In a year in which tech companies have struggled to stay alive, Apple’s stock has doubled.

In January of 2009, Apple stock was priced at $78. Last week, it closed at $184. Also late last week, three major investment firms elevated their expectations for Apple. On Thursday, Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner increased his target price for Apple from $185 to $210, while Bank of America/Merrill Lynch analyst Scott Craig increased his target from $185 to $220. On Friday, UBS analyst Maynard Um jumped on the Apple bandwagon, and raised the bet, escalating Apple’s target price from $170 to $265.

A 236% jump in stock price from January to October would be remarkable for any company. But in the case of Apple, it happened under the most bizarre of circumstances.

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In 2008 the stock market fell into shambles, the real estate market tumbled, big companies announced big layoffs, VC investors became more careful, and the entire world economy went downhill. It’s enough to put a sour face on the most optimistic person.

But now contrast this with what happened with the Internet in 2008:

• The number of websites increased by 20%.
• The number of domain names increased by 19%.
• Not to mention that there were more than 1.4 billion people on the Internet, a number that will keep growing.

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When you think about outsourcing (especially offshore outsourcing), usually India comes foremost to mind. The country has been the premier outsourcing destination for years, providing services such as software development and call centers to companies in the West. Though there are other countries gunning for the profitable outsourcing contracts as well, for example the Philippines, India is considered a dominant player.

Now it seems like a new threat to India’s dominance is rising on the African east coast. Kenya is about to get a significant boost to its Internet infrastructure, and since most people there speak English they have a good opportunity to set up for example call center operations. (Most of the population in Kenya is bilingual, the official languages being English and Swahili.)

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