Apple cracked $700 in early September and has now pulled back sharply. It seems to me the pullback has to do with investor concerns over a possible labor strike at Foxconn, Apple's Chinese manufacturing facility.

Certainly, there should be concern. Conditions at Foxconn have been the subject of much controversy, and a plant-wide strike has the potential to shut down iPhone 5 production. But in the past, these things have passed. And they probably will again. More importantly, analysts I have spoken with say Apple could be prepping a huge fourth-quarter product push that many include not just one, but two new products.

The products would be a new iPad as well as the famous Apple TV everybody has been waiting for. If you don't think that Apple is prepping something big, you need to look at this very interesting analysis published by Horace Dediu the ASYMCO Website. Dediu demonstrates the relationship between Apple's groth in Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and revenue growth in new products. What's interesting is that CapEx is a leading indicator because Apple budgets this ahead of the production schedule, so you can see what the company is expecting.

In some shocking graphs, Dediu shows that CapEx has exploded in the just-ended quarter, to a new high of $3 billion, which is almost double what Apple has produced in the past -- just a few quarters ago. This sets the stages for a historic fourth quarter for Apple. Using historical data, Dediu attempted to project the relationship between share price and capial spending, based on what types of revenue growth has occurred in the past after CapEx jumps. According to him $1.5 billion in CapEx -- achieved just a quarter ago -- equates to a share price of $800. If history is any guide, Apple's $3 billion in CapEx would correspond to a doubling of share price from there -- to $1,600.

Of course past history is not guarantee of future results. As of this moment, the market believes a bigger concern are the working conditions in Foxconn. Will it be yet another grand buying opportunity for Apple? I have picked up some Apple shares in the $660 area on this weakness. That's a nice pullback from the all-time high of $700. Apple stock is still cheap with a P/E in the 14 range and a PEG of .63, so it's worth holding. I would no want to miss out on a possible explosion to $1,600 per share

Disclosure: Long Apple

Have you noticed that mobile networks are becoming increasingly commoditized and more efficient for the consumer? Years ago, text-messaging was a value-added service, now bundles of unlimited text messages are common. And while unlimited data plans are no longer widely available, mobile bandwidth is becoming cheaper and more plentiful. The ultimate trend is that profit margins in pure connectivity and basic services are becoming tighter for mobile service providers.

Another big threat to the mobile operators is the app and social-media revolution. This puts pressure on their own messaging services, such as SMS, as users migrated to social-networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter to communicate with other users over the mobile platform.

So, as usual, mobile providers have to look for ways to diversify into new revenue streams. Clearly the app ecosystem is one place to look, although it's unclear exactly how mobile providers can profit from apps as many apps are downloaded from third parties. In the case of the Apple OS, it's Apple that controls the revenue channel -- and clearly service providers have made little headway in breaking down that relationship.

So what's next? Service providers have to look at a spate of new potential business models as the mobile device takes over the world. Here are the top contenders for new revenue-generating services in the mobile network:

Apple is probably the best business competitor in the world. And when you win, eventually you will have to deal with anti-trust accusations, much as Microsoft dealt with in operating systems in the 1990s. Anti-trust actions are famously difficult to prove, but I think in the coming years you'll hear more about it with Apple because it controls huge amounts of business.

I wrote about this a couple weeks back on Investor Uprising, but I thought it would be good to summarize what about Apple makes it so dominant in the market... for, well, everything.

Apple, after all, is not just growing in one segment. It's actually taking huge chunks of profit  out of entire industries.

Apple also enjoys fatter profit margins because of its vertically integrated model -- which has come at the expense of telecom providers who must subsidize customers' never-ending thirst for iPhones and iPads. It also allows Apple to build in excess profits into components such as chips, because it can charge a premium.

 Let's just look at some facts about Apple's dominance.

• Apple has single-handedly boosted the stock market. Bloomberg tells us that Apple alone has accounted for 8% of the S&P 500's rise since the 2009 bottom. And Barclay's analysts recently pointed out that Apple has had an outsized influence on the markets, accounting for 15% of the growth in all of the S&P's rise this year. They estimate Apple contributed four times its weight to the index by having outsized profits. So maybe the government should launch an inquiry into Apple controlling the stock market.

   

• Apple's profits account for most of recent profit growth. According to FactSet research, if you subtract Apple's earnings from the market in the fourth quarter 2011, profit growth for all of the S&P 500 was -1.6%. With Apple profit growth added back in, overall profit growth was flat. That's right folks -- without Apple, there would be no growth in profits. It alone accounted for all of the profit growth in S&P 500 in the last quarter last year, and FactSet expects Apple to the be the largest source of earnings growth in Q1 2012.

   

• Apple leverages major telecoms through subsidies. The retail price on a new iPhone can be as high as $600. A telecom carrier will sell it to you for $199. Think about Apple's core sales channel: telecom operators. Apple has so much leverage that it can largely dictate the terms in these relationships so that telecom operators subsidize sales of its devices.

  In extreme cases, such as the deal with Sprint, the subsidy is a simple transfer of wealth from carrier to Apple. Sprint tagged its subsidy expense at $1.7 billion, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier. Some analysts predict this can't last, that Apple has to give back more of its profits to carriers. But Apple's immense leverage means it can dictate the terms.

• Apple is taking over all of retail electronics. Blog site Zero Hedge recently calculated that Apple's market capitalization now surpasses that of the entire retail industry. How is this possible? Well, as i-devices have added functionality such as music, communications, and video, they have eliminated entire segments of the industry. Maybe this is contributing to Sony's recent woes. Once you have an iPad, you need a portable DVD player?

   

• Apple's winning the smartphone profit battle. Though it's having a see-saw battle with the Android-powered mobile phones and can't quite gain majority market share, Apple recently gained some share back and now represents 43% of the smartphone market to Android's 53%, according to the NPD group. But more importantly, Apple makes more money in this market. Keep in mind that Google does not profit on Android directly because it gives its operating system away for free to phone manufacturers, whereas Apple controls its own manufacturing from the Operating System (OS) to the memory chips. Apple's model results in more profit, because it can charge more for all of the components in its product, including the OS. Even though it's not winning top market share, Apple is winning on profitability.

   

• Apple controls digital music. Remember the music industry? Apple's influence and control of digital music is still growing. It now accounts for 69% of all digital music sales. Amazon is a distant second with 8 percent, according to the NPD group. Apple's growth in digital sales means it now serves up about 25% of all music units, which includes physical units (even though Apple sells no physical music units), according to the NPD group. That's up from 14% in 2007.

I think that Apple's growing power and dominance in a number of industries is likely to be a topic for trade regulators for some time. The regulators have plenty of areas to mine, most notably Apple's control of the relationships in the telecommunications sales channel.

Will they make any progress? It may take years and years, but eventually you may see more legal action against Apple in the realm of anti-trust actions.

Don't get me wrong: I think Apple earned the control of markets that it has. It has better products, and it's a better company. We're also not crying because Apple is one of the leading components of our IU25 Index, which is up 35% in one year.

But it's not just about e-books. Apple's immense control now extends to the broad range of the entire business universe.

Returned from CES last week. Slept for a couple days. Woke up. Tried to remember something that will change the world. Couldn't think of anything.

Here's a problem: CES is becoming like the old Comdex. It's like a giant star that's gotten too big and general and will soon Supernova and collapse in upon itself.

Here's another problem. Apple generates the most excitement, both form the technology and a investment perspective, in the mobile consumer electronics space. And Apple doesn't go to CES. So what you have is a gigantic hallway filled with 150,000 people trying to copy Apple.

What's more important is what Apple will do next. Apple will do a sleeker tablet with LTE connectivity. Apple will try to do TV -- again.

That being said, there was stuff to listen to. If you want a list of some potential future tech trends, I wrote about some futuristic stuff on Investor Uprising.

In terms of investment ideas, I believe that the place to look in mobile and consumer is in suppliers and chips, because clearly as devices multiply it opens up many chip markets for many players. Read my CES Investor's Guide on Investor Uprising.

The gold and silver negativity is suddenly back on financial TV after euphoria just a week ago -- you know what that means: Time to buy!

I picked up some more gold, silver, and mining shares on this AM's flush. We've come a long way back from this morning's sell-off. At one point we were down $20, now we are only down $6 on the day. Gold has now tested the $1370 level twice and survived; silver has tested $28 twice. Both of them are developing well-defined uptrend channels. I think the metals will bottom either today or Monday.

One of the overhangs has been the anticipation of a Chinese rate hike. That, and the fact that many people had a nice run in the metals meant profit-taking ahead of year-end. But everybody is talking about a Chinese rate hiike so how much of a surprise can it be? I say you buy on Monday whether or not there is a rate hike.

All of this sets up for a nice buy point some $50 or so off the recent high in gold. The last three corrections have been swift in violent: $74-$100 flushes in a matter of days, only to reverse higher. I think we will see a similar thing of this correction, most of which is probably done.

Silicon Valley startup ConteXtream (yes, the company name spelling is that silly!)  announced yesterday that it landed $14 million in Series B funding to go after a big problem in global networks: Virtualizing the management of broadband applications and content through data centers.

Here's the big picture: As the use of content and bandwidth-intensive applications such as movies, photos, social networking, and games explodes on mobile and wireline networks, service providers are having major headaches managing the bandwidth as well as allocating resources in the data centers to serve these applicatoins. ConteXtream's product, a software solution that loads on commodity PC hardware, adds "smarts" to the network delivery of these applications, allowing service providers to manage the resources on their data centers as a single virtualized "grid."

Well, the 3Par bidding war saga looks to be coming to an end as HP's final $33 offer has been accepted and Dell has pulled out of the race.

It makes you wonder about the "efficient market" theory, doesn't it? I mean, here is a stock that was trading around $10 and basically flatlined for about a year, only to suddenly increase by more than 300% in a period of three weeks. The market certainly wasn't efficient at pricing 3Par shares.

Here are the latest stats on 3Par at the current near-$33 level:

Market Cap: $2B

Forward P/E: 122

Revenue (TTM) $203M

Price/Sales (TTM): 9.84

Enterprise value/EBITDA: 294

Hmmm. Not sure I'd call that a bargain.

Onto the rest of the news:

• The Atlantic coast of the U.S. is prepping for Hurricane Earl (New York Times).
• Andy Roddick is out at the U.S. Open (Wall Street Journal). But the real reason to cite this story is because of this great line: "Andy Roddick’s early exit breaks the hearts of T.V. producers dependent on repeated Brooklyn Decker reaction shots"
• 3G Capital is acquiring Burger King (Wall Street Journal). Will that yield downloadable mobile burgers?
• Bernanke admits he "wasn't straightforward" on Lehman (Bloomberg). According to my thesaurus, here are some synonyms for being "not straightforward": dishonest, crafty, crooked, deceitful, evasive, fraudulent, oblique, shady, shifty, sly, surreptitious, tricky.
• Jobless claims decline (CNNMoney.com). Barely.
• Ten questions and answers on Apple TV (PCMag). Silliest uestion: Does Apple have a Twitter killer?
• In case you haven't refinanced yet, you might want to note the current 30-year mortgage is at 4.32% which is a new all-time record since records starting being kept in 1971 (did they not have mortgages before 1971?) (Wall Street Journal).
• Most interesting financial headline of the day: "I'm selling the house and piling the proceeds into Greek government bonds." (Telegraph)
• The verdict is in: People hate the new Digg (Mashable). Yes, I do too.

The "Net Neutrality" debate has taken a interesting turn this week, triggered by Verizon and Google's joint statement to move toward more tiered services on the Internet.

Here's where I am on net neutrality: It's not black or white. It's gray. Yes, we need to preserve an element of freedom to access applications over broadband. But also, the definition of net neutraility needs to leave some wiggle room to help telecom and media companies roll out some newer premium appications that make money.

I think the recent developments are actually exciting, because there is now a catalyst for change and the debate is out on the table. Verizon and Google getting together is kind of like the executives of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees coming to the table on a stadium-sharing deal. But this shows how crucial the issue is, if two of the most powerful corporations in the world are willing to come to the table to talk about it.

As the net neutraility fanatics grab their pitchforks and fire up their blogs, ready the roast the big evil corporations that are trying to swipe away their YouTube Internet, they're being naive if they think things can stay as they are. Stuff's gonna change.

Oh, this is fantastic, Oracle is suing Google. Larry Ellison vs. Eric Schmidt -- the Alpha Male vs. the Science Geek. This is going to be very interesting!

Oracle says in a press release that Google "knowingly, directly and repeatedly infringed Oracle's Java-related intellectual property." What's interesting is that it involves Java technology, which Oracle acquired when it bought Sun Microsystems earlier in the year. Hmmm, did Oracle lawyers know something that Sun lawyers didnt?

I'm sure you'll be reading more about that in the days ahead. On to some more news:

• IBM is buying software company Unica for $480 million (ZDNet). Unica helps retail sellers target marketing efforts and predict consumer behavior. I bet they can't predict my behavior.
• Sequoia is backing Airstrip, a software company that makes mobile patient monitoring applications (VentureBeat).
• WePay raises $7.5 million for group payment systems (TechCrunch).
• Retail sales rise less than estimated (Bloomberg). Hmm, just a theory here, but does that mean everybody spent their tax refunds?
• China mudslides kill more than 1,000 (CNN).
• Russian fire spreads near nuclear facility (Bloomberg). No, they don't mean it's come close to Boris Yeltsin.
• Google defends net neutrality plan (PCWorld).
• New Google apps extend the cloud (InformationWeek).
• Citizen scientists, using their computers in the Einstein@Home project, have discovered a rare star (BBC).
• Belgium is looking to get greener -- by liquifying corpses (Greenbiz.com). Ewwww.
• Liberals start "F*ck Tea" party compaign (CBSNews). Now, that's kind of funny.

A great why to find advantageous companies is to look at those driving key technology market trends and generating good business results when the rest of the market is struggling. This story fits Synaptics, the touch-interface specialists, perfectly.

Synaptics makes human interfaces (mostly touchpads and touchscreens) for a variety of PC and smartphone devices. Big customers include Dell, LG, Ericsson, HTC, and Sony. The company has grown fast, roughly doubling revenue and earnings since 2007, at a time when the economy has been dark, at best. During this time, the stock price has been volatile, but largely flat, and the stock price relative to earnings has gotten cheaper and cheaper.

The company announced earnings yesterday, reporting net income of $19.3 million, or 54 cents a share, compared with $12.4 million, or 34 cents a share, a year ago. Synaptics earned 70 cents a share. Revenue hit $145.8 million, a ries of 27% over last year.