pics, videos and good details from someone who's actually been using the phone for weeks.

Revolution Investing Newsletter: Appetite for apps ($) - My newsletter last week details some of the most important app revolution and their impact on some of the biggest tech stocks.  (Subscription required.)

MOMA iPhone App a Worthy Work of Art - Very cool concept and beautiful app. I've had several friends visit the MOMA recently and tell me I need to go.  I guess I'll go.  But I'll get the MOMA app first.

Voice Actions for Android Looks Very Suh-weet! - Another cool video.  I'm going to start playing with this still wildly futuristic technology asap.  Killer app: spoken text messages. Count me in.

Network neutrality explained - I break it down for you in real world terms...and explain why Google's YouTube is the big winner in the death of net neutrality.

Evidence Mounts for Verizon iPhone - Last year I predicted that Verizon would have the iPhone by Christmas 2010.  Getting down to the wire.

Only Nokia, Apple and Google have reached critical mass in the smartphone wars. - Gotta love it! “Cody, You are a CROOK reviewer. Stop with the FAKING reviews FOOL. iphones are garbage, stop with the LIES"

iPhone vs Android - everything you need to know - My first in what will be many reviews to come.  Got good traction on this one, picked up by AOL.com's home page, on MacDailyNews (who critiqued my critique), and others.  Let me know what you think.

The app revolution: the biggest market in the history of the planet - Another article by me...Within ten years, more than a billion people will have bought their first app-enabled smartphone.  Trillions of apps will be have been downloaded. Think about it. Get involved.

Let's tackle net neutrality

Let's tackle net neutrality.  Net neutrality, as I'm sure you've read, means that the telecom/cable/satellite/wireless networks that connect you to the Internet have to allow you to access anything on the Internet equally, without making it easier to connect to one site vs. another.  And that matters, not only to the companies and websites that you use right now and might someday use in the future, but it matters hugely to you too. More on that in a minute.

But first, let's break network neutrality down into a real world example.  Say you've just launched a website that focuses on delivering the best reviews and news about apps, games and devices.  Pretend you call it AppConsumer.com, like I did mine. Let's say the traffic is going thru the charts in just the first few days, blowing away even your highest expectations for the site.

And then let's say since you use Google Ads and since Google searches are starting to drive traffic to your awesome app review site that somebody at Google says, "Hey, we should get into the app, game, and device reviews and news business like those guys at AppConsumer.com."  Google also knows just how huge the growth in searches for app reviews and news that I've cited on here many times lately is.

Anyway, the point is, let's say Google decides to start a direct competitor to your company.   Google starts adding lots of very expensively-developed technologies to their app reviews website, but the networks are clogged because of people still coming to your site and other small-business-owned app reviews and news websites, so Google says to Verizon and the other carriers:

"Look, we'll pay you if you'll carry our content and make it work better on your networks than anybody else's.  Especially those damn rebels at AppConsumer.com!" (Okay, maybe I made up them saying that last part for effect.)

And that's where the fissure starts. Network neutrality might be good for competition which might be good for you, the consumer.  But then again, if Google's invested in new technologies that can only be delivered if they get the extra broadband on the networks that they're now paying Verizon for, then why would we want to suppress that?  Don't you, as a consumer, want access to the very best technologies, and if you've got a problem with companies like Google that bribe the people selling you access to the Internet, then don't use Google products and try to only use networks that remain net neutral.  It's a free country, right? (ha!)

On that note, isn't this arrangement between Google and Verizon a lot like the illegal payola arrangements of the music industry?  You're not allowed to pay to get your music content on the radio, but you can pay to get your web content on the network?

And finally, maybe it's up to us at AppConsumer, as a competitor of Google's, to figure out ways to build on top of their new app reviews technologies to enhance the experience of my users and also thereby gain access to Google's preferred network status at Verizon et al?

One of the main reasons for Google abandoning their former positive-on-net-neutrality stance is because they want to kill off any chance of anybody ever competing with YouTube as the de facto standard for delivering user-gen video on the Internet.  With this agreement with Verizon, Google's formally announced it's game over for YouTube competitors.

And there's the point of this article for Google investors and for followers of my Revolution Investing newsletter.   What if I told you that Google could pay millions of dollars to ensure that YouTube never loses to a competitor, ensuring that all user-gen content creators (and any small business and most medium and large businesses, including media/entertainment companies) would use it and therefore creating a perfect virtuous cycle.  Not this year, but ten years from now, when we're all consuming almost all of our content wirelessly with apps on our smartphone/devices and YouTube will deliver the vast majority of it.  Can't you see Google search type market share here? say 60-70%? of video delivered on smartphones?

That business, supported with ads and search and all the other things that Google does, will be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.  I've said before that I can see a Google $2000 price tag before 2020. This emboldens me on that prediction.  Google, via YouTube, wins big with the death of net neutrality.

In the meantime, stick with Google the stock and help support a small business content provider while they still exist - http://appconsumer.com, the best reviews and news of apps, games and devices on the net.

XXX Smartphone apps are coming - a guide for investors, parents, kids, and the rest of us

It's going to be a trillion dollar market.

The "it", that I am referring to is the coming onslaught of XXX apps that will be hitting the smartphone marketplaces in coming years.  Porn. Sex. And smartphones, oh my.

And no, we don't have any porn app reviews up on my new app reviews and news website AppConsumer.com.  We're not planning to either, ok?

And yes, unfortunately for the remarkably safe, secure and Puritanical iPhone/iTunes App marketplace whether the high-minded well-intentioned folks at Apple want it or not.  Think of it this way -- what kind of social networks for it are already being built utilizing the new iPhone video cam?

I mean, I'm watching Law & Order: SVU the other night and they're trying to catch a serial rapist who uses an app called "Quickies" or something like that, an app for people who want to connect and have quick anonymous sex.  I don't consider myself prude, but holy STD, batman, that episode freaked me out.  And more importantly, got me thinking about such applications being built right now for the latest smartphone technologies.

Yes, with the advent of the iPhone's real-time video calling, people are already, shall we say, "opening up" to the possiblities.   Just as chat rooms, instant message services, myspace, craig's list, ebay, facebook --- even plain ol' email, have long been exploited by people with bad intentions, so too shall it be with what will soon be a normal reality of video chat rooms and video social networks.

Long ago, I trademarked the term "They can't stop the revolution", meaning that nobody can stop these technological revolutions that are built upon the networks and the technologies employed by those networks from building their own revolutions.  The demand is there, so the market will deliver it.

For concerned parents, as always, be smart, be aware and communicate the dangers.  For kids, please be careful and listen to what your parents are warning you about...the dangers are real.  And for the rest of you, same thing -- be careful. But for the rest of you, have fun too.  You'll also have tons of high-brow applications for these same smartphone technologies.

For investors -- and this is where I get really interested in the topic, for the record, all right? -- as usual, playing the guys selling the shovels to those doing the digging is the way to go.  We've had Riverbed Technology, a company that sells equipment that makes all these new video chat, video conferencing, etc technologies work on all these networks, in the Revolution Investing portfolio from much lower levels, but it's recently pulled back a little bit, and I'd look to get in for a long-term investment.  Same goes for another stock oft-highlighted in my newsletter -- FFIV, another equipment vendor who makes this stuff happen.  Cisco, Juniper, are good plays on this too, though in a more "rising tide lifts all boats" kind of way, as usual.

Porn. Sex.  XXX.  These are going to be huge markets and will drive demand for Riverbed and F5 equipment. There I said it.

What?

Here's a walkaway prediction: In ten years from now, the biggest app markets will be, in order:

1. Enterprise
2. Entertainment
3. Gaming
4. XXX
5. Children

My suggestion is to stick with the non-XXX markets.  I'll remind you that they will entail billions of people using trillions of apps.  That's where AppConsumer.com will be focused.

Here's to the future.

Everything you want to know the iPhone vs Android war

I've been using and reviewing cell phones, gadgets and devices professionally for more than a decade now. I've played with and written about Hewlett-Packard's iPaq (not quite the success of Apple's iPad, eh?), VoiceStream services (remember that brand?), Microsoft's Zune, and about a thousand other tech products. More recently, I've used every version of the iPhone (including the latest 4g), several versions of the iPod (including the latest Touch), several versions of Android, an iPad, several global Nokia's, most of the latest Blackberry's, and just about every device out there right now (somehow I missed Microsoft's several hundred million dollar flash-in-the-pan Kin, but who didn't?).

Now I've founded AppConsumer.com, an app reviews and news company, and I'm once again going to be regularly reviewing tech products once again for our AppConsumer Originals page, where I'll be joined by the funny tech expert, Nathania Johnson, and several other contributors. As I keep telling anybody who will listen, you have to be investing in the app revolution and if you're investing in anything related to tech at all, you have to be on top of all the app trends.

Only about 10-20% of all cell phone users have a smartphone (much less an app-centric smart phone that is all about enabling you to connect to the information, other people, and entertainment services using apps) Take a look at how many people are googling "iPhone vs Android" these days.

So let's talk Apple's iPhone platform vs. Google's Android platform and see what trends (and therefore investment implications) come from the analysis.

The good in both: Both platforms use an effective touch screen interface and both are far and away the leaders of the app-centric smartphone industry (though both are still marketshare takers in the smartphone industry, which is taking huge share from the non-smartphone device industries). And both are rather remarkably easy to use, as my father, a 65-year old veterinarian in rural New Mexico loves his Motorola Droid, while my girlfriend's mother, a 65-year old landscape architect in Venezuela loves her iPhone. The app store for each platform is easy to access and both offer more apps for free and for pay than you could ever download.

The bad in both: Having more apps than you can look at has its downsides - I think most people who use apps are desperate for better app filters and app guidance (did I mention I started an app reviews website?).

Both need more RAM. Some of these apps, some of these services, some of these features on our phones are serious processor-hogs, and I'm sick to death of waiting for emails and big files to process. My girlfriend and I might have a problem, but we have indeed sent so many texts to each other in the few months that I've been sticking with the HTC Incredible that it literally takes 30 seconds or more to open the text string everytime she sends me a new text. That means looking at Micron and Sandisk.

Both need more processing power. Sure, the functionalities in these things already blow the mind and put Gene Roddenberry's most futuristic gadgets from even the 1990s' Star Trek: Next Generation's generation of gadgets to shame. But what about when we want to broadcast the 2018 World Cup in HD using our 109" built-in projector to the Motorola Droid XXX (that'd be the third generation of the Droid X, no? Er, wait a minute...perhaps not) -- that is, what about when we want to broadcast the 2018 World Cup in HD using our 109" built-in projector to the Motorola Droid 3X? Anyway, they need more processing power and graphics power and that means sticking with Intel with its steady exposure to the growth in this market. And it also means digging into the Nvidia once again to see if it can catch this next cycle because that would mean a 5-fold hit for investors if so.

Both need more memory. People are running into memory problems as they shoot HD video on their smart phones, and as they shoot high-pixel pictures, and as they add more information and entertainment to their phones. Think Sandisk and Micron once again here.

The biggest differences: You can only get the iPhone on AT&T. And we all know that AT&T's network sucks. Verizon's network, which runs most of my Motorola's and HTC's, rocks. The Android, while remarkably easy to use, isn't as easy to use as the iPhone. For example, you have to push one too many buttons to dial from other applications than you do on the iPhone. The iPhone ain't perfect in its interface, but it's the best. Just like it was on day one. Still.

The Android's not quite as reliable as the iPhone. I think it's got something to do with the extra software that Verizon adds on to these Android phones that I use, but the very fact that my Android phone requires reboot about 25% of the time I get in my car and try to use it with the built-in bluetooth car phone technology sorta defeats the purpose of the supposed increased safety of handsfree dialing.

The upshot is that although there's going to be differences between each Android-power device, I'd give the Android OS an overall rating of 4 AppConsumer Stars out of 5. And I'd give the iPhone OS an overall rating of 4.5 Stars out of 5. Both set very high standards for the mobile OS field and therefore both do get very high ratings for this reviewer.

Check out all our AppConsumer Originals. And come see the aggregation of only the best reviews and news about apps from all around the Internet at http://AppConsumer.com.

The app revolution: the biggest market in the history of the planet

When you find the single largest target market in the history of the planet, it's time to get excited -- perhaps even consumed by apps.  I've certainly been obsessed with all things apps since I started looking at the growth ahead and the ultimate size of a market that will entail billions of people using trillions of apps.

Seriously, those are real numbers, and as I wrote in Invest in the app revolution any way you can, I'm not only obsessed with finding the best publicly-traded plays on the app revolution, but I'm even launching AppConsumer.com.

And as for those publicly-traded plays on the app revolution, you really do have to do the ol' Peter Lynch methodology and look at Google and Apple as the purest ways to get involved.  I like both stocks and companies a lot and my partners and I owned those stocks for years when I traded money, but I think Google's a better play right here right now on it.  That's what I wrote in this week's Revolution Investing Newsletter and that's also what I told Riva Froymovich in a video interview for the WSJ/Marketwatch network.

Nokia and its Symbian OS are also going to be huge, but unlike Google's Android and Apple's iPhone, Symbian's got to be defending its current outsized global marketshare, and I prefer market share takers in growing markets to get even bigger upside over the long haul.  RIMM and Softee and Palm et al, are going to see big growth too, but I think we'll looking at three primary platforms in five or ten years from now.

Billions of people, trillions of apps, and un-count-able app transacactions, interactions, and entertainments and games played...there are going to be a lot of winners and a lot of money to be made by those winners.  The app revolution is an opportunity I'm taking very seriously with my time and money and I think any serious investor should be too. Check out the AppConsumer Original Reviews page, where I'm writing and reviewing apps and devices, keep reading this blog and/or sign up for my Revolution Investing newsletter for more as this whole app revolution gets started.

http://AppConsumer.com - app reviews and news.

How to trade Google now that it's killed the Nexus One

This is the dumbest article I have read in a while. All you have is some random rants and comments. You clearly lack the understanding of this industry. Please go back, learn and get your facts straight about how the manufacturing and business model for Nexus One from other more informed bloggers. -- Comment from dumbdumb on Five Reasons Google's gonna kill the Nexus One on The Cody Word 1:44 pm January 18, 2010

iphone, nexus one or cody, whats the most stupid of all? the cody word -- Random Reader 1:05 pm January 18, 2010

What a stupid article. There is no real content and just random comments about Google. -- Comment from igoogle 12:45 pm January 18, 2010

I was going to set this “dush bag” straight but seeing all the previous posters did. Have a good day sir. -- Comment from vsx 12:41 pm January 18, 2010

The guy that wrote this knowns nothing…. pretty poor article. I recommend doing a bit of research in future -- Comment from Lee T 1:26 pm January 18, 2010

Your an idiot! -- Comment from gus 1:53 pm January 18, 2010

You have to be flexible when you trade. In many ways, it shouldn't matter how long you've held a position, what you've told your investors about how long you expect to hold that position, or how much pride you've got in having found that nugget. And it sure shouldn't matter what the peanut gallery's saying about you.

Case in point from my own life is Google. One of the proudest moments of my investing life was when I changed my mind about Google the day after telling Maria Baritiromo on national TV that I didn't plan to buy Google the day it came public the very day before it came public. I wrote a mea culpa on my trading blog the next morning and went out and paid up for Google in the open market at $95 a share and told the viewers the next time I was on TV what an idiot I'd been for hesitating about getting long Google at these prices. I sold the stock when I took my job at Fox Business a few years later...somewhere closer to $600 a share. Swallowing pride had been proven a successful trading strategy in my mind. Certainly, flexibility was key -- it hadn't mattered how stupid I might look for "flip-flopping" my stance...I got long Google the day it came public and stayed long it and wrote about why it was such a great long for years after.

But then one day, not long after I'd become a full-time TV pundit and wasn't trading stocks at all anymore, I heard one of the reporters from my new firm repeat over and over how "Google was being perceived as a safe stock" as it was getting closer to $700 a share while the rest of the broader market was tanking.

I went on the show that night and told everybody it was probably time to buy puts, because I used to be made fun of for calling Google a safe stock back when it was at $100, 200, 300...and now at nearly $700 it's being "perceived as safe?"

Later, when it fell to $450 or so, I got excited about the stock again...remember, be flexible.

Here's me talking to Whoopi Goldberg about being flexible with Google --

Whoopi and I talked about liking and then disliking Google. She was okay with it. You should be too. And also, completely related to this same topic -- notice how politely Stephanie disagreed with me and took the other side of my MSFT recommendation? (She was right, btw!)

At any rate, I'm sure I'll be villified for saying this now, because all the people who started reading my blog because I trashed Google's Nexus One (and in many people's minds, Google itself) will now have to deal with me throwing kudos to both Google for doing exactly what I'd written back in January, ten days after they launched the Nexus One: Google killed the Nexus One today.

And I'll also tell you that we've added Google to the Revolution Investing portfolio as a long position once again. I expect we've got some pretty good upside in the stock both in the short-term and in the longer term. Sign up for my weekly Revolution Investing newsletter to get all my analysis on Google and to track how we'll be trading it.

Or if you'd rather, you can leave me some hate commentary below. The more hate you put out there, the more data my subscribers and I have to work off of.

Did you miss the revolution?

Better to be lucky than good, perhaps, but it's been one heckuva week for traders and investors who subscribe to my newsletter and even those who gambled on my Smackdown with my old friend Scott Moritz from TheStreet.com.

Three short weeks ago, I wrote a newsletter called "Rock this short", and in it I laid out the logic behind why I thought Live Nation was in dire straits for both the short-term and the long-term.  I mean, at the risk of dropping names faster than Live Nation's stock, I had Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, the money manager for Santana, an attorney for Britney Spears, and about five other very connected people confirm that Live Nation was about to get crushed because they'd overpaid for their acts and were having to cut prices and fees like a scalper at halftime of a blowout. 

As I wrote at the time:

Everybody knows this is nowhere, and everybody I know in the music business is telling me to short Live Nation. And like a good rock fan should, I'm listening... click here to read on.

As for the Smackdown, in which I picked five stocks reporting earnings this week that I thought looked like good trades (both long ideas and short ideas) -- well, I can tell you after having traded thousands of earnings reports back over the years when I used to trade for a living that going 5 for 5 is about as lucky as you can get in the near term.  I'll take it and pretend to take all the credit in the world for it, since, frankly, that's all I get for analyzing trades like this these days.  The fact is that I did allocate 80% of the pretend trading money in Smackdown to long positions in INTC and ADTN because I had a lot of conviction that they were going to report very strong quarters and give great guidance AND that that Wall Street was pricing in exactly the opposite -- that is Wall Street expected fundamental weakness in the reports and I expected strength. 

That's a recipe for a great near-term trade because that way you've got the expectations, the pschology and the fundamentals all set up for you.  You can see the whole Smackdown portfolio by clicking here.

More importantly than those short term trades, though, I've had my newsletter subscribers in Adtran since it was in the low 20s and we're still holding it strong, as the company is in a very sweet spot for the ongoing and accelerating build out of the wireless high speed networks around the world.  The company has been executing, the fundamentals improving, the analysts are chasing the estimates higher and that's probably going to be going on for several quarters.  You'll need to subscribe to know how we'll be handling the stock from here, but rock on if you caught the short-term pop off my Smackdown recommendation too.

If you'd like access to all my favorite stock picks, investment allocation concepts, and short-term trading opportunities, you can sign up at http://marketwatch.com/cody.

Rock on, indeed, eh!

Codytwit: Market to rip higher, LeBronchitis, and why BP is likely headed Bankrupt

Here's some of what I was tweeting about in just the last couple days at http://twitter.com/codywillard:

Take the other side of headlines proclaiming: "Dow Repeats Great Depression Pattern: Charts". I'm saying RIGHT NOW that market's about to rip 10% higher from this 9800 level this morning by summer end on its way to 12k by sometime 2011. $$ 12:32 PM Jul 7th

I'm baaack. My latest- http://bit.ly/cMuHSQ "What are you trying to prove, what does it prove?" 2:48 PM Jul 7th

Did LeBron possibly gain any new fans by how he's handled this? And if not, does it matter to his bottomline that so many of us are turned off by how he's letting everybody grovel to the King James? Apparently money/media is a motivating factor for the guy - and I would be fine with that. But this self-induced hypefest... on overdrive probably means lot of will ever admire him like we used to. With all this LeBron-athon going on,let's go ahead and say it: the MSM (certainly ESPN) have a bad case of LeBronchitis. And with that, I'm done contributing to the LeBron-athon hype. Next topic, please! about 21 hours ago

I figure there's more than $100BB worth of spill liabilities. BP = BK < 2yrs. (BP is going bankrupt, IMHO).

Question: Are you short BP, Cody? Answer: I don't trade at all right now. I probably would slowly buy longdated out-ofthe-$ puts over the next year were I running $.  I wouldn't trade BP at all as an individual investor though. Unless you can manage trading OTM puts and know how to create positive gamma if the trade starts working for you, don't mess with trying to trade BP. Unless you know what I mean when I say I'd try to use the beta in BP to create positive gamma to capture alpha, REMAIN AN OBSERVER of BP.

Also, let's keep it real: It ain't Obama that's gonna force BP into bankruptcy. It's the court system of the USofA. It's justice!

Since when are high end estimates relevant? Since when do analysts get it right? When BP first said 5k barrels a day, I laughed on TV and said we would soon find out it was probably an order of magnitude higher. High end estimates were 10-12k barrels a day. We're now at 60k estimates average? High end estimates are currently what? ;) Creative accounting or not, math can't trump a sucking sound of $100s of BBs of $s going out the door to clean up and meet endless claims. See Dow Corning about 14 hours ago

Driving into NYC today, Sabrina turns the Sirius to the Grateful Dead channel and as the music starts, the system flashes "Bob Weir calling". Bob and I talked biz and all...but come on, we summoned him, no? Du du du du. about 13 hours ago

Song o' the day: Grateful Dead- So Many Roads http://youtu.be/gfGD94CchJU Whining boy got nowhere to go, So many roads I tell you, So many roads I know about 12 hours ago

Comment of the day: "Who would want to use the internet to tell people things that they think?? Not me!" Article: http://gu.com/p/2t5yn/tw about 1 hour ago

How long have both bulls & bears been preparing for "deflation"? http://www.google.com/trends?q=deflation. I've always pointed out the big diff btwn "deflation" and "depreciation". Prices at the supermarket won't drop EVER in the fiat currency US. But we will go thru phases of seeing our assets depreciate, ie the stock... and real estate market crashes of 2008 and 2009. How I'd trade this concept: http://shar.es/mUir about 1 hour ago

When We Rally on Bad News

Didn't I mention yesterday something about this market's ability to rally on bad news these days?

That jobs report was clearly bad news. To be clear, I don't care that it was worse than some clueless economists polled by some news organization or not.  The point is that we lost 80,000 jobs as measured by our antiquated governmental measuring systems, and the magnitude of that along with all the data points we get elsewhere, simply confirms the hard economic times we're going through.

You really needed a jobs report for that?  No, and neither did the market and thus...

We rally on bad news.

And that's bullish.

Shocking Headline: Investment Banks Having Problems

Let's say we find out there's another $100 billion in losses at the US investment banks from the mortgage bubble coming unwound.  No, even better, let's say there's another quarter of a trillion of losses at than i-banks and other financial institutions in this country. And what would you think if you wake up tomorrow and find out that oil supplies are being disrupted and the world's economies are slipping along with the US.

Would you be surprised?  No, of course not.  And neither would the stock market at this point, it seems, no?

And what if it turns out the mortgage write-downs are nearly over.  Or more to the point, let's say there's some new development of peace and it turns out that the consumer picks up her spending again this summer and that the enterprises around the world start investing in new technologies and productivity and GDP numbers perk up.

I feel almost silly just writing that last graph...we'd all be shocked if things get better in a hurry for the economy and fundamentals.

And see, doesn't that say it all about why you've gotta stay bullish and long for the near-term...and, as I said on Happy Hour last night -- maybe even expect the stock markets to reach new highs into early summer...

Even the bad economic news about jobs and the rest of the ugly data from the last couple weeks along with the testimony on Capitol hill from the idiots who've created this mess for us have all resulted in a steadily climbing stock market from the recent lows.

When stocks flatline or bounce on bad news...you gotta ask yourself, what would they do on, yes I'm gonna throw it out there -- good news.  "Flip it", right?

Buy the fear and bad news, sell the euphoria and good news.