Serious question here. It seems possible that the microsoft surface can do for microsoft what the ipad did for aapl.
Forget about the surface, its going to come and go, it will be forgotten about as soon as it comes to market. Its not going to be a turn around for them....the market is soooooooooooooo saturated with tablets and smartphones, how many tablets have come and go? Everyone who pushes a tablet to the market thinks its going to be the next big thing...the only ones that are doing well are tablets priced extremely well like the Nexus 7 and Kindle. They are practically being giving away at cost. Microsoft keeps trying to play catchup, if anything they would have caught up by now, its not happening and wont, the surface is not a game changer, if they price it right they might be able to compete, but at a starting price of $500 its just way too much, people would rather buy the ipad at that price, a good starting price would have been $300 to really compete with apple.
Say you are a lifelong windows user (that's still like 80% of the market place). How likely are you to jump to an Android or Mac based tablet? I think there's a sizable chunk that transition to a windows tablet when they do get a table device. Design wise, the surface isn't really worse than the ipad. Then, there's the surface pro, this is basically an ultrabook in tablet form and runs a full version of windows 8. Apple has no comparable offering. All this, coupled with the fact that Windows 8 will drive revenue, and that MSFT is currently down to due to a lackluster 3rd quarter, it seems like a pretty risk free buy. Don't forget, Halo4 right around the corner. The only real risk here is if the entire market turns down but if you're worried about that, hedge against SPY. Now that the earnings have just come out for Q3, a lot of people waiting to buy are going to jump on the bandwagon soon. There's no reason MSFT of 2013 won't be the AAPL of 2012.
OK, maybe not quite as insane, but MSFT hitting $40 by May 2013 is not inconceivable. I wouldn't advocate buying msft right away either, wait for it to finish falling, then buy in at the dip.
I doubt this will happen either. their OS business is being eaten away by new technologies and they aren't going to win in the sexy businesses of cellphones and tablets. That being said, i sold Nov 28 puts this morning. Vol is too high.
-1 as long as this idiot is in the corner office. <iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e8M6S8EKbnU?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>