Apple stock hits $500 milestone - Page 2

Good for you, mstone.

My big leap (aka wild guess) regarding AAPL will be that they will finally have another split in the shares.

I'm thinking if this happens it will be either 2:1 or 5:1... and I'm guessing it might happen this year.

I do not for a second think they will offer a dividend, nor do I hope they offer one.

Agreed. Same reasoning goes for why I expect AAPL is not going to split it's stock.

On another note, Anant - were you the person interviewed by Andrew Sorkin the other morning on CNBC?

We need to start ignoring these ignoramuses. They are not rational people. Who cares what these losers think about Apple, its products, or its users? They really believe, apparently, that if they keep repeating the same drivel it will somehow become fact, or somehow have a negative impact on Apple. Their latest hope is the Foxconn controversy so they hammer away at it incessantly. They live in their own fantasy world where their obsessive compulsions actually have a real effect. Let 'em fester in their hatred. It just makes them look more stupid than they are.

I believe the reality at the time was that apple was solvent, but needed to settle with msft vis a vis patents and keeping office on the mac, msft's investment kept apple alive as a viable competitor which at the time the monopoly msft needed to keep DOJ off their back, a win win situation. This may have been the beginning of the cross-licensing patent agreement which is often referred to as well. That has, I believe run it's course, hard to find information on that though.

Other CEOs do indeed ponder Apple. That's why we see tech companies emulating the Apple Way at every turn. From ecosystems to retail stores (note that even Amazon is considering a physical retail presence). C|net recently published an article about companies looking to emulate Apple in the secrecy department too, seeing how well it has served the Apple brand mystique. Remember the "Toyota Way" wave that swept through American business years ago, spurred by the success of Toyota's automobile business? I could safely bet some serious money that business school professors are preparing textbooks that dissect and analyze the "Apple Way." The company has become that iconic and that influential. Simply amazing.

You are already in your own RDF. Apple was not anywhere near bankruptcy. The $150 million investment (not a loan at all) was peanuts and would have no effect whatsoever on Apple's ability to stay afloat. The investment in non voting stock was a PR move only to show that Microsoft was still going to develop Mac software. Check your facts. All of your assertions are dead wrong.

$500+ !!

All this on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, OSX, iOS and a bunch of other software....

Amazing!

I actually think Apple is able to develop the second generation computing world because they lost out in the first generation. In the long run, I think Apple got really lucky that MS kept them out of the fray for so long. Apple isn't burdened down with nearly as much dinosaur bloated code.

The most important thing is probably the fact that Apple doesn't have to cater to the dumb a$$ corporate IT department. My corporate IT department is so risk adverse I seriously wonder how they live with the stress of it all. Recently I restrained myself from saying, "what's next....are you going to make me close my blinds so someone doesn't spy on my computer screen from the building next door?" I quickly stopped myself from making this derogatory comment. I've learned that just when you think the corporate PC monkey running the IT department couldn't do anything more stupid or irrational, he does it.

The irony is that the PC guys all tell me they don't like the constraints Apple imposes. However, those Apple constraints have made me free from the very things the IT department can't handle. The freedom of the PC has resulted in me being choked to death at work.
PC freedom is a rope to hang yourself with. Apple restrictions are like "thou shalt not kill". Yes it is restricting, but in the end it just makes sense.

And lately the Apple Chips have been falling everywhere.http://forums.appleinsider.com/images/smilies/1wink.gif

Are you referring to a certain 'institution' defaulting in the near future?

I'm not bagging on Gates. He was good at seeing business opportunities and taking advantage of them. I don't think he had (or has) the vision to see the "next big thing." On that note, I disagree with people who criticize Ballmer today, because he's essentially following the Gates playbook, but he's facing real competition today the likes of which Gates did not.

As for Jobs, its funny to hear people say he needed to be fired to somehow regain his spark, after being intimately involved in the Apple II and Macintosh. Obviously this is all speculation, and I understand that Jobs himself said that getting fired was good for him, but its obvious in hindsight that Jobs at the helm could not have been worse then Sculley and the rest of the clowns that came after him. Just imagine if Jobs had pushed Apple to a Unix based OS (essentially a Mac version of the NeXT OS) years before 2001. I don't think that is very far fetched.

As for being "humbled," I don't really think that ever happened to Jobs. He may have become slightly less abrasive, but the "most people are bozos or shitheads" mentality, the cutting in lines, the taking credit for Ive's stuff, all that stayed apparently to the end.

What Jobs was really missing was Ive and Cook in the 1980s - someone to design things that met an extremely high standard, and someone who could put the necessary parts together to be able to sell the products at a reasonable cost. But I don't think he needed to get fired for that.

I read somewhere recently that Apple is becoming more prevalent in corporations, but still forcing them to do things Apple's way. For instance, they hate using iTunes but have to because all their employees want iPhones. Who knows how a young Jobs would have reacted to a flood of corporate orders for the Mac, but my impression is he would have told them to go to hell if they didn't like his way of doing things. But I would agree that the scenario you presented is a real possibility.

Corporations don't have to use iTunes. Apple has made specific apps for Mac OS and Windows specifically for companies to push out internal apps, set up profiles and push updates.

Good points by several re: worldwide growth, I'd forgotten about this in the context of my post but had certainly been thinking about it in the long term, it is exciting how much room they have to grow there. I was just surprised that there was not as much room to grow in the US...I had thought their revenues were closer to their unit market share. I know they're at the premium end of the market and completely dominate in iOS devices, but thought there was tons of room to grow in the computer market.

But to get back to the key metric of the article (actually the other one, http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...hreadid=143492, I posted in the wrong thread, was looking at them both, but my post is relative to both articles), they already have 20% of _all_ consumer electronic sales! That's stunning. There _is_ a cap to growth there. Unless of course they create a new product category that causes US citizens in aggregate to spend more of their income on electronics. I thought the cap was just much higher - watches, GPSes, egg timers, baby monitors, etc. Of course, most of those sub-sectors I just mentioned will all just disappear and be replaced by one (or several) iOS devices, as Apple moves from say 20% to 80%. There was just less theoretical headroom to grow than I had previously thought.



Well, this article (or the 20% one, rather) mentions that they're avoiding the low-end, low-margin market, and that that's a good thing. And regardless if it is larger, Apple is already taking in 20% of _all electronics revenue_. By definition they can only grow by so much in the US. But yes, lots of room to grow world-wide.



Those points seem to go counter to your first one. And Apple doesn't need any more mindshare, and from what I understand they already have amazing economies of scale and scope and control of their production line and inventory (courtesy of Cook and hoards of cash to get pre-payment discounts, tie up supplier markets to make it harder to competitors to compete on cost, etc.). I think "race to the bottom' is the more important point, Apple doesn't need to go there to grow, necessarily. They can take a good chunk of that other 80% of _total CE spending_ by killing off other subsectors (egg timers, watches, heartrate monitors, etc.) just as they have done for hard drives small cameras (shortly - c.f. Annie Leibovitz' recommendation of iPhone 4gs as pocket camera) and (competitors') laptops.




Again these numbers are amazing, but re: growth...how much can you grow from 90%? Or even 35%. A lot in terms of total absolute dollars, but it seems like the stock which values the company as the most valuable on the planet expects continued insane levels of growth. Once they have two more years of 100% growth of PC revenues they're at 100% (again, in US). But yes they have worldwide room to grow - lots there.



Absolutely, agreed. Lots of room to grow from their current sales...but there is already a ceiling...100% of CE spending in the US. They're already at a shocking 20% of that according to the other article (http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...hreadid=143492). All these other methods you mention are ways for them to grow and take more of that 100%. But as they approach 100% (in the US) the only way to continue to grow is to either shift more consumer spending to CE, or to shift their markets outside of CE, or to continue to grow worldwide. I expect all three to occur, to some extent (well, I expect whatever "non CE" market they move into (wall coverings that are now digital wallpaper? - that makes that item a CE item I suppose) will now be considered CE, which will go towards the expansion of CE market revenues).

I'm sure they'll grow, and that there is tons of room worldwide, I was just shocked that they're (apparently) at 20% of all CE spending in the US, at least in one period.

I suppose they can still maintain their same rate of growth with all the international expansion, at least for many years.





Yup, Apple replaced their revenue from one product with even more revenue from another product, and thus continued to grow. But again, once you get to 100% (and lets be reasonable, they'll never do that, nor would that be desireable to anyone) there's no more room for growth. Which is fine with me. They can still be a valuable company continuing to make new and better products which people will purchase, thus maintaining their highest revenue level, but they will no longer be a growth company (it's shocking to think of the most valuable company (by market valuation anyway) being a growth stock.

Thanks for the discussion.

Yeah better not to think about the luxurious villa within the lush surrounding park you could buy in two or three years to come. But I have to agree, we have the saying better take the sparrow in your hand then the dove on the roof.

Well, I said the same in 1997 when the share price was $13 and that was before two stock splits. I hate myself for being too chicken to spend all my savings on buying stock back then. I could be a millionaire now without lifting as much as a finger.

No... just to the regular ups and downs of AAPL. I don't believe that AAPL is as high as it will get one year from now (barring global financial meltdown) but I also believe that there will be a sell off or two before that time. When AAPL sold off in November it was an obvious buy below $400... with Tim saying they were expecting $37 million in revenue one would have expected the stock to go to $450... when the quarterly came out it seemed obvious that AAPL would then go close to $500.

I expect to see the same buying opportunity in the future.

Not sure this is a good thing. Apple has now become what they used to make fun of (IBM, Microsoft) at the beginning.

Apple owns the consumer device space. Anytime a company comes out with something, even if it might actually be a superior product it dies a quick death as all consumers want is Apple.

In the end when there's no real competition innovation declines. What happened to Sony will eventually happen to Apple.

And when it hit 750 you will say God, I shoulda bought at $500.

I must have read the article wrong.

Likewise. I sold a bunch of mine for a downpayment on a house about ten years ago. And I donated some to my church when it was ~$190.

Fortunately, I kept a few shares, and my 401k funds have a lot of Apple in them.

- Jasen.

You are mostly right. So are they. I am not sure either of you know why. Stocks do tend to go up on good rumors and drop (for a short time) on good news when the traders take their profit. Apples most recent earnings blew away even some of the rumors people thought were crazy. That disrupted the cycle and made the profit taking irrelevant.

Elaborate.

Not at $350 or near it, unless something incredibly catastrophic happens.

Edit: Just say your response. Makes sense of course. Hopefully we don't see such a strong pullback (I think that one in December was hopefully a one-off in dramatization, though, it was an incredible buy, so it could have been used either way), but of course there will be pullbacks which spur massive upward waves.