CNBC’s Goldman: Having an Apple iPhone tie boosts companies; like the ‘New Dot Com,” but for real

“Remember the frothy days of the dot com bubble? It was like watching one of those films in science class where time-lapse photography captured a flower blooming, bursting into beautiful colors, dancing in the breeze,” Jim Goldman writes for CNBC. “New companies would seem to burst forth on a daily basis, but more interestingly, established companies that merely announced some kind of web strategy, even if it were simply adding a home page, watched their stocks soar.”

“Today, we have a new kind of craze, courtesy of Apple, its iPhone, and that incredible engine-that-could, the App Store. Look no further than Radio Shack this morning,” Goldman writes. “The company announces that it will become an authorized reseller of Apple’s iPhone and the stock jumps 10 percent on the news.”

“It seems that Apple’s App Store is the train everyone is trying to catch. Merely by announcing they have an ‘app strategy’ is enough to pop a stock,” Goldman writes. “We heard from eBay last week that transactions on the iPhone through PayPal hit a half-billion dollars in the blink of an eye. Electronic Arts, which reports earnings tonight, has seen something like $1 billion in revenue from its games available on the App Store.”

Goldman writes, “Apple itself has said that there are now over 100,000 apps available for download, and they’ve been downloaded over 2 billion times. Some cost money, others are free, and we still don’t have a clear picture of just how much of a money-maker the service is. But unlike the dot com craze, with its nutty eye-ball valuations, this is real money, real innovation, real growth.”

There’s much more in the full article – recommended – here.