If you were alive and old enough to be aware of trends in the early 1980’s, then you probably remember the big stir caused by the Commodore VIC-20, an affordable personal computer that was the first PC to sell one million units. That may not sound like a big number today, but in the early 80’s- before iPods, lap tops and smartphones – one million units of computer hardware was an impressive number.
In the past 30 years, the personal computing landscape has changed significantly and the Vic-20 of today seems to be the tablet PC – -but on a much larger scale. Some estimate that as many as 70 million tablets will be sold in 2011.
Naturally, this leads you to think of all the major tablet producers, like Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Hewlett Packard Co (NYSE: HPQ) and Lenovo, and the sales that might be gained if this is the case. But what about the companies that make the chips, graphics cards, processors and other components that collectively create the tablet? Companies like NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ: NVDA), with its Tegra 2 graphics processor chip present in the tablet that Motorola (which announced Monday that it would be splitting into two companies) is said to be unveiling at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show. Today, Barclays upgraded NVDA due to the “significant push into the mobile phone and tablet device market” the company may experience due to this chip (“Nvidia shares rise on analyst upgrade,” January 5, 2011, Bloomberg.com). As a result, its stock price rose 7.67 percent from a closing price of $15.77 on January 4th to $16.98 January 5th.
Here are Covestor models with holdings in this sector: Undervalued Growth Companies, Innovative Companies, Bottom-Up Analysis, Bottom-Up Analysis Agg, and Stealthy and Nimble.
*Prices and charts courtesy of Yahoo Finance.
