What you people who do not use the Apple product fail to recognize is that the $45 product does NOT do what the Apple product does. You just think it does. We have owned the $45 products and also owned the Apple products and we KNOW what we are buying. There is a reason why iPhones and iPads dominate 80% of mobile web usage while the Android OS devices are outselling them three to one with BOGO promotions and spiffs to sales people that sometimes reward the sales guy beyonds the price the customer pays. The iPhone/iPads are USEFUL.Nor is your price analogy correct. It is far distorted from reality. With contract pricing, the costs are pretty close to equal. In fact, you can get an iPhone 4 under contract for free. . . the same price you can get many Android phones under contract for. . . but Apple doesn't spiff the sales people. To try and convince people to buy other than iPhone, Samsung's advertising budget to sell its smartphones was over $9 billion last year alone! Sales spiffs are included in that figure.
Currently, Apple is selling every iPhone and iPad they can manufacture. . . and are expanding into more markets. They can keep this up for quite some time. They have 80% of ALL the world's phone profits—not just smartphone profits—while having less than 10% of the world's market share. Apple and Samsung split 103% of the profits (yes, that figure is correct, because other phone makers are selling at a loss!). There is lots of room left for growth.
OH, and Rocky? Your dig that it is Apple that is selling the clones is noted. It is the other way around.
Market watchers are at a loss to explain the drop in Apple valuation. Its fundamentals are phenomenal... they have over $150 BILLION in cash and short term securities and NO DEBT! That is more than 97% of the market caps of all other publicly traded companies on the stock exchange! A P/E of 13 is unheard of in a company like Apple... and when you subtract the cash holdings it is a miraculous 8-9! This is a company that has created FOUR major product categories in 12 years. . . and holds the promise of more. Why, then is its stock tanking when Amazon with a p/e of over 3,000 and now because they posted a loss, not calculable?
The stock drops on the silliest of rumors... and "analysts" toss out rumors they KNOW to be false, and admit they trade for their own profit on those rumors, and are NOT prosecuted. This happened this week when one "analyst" published that Apple was going to do a 10 for 1 stock split when the analyst KNEW that Apple stock holders had to approve such a split. He sold on the rise, bought back in on the fall, after he admitted he knew it was false, and why, when he published it... and thousands of people lost a lot of money! Why has he not been arrested?
Apple reported 4th best quarter in business history, eclipsed only by its OWN record quarters, and did it on quarter being compared to a year ago's rare 14 long week quarter (which when adjusted for that, was absolutely phenomenal) and BEAT the year ago quarter, and because on just two metrics slightly below STREET targets, Apple stock took a beating.
WHY???? They missed what overheated analysts wanted, wild guesses that the analysts had pulled out of their collective asses. Nothing that Apple had claimed would happen. In fact, Apple had WARNED, because of the release of the new iPad Mini, that margins would be lower that quarter, but the analysts ignored that. . . they wanted to be blown away. They didn't get blown away and so they piled on with headlines about "Apple misses", and "Apple disappoints"... all on one of the BEST QUARTERS IN HISTORY!
I don't know much about the market, but I would guess there is some skittishness at the top end, that the bull could turn into a bear at any moment. Some say that doom is just around the corner.
Given it's position in the market, I can see people beginning to have reservations about Apple's run, even if it is only based in overall market nervousness. Add in that Jobs is gone and Tim Cook remains untested over the long haul and I can see people being concerned that Apple may be losing its innovative edge, Certainly for existing lines, incremental improvements are probably what we will see for some time to come. That is not to say that there won't be new things coming from Apple, but as always, they play it close to the vest.
Besides, for a company in their sector at their age and size their numbers remain ridiculously good.
why do you have to post something 3 times?
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here is an article written in
Sept of 2012.
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/
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the hardware is approaching giveaway status
you are paying for snob appeal.
Thanks Swordmaker.
Wasn’t it in 2011 that Google hit new lows? I remember a Fortune piece that questioned if it was “over” for Google. I’m sensing the same thing now with Apple.
I have a Droid. My kids have iphones. I don’t see much difference.
I don’t have any stock in either.
The big screen droids appeal to me.