Eat Fruit

Over the past few weeks Apple (AAPL) has lost around 15% of its stock value. That makes this a good time to buy, and buy big. Apple is a bit price, its around $88/share, but when the market gets back to fundamentals it will climb up over $115/share.

Right now AAPL has 25 billion in the bank, and that is a nice stockpile to fund its research and development operations. While speculation continues about Steve Job's future role in the company, he has created an anti-establishment, anti_Microsoft juggernaut. Some of that R&D money is already paying dividends, like the improved iPod Nano. The new Nano has a great screen, better backlight, and an improved interface.

The other big news out of AAPL is the fact that they are now selling iPhones for less than $200 at Walmart. We believe that if Apple's push into Wal-Mart stores goes successfully, it will be creating a situation "to sell a relatively complex piece of computing to folks who may never have touched a computer, or who didn't think they'd ever want to carry one around with them." Further, this could drive a wedge between Apple and competitors Research In Motion and Palm, as the latter two have so far had a tough time selling their smartphones to non-corporate consumer types, a market which, for the most part, is dominated by Apple.

All of this is bad news for Blackberry and even worse news for Palm. The new Palm Centro has had a big marketing push over the Holidays, but it wont matter. The lack of push technology makes its too inefficient.

Also, a recent demographic shift in smartphone users from corporate users to individual consumers has created a margin issue at Research In Motion. As more than half of RIM's new subscriptions are now coming from consumers, the company now sees its gross profit falling from 45.6% to in the range of 40-41%.

Shares of Research In Motion are now down nearly 3% this week alone. Elsewhere in the sector, shares of Palm are down 3.4% to $3.10 and Nokia stock is also down 3.4% to $14.93. Meanwhile, shares of Apple, which initially traded up as much as 2%, are now up about 0.5% to $86.23.