“Lazard Capital Markets‘s Edward Parker [on Thursday] initiated coverage of Apple with a Buy rating and a $540 price target, arguing the Street has its conception of the company all wrong, that it is in fact a ‘storage’ company whose appeal is closer to that of EMC and NetApp than to that of Nokia and BlackBerry), as he puts it,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s. “Parker argues that while people fret about the waning influence of late founder Steve Jobs, investors would do better to focus on ‘an alternative analytical framework that goes beyond addressing Apple’s product elegance and ecosystem lock-in will become increasingly more useful and insightful.'”
Ray reports, “Apple’s focus on utility gives it an economic advantage over Samsung much like Starbucks versus store-bought coffee: ‘Not everyone can charge $2.00 for a 12 oz. cup of coffee if one business model rests on attracting customers to sit in a café while another rests on selling coffee beans over the Internet so a customer can make coffee cheaply at home. Ask Starbucks. Then ask Folgers. Nor can everyone charge $1.00 per GB of HDD storage capacity if one business model rests on protecting and managing valuable corporate data while another rests on providing storage capacity alone. Ask EMC. Then ask Seagate.'”
Much more in the full article here.