Keeping it REALLY Simple.

 Benchmark --- LAZR  -- Upstart LiDAR company.

Approximate Valuation: 10 Billion. (MicroVision's LiDAR is better)

At the same value: 10 Billion / 152 Million = $66

I consider the near eye display to be worth MORE than the LiDAR -- it certainly I think will be at least as widely used. Now that we have a value for LiDAR, I'm significantly adjusting my guess on NED -- I'm keeping my guess simple.

Market Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is likely more important than fundamentals... And the fundamentals here are REALLY good.

Give it a comparable valuation:

$66 + $66 = $132


Review previous Value Posts

Value LiDAR

The Beats Exercise 

Near Eye Display

The Beats Exercise

Beats sold to Apple for 3.2 Billion. Why?

This was a mysterious acquisition when it happened. Not too difficult to make a new kind of headset, but that was what everyone saw when they purchased it.

Why did Apple buy Beats?


Apple's Beats Acquisition has already paid off

Indeed, Apple Music would launch in June 2015, and amass 10 million subscribers by January 2016 -- 20 million paid users that December. Less than two years later, and after some redesigns, it would double its tally to 40 million. Sure, the company hasn't caught Spotify globally, and it may never be able to. But in the US, Apple reportedly has more paying users than its biggest rival.

The reason for the price wasn't obvious --- but it was there.

It was not for the hardware, but for the number of subscriptions it could sell.

So, you need to ask yourself, how many paying subscriptions could MicroVision's technology enable?

Microsoft office is a subscription.

In the world of AR there will likely be subscription services for education, games, business applications, or additional fees just to have AR service.

Interactive projection(or display only) could improve the appeal media subscriptions significantly.

Can they sell in a few years 20 million subscriptions? There's your 3.8 Billion. ($27/share)


Secret History of Beats

“By 2013, Beats Electronics was a distressed business by any standard,” said the late PrivCo chief Sam Hamadeh. “The company was in a corner until Carlyle stepped in.” 

The Carlyle investment also gave Beats the funds it needed to keep expanding. That was especially important given the focus on its new streaming service. Beats Music celebrated its official launch in January 2014 with a concert at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles, fronted by Dre, Diddy, Eminem, Nas, and Ice Cube. Inside, superstars from Drake to Pink mingled with label chiefs and talent agency executives at the oversubscribed show.

There were no reports of Apple executives in the crowd, but the computer giant was clearly watching. On May 8, the Financial Times reported that Apple had agreed to purchase Beats for $3.2 billion; that night, the grainy YouTube video of Dr. Dre’s impromptu celebration lit up the Internet.

******three weeks later, though, the deal went through—for a final price of $3 billion. “No traditional valuation measure applied to Beats as a business justifies the price,”

It seems pretty clear to me that it was purchased for getting subscriptions to increase. If it already paid off for the increase from doubling the number of paid users from 20 million to 40 million --- you have to ask yourself can the results from MicroVision's Near Eye Display OR their Interactive Display result in 20 million paid subscriptions? (I believe the answer is clearly yes it can -- significantly more than that.) so those 20 million paid subscribers are worth 

History's most expensive yawn (UPDATED)

Apple had their Word Wide Developer Conference keynote speech this morning.

WWDC Highlights at THE VERGE

It delivered adjustments to some things - improvements to their products and software certainly. There was no WOW factor at all, (a Kando-free performance). The most exciting thing for the attendees was an upgrade of Swift, their programming language.

They did unveil their "new" music service, which apparently is a mixing of their acquisition "Beats" & iTunes. I wasn't impressed, and I'm kind of dreading needing to re-learn how to manage my music with iTunes.

The way I see it, Apple could have offered something that really wowed their fans, but they didn't.

Someday, they'll follow SONY into that territory.


Apple KILLS iPod

"Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, who thinks Apple will ship 40 million unitsof the Watch in 2015, told Benzinga that the Apple Music service was a disappointment.

He said that this “is a me-too offering, which is not what Apple is considered to be. They should always be exponentially better than whatever else is available."

From Business Insider

"Because Apple Music offers only a paid subscription, and because Pandora is used mostly as a free streaming app, it looks as if the two services will not compete. This, of course, assumes that that people who like free music now will not suddenly develop an urge to start paying for it in the future."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/pandora-v-apple-music-2015-6#ixzz3cfZANDtt

The Telegraph  --

“There is definitely an appetite among iTunes users for this kind of service - over 20% of them already stream compared to 14% on average,” said Andy Saxton, consumer retail analyst at Kantar Worldpanel. “Yet with nearly three quarters currently using Spotify, the challenge for Apple will be to convert these users to their own platform.”

It's REALLY hard to get people to pay for what they're used to getting for free -- even for a company like Apple. Maybe they'll get a return on their $3Billion, but I retain my skepticism. 

Bloomberg -- "huh?" they didn't say it, but they have no idea what Apple is selling.

Tech Crunch Apple Buys Beats for 3 Billion

Apple Trapping Customers

@CNET