* Stock Winners and Losers from Google's Chrome OS

Google's Chrome operating system will, over time, strongly impact the stocks in the PC hardware and software sector. Here's a quick initial checklist of stocks that could win and lose from the Chrome OS:

Losers

The other OS companies. Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL) will both face increased competition. Apple has taken market share due to the poor quality of Windows. Now there will be real competition.

The hard drive vendors. According to GOOG founder Larry Page, "Netbooks loaded with Chrome will boot up almost instantaneously and will store data on the Internet instead of a hard drive." Hard drive vendors include Seagate (STX) and Western Digital (WDC).

The leading microprocessor vendors. It's unclear what the impact will be on Intel (INTC) and AMD (AMD), but my guess is the net impact will be negative. Slashing the cost of the OS will boost netbook sales, but as more processing is handled in the cloud, the requirement for local processing power falls. Note that Google has stated that Chrome will run on lower-cost ARM chips as well as x86 processors. Both (INTC) and (AMD) may will gain from more frequent upgrades of wireless networking chips.

High-end laptop vendors. While cheaper netbooks and a cheaper operating system will boost demand for low-end PCs, sales of higher margin, high-end PCs will fall. That market is currently dominated by (HPQ), (AAPL) and (DELL).



Winners

Cloud service companies. Google's Chrome will accelerate the shift to cloud computing. Google (GOOG) itself is the leader in consumer and small business cloud services, including gmail, Google Calendar and the rest of the Google Apps suite. But this also plays to other software-as-a-service stocks. Leave a comment below if you can think of any particular winners.

Communications chip vendors. More reliance on the cloud means that connectivity becomes more important. Communications chip providers include Texas Instruments (TXN) and Qualcomm (QCOM).

Finally, see also my earlier checklist of Netbooks: An Investment Thesis, with Winning and Losing Stocks.

From : seekingalpha.com