"How Apple Made Other Tech Stocks Cheap"
By Jim Cramer
RealMoney Columnist
5/9/2011 11:50 AM EDT
"Has tech gotten too cheap? Are there values in tech everywhere? Yes and no. There are certainly some values being created by the under-appreciation of the group. But the first thing you have to ask yourself is, "Is the undervaluation caused by going up against Apple (AAPL - commentary - Trade Now)?"
Now, for instance, that Intel (INTC - commentary - Trade Now) has played its hand on its new chip, I wonder if Apple likes the hand. Apple likes ARM Holdings (ARMH - commentary - Trade Now), but the secretive nature of Apple makes it hard to divine whether Intel will get new business from the chip. You simply don't have enough growth away from Apple to make a go of a new chip.
Don't believe me? Go look at the reaction to Microsoft's (MSFT - commentary - Trade Now) quarter, which was "Macro Soft," a better name for the company. The part of Microsoft that is growing is games. In fact, games are really the hallmark of the company, even as the company would have you believe that it is all about everything tech and that everything tech is growing.
Not really.
I think that it is very hard, when you look at the panoply of companies that just reported, to find real growth away from Apple and data centers, the two most robust parts of the business.
Tablets are growing. But that's Apple. Cellphones are growing. But that's Apple.
The interesting part of tech is that the companies that are levered to the data center, mostly EMC (EMC - commentary - Trade Now) and NetApp (NTAP - commentary - Trade Now), aren't expensive vs. their growth rate and are probably going to be core -- at least one -- for tech buyers.
But just plain old tech? Hard. Very hard. We have pushbacks and gluts in all sorts of areas, whether it be hard drives or NAN or DRAMs or equipment that makes them. We have outfits like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ - commentary - Trade Now) that look so cheap but could stay cheap forever. We have Cisco (CSCO - commentary - Trade Now) but, well, I would rather own Sysco (SYY - commentary - Trade Now).
In the end, I think that tech is cheap because it should be. Sure, it is underweighted, but tech is in a difficult transition out of PCs and into Apple, out of cell-phones and into Apple, and out of parts and into parts for Apple. Do you want Research In Motion (RIMM - commentary - Trade Now)? It's definitively not Apple. Do you want Nokia (NOK - commentary - Trade Now)? Totally not Apple. Do you want Dell (DELL - commentary - Trade Now)? Sold!
It is that simple. Apple is the sun. You have to be in the Apple solar system to make money, except that Apple realigns the solar system quite regularly, so we have no idea who the real planets are.
We do know that worlds have collided and that Apple is the champ. There's not enough room for two solar systems right now, and that's what's causing the undervaluation.
At the time of publication, Cramer was long AAPL and EMC. "
(in
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