Apple
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Posted on 08/27/2015 12:36:52 PM PDT by Swordmaker
If you can believe what some industry analysts have been saying, Apple should now be playing third fiddle in the smartphone wars. Android and Windows Phone would be ahead of iOS. Apple would, I suppose, be destined to fall back into niche status.
Have you looked at the Windows Phone and BlackBerry market shares lately? Have you noticed how Microsoft is quickly unraveling the failed Nokia handset division purchase? Have you noticed how thousands of brand new Microsoft employees are being consigned to the unemployment lines?
So do you believe those predictions?
There’s one more. IDC, part of IDG, which used to sponsor the now-discontinued Macworld Expo, and, some time back, consigned Macworld magazine to digital, claims that Android will continue to gain share against iOS. But have you noticed that Android’s share is stagnant or falling slightly in the U.S. and elsewhere compared to iOS? That’s hardly gaining share. It goes back to the theory that Android, being open and partly open source, is destined to devour Apple.
The problem is that Apple continues to sell more and more iPhones. The decision to build smartphones with larger displays, including the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus phablet, was genius, or just logical. Some suggest Steve Jobs would never had allowed Apple to build an iPhone with a display that exceeded four inches, but the end result is that Samsung’s high-end Galaxy handsets are struggling. On a per-model basis, Apple dominates the high-end of the market, and Macs dominate the high-end PC space. What’s the most popular thin and light notebook? If you said MacBook Air, you’d be correct.
Sure, Apple doesn’t sell $600 notebooks, or $200 smartphones. They cede that market to bottom feeders who struggle to make profits in segments where profits are hard to come by.
Now the big problem with these well-connected industry analysis firms is that their pronouncements are taken seriously. They are quoted without question and never asked “show me how accurate you really are.” The articles about them basically quote, or summarize, press releases without actually exploring the track records to see how previous predictions have fared.
When it comes to Apple, they don’t always do so well. Both Gartner and IDC routinely post quarterly PC sales estimates. Apple is almost always undercounted. But they are also preliminary estimates, so you don’t expect them to be perfect. Still, the tendency to report lower results than are actually achieved is troubling. Sure, all this comes a few weeks ahead of the release of Apple’s own financials, so the real figures are soon known. But not until the incorrect figures get plenty of coverage.
If you can believe what industry analysts have said, the iPhone would have been a huge failure. True, some tend to overestimate sales figures nowadays, which has the added consequence of tanking Apple’s stock price when the actual revenue is lower despite hitting record levels. But the usual approach has been one of counting Apple down and out and overly dependent on one product for success.
True, I suppose it would be nice to see iPads selling more than they do. Maybe the rumored iPad Pro, the multitasking enhancements in iOS 9, and greater emphasis, with the help of IBM, towards business sales, will improve the numbers. But when you see surveys of iPad’s sales, they are swamped with figures for products that barely compete. I’m referring to those $50-100 junk tablets sold at Walmart and other retailers. They hardly rate above toys, and are thus only good for reading and watching YouTube and Netflix — if that. On a broad scale, they are tablets, but can anyone really claim, with a straight face, that a $49.99 7-inch RCA tablet, with 8GB storage and a .3 megapixel front camera, in any way competes with an iPad mini?
Well, I suppose Gartner and IDC believe they do, because such products are considered to be in the very same category as the iPad. Adding these toys to the mix essentially puts Apple’s tablet in a poor light even though they cater to very different audiences.
Now I suppose older customers might be impressed with the RCA brand, a major American manufacturer more than 30 years ago. It was sold off in 1986, and the trademark is licensed these days to a number of companies depending on the product. Today, RCA is usually synonymous with low-end gear.
But when people read about Apple’s prospects, they do not normally consider such matters. They are seldom informed that most industry analysts are frequently wrong in their assessments, particularly when it comes to Apple.
Don’t forget that, when Apple’s stock was tanking in 2013, there were calls for Tim Cook’s head. They continued to claim that he was unsuited to the job, and did not have anything approaching the vision of his predecessor. Apple was therefore in deep trouble.
At least Cook had the smarts to reveal some basics about iPhone sales in China, earlier this week, after Apple’s stock was hit due to concerns about the state of that country’s economy. Some tech pundits claimed that Cook violated an obscure SEC rule as a result, as if just making what appears to be a truthful statement is wrong. Maybe, maybe not.
Of course, you can also suggest Cook was exaggerating to keep the stock price from dropping any further. There’s no evidence of that, but actual sales figures won’t be known till late October, when the financials for Apple’s September quarter are released.
Unless Cook has more to say at September’s iPhone event.
Meantime, don’t expect industry analysts to say, “sorry we goofed.” They are never wrong, even when they are.
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The homo-nazi CEO and his sycophant customers will be pleased.
Tim Cook better worry about getting the stock price up a lot more than Google and Microsoft. That and where his next job is going to be.
Cook understands nothing about Apple and was hired because he’s a whiny, needling little store clerk who did all the nasty jobs that Steve didn’t want to do.
It won’t be long now. They’ve been running on Steve’s stuff and hoping Jonny Ivins will keep them going.
But Cook never got the gig. He has no ideas, no sense of what technology to use to create products, or even what his customer’s want in a product.
Eventually the numbers will start dropping off...the calls will get louder...the Board will have to act.
But it will probably be too late.
The guy who made the joint what it is...is gone. All they got is market momentum, and luckily, the equally clueless competition.
Sorry, Jonny IVE.
Forgettable sort...
Tim Cook isn’t worried about the stock price. They will simply by back enough stock to keep it where he wants to keep it. They have tons of cash. They can do that.
In fact, they’ll use their foreign cash to do it, since they can’t bring that cash back into the US without paying a massive tax on it.
Ah hah hah
If you think Timmy was in charge of anything when Steve was there...
In fact, they’ll use their foreign cash to do it, since they can’t bring that cash back into the US without paying a massive tax on it.
I question whether they can buy AAPL stock (at least enough of it) overseas, with foreign money without paying the punitive US tax. If so, they should have been doing it in a big way, long since.But I do wonder why Cook talked about business fundamentals instead of just announcing a stock buyback of up to x thousand shares at any price below $100 . . .
Seems like that would introduce some reality into the market for AAPL rather quickly.
Would have been a good idea for the Republicans to have taken the occasion to push for elimination of the punitive double taxation of repatriated overseas corporate income for the purpose of such buyback . . .
(Where’s Donald Trump when we needed someone to call that government policy by its name - “Stupid"???)
Dooooooooooooooooooooooomed! ;')
Tim was HAND-PICKED by Jobs to take over. Golly, I wonder why Steve Jobs would have hand-picked his successor out of a pool of literally tens of thousands? Could he know more about Tim than you? Why, that must be crazy talk. What did Jobs know that you don't?
Hmmm, let's start here . Let's see, Tim started working with Apple back in 1998, so he wasn't a "New Hire". He worked as COO for IBM, and came on board as Senior VP of Operations.
Isn't it funny how just 15 seconds of fact finding makes you look foolish?
You’re hilarious.
Anyone who worked with Jobs knows he doesn’t delegate.
He could be reasonable when he wanted to. But not on issues of substance.
You can observe all ya want. Worked with and for Apple upper mgmt and employee people for years. Lived with them and they’re still all around me. The topic is well worn in that group. The consensus was and is the same.
Did it ever occur to you that Timmy was picked because he did what he was told?
There is a nugget of truth in that manure pile of wrong. Cook was good at the things Jobs was bad at and uninterested in -- logistics, supply chains and accounting. It isn't just high prices that keep Apple's margins so healthy. Apple gets the first pick of components and contractors. At one point, Apple was buying between a quarter and a third of all the flash memory chips every manufacturer on this planet could make.
Cook is a master at getting ducks in rows. It's not an accident that Apple manages to maintain the secrecy that builds buzz toward product launches while building millions of devices. Cook is a very talented manager, which isn't the kind of inspirational leader Jobs was, but it's the kind of skill set you notice when you don't have it.
Jony Ive is the man with the vision, Cook keeps the lights on. They're a hell of a team, and were even whien Steve was the one out front.
There’s some truth in what you say but believe whatcha want spud.
The stew that Jobs came out of came and went. Ive is a good product design guy but so’s half the people coming out of the Pasadena school.
That ain’t where it all came from.
Hate to tell but the music stopped, and process guys aren’t gonna save it. Maybe keep the ball rolling a while longer, and maybe even succeed because the competition is worse.
But it ain’t the House of Steve and Steve no mo.
Which means the horizon is wide open for a new seeker.
And he will come. Maybe she, but usually he.
If you worked with Jobs and the upper Management for years - then I defer to your knowledge. You have had the opportunity that very few people have had.
I have had my career on the outside, and I’ll assure you that Jobs did not have a monopoly on being an asshat.
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