Comment by confluence | Hacker News Reader

Comment by confluence | Hacker News Reader

> Earnings from the chip division, where Samsung competes against Toshiba Corp and SK Hynix Inc, dropped 28 percent to 1.15 trillion won as prices of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips sagged, though a recovery in NAND flash chips, widely used in mobile devices, helped offset the weakness.

The company said it expected DRAM oversupply to run on into the current quarter, but sees a tight NAND flash memory market.

Intel had the same problem. They switched markets from commodity to monopoly. They're still around.

I've noticed Samsung's ability to crush it since about March of last year and have been long Korean tech dominated ETFs to hedge my Apple stock - which I recently sold and subsequently shorted. Samsung is Dell with profits. It in combination with Android will destroy the iOS ecosystem.

Here's to profits with openness. May the Microsoft strategy once again prevail.

Apple was good while it lasted and it brought a lot of great tech forward by a few years. But they're out of screens to attack - just like Microsoft is really out of operating systems to attack. Disclaimer: I'm long Samsung, and will be long Google once more if the price drops further.

You never bet against Linux in the long term. Just like you never bet against capitalism or democracy.

Linux always wins.

While I think Samsung is a great stock and company, it's not like Apple is failing miserably. Shorting it here seems like a scary idea. They have 120 billion in the bank with a PE < 15. ex cash it's 10 or 11.

My short was at 700. I'm up ~15% where they had a P/E of ~17.

I'm not too worried. Apple was worth ~$700 billion and based on future growth prospects, market saturation, commodity competition and the squeeze currently being put on by the entire world's electronic manufacturing community backing Android on both the high/low ends and in terms of sheer volume (millions of activations per day) - I feel rather secure.

Apple is being Netscape'd.

No company can survive a full world supply squeeze with path dependent adoption. Even with their cash horde (which they are paying out because they literally can't use it) they can't directly confront hundreds of billions in global investment in electronics manufacturing through South East Asia chasing Apple's profits. If they do try - they'll be Solyndra'ed.

Screens are now commodity (see lagging iPad).

However, I've been thinking of closing up my short this week so who knows - I might buy. Investors who win are investors who think and always have the ability to change their minds, reverse direction and go all in if the fundamentals change.

I don't really care either way.

I'd agree with you if Apple had said they were going to use all that cash to force content providers to let them change TV.

But seeing as Apple TV isn't trying anything ambitious, and they've decided to pay all that cash back to investors instead of disrupting new markets, and Samsung is clearly killing it as their chief rival, I also hold the OP's opinion that Apple has peaked.

They aren't paying anywhere close to all that cash back to investors. They are paying roughly 1/4 of the new money they make each quarter. Total cash still went up last quarter by several billion. Apple TV may or may not be a myth, but they haven't announced anything yet so I don't think you can say whether or not it is ambitious.

Samsung is killing it, but Apple still made more money this quarter (and every recent quarter). They are a 6-700 billion dollar company that is growing > 20%. With a PE of 11, how do you short that?

The last two years, Apple has done things that no company has done in the history of capitalism. It really is remarkable, and should be taught in history books.

To say that they've peaked is not to say that they're going to fail or flop or anything like this, but I don't see them getting to a $1Trillion market cap without a major disruption in television. To say that they've peaked and that their stock is unlikely to go up is not necessarily a critique of Apple, but an acknowledgement of gravity.

To me peaked seems to imply that they will be going down quickly, and I just don't see that happening anytime soon. Look at the amount of money they've been making, and then look at their market share. Macs, it's tiny. iPhones, where they make 50% of their profit, it's half of samsung. Yes they dominate in tablets, but that is a rapidly growing market. They can lose share and still grow there.

It seems to me that the way the phone business is they don't really need to do anything special at all and they will make about 50 billion profit next year. That makes them undervalued in my opinion, just based on the fundamentals.

Now, do I think they are going to a trillion market cap in 3 months, not at all. But I think at this level they are a much better buy than sell. If only for the dividend that is likely to be growing by large amounts. all this being said i agree that samsung is also a buy. They are selling huge amounts of phones, and they are also selling the components for lots of others (though i think i just read they stopped selling screens to apple maybe?)

Linux always wins? I disagree!

Desktop linux adoption is still in the low single percentages. I think your linking linux with democracy/capitalism is very random.

Desktop linux was always completely stupid idea - it provided no benefits to either the manufacturer or consumer but it had all of the drawbacks of a switch with no forcing function available to push mainstream adoption (for example fundamental lack of OS/tools for consumers from another platform).

However - Linux dominates mobile and it dominates commodity consumer tech. It already dominates back end server tech. My Android phone/tablet is indistinguishable from the iPhone/iPad. The forcing function for this was due to manufacturers needing an OS to run their mobile systems - since Apple ain't licensing - they are forced to adopt Android to scale out their high volume production.

Linux dominates server tech because licensing fees kill business models and the vast majority of backend processing is mostly stable and needs to be horizontally scalable.

The world is going to run on linux. And it'll be through the browser.

Stupid idea? Initial goal of desktop linux was to provide a 'free as in free speech' desktop. It was not a stupid idea and has worked out just fine.

It was so damn successful on that goal that at some point (early 2000's) we thought we could reach world domination without any heavy investment.

I have a very functional, good looking, modern 'free' desktop.

Disclaimer: Im a KDE contributor.

I don't understand what you mean.

Ubuntu has so far lead the charge with the Linux desktop and even back in 2005 the user experience was atrocious (no fault of their own).

The open source community should've just given up and transferred resources to FireFox, servers and the Linux kernel - because so far net investment in desktop Linux has had negative ROI.

Just look at the example of Plan9 to see why.

Whether desktop linux has been successful or not must be judged by its goal.

Its goal was not reaching mass market (hence, its not a company selling a product). Its goal was creating a usable free desktop. We have more than one usable desktop. We have been successful by definition.

But the fact that you say "we should've just given up" or "Desktop linux was always completely stupid idea" tells me that you do not share the concern of people who are working (mostly as volunteers) on desktop linux.

Even for the mass market goal, I'm not sure it's failed. All my family and friends (including my parents) are running Ubuntu, and whenever my (average, when it comes to computer literacy) girlfriend hears about someone having problem with Windows, she says "well, it's their fault for not running Ubuntu".

The FOSS community doesn't really have a single goal. Some people want a usable free desktop, others to get mass market share (see Ubuntu bug #1, for example). Some people have specific principles - like that science should run on open source code - others see money to be made from it.

These groups work together when their interests are aligned. Many people, for instance, have an interest in ensuring the Linux kernel works well. But the goal, and hence our success, depends on the individual.

Initial goal of desktop linux was to provide a 'free as in free speech' desktop

Linux has been my free as in speech OS for many years. I love it! I don't give a shit about the "Desktop". Sorry, KDE contributor, KDE is a very impressive product, I just don't need it. The command line is how I use Linux, because it is a far better way to deal with a computer. If you are a power user.

Linux, from, by, and for, power users has always worked spectacularly well using the command line.

The desktop? That's always been something our pride and ambition wanted, but we never needed it.

When we talk about desktop linux, we do not talk only about the widgets and wallpapers. Desktop linux means PDF readers, video players, window managers, web browsers, email clients, music players, chat services, office suites and much more.

Are you telling me that you use none of them and perform all your tasks without even running X?

I try to avoid PDFs as much as possible, I hate them. I am not interested in video playing on Linux. And I used to work for a video editor maker who's products worked on Windows, OSX and Linux. (And used to work SGI) But my workhorse Linux machine is just not for videos or video games. OSX and Windows are for those. That's why I think of Linux as by and for programmers. Not anyone else.

Email does not need window managers, same with music players, chat service, emacs is my "office suite", etc. All of these are generic things for a wide public. For everyone. But OSX and Windows are already doing a great service for everyone.

Why should the free and open OS also be easy to use for the general audience? What's so wrong about it being specialized to power users?

My point is that Linux as an OS for and by hackers has been spectacularly successful. As an OS for everyone else? Meh.

I still think a desktop Linux will be big in the enterprise, especially for computer professionals. You need a powerful machine for certain things.

You're probably right - but that wasn't the goal of the Desktop - which was mainstream adoption.

When you make statements like this, you need to qualify the goal of whom. I've run Linux on my desktop since '95. It's not my goal to get mainstream adoption - mainstream adoption is irrelevant to me. The same is the case for a lot of people, and quite a few Linux "desktop distros".

Specific distro's might have mainstreaming the Linux desktop as a goal. Some might have failed. Some are still trying.

But there's no single goal here. Nor even a single vision of what a "Linux desktop" should look like.

I don't know if it was stupid or not, but I wouldn't know how to use Linux at all without switching to Ubuntu desktop from Mac OS when I couldn't afford the Apple premium after college.

It released me from dependency hell, forced me to learn VIM, and vastly improved the quality of my Google searches when I had a development question.

As a result, I'm a much better developer today than if I had been able to afford a Mac.

Profits with openness. How many phones did Samsung sell?

My guess is GOOG at ~$200B is close to the lowest it will get. There are a lot of potential big revenue streams that are currently in development.

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