Apple hit home runs when it first launched the original iPad and iPhone. However, the successful launches of these products will be tough to beat. While Apple doubtless has a road map of future product releases, its visionary founder, Steve Jobs, is no longer at the helm.

Jobs was intimately involved in developing Apple products, and he was a genius at anticipating what customers would want before they even knew they wanted it. Apple is currently releasing products already dreamed up in Jobs’ fertile mind.

What will happen when the Jobs pipeline dries up?

There are signs that Apple is slowing down relative to its competitors. Last year, for example, Samsung passed Apple as the top smartphone company by shipments in the world.

In the tablet market, Apple’s market share has also fallen. In 2010, for example, the iPad accounted for over 94% of the tablet market share. By the middle of last year, that had fallen to 70%. Today, that number is down to just under 58%.

Most of that lost share in the overall tablet market has been captured by a diverse group of companies running Google’s Android platform. Like the tortoise to Apple’s hare, I expect the Android army will eventually overtake Apple for the tablet lead.

Microsoft is also chomping at the bit to get into this market. Its next version of Windows will run on tablet computers and smartphones. I was able to check out an early version of the new operating system at January’s Consumer Electronics Show, and I found it impressive.

In the meantime, Apple is trading on its past success. Today, it’s the world’s largest company by market capitalization. The $500 billion question is whether or not Apple can continue to grow as it has in the past…

I suspect Apple is approaching the slowdown phase in its growth curve and future growth will be more modest. Even new products, like Apple TV, will contribute only modestly to overall growth at this point.

While I fully expect the mobile computing market to continue to grow, I think there are better ways to invest in it than Apple. Today, Apple is priced for perfection. However, even if Apple stumbles, the mobile market will continue to grow.

One investment theme I’ve mentioned to my Technology Profits Confidential subscribers is to buy mobile technology suppliers. This includes major Apple suppliers. The suppliers don’t make components just for Apple products; they make them for the entire mobile market. The slices of the market share pie might change size, but the pie itself will continue to grow…

On example would be to focus on companies trying to solve the wireless bandwidth problem. A wireless data capacity crunch is happening right now. Wireless carriers like Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint are dumping unlimited data plans in the face of too much traffic to handle. They are now charging additional fees for data above a certain level.

Consumers hate this, of course. When they shell out hundreds of dollars for a powerful wireless device like the new iPad, they want to be able to use it as much as they like. They want to be able to browse the Web, download applications and watch high-resolution video.

Technology companies that help wireless carriers solve the bandwidth crunch inexpensively will be in high demand in this environment.

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco
for The Penny Sleuth

Bank Tech Gains Without Investing in Apple

Bank Tech Gains Without Investing in Apple was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

First developed by Kodak in 1987, OLEDs are a revolutionary display technology. OLEDs use organic (carbon-based) thin films sandwiched between conductive layers. When an electric current is applied across the organic film, it emits light.

Since the individual display elements in OLED screens emit light, they do not need a separate lighting source like LCD screens do.

Getting rid of the need for a separate light makes OLED displays very energy efficient and thin. It also makes OLEDs an energy-efficient technology for other applications, like lighting.

OLED displays are already becoming widespread in mobile phones…

Earlier this year, the world’s No. 1 mobile phone manufacturer, Samsung, signed a multiyear licensing deal with one OLED manufacturer that includes the purchase of emitter materials used to create OLED displays. “Emitter materials” refers to organometallic materials that light up when excited by electricity.

Samsung is still building out new OLED manufacturing capacity in order to supply OLED displays for its mobile phones. Samsung will also be supplying OLED technology for mobile phones from other phone brands, such as Google and, it also appears, HTC and Motorola.

Mobile phone displays, however, are just the beginning for OLED technology. This technology will eventually move into much larger, and more lucrative, tablet and television displays. LG, AU Optronics, Samsung and others are working on developing the manufacturing technology and facilities for what will eventually replace LCD and plasma as the display technology of choice.

Royal Philips Electronics has announced that it plans to make OLED a mainstream lighting technology by the end of next year. Philips’ latest OLED products use lighting panels developed by Universal Display licensee Konica Minolta. Konica Minolta claims the world’s highest lighting efficiencies for its all-phosphorescent OLED technology.

OLED is proving to be an excellent technology for use in energy-efficient, pleasant lighting. This is a huge potential market that hasn’t hit the exponential growth phase yet. It is, however, beginning to accelerate. Double-digit growth in OLED display technology is forecast for years to come. OLED lighting could become a multibillion-dollar industry in the next few years…

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco
for The Penny Sleuth

Accelerating Growth in the OLED Market… was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Partly, it is because North America saw mobile phones so early. When other regions finally rolled out mobile phones, infrastructures were more modern. The larger reason, however, is that there is so much at stake.

Right now, there are a limited number of players in the lucrative payment network world. Visa, MasterCard and American Express would like to move to your phone. They fear, however, that enabling electronic wallets in phones would allow aggressive young players onto their turf. PayPal, Amazon and Google are, in fact, financial networks, and they would love to do your banking. This could open a whole new world for us as technology investors…

So far, progress has been slow, but the emergence of Android is opening up new possibilities. Work is being done by the Mobile Payments Industry Workgroup that would establish standards. What we know for sure is that the established payment networks will do their best to keep out upstarts. We also know they will fail.

Part of the reason for this is political. Part is cultural.

The politics are that Wall Street and the major banks have never enjoyed lower public regard and support. Consumers sense that the bailout profited rich bankers more than consumers. The customer base is not going to support politicians who continue to put the interests of favored banking institutions above those of consumers.

Eventually, market forces always win. Currently, retailers are capable of dealing with only a few credit and debit card companies. This limits competition and keeps prices higher than they would otherwise be. A sophisticated mobile payments infrastructure, which is inevitable now that the Android has broken free, will arise. In fact, it will arise before most people know it’s happened.

The cultural factor I referred to is the difference between the old-school financial institutions and the new electronic services. I have little confidence that Visa or MasterCard is going to do what’s necessary to exploit the convergence. They’re too habituated and institutionalized.

PayPal, Amazon and Google, however, are populated by people who want to transform the financial world. They will find a way to force themselves into an industry that has lost serious credibility and clout due to its participation in the ongoing subprime mortgage fiasco.

Fortunes will be made by financially sophisticated app developers. One of the companies covered in Breakthrough Technology Alert is clearly in this category.

We are moving very rapidly toward developing an electronic infrastructure that would enable brand-new forms of banking. Given our recent experience with the federally controlled financial system, the need is clear.

I won’t detail here how I think this new banking will function. For now, however, I’d just like to warn you that you shouldn’t be too surprised to see completely transformed financial institutions arise from the current rubble.

Yours for transformational profits,

Patrick Cox
for The Penny Sleuth

Banking 2.0: How Mobile Innovators Will Take On Big Finance was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

He will be missed.

Who knows what Jobs could have accomplished with another 20 years of healthy, productive life? I only wish some of the breakthrough cancer therapies in development could be brought to market more quickly…

Unlike entrepreneurs in the relatively unregulated personal electronics industry, innovators in biotechnology are constantly impeded by myriads of costly regulations.

The late Jobs’ Apple Inc. introduced the latest iteration of its wildly successful smartphone, the iPhone, preceding his passing. The new iPhone 4S features an upgraded ARM-based processor; a new version of the iOS operating system; a higher-quality camera; and new voice recognition features built into Siri, a personal assistant software package.

The new smartphone is able to record video at a full 1080p of resolution, and integration of Apple’s new cloud computing solution, iCloud, allows easy offline storage and access. Moreover, the phone will integrate both CDMA and GSM wireless, providing users with more flexibility when they are traveling around the world. The new iPhone is a world phone.

For many observers hoping for the iPhone 5, the 4S was somewhat underwhelming. Many of the features, such as an 8-megapixel camera, a more powerful processor, cloud storage and a voice-recognizing virtual assistant, are already available in existing Android products.

The 4S, therefore, is more of a mild upgrade of Apple’s existing product than a quantum leap. The iPhone 5 is still in the works and is expected sometime next year, but Apple needed a new product to introduce to existing users whose wireless contracts are due for renewal, and who might feel the temptation to switch to a different platform.

In the meantime, Samsung is working on next-generation smartphones, as well. One concept, the Galaxy Skin, can twist, flex and bend:

What is Samsung’s secret? Flexible active matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) technology supplied by none other than Universal Display Corporation.

New OLED technology allows for flexible, beautiful, nearly indestructible mobile screens. The use of graphene sheets — the discovery of which resulted in the awarding of a Nobel Prize last year — allows the touch-sensitive layers of the phone to be flexible as well. When the technology advances sufficiently, you may be able to carry an entire foldable tablet computer in your pocket.

The phone features an 8-megapixel camera and a 1.2 gigahertz processor. Although the processor type isn’t specified, some of latest high-end Samsung “super smartphones” have been running Nvidia Tegra processors. Samsung is reported to begin offering the phone in the second quarter of next year. The flexible architecture is a radical departure from any commercially available smartphone we’ve yet seen.

I hope it makes a big splash… it would mean a world of profits for these small chip companies.

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco

The Mobile Technology That Will Change Everything was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Big tech companies that missed the boat see the writing on the wall, too, and are scrambling to secure a position in the mobile computing market. Some are selling off legacy lines of business and changing their focus.

IBM, for example, sold off its PC unit to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo a few years ago. HP’s recent move in this direction reinforces the trend. Microsoft is also working on claiming a bigger stake in mobile computing, signing deals with Nokia and announcing that its next operating system, Windows 8.

Smart investors often look to international markets for opportunities and diversification. One example is China, a huge market. Over the past decade, investors who have traded commodities in high demand in China have done very well.

China, however, isn’t just hungry for raw materials. The people of China want to enjoy all the latest technologies we take for granted, which, of course, includes advanced wireless communications and mobile hardware.

With a population of over 1.3 billion, China represents the largest national mobile market in the world. According to the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), 930 million Chinese are mobile phone users.

Taken at face value, this might sound like a relatively saturated market. However, if we drill down a bit, nothing could be further from the truth. According to MIIT’s figures, only 87 million Chinese mobile users have fast 3G services. The great majority of China’s mobile users are still using old 2G mobile phones. Essentially, when it comes to smartphones on fast wireless connections, the Chinese mobile market is about where the U.S. market was nearly a decade ago.

A factor holding up China’s mobile expansion into 3G has been the relatively high cost of smartphones. Average Chinese incomes are still lower than in other places such as the U.S. or Europe. As a consequence, spending $500 on a powerful new smartphone hasn’t been an option for most Chinese.

Rapidly falling handset prices, however, are changing that quickly. In addition, Chinese wireless carriers are building out hundreds of thousands of 3G cell towers all around the country. When China does something, it does it big and fast.

According to iSuppli market research, Chinese smartphone shipments will rise to 54.1 million units this year, up from 35.3 million last year. Total China domestic sales are expected to top 111.6 million per year by 2015.

One Chinese company that has been expanding 3G access is China Mobile. With a subscriber base nearly twice the size of the U.S. population, China Mobile is the largest wireless carrier in the world. China Mobile has been building out a 3G network using a Chinese communications standard called TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access). It is now rolling out new lines of smartphones that work on that network.

This summer’s market decline has exposed many opportunities to invest in technology. Many excellent technology companies are trading on fear, rather than on their fundamental values. I love a bargain, and I think right now is a great time to pick up a couple of innovative, solid technology companies at fire-sale prices. Looking into mobile technology in emerging markets, like China, could be the best place to lock in transformational profits for your technology portfolio…

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco
for The Penny Sleuth

Mobile Companies In This Emerging Market Are Poised for Strong Growth was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Basically, it’s because everything that you do that can be digitized is going toward mobile. Whether it’s voice, music, entertainment, information, everything is going toward mobile. So if Eric Schmidt, who runs one of the most significant technology companies on the planet, is basically saying put your best people in mobile, maybe as investors, we should be putting our best technology dollars into mobile.

So… to put it into perspective, we look at mobile, and we think about how significant it is. What does it really mean? There are a little bit less than 7 billion people on the planet.

And we compare mobile to other technologies and other industries. Think of automobiles. There are a billion automobiles registered in use today worldwide. There are 1.1 fix-line phones. There are 1.2 billion personal computers. Just think about that. 7 billion people, 1.2 billion personal computers. That includes tablets, PCs, laptops. There are 1.6 billion television sets. There are 1.7 billion credit card users worldwide. There are 2 billion Internet users. Think about that. There are 2 billion — again, there are more Internet users than people with PCs, that’s important. There are 2.2 billion people with a banking account. This includes everywhere, the United States, developed countries, developing nations, underdeveloped, doesn’t matter.

This is what we’re looking at here. There are 3.9 billion radio receivers in use today. So there’s the number. There are 5.2 billion mobile subscribers out there. Unique, 3.7 billion. That’s over half the world population with mobile phones.

When you think about it, it makes sense. Pretty much everyone in this room has a mobile phone. Any of the developing countries, everyone has a mobile phone, kids have mobile phones. In some of the smallest countries, some of the poorest countries, the only way they can communicate is via mobile technology. Then we think about the future as investors. We’re all investors here. We’re all looking for the next Google, the next great opportunity, great investment.

If you’re thinking technology, what you want to do is — what are the kids doing?

Not what I’m doing, not what you’re doing. What are the kids doing?

Because that’s where the real future is. That’s where the growth is going to be. One in three teens today send over 100 text messages per day. If they’re sending 100 text messages, they’re receiving 100 text messages. That’s 200 text messages a day. And they’re doing that on their mobile phone. ChaCha, a mobile phone company, surveyed teens. 61% of the teens said, “If I could have one device, it would be a mobile device.”

Not a computer. 18% of them said they would want a computer, and 61% said they would want a mobile device. These are the kids that are growing up, and they’re going to be running future technologies, future businesses. Clearly, mobile is the future. And sticking with the teens, try to understand what do they do with their mobile phones.

You would think that they’re talking on their mobile phones. They don’t.

Based on the ChaCha study, 68% of the teens prefer to text. Talking, only 10%. It’s not very much. The most telling figure is email. Less than 1% of the kids are actually emailing each other nowadays.

So this is, again, from an investor’s standpoint, understanding where the trend is. Where are the opportunities? What’s going on? Where are the changes happening? So again, it’s not what you and I are doing. I still fax. Email is still important for me. But where is the future going to be? Where is the next Google?

You never hear about adversities in mobile. Maybe because mobile is probably the most advanced, most important productivity tool on the planet. Think about it today. If you didn’t have a cell phone, how would you communicate with your spouse? How would you communicate with the office? How would you stay in touch with your kids? Just imagine. So it’s a productivity tool that’s accessible to everybody. So there’s the number, $1.18 trillion in revenues last year. It’s very big.

And it’s not just big, it’s growing. Growth is pretty much the lifeblood of earnings and investors. Without growth, without real dollars, without real buying power, you don’t have an investment.

So mobile is big. So the macro picture is telling us that it’s big, and it’s growing. Other trillion-dollar industries, cars, food, clothing, construction, weapons, banking. I don’t know anybody buying banks nowadays, but banking is a trillion-dollar industry. Mobile is the fastest-growing trillion-dollar industry. What you don’t see on the list? You don’t see movies, music, pharmaceuticals, you name it. They’re not trillion-dollar industries. Again, trillion-dollar industries are very rare.

A trillion-dollar industry that’s even growing is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Anybody ever heard of Angry Birds? Angry Birds is taking off leaps and bounds. The rest of the industry is hurting. But yet, Angry Birds, or Rovio, the maker of Angry Birds, they’re getting ready to launch a billion-dollar IPO. And this is a company that maybe two years ago probably didn’t really exist.

This is all due to mobile technology.

It’s a mobile-based platform. Bigger than Angry Birds is a company called Zynga. Who has heard of Zynga? Zynga is getting ready for a billion-dollar IPO. Their sales are up five-fold from last year, from 120 million up to 600 million. They’re getting ready for a $1 billion IPO. That’s not a $1 billion market cap. That’s $1 billion in cash. We’re talking about a market cap of anywhere between $20-30 billion.

Again, this is all new. This is all due to mobile technology, and these are the things that, as investors, we should be paying attention to.

It’s important that, as investors, we understand that the Internet, which is big, is adapting to mobile, and pretty much everything is adapting to mobile. So if you’re running a business, you want to think about your mobile strategy. If you’re looking for an investment, you want to think about your mobile strategy.

Sincerely,

Peter Charles
for The Penny Sleuth

Invest In What The Kids Are Doing… was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

As a consequence, today, we have a fragmented wireless landscape. During peak usage, traffic bottlenecks can form on some of these networks while others enjoy excess unused capacity. With the explosion in sales of data-hungry smartphones and tablets, wireless subscribers often find themselves getting far less bandwidth than what they paid for.

Of course, 4G technologies, such as LTE (Long Term Evolution), are emerging to ease the pain. Along with 2G and 3G, InterDigital has developed foundational 4G technology, and 4G promises to offer multiples in bandwidth improvement over 3G. However, even with 4G, problems remain to be solved.

According to Credit Suisse, for example, U.S. wireless networks are running at 80% capacity. Globally, the figure is 65%. Even in the parts of the country where 4G service has become available, we still see slowdowns and congestion during peak usage, because the networks can’t handle the traffic.

While mobile carriers are increasing their investment in mobile infrastructure, it is important to find companies that are carrying out important research into utilizing current and future bandwidth more efficiently.

What needs to be done?

Many smartphones and tablets contain multiple wireless interfaces, but lack the technology to use them intelligently. For example, a modern 4G smartphone usually has the ability to connect to 4G, 3G or WiFi networks. With additional interfaces, it could connect to other wireless networks, such as WiMAX.

What these phones do not do, however, is transition seamlessly between connections. They also do not connect to multiple networks at the same time to balance the data load across multiple networks, or perform quality of service duties (QoS) in order to automatically route traffic to the highest-quality connection.

Also, cellular networks distribute radio communication over a geographic service area. When your handset connects to the network, it connects to the nearest cell station serving your location. This service area is known as a cell.

Within a cell, however, performance can vary. If you are accessing the network near the edge of a cell, your network bandwidth can degrade considerably. This is true even with the latest 4G networks.

Pervasive wireless networks and higher bandwidth throughout the wireless cell are only two of the problems. Finding companies that are working to solve these problems could lead to profits for early investors.  Solutions that are being created it right now…

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco
for The Penny Sleuth

Solving the Bandwidth Crisis With a New Generation of Wireless Technology was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Apple won another major victory in its battle against Samsung in European courts this week, winning a patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung in Dutch courts. Along with the German ban on Samsung Galaxy tablets, Samsung’s excellent line of Galaxy smartphones will be banned in the Netherlands.

What is Samsung’s response to Apple claims of original prior art? I have to admit, one of Samsung’s court exhibits made me laugh. Samsung claims the tablet concept dates back to director Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 science fiction classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.

According to Samsung:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface) and a thin form factor.

Does this invalidate Apple’s claims and should Kubrick have patented the idea back in the ’60s?

The key right now is to find the companies hold the patent keys for the mobile computing future…

One company, for example, announced a long-term contract with Samsung for the licensing of OLED (organic light-emitting diode) patents and the sale of phosphorescent OLED materials.

Samsung is sharply increasing the production of OLED displays for use in its Galaxy smartphones. It also plans to supply other companies that want to use the breakthrough display technology. OLED is a far superior technology to the current commercial LCD (liquid crystal display) standard. It is the next generation display technology and will eventually replace LCD.

Unfortunately for Apple, it does not have access to the technology at this time. The manufacturing capacity for millions of iPhones and iPads does not yet exist. Apple has a reputation for being a first mover with new consumer electronics technology, and I believe this state of affairs has to have Apple a bit nervous.

The OLED manufacturing capacity will eventually come online, however. Along with Samsung, other big electronics manufacturers like LG and AU Optronics have announced plans to invest billions of dollars in new OLED display manufacturing capacity.

The OLED display market will enjoy multibillion-dollar worldwide sales in the coming years.

Samsung isn’t taking Apple’s challenge standing still. Ownership of key wireless patents could help Samsung win a patent “cease-fire” from competitors like Apple, protecting its ability to sell its products in Europe and elsewhere…

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco
for The Penny Sleuth

The Patent Arms Race was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

These technologies will become more widespread as global growth in wireless increases.

They will also be very profitable for investors.

As these devices have become more powerful, they have become a transformational general-purpose technology. Smartphone users are doing everything from mobile payment processing to banking to stock trading— all from their mobile handsets.

This is a huge technological leap forward.

But unprotected and sensitive data also make a very tempting target for cyber criminals…

Cyber attacks have become more sophisticated and daring.

For example:

• Late last year a group of criminals stole $70 million using a computer virus. It captured bank account details from unsuspecting users.

• Earlier this year, Citigroup lost personal credit card information for more than 200,000 users from a hacker group known as Anonymous.

• Another group, called LulzSec, did the same to Sony’s online video site and PlayStation Network.

And, the hacks aren’t limited to private interests. Government websites have been taken down or defaced, from the CIA to the president of Greece.

While these online crimes aren’t specific to mobile, they do underline the danger. PC-based security has been the subject of headlines for many years. Smartphones and tablets aren’t immune. They have simply escaped attention because they have previously represented a relatively small base.

As the amount of highly mobile computing devices rises, this is changing. Ultra-mobile computers are also becoming a growth market for cybercrimes. The sheer number of smartphones that will be on the Internet in the years to come makes them a logical target for hackers, scammers, and thieves.

For example, Google’s mobile operating system, Android, is reported to be growing by 500,000 new activations per day. Many of these devices are used to access corporate data while users are away from their desks.

As a consequence, Android is already under attack. A new security flaw in the Skype application for Android could let crooks gain access to users’ private data. Google has had to remove dozens of virus-infected Android applications from its application market in recent months.

Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system, iOS, isn’t immune either.

In 2009, the first iPhone worm made its debut. It was a relatively benign and simple exploit (it changed the user’s wallpaper to a very annoying picture of ’80s video star Rick Astley).

We will see only more exploits as cyber criminals find new ways to gain unauthorized access and control.

The upside of this gloomy story is that technology innovators are working on the problem of securing our wireless networks. Those that do so in a way that is easy for users, as well as being platform agnostic, will make fortunes protecting our data. And take their investors along with them…

[The Sleuth’s Note: Doing a quick search with Google Finance we found three small security company working to protect your data.  They are: Zix Corp. (NASDAQ: ZIXI), VASCO Data Security International, Inc. (NASDAQ: VDSI), and Wave Systems Corp. (NASDAQ: WAVX). While all these companies are working toward better security, there are many more out there. As always, we suggest you do your homework before investing in anything.]

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco,
for Penny Sleuth

Making Fortunes in Mobile Security was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.

Now the number of gadgets running Google’s Android operating has grown to 310 different devices… from 36 different manufacturers… selling in 112 countries.

Amazingly, there are 400,000 new Android device activations every single day. The total installed base has exploded to over 100 million devices communicating on 215 different wireless carrier networks.

The numbers are shocking, I know.

And those numbers are just from Google’s Android system. Throw in Apple’s iPhone and the growth numbers of smartphones are nearly unbelievable.

Both companies are fighting it out to see who can produce the coolest new applications… who can have the biggest number of new device activations… and who can produce the fastest new technology.

But today I’d like to show you a way to profit from the Google/Apple smartphone war… no matter who comes out on top.

See, for truly life transforming returns, investing in Google or Apple may not be the way to go. I’ll show you why in a second.

But first, let’s dive back into this fight…

Google’s Android comes with an army of 450,000 developers. It is the applications that count the most for end users.

An operating system can be easy to use, secure and efficient, but it is useless in the consumer market without a large variety of desirable apps. The Android operating system is proving to be a rapidly growing applications delivery engine. The Android Market has sold 4.5 billion applications to date. At the current rate of growth, the number of available Android applications will overtake Apple’s iOS applications market sometime next year.

At a recent industry conference, Google speakers crowed over growing market share. They even had prominent background images of the Android robot taking a big bite out of an apple… heh. (see below)

Why has Google been gaining market share from Apple?

Well, unlike the iPhone’s iOS operating system, Android OS is an open source Linux variant. Android can run on devices offered by any hardware manufacturer that receives a certification from Google. iOS, on the other hand, runs only on Apple’s hardware.

This open nature has rapidly created a huge ecosystem for Android phones. It is a 21st-century replay of how the open PC platform came to dominate home and business computing in the 1980s.

Still, a great deal of credit has to be given to Apple. The iPhone and iPad devices have served as catalysts for new product markets.

Apple can’t rest on its laurels, however. With so many mobile device manufacturers entering the fray with new Android products, it has to continue to innovate to survive.

Already, other manufacturers are releasing phones with 3-D capabilities. HTC’s new phone is called the EVO 3D. The phone features dual cameras for stereoscopic photography and a glasses-free 3-D display.

It doesn’t really matter who wins the mobile OS fight (although I am betting on Google), because we are not recommending you invest in Google or Apple.

The key is to find companies that are agnostic from the standpoint of the Google/Apple wars. This means finding the small semiconductor companies that will provide the tools for both Google AND Apple.

In short, buy the companies that keep this market growing no matter who comes out on top.

For proof of this concept in action, just look at the last two years…

If you picked up shares of MIPS Technologies, Inc (NASDAQ: MIPS), a small company working on semiconductor technology, back in 2009 you would have had the chance to get in at $1.05.  Today that company is trading above $6.50 per share.

That is an astounding 620% gain!

With the accelerating growth of this market and the need for their technology, small semiconductor companies will be the clear winners of this war… and early investors will be able to take profits in the process.

If you haven’t already, I’d look to add some of these small semiconductor companies to your portfolio.

Ad lucrum per scientia (toward wealth through science),

Ray Blanco
Penny Sleuth

How to Profit From The Smartphone War… No Matter Who Wins was originally featured in the Penny Sleuth.