Apple's premium-priced Macs 'defy the laws of economics,' but iPhone does not, Needham says

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  • Reply 21 of 50
    seankillseankill Posts: 569member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    All six of them.


    Way more than that. I personally know some 6-10 people who went to android for that. I myself have begun to think about it because I am looking to stop getting a tablet (except for any work issues me) and just carry one device to do all. If the iPhone goes to 4.7'', I will likely keep an iPhone. 

     

    Apple and I are going through a little marriage issues since the screen on my Macbook Pro Retina 15.4 (mid 2012) started showing IR only 3 months out of warranty. I had to foot the bill for that one despite being reassured by the sales team that the issue would not show up. 

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  • Reply 22 of 50
    darklite wrote: »
    While that matters for the company selling the phones, it doesn't matter for Apple. Whether their competitors are profitable or not isn't the issue: whether they're eating into Apple's market is, and that's purely a function of 'number out the door' rather than profitability.
    sorry, more to the point, Apple doesn't compete in the low end. Without a problem or not remains to be seen. But counting those android numbers there does have an impact
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  • Reply 23 of 50
    where did my comment go?
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  • Reply 24 of 50
    dewmedewme Posts: 6,104member
    These endless and banal market share comparisons are all meaningless because they lump everything and anything claiming to be "smartphone" into a SINGLE market segment. This is blatantly ridiculous even for first semester marketing or economics students. This completely ignores 3 out of the 4 basic Ps of Marketing 101. A freshman student turning in this "analysis" as homework would receive a failing grade.

    Do you think Mercedes, Lexus, and Audi are driving their luxury product roadmaps and assessing their product performance based on their luxury branded products market share in the worldwide car market when you have cheap econoboxes from China, Korea, and India streaming into emerging markets? No, they look at market share in the market segment that they are specifically selling into, along with the number of units sold and the selling price. That's what you do when you build products to make a profit.

    Adding fancy graphs and charts around meaningless analysis and off the mark fundamentals is just chaff to deflect and obscure the fact that the analyst is either clueless or is trying to get credit for adding absolutely nothing to the subject at hand. Nice try but it's still a failing grade. Try harder next time.
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  • Reply 25 of 50
    normmnormm Posts: 653member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by poke View Post



    The Mac is gaining share because the PC market reached saturation and is now in decline, the iPhone is losing share in the smartphone market because the smartphone market is growing (but it's still gaining in the more saturated phone market). Once smartphones are saturated, the iPhone will be gaining share again (you can already see this in the US, Japan and some EU countries).



    The thing to learn from this is that both the Mac and the iPhone grow independently of their respective markets. It has nothing to do with the "halo effect." Apple grows independently of the market because it sells Macs and iPhones and not simply PCs and smartphones. Their products form their own category.

     

    Exactly right!  The transition to "smartphones" is something that carriers are doing and is happening very quickly.  Consumer choice is happening much more slowly.  Growth in the mobile-phone market is much more meaningful, because you don't have these two different effects mixed together: growth in the overall mobile phone market is slow, so you can see Apple's share there growing steadily.  

     

    Wolf is also making the usual mistake in saying there's nothing that will allow Apple to continue to sell a premium priced phone.  How about the entire history of the company and its customers that want something better?  And an iTunes ecosystem that is, by itself, more profitable than Google?

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  • Reply 26 of 50
    bradipaobradipao Posts: 145member
    starbird73 wrote: »
    Number out the door does not equal profitability. Nuff said.

    The problem is that Apple is forced to literally burn profits to buyback and avoid AAPL falling. Several tens of billion of profits burned to sustain (not to increase) AAPL value.
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  • Reply 27 of 50
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,124member
    N/A
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  • Reply 28 of 50
    sockrolidsockrolid Posts: 2,789member

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post

    ... driven by what he called "imploding smartphone prices," ...

     

    Without quoting any specific numbers.  Just FUD-ishly provocative adjectives.

     

    Hey Charlie, you'd better crank out a crapton of hysterical hand-wringing iPhone stories.  While you still can.

    The economy is gradually turning around.  Just imagine iPhones sales when the economy is *hot*.

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  • Reply 29 of 50
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,124member
    rogifan wrote: »
    If Apple is still selling the iPhone 4 or 4S in 5 months something is seriously wrong in Cupertino. They need to finally be done with 30-pin connector devices. And that includes the iPod Classic. Either get rid of it once and for all or update it to something audiophiles with large music collections would want.

    Why, specifically?

    iOS 7.1 performs flawlessly on it
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  • Reply 30 of 50
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by 512ke View Post

     

    Can one of these analysts, just one, come up with a graph one time that says, "iPhone MID TO HIGH END market share?"

    Or are we going to continue to compare high end/mid tier iPhones to every single electronic device running any variant of Android on the planet?


     

    Similarly, show us a chart of % market share of computers costing over $900.  And profit share of same.  I think we'll see Macs are in the 90% range for both.

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  • Reply 31 of 50
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member

    iPhone dominates smartphone profits. By a large margin.

     

    What else is there to say?

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  • Reply 32 of 50
    "Our analysis indicates that the Mac is the exception, not the rule," Wolf wrote. "Against a background of progressively rising prices compared to the prices of PCs, the Mac has consistently gained share in the personal computer industry as a result of an outward shift in its demand curve. The only explanation that we see for the shifting demand curve is the now-mythical halo effect."

    Doesn't he mean the once-mythical halo effect?
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  • Reply 33 of 50
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by TeaEarleGreyHot View Post

     

     

    Similarly, show us a chart of % market share of computers costing over $900.  And profit share of same.  I think we'll see Macs are in the 90% range for both.


    Apple has always had over 90% market share in computers over a thousand dollars. I think since around the year 2000, and still to this day.

     

    Which says a lot. It means people that are actually buying machines to do real work, that require processing power and graphics, are almost all buying Macs. When I price out PCs, machines with comparable specs to a MacBook Pro or Mac Pro are all around the same prices.

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  • Reply 34 of 50
    All six of them.

    That's twice the number of people who threatened to buy a Windows 8 PC laptop if Apple stopped selling the 17" MBP.
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  • Reply 35 of 50
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Suddenly Newton View Post





    That's twice the number of people who threatened to buy a Windows 8 PC laptop if Apple stopped selling the 17" MBP.

    .....Or ditched the Matte screen.

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  • Reply 36 of 50
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member

    I don't think the Halo Effect is the only explanation. Another one is that the PC market in general is not shrinking, it's specifically the low-cost PC market that is shrinking (being displaced by tablets). So the Mac is not escaping the shrinking of it's market, because it's not in the low-cost PC market in the first place. And since it's not escaping anything, there's no need to hypothesize Halo Effects and such to explain why it is escaping.

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  • Reply 37 of 50
    bigpicsbigpics Posts: 1,397member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post

     

     

    All six of them.


    Seven. You missed me.



    And happy with the very pocketable Moto X I bought.  Phones are my least valued computing platform anyway.  I just keep chafing for more screen real estate and targets I can reliably hit.  So getting all I expect and need for a very nice price.



    I will be adding an iPad to my stable of devices (including a Mac notebook and a PC Desktop) with the next iteration this fall, though.  No comparison in the tab segment yet. 



    Forget the tech religious wars and focus on value delivered for price.  Once you understand modern computing metaphors and aren't thrown by the diff's between OS's, platform agnostic's the way to go.... 

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  • Reply 38 of 50
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,179member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bradipao View Post





    The problem is that Apple is forced to literally burn profits to buyback and avoid AAPL falling. Several tens of billion of profits burned to sustain (not to increase) AAPL value.



    Do you often try passing-off nonsense as fact?

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  • Reply 39 of 50
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,398member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by DewMe View Post



    These endless and banal market share comparisons are all meaningless because they lump everything and anything claiming to be "smartphone" into a SINGLE market segment. This is blatantly ridiculous even for first semester marketing or economics students. This completely ignores 3 out of the 4 basic Ps of Marketing 101. A freshman student turning in this "analysis" as homework would receive a failing grade.



    Do you think Mercedes, Lexus, and Audi are driving their luxury product roadmaps and assessing their product performance based on their luxury branded products market share in the worldwide car market when you have cheap econoboxes from China, Korea, and India streaming into emerging markets? No, they look at market share in the market segment that they are specifically selling into, along with the number of units sold and the selling price. That's what you do when you build products to make a profit.



    Adding fancy graphs and charts around meaningless analysis and off the mark fundamentals is just chaff to deflect and obscure the fact that the analyst is either clueless or is trying to get credit for adding absolutely nothing to the subject at hand. Nice try but it's still a failing grade. Try harder next time.

     

    Excellent post. This mind-numbing analysis is insanely idiotic in more ways than one, not to mention that it excludes the fundamental premise that the smartphone market is still rapidly growing, while the PC market (that macs are included in) is shrinking- anyone with 2 braincells can understand why Macs would be increasing in share, while iPhone decreasing when you lump all "smartphones" together (nevermind the stupidity of making no distinction from a $700 iPhone and a $50 phone running some variant of Android). It has nothing to do with "defying laws of economics" or "being fortunate"- it's fucking common sense, that anyone with even a mild understanding of the industry should grasp. I'm always in awe of how these people are well paid for their vomitted out "analysis" and "conclusions", that is not fit for toilet paper. 

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  • Reply 40 of 50
    So those average unit prices...those are for comparably built machines, right? Oh, nevermind.
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