Size of company: if products expand, they must add people and teams of people. Size determines what you can make.
Wasn't talking about Foxconn, but the CNC shops that have to be brought up to the precision jobs like the first Airs, the shops that made first friction-stir welded iMacs, the first glass-inlaid iPhone backs, the first stainless-steel antenna bands, the first lacquer-sprayed polycarbonate cases, etc. Apple is doing rarefied materials engineering and production design in California and exporting the basic procedures to shops in China, where the high volume procedures are worked out with the engineers there. Then the assembly of these precision parts go to Foxconn, where the volume assembly expertise takes over without Apple's input, as you say. How do we know this? There is no other way it could work! These radical details are not designed in China!
The 5c's success will not be known until China Mobile has had a chance to influence, and until the initial costs of the redesign are paid off (I would imagine), allowing for a price reduction, and until the flexibility of a plastic case is allowed to show itself in future models and build rates. It's crazy for people to pronounce the model a screw-up on the basis of the ultra-aspirational U.S. Market. All that Tim Cook was saying was that they didn't forecast the popularity of the 5s.
My data center point was based on misreading your post saying that Apple might build 10 centers at once and spend so many billions doing so, it still wouldn't matter. I overlooked your facetiousness in saying this.
The point of all this is that there is an "Apple needs to . . ." circle of armchair CEOs that contributes a general perception that the company isn't being run right by Tim Cook. It's similar to the "if Steve Jobs were still alive this would never . . ."
I find that all this unsolicited advising, or most of it, is very, very weak on realism about what is technically possible for the company to accomplish at this stage. They do need to build more data centers, to get their software and services tightened up, to get their headquarters built, to get through the transition post Jobs, and probably a thousand other things we don't know about. It's common sense that we shouldn't be contributing to the negative perception about Apple's future by this nagging.
I'd like to start with the last part. We're not nagging Apple. Carl Icahn is nagging Apple. We're just enjoying ourselves (that is, I hope we're enjoying ourselves) in musing about what's happening, and what we think would be solutions to problems, real, or perceived. That's healthy. Certainly better than the fanboy attitude that macdailynews takes. They're embarrassing.
I agree that Apple comes up with new concepts, and even new technologies. I've no argument with that. And like other companies like them, they work with manufacturers. But that's nothing new. Nothing uncommon. But the big manufacturers do their own thing. Apple is not the expert.
Cook was basically admitting that the 5C wasn't popular. From the 51 million phones sold, the 5s wasn't as popular as we all had hoped. 7% growth was very disappointing in a market with 24% growth.
Cook was basically admitting that the 5C wasn't popular. From the 51 million phones sold, the 5s wasn't as popular as we all had hoped. 7% growth was very disappointing in a market with 24% growth.
No, Cook stated the 5C was short of its expectations but still sold more than the 4S did in 1QFY13. That's a far cry from "not popular". Again, define smart phone market.
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I'd like to start with the last part. We're not nagging Apple. Carl Icahn is nagging Apple. We're just enjoying ourselves (that is, I hope we're enjoying ourselves) in musing about what's happening, and what we think would be solutions to problems, real, or perceived. That's healthy. Certainly better than the fanboy attitude that macdailynews takes. They're embarrassing.
I agree that Apple comes up with new concepts, and even new technologies. I've no argument with that. And like other companies like them, they work with manufacturers. But that's nothing new. Nothing uncommon. But the big manufacturers do their own thing. Apple is not the expert.
Cook was basically admitting that the 5C wasn't popular. From the 51 million phones sold, the 5s wasn't as popular as we all had hoped. 7% growth was very disappointing in a market with 24% growth.