The question is how many will survive in 2012 and how will they all differentiate among each other?  There are really 2 camps:  Consumer tablets (iPad and Android based), and everyone else.  I know, I know, RIM has one (the Playbook), Cisco (Cius), and Avaya (Flare) have one too, and maybe HP’s WebOS will be like these too.  But, I’m sorry, they fall in the “everyone else” camp.  Let me explain:

iPad and most Android tablets (Dell Streak, Motorola Xoom, Asus Slate, Samsung Galaxy, etc.) are designed primarily  for media consumption.  In other words to watch videos, read books and blogs, listen to music, etc.  The difference between iPad and all Android tablets is the obvious, but the uses are pretty much the same.  The “other three” are for communications.  All three companies have a great history of selling product to the enterprise and want to capitalize on the Tablet buzz. So they are tailoring them to be best for video communications, email, and those kinds of apps for people that are on the go.  BTW, where is Microsoft in all this?

Now, there is also a sub categorization of the consumer devices in iPads, “good” Androids, and 100′s of cheapo devices.  During CES, Motorola Mobility (one of the 2 siblings that came out of the mother ship Motorola, Inc.) introduced the Xoom, whose main allure was the introduction of Google’s new version of Android, Honeycomb.  Reviews were amazing, Honeycomb looks fabulous.  But every non Apple manufacturer in the consumer space will have access to it, so there will be competing head to head, the same way Android Smartphones do today.  But there will be 100′s of cheap ones too, based on Android, but not necessarily good.  When you take away the complexity of the phone, almost every manufacturer can build one, but few will be worthy of the Android seal of approval.  Those are the ones to look for.

By any measure, this is great since it will drive lots of product innovation, lots of choices, in a market with iDevices has been the only true alternative, but it will also drive commoditization.  Good for consumers, bad for the companies that will be competing.  Particularly great for Google who will see it’s new OS proliferate like the corn subproducts.  And more and more users will access the internet using a mobile via either Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS with infinite income potential for both.  And the competition between them will only get more fascinating.

How will everyone differentiate remains to be seen, but with the clever ideas on this post there will be room for plenty.  One more thought: Will this be totally incremental to the 600M smartphones supposed to be sold in 2012 or will it cannibalize it?  Quite frankly who cares?  There is plenty of pie for both.

So, my faithful reader (singular) wait for Honeycomb and run for your tablet or go buy an iPad now.  You will be glad you did.

Enjoy.

Cramer writes as he speaks: a little too cocky, self confident, straightforward, candid, and with a couple of “insider” jokes that make you think he is the only one that finds them funny. It is a great flight book (that is a book to read on a boring 6 hour flight). That being said, the book is a good collection of sane (yes, I said sane) advices for the novice and no so novice investor. His stock-picking rules are a good organized way to summarize the basics of disciplined investing / trading. I have two pet peeves on his recommendations: the way he defines diversification (which is not exclusive of Mr. Cramer), and the 5 stock limit for part time investors. Let me explain.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t diversify, but diversification is different for each investor. If you call his show to the “am I diversified” segment and tell him: “I own EBAY, GOOG, AAPL, CSCO, and QCOM” i can hear the screams all the way from here: “They are all tech!!, are you crazy????” The firs statement is true, the second … well, I don’t know for sure, but not because you own those stocks. EBAY is really online retail, Google is advertisement; Apple devices; Cisco, infrastructure, and Qualcomm, chips. True, there may be some correlation between them, especially between QCOM and AAPL (iPhone uses silicon chips). But based on fundamentals they really address very different markets and their revenues are not so closely tied. Technically, they might be closer since most investors aren’t tech geeks so they think they are tied together more than they really are. If you work in tech like I do, you can distinguish the differences between these sub-categories and be diversified within a sector. Moreover if you work in tech you have to monitor these companies.

Cramer also suggests to own a minimum of 5 stocks to consider diversified, and he even goes through rules of how to pick the categories of these 5. He also suggests that more than 5 is too many due to the “buy and homework” strategy, arguing that you can’t devote enough time to do homework on more than 5 stocks and still have a day job. My opinion is that like everything else in life it depends. Following on my example above I have to know about the 5 companies I highlighted below for my day job, so I can afford to own stock of more than 5 if I can dedicate my moonlight hours to do “homework” outside of my area of expertise.

One last comment: I think Cramer overlooks one additional cardinal rule of investing. That is keep a balanced portfolio. Diversification doesn’t mean a lot if you own 5 stocks but 80% of your portfolio is in only one. Index funds that follow the Dow Jones or S&P are another fallacy of proper diversification like I explained here.

Enjoy.