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Could the iPad be Apple’s key to gaining a bigger slice of the global personal computer market? If you consider it a PC like Goldman Sachs does, then yes.

Goldman Sachs on Monday resurrected its analyst coverage of Apple with a note from the newly hired Bill Shope, formerly of Credit Suisse. The note, packed with praise for Apple and bearing a stock-price target of $430, has created a stir — including on Wall Street, where Apple’s stock popped on Monday before drifting back down a bit today to about $321.

Shope noted the growth in the “global PC personal computer market,” but he includes tablets such as the iPad in that market – including when he tracked the growth of Apple’s share of the “PC market” over the past 15 years.

While there is overlap in the markets for tablets and computers (some people are buying the former rather than the latter), it seems strange to just lump them together for purposes of historical analysis. He wrote that “Apple’s share of the PC market has been below 5 percent for most of the past 15 years,” but that, with tablets from all vendors now in the mix, that share will rise to 12 percent next year.

However the data might be framed, it does show why other PC makers are (or should be) stepping up their development of tablets. Shope forecasts that Apple will sell 37.2 million iPads next year, which would give it a 68 percent share of the tablet market.

Macs, meanwhile, are more than holding their own, despite the iPad’s cannibalization. NPD Group on Monday said Mac sales will break a record this quarter, with more than 4 million being purchased. Sales are up 20 percent so far this quarter compared with the same period last year. Growth is faster overseas than in the United States, NPD said. About half a million of those sales will be of the MacBook Air.

For Shope, the key to Apple’s growth story is the “ecosystem” of software and content the company has created. In his 59-page report, he says that people buy Apple hardware products for their design, but once they buy in, they stay because of the “switching costs” involved with moving to another platform. He says Apple’s revenue growth relative to operating expenses – nearly triple since iTunes launched in 2003 – is traceable in large part to this lock-in. Once you buy an Apple product, you’re likely to buy many more Apple products because they’re all tied to the platform.

John Melloy of CNBC took note of an otherwise-overlooked aspect of Shope’s report: the $50 billion in cash Apple is sitting on. So far, the company has “steadfastly refused to part with this cash hoard,” Shope wrote. He predicts a big dividend.

Some observers say the cash is best used to improve efficiency, which improves margins. Others note the incredible growth in the stock, and the missed returns that represents for Apple.

But Dan Nathan, an options trader quoted by Melloy, said that “Apple invests only in Steve Jobs’ ego. “They have made a monumentally horrible decision on this cash management issue, and believe it or not it has cost investors in a serious way.  Their arrogance will be the thing that brings them back down to the stratosphere with every other once dominant tech company.”

That might be more than a bit harsh, but, as noted by Fortune’s Philip Elmer-Dewitt, revenues have grown seven times faster than operating-system R&D spending. Dewitt chose to characterize this as being evidence of the “bang [Apple] gets for its R&D expenses.”

Apple hasn’t reported how much it spends on Jobs’ ego.

Tags: iPad, pc mac, tablets

Companies: Apple, Goldman Sachs

People: Bill Shope, Steve Jobs

In an inauspicious start to the day for Research in Motion, three major BlackBerry clients have announced that they’re moving to new devices.

Dell is planning to move its 25,000 employees away from BlackBerry, and towards its own devices, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Dell employees will initially be moved to the company’s Venue Pro Windows Phone 7 smartphone and will eventually have the choice of moving to Dell’s high-end Thunder Android phone.

“Clearly in this decision we are competing with RIM, because we’re kicking them out,” Dell chief financial officer Brian Gladden told the WSJ. He goes on to say that the switch, which will begin next week, will save Dell 25 percent in mobile costs — mostly because it won’t need to pay for BlackBerry servers any longer. Dell is also in discussions with T-Mobile to buy bulk voice minutes and mobile data that can be carried over monthly.

Dell is also planning services — like network setups and asset management — that could lure other businesses to dump BlackBerrys en masse as well. Now that Dell is offering some very desirable smartphones of its own, the move is a way for the company to help promote its own devices. Dell also isn’t afraid of selling competing mobile devices, since it will see higher margins through its service offerings, according to Gladden.

In other news, two of the largest banks in the U.S., Bank of America and Citigroup, are looking to dump BlackBerrys in favor of iPhones, according to Bloomberg. Sources tell the paper that both banks are testing software that will make the iPhone secure for company messages.

The banks are also testing Android devices, but it sounds like iPhone testing is further along at this point. The sources say the banks are looking to expand the variety of device choices for employees, instead of just dropping BlackBerrys cold-turkey like Dell.

The news follows a report from last month that showed the iPhone outmatched its business competition in activations. Apple also revealed in its most recent earnings call that it was seeing widespread adoption for the iPad and iPhone among enterprise users. Apple recently announced that it will work with Unisys to expand its enterprise offerings.

The reports are a one-two punch for RIM, but they certainly didn’t come out of the blue. RIM’s most recent flagship device, the BlackBerry Torch, was a decent upgrade for BlackBerry users, but it still wasn’t compelling enough to compete with the iPhone 4 and new Android devices. And while RIM is stagnating, Google, Apple, and even Microsoft, are targeting the now vulnerable mobile enterprise space.

Tags: Android, Blackberry, enterprise, iPhone, smartphones, Windows Phone 7

Companies: Apple, Bank of America, Citigroup, Dell, Google, Microsoft, Research In Motion, RIM

People: Brian Gladden

Kent Lindstrom is founder and CEO of location-based social network PlacePop and the former CEO of Friendster.

Location-based “check-in” applications let smartphone users record when they’ve arrived at a particular restaurant, store, or other venue in order to receive points in a game, get special offers, or have friends track you, and they’ve rapidly been gaining a following. But as their popularity grows, so too does the concern over “fake” check-ins. Given the way smartphone LBS systems work, a check-in can be recorded when the user is near, but not actually in, a particular venue. So users may be able to check into a variety of nearby businesses right from the comfort of their living room.

In fact, CEO of check-in app maker Shopkick recently declared that “most check-ins are fake“. Yikes.

Since a number of small businesses are starting to invest in check-in apps that send promos or special offers out to customers who check-in frequently at their venue, fake check-ins are a serious concern. The fear is that conniving users will accrue points and rewards for checking into stores when they haven’t made a purchase or even entered the place.

Should local businesses, then, avoid rewarding users of check-in applications? No. They should embrace these applications and their growing millions of users. People genuinely want to share their location with their friends, and, presumably, prefer to accrue rewards at places they go over places they don’t. In the long-run, it is not as bad news as you might think. Even fake check-ins can be valuable to local merchant. Here are seven reasons why:

1. The user engages with your brand. In order to check-in, the user has opened an application, chosen your business, and pressed a button associating themselves with your business. Contrast this to the much lighter engagement of an advertisement.
2. The user sees a message from your business. After checking in, the user sees your message: “Thank you for coming to my shop, the peaches are fresh today”, etc.
3. The user is near your business. Check-in applications generally only show businesses within, say, 300 feet of the business. People checking in are at least potential customers – they are not checking into a store in Chicago from China.
4. You are building a customer list. Subject to the user’s privacy settings, when they check into a business, they (and a lot of data about them, like phone numbers and emails) are added to your store’s customer list. Think of a fishbowl on top of the counter with a note that says “toss in your business card for …”  Well, you can get rid of the fishbowl now.
5. You are opening a communication channel: All those people who checked in can be contacted if they have opted in to receive emails about “deals, offers and happenings near me”.
6. The user shares on Twitter: Almost all check-in apps allow check-ins to be ‘tweeted’, so every check-in can be a tweet reminding people about your business.
7. The user shares on Facebook: Like Twitter, check-ins can be shared on Facebook as can photos of your business and/or product. Photos are the most shared thing on Facebook.

So if someone is giving your business all of this from a single check-in, maybe they deserve that free cup of coffee.

It is early days for location-based applications. But they provide a critical tool for local businesses to increase both acquisition and retention of customers. Like Facebook Fans, or Twitter followers, more is almost always more.

Tags: check-ins, LBS, location based services

Companies: PlacePop, Shopkick

People: Kent Lindstrom

The video games industry is big and getting bigger. But it’s changing. Console games are getting riskier to make, while online and mobile games are taking over the market (see my updated Global Video Games Investment Review, which I’ll be using to open GDC Europe).

Today online and mobile games generate about a third of all games software revenues globally. In five years’ time they are forecast to generate 50 percent of all games software revenue, or around a fifth more revenue than pure console games. This morning, market researcher iSuppli said that cell phone games are growing fast as console and handheld games sputter. Whether you have faith in the forecasts or not, executives from the major U.S., European and Asian publishers all tell me that this is what keeps them awake at night.

What excites me about the online and mobile games markets is that they are both high-growth and profitable, which is pretty rare. The leading competitors are growing revenue 100 percent-plus annually while also delivering 20 percent to 30 percent EBITDA (earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortization) margins. Add to that a fragmented industry structure, no dominant leaders yet, plus clear strategic exit options, and it looks like this is the time for strategic game and media companies, as well as financial investors, to invest.

However, major publishers aren’t structured to invest in online and mobile. Their core competencies focus on management of $20 million-plus serial, high risk, complex developments, launches and commercialization. Online and mobile games require rapid, multiple, small-scale parallel development platform investments. It’s a completely different business culture. As a result, major publishers aren’t driving investment in those games the same way they did console games.

In parallel, generalist venture capitalists are investing less in video games. Despite the rapid growth of the online and mobile games markets, VentureBeat’s own analysis shows investment in games companies dropping 36 percent from 2008 to 2009. Our analysis (which uses different definitions) shows VC investment across video games in 2009 had dropped by 60 percent from its high point in 2007. The drop has come from general VC market weakness, combined with limited knowledge and relationships across the complex, fast-moving online and mobile games sectors.

I am constantly being approached by high-quality, high-growth online and mobile video games companies from the U.S. and Europe who are finding it harder than you’d expect to get the funds they need to drive growth during this critical stage, before the industry consolidates. Quality demand is exceeding quality supply of investment and board representation.

Why a growth capital games fund could fill the investment gap

The opportunity now exists for major strategic video games, media and financial investors to maximize returns from online and mobile, so high quality deal flow is needed. Yet entrepreneurs typically avoid direct corporate investment prior to exit, so major strategic players aren’t seeing quality deals until merger and acquisition time when valuations are full or already prohibitively high. As before, the generalist VC market isn’t putting enough money to work here either.

I believe that a growth capital game fund is the most promising approach, investing in online and mobile games companies rather than more common and higher risk project-funding of individual games. A true growth capital game fund would invest in working capital (debt convertible into equity via convertible loan notes), venture capital first, second, or third rounds (early stage equity) and growth equity (later stage mix of equity and some debt) in multiple, parallel game business development platforms (not “one game” hit driven companies). That’s where the strategic and financial investors should be looking to invest across the U.S. and Europe. Asia is also interesting, but you need local partners to make it work.

In terms of focus, I like companies like Bigpoint, with a portfolio approach for both games (DarkOrbit, Deepolis, Farmerama) and distribution (limited reliance on Facebook). I also like online/mobile games B2B middleware companies like Live Gamer. I’m less enthusiastic about predominantly single game companies like Jagex (Runescape), and the Facebook players (Zynga, EA Playfish). These companies aren’t diversified enough. Primary dependence on one game or one distribution channel is a bit risky for my tastes, as any game can decline or Facebook can turn you off or charge increasing rents.

The real difference with this approach is the delivery of earlier stage investments than otherwise possible, meeting the needs of high-growth companies independent of stage while also managing investment risk. With the right relationships and management, this could yield high growth capital returns (greater than 30 percent internal rate of return) or three to six times money multiple (where the company sells for several times what went into it) due to investment at lower, earlier stage valuations than typical acquisitions. So long as the rules of engagement are clear, there is substantial opportunity to make money by investing in the growth of the best online and mobile games companies.

In short, the video game funding model needs to be reinvigorated in the same way that online and mobile are reinvigorating the video games industry as a whole. The console industry today looks a lot like the old media industry 10 years ago: cash generative, revenues flat to down and cost focused. Fortunately there is a real opportunity for the games industry to attract investment in online and mobile to avoid a declining future. I believe it will happen.

Tim Merel is a Corporate Finance Director at IBIS Capital with Video Games, Digital Media, Technology and Telecoms experience in industry, direct investment, financial services, growth company development and turnaround, across Europe, USA and Asia Pacific, with background in software engineering, law and business from Yale and Sydney University. Tim has the triumvirate of evil professions, having been a lawyer, worked for Rupert Murdoch, and now being an investment banker. When he’s not doing sensible things, Tim writes adventure stories and plays a mean guitar.

[photo credit: Flickr, Picnic Young]

People: Tim Merel

eWise, an online payments and financial management solutions company, has secured $12.1M in funding, it announced today.

The round was led by prominent European tech investor Balderton Capital, and included Total Technology Ventures, Patagorang, and Allen & Co.’s Roger Allen and Stanley S. Shuman.

Founded by Alexander Grinberg, who also heads the company, eWise is headquartered in the United Kingdom, and has expanded its market services to the United States, Australia, and China. Utilizing its new funds, eWise hopes to realize the widespread use of Secure Vault Payments (SVP) in the US.

eWise’s chief concern is to assure security — it says customers should make payments safely and confidently, either through its person to person solution, eWise Pay Anyone, or their its banking e-payments solution, eWise Pay By Account.

eWise’s new board member, Balderton partner Dharmash Mistry, said “In SVP, the compelling yet simple proposition of allowing customers to pay for online purchases through their own bank accounts, we believe that eWise has developed an innovative game-changing payments solution.”

Tags: epayments

Companies: Allen & Co, balderton, ewise, total technology ventures

People: alexander grinberg, dharmash mistry

Another day, another Android departure.

Google’s worldwide head of Android business development and operations, Tom Moss, has left the company this month. He owned relationships with the major handset manufacturers and carriers for Google and led business development for the Android operating system. He was also a recipient of a Founders Award, which are generous Google stock grants that can be worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and are used to protect employees from poaching.

We’ve reached out to Google for official confirmation.

Moss follows other key Android managers in leaving the company including Erick Tseng, who went to Facebook, Sung-Hu Kim, who went to Twitter, and Gummi Hafsteinsson, who landed at Apple after it acquired Siri.

Losing key people left and right might put a dent in Google chief executive Eric Schmidt’s plans to make $10 billion a year from mobile devices. Mobile is an incredibly competitive space for recruiting and keeping talent and there are plenty of opportunities to build startups for managers and engineers with a few years of experience working on Android under their belts.

We don’t know where Moss will head next, but we’re suspecting it might be a company of his own creation.

Companies: Google

People: Tom Moss

Evernote, a Mountain View-based startup devoted to helping people remember everything, is maturing as a platform with the launch of an app store today.

Called Trunk, the store has about 100 apps or add-ons from 67 companies, covering everything from games to productivity apps to add-ons that let you create physical, personal scrapbooks. About 30 of them are brand new and come from the company’s 2,000 developer partners.

“The next phase of Evernote is about being smarter and giving you the ability to leverage your memories to support everyday activities like scheduling, cooking and writing,” said chief executive Phil Libin. The company is still working out details of a revenue sharing program. There will be an affiliate program coming later this year.

Many of the Evernote partners that demoed today weren’t companies that were exclusively dependent on Evernote. They were startups like Seesmic or very large corporations like SAP.

Libin was cautious about using the phrase “app store,” saying that there are plenty of other channels to distribute and make money from apps. Instead, the point of Trunk was to show off what the company’s developer partners could do with its technology.

“The focus isn’t necessarily to build an app store. We want to be a showcase,” Libin said. “If the easiest way for a user to access these features is to buy something within Evernote, we’ll do that.”

Since publicly launching two years ago, Evernote has grown to support 3.7 million users, and Libin said revenue has grown 12 percent month-over-month for the past two years. About 6,000 new members join a day.

Evernote’s business model is relatively simple — it’s free for everyone, but if you want premium services, you’ll pay $5 per month. Libin said Evernote’s conversion rates, while low at first, rise the longer people use the service. A half-percent of users opt for the paid premium service in the first month. But eight percent of users choose to pay for Evernote if they’ve used it for two years.

The company has raised a little over $25 million in venture funding from investors including Morgenthaler Ventures and NTT DoCoMo.

Companies: Evernote

People: Phil Libin