I like the look of the I-Pace a lot but know nothing about it. While I lauded Tesla on it's efforts to make an electric car more main stream (beside helping fund his space plans) I've never really liked the appearance of the cars. Their lines have always seemed awkward to me.
The Volt has always looked much more attractive to me, as has the I-Pace. As I understand it, 2019 is the last year for Volt production? That is/would be a shame as I don't like the Bolt and Spark at all.
I made my first purchase on Apple Card tonight (a movie rental on Apple TV) and it hasn't shown up in Wallet yet. I thought one of the benefits of Apple Card is the quickness of response? So far, it's just another poky credit card.
It has nothing to do with the card. Some charges like monthly subscriptions are processed by themselves right away, but for rentals and most other things (books, songs, movies, apps) they wait to see if you rent or buy more so they can group them together:
It's funny, but RogAndroidFan has been absolutely silent. Maybe he's been shamed into silence for once. No "Corrections" needed for once, because no silly things were said.
I guess we'll see if that lasts. Keep up the great work, DED!
It's funny, but RogAndroidFan has been absolutely silent. Maybe he's been shamed into silence for once. No "Corrections" needed for once, because no silly things were said.
I guess we'll see if that lasts. Keep up the great work, DED!
The difference is that DED didn’t mention Google or Android. That’s what usually gets them bleating.
It's funny, but RogAndroidFan has been absolutely silent. Maybe he's been shamed into silence for once. No "Corrections" needed for once, because no silly things were said.
I guess we'll see if that lasts. Keep up the great work, DED!
The difference is that DED didn’t mention Google or Android. That’s what usually gets them bleating.
Yep, for some reason some people don’t like it when Apple is compared and contrasted with its, you know, rivals in the sector. Odd.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1982 and have experienced firsthand the negativity and hatred of Apple by so many pundits, analysts, and self appointed experts over the years.
It is just the same w.r.t. Electric Vehicles. There are big players behind a lot of anti-EV rhetoric possibly Big-oil/coal. They are spending huge amounts of money to discredit EV's as a whole and in particular Tesla.
There will be people looking at making billions taking down Apple, Amazon and the rest.
The big automakers are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to electrics, and in case you were unaware, half of the Koch Brothers died yesterday. The oil industry is still a powerful entity, but coal is on its deathbed for power production.
Of note, Tesla isn't in a strong position to fight off the big automakers. Case in point is the Porsche Taycan, which competes head on with the the Model S, Jaguar iPace which competes withe the Model X, and a number of Model 3 competitors, especially the Nissan Leaf.
"Should Tesla be worried? Absolutely. Even from the passenger seat, it's clear the Porsche is dynamically superior in every way. And if the numbers we've seen hold up under our testing, go-fast Teslas such as the Model S 100D may not have a decisive range advantage over the Taycan, especially when driven hard. Combine that with noticeably better build quality—even on the preproduction car—and the cachet of that Porsche badge, and it all adds up to one thing: The Taycan is a game-changer."
($130000 vs $38000) Thats what I mean: ill informed.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1982 and have experienced firsthand the negativity and hatred of Apple by so many pundits, analysts, and self appointed experts over the years.
It is just the same w.r.t. Electric Vehicles. There are big players behind a lot of anti-EV rhetoric possibly Big-oil/coal. They are spending huge amounts of money to discredit EV's as a whole and in particular Tesla.
There will be people looking at making billions taking down Apple, Amazon and the rest.
The big automakers are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to electrics, and in case you were unaware, half of the Koch Brothers died yesterday. The oil industry is still a powerful entity, but coal is on its deathbed for power production.
Of note, Tesla isn't in a strong position to fight off the big automakers. Case in point is the Porsche Taycan, which competes head on with the the Model S, Jaguar iPace which competes withe the Model X, and a number of Model 3 competitors, especially the Nissan Leaf.
"Should Tesla be worried? Absolutely. Even from the passenger seat, it's clear the Porsche is dynamically superior in every way. And if the numbers we've seen hold up under our testing, go-fast Teslas such as the Model S 100D may not have a decisive range advantage over the Taycan, especially when driven hard. Combine that with noticeably better build quality—even on the preproduction car—and the cachet of that Porsche badge, and it all adds up to one thing: The Taycan is a game-changer."
($130000 vs $38000) Thats what I mean: ill informed.
Your reading comprehension is evidently limited.
I compared each model of Tesla with a comparable competitor; the Taycan is a competitor of the Model S.
The base Model 3 currently at $36,200 would compare with the Nissan Leaf:
You can get a Nissan Leaf S for just under $30,000 and still receive the full federal tax credit, whereas Tesla's is now down to $1875 until the end of the year when it goes to zero.
Which do you think the consumer is going to prefer on price?
"Why is it so important that Apple is not selling more devices than the rest of the world combined? Actually, it's quite clearly not important"
AFAIK, Apple has never sold more 'devices' than the rest of the world combined and you yourself have written articles on Apple being the top seller in some shape or fashion of some models. Handset sales remain a key metric in Apple's business. That is undeniable in spite of your sarcasm.
The wobble Apple took at the start of the year was largely caused by lower than expected iPhone sales.
Actually sales are clearly very important and have been the key driver for Apple for years. That's why they actually do matter and are important. Even today.
While revenue from iPhones, for the first time in a long while, made up less than 50% of the total recently (and might even become a trend), that percentage is likely to jump back over 50% after Apple's blowout Christmas quarter and that will happen largely through increasing handset sales.
After a profit warning and three years of flat unit sales, you are now picking up something new to downplay problematic handset unit sales. Sales that would have been seen in even poorer light if it weren't for DT trying to crush Huawei.
Less than a year ago, sales (or analysts hitting on them) were important enough for you to pen this piece:
You even wrote a piece claiming Apple in China was doing fine in the very same 24 hours that Apple issued a profit warning. Speculation swings both ways and can be wrong. No news there.
Why wasn't this piece written back then if unit sales aren't actually important? Why waste so much energy focussing on pure speculation by different analysts/journalists? Analysts and journalists will speculate but they also report the official numbers too. Just like they report on Apple Card.
In fact, the current situation is partly because Apple has lagged behind competitors for a few years now in a broad range of handset technologies. Price is clearly another factor. If people talk about Huawei and Samsung it is because of what they have delivered. If people largely stopped talking about the latest iPhone series shortly after release it is because the release was not worthy of more attention. Apple really didn't deliver with the 2018 iPhone refresh. The Apple Watch was far more newsworthy.
If Huawei and Samsung have delivered and left Apple to catch-up in key areas it is because they are competing and as a result of that competition, Apple is apparently trying to move things up a gear. At last! But all indicators (read rumours) point to another relatively 'light' iPhone refresh. We'll see what actually gets presented but, unlike sales forecasts, rumours on upcoming iPhones have historically not been that bad.
'Competency' seems to be your way of writing Samsung and Huawei off in some way. I have no idea why you want to tread there.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Fold was a PR disaster but the rest of the handset division has been on a roll. Far better than the S9 Series.
Huawei hasn't put a foot wrong so far in spite of U.S attempts to literally kill the company.
In fact, Huawei moved into the handset business and broke the Apple/Samsung duolpoly. No mean feat. It has key technology literally at every step of the way from the top right down into wearables and everything in between.
If you want to talk about competency, where was Apple while all this was happening? Why wasn't Apple developing 5G in 2009 like Huawei? If Huawei managed to outdo Apple on handset hardware in just a few short years, why hasn't Apple done the same in the other direction? Was it really so hard not to see 5G in terms of another industrial revolution and make a strategic move?
No Apple hoarded it's cash and is still focussing on consumer facing earnings. Only now is it trying to pick up the pieces of not seeing the strategic moves its competitors saw long ago and make its own 5G modem (buying in IP and know how).
Now, AI is another prospective big money earner for the next six years both at enterprise and consumer levels.
On Friday, Huawei released Ascend which will be included in earbuds and rise up through watches, handsets, IoT, TVs, cars, servers and entire data centers. Alongside that, it released MindSpore. That is competency and Mindspore will go open source like HiAI has been for three years now.
Where is the Apple equivalent silicon and supporting software frameworks? I've read rumours of Apple being interested in 6G development but missing 5G almost entirely isn't 'competency' in my book.
Apple 'miscalculated' in Tim Cook's own words. As a result it looks like it had to reimburse Samsung for not achieving planned shipments of oled displays and issue a profit warning.
If Huawei has reached the point where it has the U.S senate running scared and trying to chop it down by any means possible you can be sure that competency was the underlying reason.
Apple Card was announced in March 2019 and went live on the 20th of August so it is a little premature to count any eggs on that one.
"telling us as loudly as possible that Apple's market share of units sold is dangerously flat or even shrinking. Often, it's "waning" or "collapsing," or some other dramatic term suggesting immediate demise for a company..."
You are mixing things up here. Firstly, Apple's unit sales have been flat. That is reality. However, where did you get 'dangerously' from? Secondly, unit sales did shrink. That is reality. However, where did you get "suggesting the immediate demise" from?
iPhone sales are still key to the company's coffers but they have enough non-iPhone business and cash to avoid its demise. You are throwing these things in for dramatic effect but they are false. You might find some unbalanced fool out there making those claims but it simply isn't representative of what is being said.
"The physical Apple Card wears out, but not the digital experience that's driving consumer attention"
I feel confident in pointing out that if this had been a Samsung/Google/Huawei card 'wearing out' it would have got far more than half a sentence dedicated to it.
The 'digital experience that is driving consumer attention' is so low that I, nor anyone I know, even has an interest in it. Many iPhone users included. Being limited to Apple Pay obviously reduces consumer attention to less than 15% of the world's smartphone base. This is supposing that I have my facts right because it hasn't really drawn my attention at all.
Now, if it wasn't less than 15%, consumer attention would probably be higher but that conflicts with the idea of marketshare not being relevant in the first place. Marketshare is important. Tim Cook even hinted during the last earnings call that less services would be tethered to the iPhone and they would see how that worked out. That was interesting for a few reasons and time will tell if it has an impact on the 'ecosystem'.
"the reality remains that Apple is selling the most premium devices to the valuable end of the market. "
The most, but less than before. That is also reality. Huawei and Samsung have better flagships in the 'valuable end' of the market and, whichever way you look at it, the pie that makes up the 'valuable end' has more non-Apple takers than before.
"This minority of the market is driving the development of the majority of the tech that is having a real impact. That, in turn, is driving commercial interest in Apple as a brand".
Can you name some of those technologies? Because for the last three years most of them have come from Huawei and Samsung (NOT Apple) and yes, they are driving commercial interest but NOT in Apple. That's why everyone has been raving about NON-Apple phones (and I'll include One Plus and others in that group). It's why the latest iPhone hasn't drawn much interest at all since launch and any buzz died down very early on.
"Interest in Apple is why the vast volumes of phones from Huawei and Samsung are desperately trying to look like an iPhone. Yet those companies have not attracted significant proprietary app development despite their efforts to do this. Neither has successfully launched new companion wearables like Apple Watch or AirPods, and neither has competently introduced new Services fueling the extraordinary growth Apple has seen from its App Store, iCloud, and other new Services offerings-- including the new Apple Card attracting an unusual level of attention, given that it is merely a credit card with some clever new app features."
No. Huawei and Samsung are not trying to look like the iPhone. Much less 'desperately'.
'Not attracted significant propietary app development'? They run Android. Perhaps I am missing something here.
No successful companion wearables? They have released successful companion wearables. Lots of them! And growing!
I mentioned Ascend further up. What do you think Ascend Nano was designed for? DaVinci cores are already present in the Kirin 810. The Kirin 990 will have an NPU based around Ascend Tiny (or perhaps Ascend Lite). You can expect its already successful wearables business to grow along with IoT.
Both have 'Services' and both will also grow. Even for Apple, Services is a relatively new leg to the earnings table but you are no doubt looking at 'Services' from short sighted CE perspective. Both Samsung and Huawei offer services outside the CE realm too. Huawei offers cloud services to industry as well as end users. Does Apple? Does Apple have an equivalent to the Ascend 910 Cluster?
"Large volumes of low and middle-tier phones are establishing their brands as basic and cheap".
Utter nonsense! Think about a Samsung or Huawei handset and the first, and only, thing that springs to mind is anything but 'basic and cheap'. It is completely the opposite! You think premium flagship with a price to match. Stop anyone in the street and ask them to name a Huawei phone. I guarantee you it won't be a Y Series phone. That is the power of the brand and is why Huawei is (or was, until Trump threw a tantrum) selling more and more premium phones. The same applies to Honor. Not only that but tech savvy users will even put the phones ahead of Apple in many areas.
"While both brands currently hold a lead in certain areas over Apple, ranging from 5G modems to screen size variants, the reality is that the largest Android licensees have always held various inconsequential leads over Apple at various times over the last decade, including 4G and 3G before it."
Certain areas? "Really, George?" Come on.
"Yet this has never mattered before."
It has but you just haven't seen it and it still matters and you still don't see it. Three years of flat sales, a profit warning and YoY contraction make those leads consequential (Competition, in a word) but let's not forget Apple's role in this. If people aren't seeing value (and I'd argue that many aren't) for the asking price, then Apple should be doing more. By the time Apple releases a tri-camera phone, it will be 18 months late to market in competitive terms. So late in fact that tri-cameras aren't even newsworthy in the wider industry anymore and only the top of the line iPhone is rumoured to carry that setup. I hope prices come down if these phones turn out to be another marginal improvement over the last generation. Low light improvements? Another 18 months late. More than x2 optical zoom. Another 18 months. Fast charging? Ten years late!
No. Those leads haven't been inconsequential in the slightest.
I only got the XR after a big increase in the trade-in discounting. Without that it was a no sale because IMO the value wasn't there.
"The two ultra premium-class products making the most original feature leap in smartphones this year were the foldable phone-tablets introduced by Samsung and Huawei. Yet they were both delayed for months, squandering their potential to captivate any real interest among consumers during the sleepy period between iPhone launches. Both represented a lot of work for nothing in 2019."
'Most original' is subjective. Folding phones may be original (or not) but the first generation models were never brought to market with anything other than a tiny niche in mind. None of their 'potential' has been squandered at all. Until they arrive there is no market and the potential is exactly the same as it was when they were announced. The quiet period for these phones (in unit sales terms) doesn't exist and there is no sleepy period between iPhones. P30 Series, S10 Series, Note 10 series, Magic II, Honor 20 Series, One Plus 7 series... . No sleep til Hammersmith!
On the other hand, when they do reach the market, they will definitely absorb attention from the iPhone. People will be rushing to publish reviews and see how quickly they break! LOL! Seriously, iPhone is going to have a harder time getting airtime this year (as if the Mate 30 Series wasn't already enough). To make matters worse, the Mate X has been seriously upgraded and might even have a 5G modem on the Kirin 990 SoC.
The most original feature IMO was the x10 periscope lens on the P30 Pro.
"Why is it so important that Apple is not selling more devices than the rest of the world combined? Actually, it's quite clearly not important"
AFAIK, Apple has never sold more 'devices' than the rest of the world combined and you yourself have written articles on Apple being the top seller in some shape or fashion of some models. Handset sales remain a key metric in Apple's business. That is undeniable in spite of your sarcasm.
This article argues that comparison of unit sales as a portion of the entire market has little meaning, yet has been trumpeted by various "analysts" as being the most important thing to consider when measuring a company's success.
Apple has stopped divulging unit sales of the iPhone arguing that the overall value of their customers is their most important metric. This doesn't mean they're not measuring handset sales and taking action to correct unsatisfactory results, but it does mean that they are treating individual devices as less important as long as total sales across all products keep growing.
This article questions why the mindshare of Apple Card is so much greater than the marketshare of the devices sold by the company. The older article pointed out that on a repeated basis, an argument of "the iPhone isn't selling well" (with no evidentiary support) has been made by people purporting to be credible and published by media purporting to be unbiased.
In fact, the current situation is partly because Apple has lagged behind competitors for a few years now in a broad range of handset technologies.
Apple is rarely first to deliver new technologies. The original iPhone was 2G, not 3G, and didn't have copy and paste, etc, etc. Apple's approach is to try and figure out the best possible implementation of the capabilities offered by a given set of new technologies. You know this.
You also know that being first to market with something does not guarantee long-term profitability, and Apple is ruthless when it comes to profitability.
I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make here. Do other companies also have outsized mindshare when they release new products? Sure. But when company X comes out with feature Y, one of the first reactions is "Apple doesn't have this" (usually with a side serve of "...and therefore is doomed.") - so Apple gets brought into the conversation when another company releases something. Conversely, when Apple releases something, Samsung/Huawei/Whoever gets mentioned because one or more of their products has some feature that "Apple is totally late to the game" on.
In fact, Huawei moved into the handset business and broke the Apple/Samsung duolpoly.
From Wikipedia: "In July 2003, Huawei established their handset department and by 2004, Huawei shipped their first phone, the C300. The U626 was Huawei's first 3G phone in June 2005 and in 2006, Huawei launched the first Vodafone-branded 3G handset, the V710."
It seems clear that Huawei was competing in the handset business before Apple was. I'm not sure your argument holds water - there were multiple handset manufacturers even after Apple entered the market. I seem to recall that only Apple and Samsung were making any profits from smartphones for a while, so from that perspective you might have a point. Huawei's mobile division has been profitable since at least 2015 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecoms-mobileworld-huawei-idUSKBN1670LN, I couldn't find any other articles giving figures for just the mobile division although I saw claims that the division was also profitable in 2014 and 2013), and we should probably count the whole company anyway since we're looking at Apple from the perspective of the entire company.
If you want to talk about competency, where was Apple while all this was happening? Why wasn't Apple developing 5G in 2009 like Huawei? If Huawei managed to outdo Apple on handset hardware in just a few short years, why hasn't Apple done the same in the other direction? Was it really so hard not to see 5G in terms of another industrial revolution and make a strategic move?
No Apple hoarded it's cash and is still focussing on consumer facing earnings. Only now is it trying to pick up the pieces of not seeing the strategic moves its competitors saw long ago and make its own 5G modem (buying in IP and know how).
Apple has been developing its products in secret, as has been its modus operandi for at least the past twenty years. With 5G, it may have judged the technology as not ready for prime time (since the availability of 5G service in their home market is probably roughly the same as the 3G service in 2006). It may also have judged that its modem suppliers were reliable enough sources of components that Apple could delay investing in that space.
Both of those judgements may turn out to be errors. Could be that Apple needs to pay more attention to the infrastructure and consumer habits in China and not be judging the world on what's happening in the US, but it's really hard for any company to downplay the importance of (a) its home turf and (b) what is currently it's largest market.
Now, AI is another prospective big money earner for the next six years both at enterprise and consumer levels.
On Friday, Huawei released Ascend which will be included in earbuds and rise up through watches, handsets, IoT, TVs, cars, servers and entire data centers. Alongside that, it released MindSpore. That is competency and Mindspore will go open source like HiAI has been for three years now.
Where is the Apple equivalent silicon and supporting software frameworks? I've read rumours of Apple being interested in 6G development but missing 5G almost entirely isn't 'competency' in my book.
Apple's got CoreML, now up to v3. Their marketing focus seems to be more on Augmented Reality rather than general AI when it comes to the phones, but from what I can tell both companies are using AI for image enhancement and machine learning. Are the two products equivalent? I don't know, I think it's probably too early to tell.
I also think that claiming Apple is "missing 5G almost entirely" is premature at this point. What's the projected lifespan of 5G networking? What coverage is available now in infrastructure terms? Will Apple be able to compete effectively enough using third party components until/if it develops its own capabilities in-house?
Apple 'miscalculated' in Tim Cook's own words. As a result it looks like it had to reimburse Samsung for not achieving planned shipments of oled displays and issue a profit warning.
Fair point.
If Huawei has reached the point where it has the U.S senate running scared and trying to chop it down by any means possible you can be sure that competency was the underlying reason.
Competency may well be one of the reasons. It's rare for such an action to be taken for only one reason, though. The US seem rather concerned that their national security is under threat, so that's another possibility.
"telling us as loudly as possible that Apple's market share of units sold is dangerously flat or even shrinking. Often, it's "waning" or "collapsing," or some other dramatic term suggesting immediate demise for a company..."
You are mixing things up here. Firstly, Apple's unit sales have been flat. That is reality.
Respectfully, you have quoted "market share of units sold" and then argued the point as though the author wrote "units sold" - so in this case, I believe you are in error.
You might find some unbalanced fool out there making those claims but it simply isn't representative of what is being said.
There are enough of them for The Macalope to have a career. Perhaps this is a case of perception bias? As a long-term Mac user I seem to come across many such articles, but no doubt that's due to my choice of reading material.
"The physical Apple Card wears out, but not the digital experience that's driving consumer attention"
I feel confident in pointing out that if this had been a Samsung/Google/Huawei card 'wearing out' it would have got far more than half a sentence dedicated to it.
"This minority of the market is driving the development of the majority of the tech that is having a real impact. That, in turn, is driving commercial interest in Apple as a brand".
Can you name some of those technologies? Because for the last three years most of them have come from Huawei and Samsung (NOT Apple) and yes, they are driving commercial interest but NOT in Apple.
Released to the market is not always equivalent to "having a real impact," but I'm willing to be persuaded. Bear in mind that Apple's viewing their performance as a whole, so if iPhone capabilities increase sales of Macs rather than iPhones that's just fine in their books. Mac sales have been outperforming the PC industry as a whole, iPads have been selling pretty well in enterprise... I think it's reasonable to say that there is commercial interest in Apple as a brand.
"Interest in Apple is why the vast volumes of phones from Huawei and Samsung are desperately trying to look like an iPhone. Yet those companies have not attracted significant proprietary app development despite their efforts to do this. Neither has successfully launched new companion wearables like Apple Watch or AirPods, and neither has competently introduced new Services fueling the extraordinary growth Apple has seen from its App Store, iCloud, and other new Services offerings-- including the new Apple Card attracting an unusual level of attention, given that it is merely a credit card with some clever new app features."
No. Huawei and Samsung are not trying to look like the iPhone. Much less 'desperately'.
'Not attracted significant propietary app development'? They run Android. Perhaps I am missing something here.
I think the author's argument stands - most Android developers support the Android OS rather than a particular phone. But that's something of a moot point, as you say.
No successful companion wearables? They have released successful companion wearables. Lots of them! And growing!
I did not know that. Thanks!
"Large volumes of low and middle-tier phones are establishing their brands as basic and cheap".
Utter nonsense! Think about a Samsung or Huawei handset and the first, and only, thing that springs to mind is anything but 'basic and cheap'. It is completely the opposite! You think premium flagship with a price to match.
And then you think "they make a lot of non-premium phones as well" which is not what people think about Apple.
tech savvy users will even put the phones ahead of Apple in many areas.
(a) the author acknowledges this in the very next quote you provide (b) tech-savvy users are not the entire market. By a wide margin.
"While both brands currently hold a lead in certain areas over Apple, ranging from 5G modems to screen size variants, the reality is that the largest Android licensees have always held various inconsequential leads over Apple at various times over the last decade, including 4G and 3G before it."
Certain areas? "Really, George?" Come on.
"Yet this has never mattered before."
It has but you just haven't seen it and it still matters and you still don't see it. Three years of flat sales, a profit warning and YoY contraction make those leads consequential (Competition, in a word) but let's not forget Apple's role in this. If people aren't seeing value (and I'd argue that many aren't) for the asking price, then Apple should be doing more. By the time Apple releases a tri-camera phone, it will be 18 months late to market in competitive terms. So late in fact that tri-cameras aren't even newsworthy in the wider industry anymore and only the top of the line iPhone is rumoured to carry that setup. I hope prices come down if these phones turn out to be another marginal improvement over the last generation. Low light improvements? Another 18 months late. More than x2 optical zoom. Another 18 months. Fast charging? Ten years late!
No. Those leads haven't been inconsequential in the slightest.
Again, first to market with features is not as important as having the best version of those features in the market. And maybe the capabilities Apple will provide with the rumoured three-camera setup will be more useful to a larger number of people than what is currently available - which is something Apple has historically done pretty well. The original iPhone, after all, only had 2G networking and no copy and paste - yet people lusted after it because what it could do it did better than anything else on the market.
"The two ultra premium-class products making the most original feature leap in smartphones this year were the foldable phone-tablets introduced by Samsung and Huawei. Yet they were both delayed for months, squandering their potential to captivate any real interest among consumers during the sleepy period between iPhone launches. Both represented a lot of work for nothing in 2019."
'Most original' is subjective. Folding phones may be original (or not) but the first generation models were never brought to market with anything other than a tiny niche in mind. None of their 'potential' has been squandered at all. Until they arrive there is no market and the potential is exactly the same as it was when they were announced. The quiet period for these phones (in unit sales terms) doesn't exist and there is no sleepy period between iPhones. P30 Series, S10 Series, Note 10 series, Magic II, Honor 20 Series, One Plus 7 series... . No sleep til Hammersmith!
Indeed.
And sorry to bring up the original iPhone again, but it too was released aiming for a tiny fraction of the global phone market. So perhaps there is something to these folding phones after all... except the original iPhone didn't break within hours of getting into users' hands, so the public perception of the two is somewhat different.
On the other hand, when they do reach the market, they will definitely absorb attention from the iPhone. People will be rushing to publish reviews and see how quickly they break! LOL! Seriously, iPhone is going to have a harder time getting airtime this year (as if the Mate 30 Series wasn't already enough). To make matters worse, the Mate X has been seriously upgraded and might even have a 5G modem on the Kirin 990 SoC.
The most original feature IMO was the x10 periscope lens on the P30 Pro.
I still predict that they will be compared to the iPhone. In as favourable a light as possible, of course (and the reverse will also be true).
I won't continue as time doesn't permit.
No kidding. Responding to it feels like it took forever.
"Why is it so important that Apple is not selling more devices than the rest of the world combined? Actually, it's quite clearly not important"
AFAIK, Apple has never sold more 'devices' than the rest of the world combined and you yourself have written articles on Apple being the top seller in some shape or fashion of some models. Handset sales remain a key metric in Apple's business. That is undeniable in spite of your sarcasm.
This article argues that comparison of unit sales as a portion of the entire market has little meaning, yet has been trumpeted by various "analysts" as being the most important thing to consider when measuring a company's success.
Apple has stopped divulging unit sales of the iPhone arguing that the overall value of their customers is their most important metric. This doesn't mean they're not measuring handset sales and taking action to correct unsatisfactory results, but it does mean that they are treating individual devices as less important as long as total sales across all products keep growing.
This article questions why the mindshare of Apple Card is so much greater than the marketshare of the devices sold by the company. The older article pointed out that on a repeated basis, an argument of "the iPhone isn't selling well" (with no evidentiary support) has been made by people purporting to be credible and published by media purporting to be unbiased.
In fact, the current situation is partly because Apple has lagged behind competitors for a few years now in a broad range of handset technologies.
Apple is rarely first to deliver new technologies. The original iPhone was 2G, not 3G, and didn't have copy and paste, etc, etc. Apple's approach is to try and figure out the best possible implementation of the capabilities offered by a given set of new technologies. You know this.
You also know that being first to market with something does not guarantee long-term profitability, and Apple is ruthless when it comes to profitability.
I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make here. Do other companies also have outsized mindshare when they release new products? Sure. But when company X comes out with feature Y, one of the first reactions is "Apple doesn't have this" (usually with a side serve of "...and therefore is doomed.") - so Apple gets brought into the conversation when another company releases something. Conversely, when Apple releases something, Samsung/Huawei/Whoever gets mentioned because one or more of their products has some feature that "Apple is totally late to the game" on.
In fact, Huawei moved into the handset business and broke the Apple/Samsung duolpoly.
From Wikipedia: "In July 2003, Huawei established their handset department and by 2004, Huawei shipped their first phone, the C300. The U626 was Huawei's first 3G phone in June 2005 and in 2006, Huawei launched the first Vodafone-branded 3G handset, the V710."
It seems clear that Huawei was competing in the handset business before Apple was. I'm not sure your argument holds water - there were multiple handset manufacturers even after Apple entered the market. I seem to recall that only Apple and Samsung were making any profits from smartphones for a while, so from that perspective you might have a point. Huawei's mobile division has been profitable since at least 2015 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecoms-mobileworld-huawei-idUSKBN1670LN, I couldn't find any other articles giving figures for just the mobile division although I saw claims that the division was also profitable in 2014 and 2013), and we should probably count the whole company anyway since we're looking at Apple from the perspective of the entire company.
If you want to talk about competency, where was Apple while all this was happening? Why wasn't Apple developing 5G in 2009 like Huawei? If Huawei managed to outdo Apple on handset hardware in just a few short years, why hasn't Apple done the same in the other direction? Was it really so hard not to see 5G in terms of another industrial revolution and make a strategic move?
No Apple hoarded it's cash and is still focussing on consumer facing earnings. Only now is it trying to pick up the pieces of not seeing the strategic moves its competitors saw long ago and make its own 5G modem (buying in IP and know how).
Apple has been developing its products in secret, as has been its modus operandi for at least the past twenty years. With 5G, it may have judged the technology as not ready for prime time (since the availability of 5G service in their home market is probably roughly the same as the 3G service in 2006). It may also have judged that its modem suppliers were reliable enough sources of components that Apple could delay investing in that space.
Both of those judgements may turn out to be errors. Could be that Apple needs to pay more attention to the infrastructure and consumer habits in China and not be judging the world on what's happening in the US, but it's really hard for any company to downplay the importance of (a) its home turf and (b) what is currently it's largest market.
Now, AI is another prospective big money earner for the next six years both at enterprise and consumer levels.
On Friday, Huawei released Ascend which will be included in earbuds and rise up through watches, handsets, IoT, TVs, cars, servers and entire data centers. Alongside that, it released MindSpore. That is competency and Mindspore will go open source like HiAI has been for three years now.
Where is the Apple equivalent silicon and supporting software frameworks? I've read rumours of Apple being interested in 6G development but missing 5G almost entirely isn't 'competency' in my book.
Apple's got CoreML, now up to v3. Their marketing focus seems to be more on Augmented Reality rather than general AI when it comes to the phones, but from what I can tell both companies are using AI for image enhancement and machine learning. Are the two products equivalent? I don't know, I think it's probably too early to tell.
I also think that claiming Apple is "missing 5G almost entirely" is premature at this point. What's the projected lifespan of 5G networking? What coverage is available now in infrastructure terms? Will Apple be able to compete effectively enough using third party components until/if it develops its own capabilities in-house?
Apple 'miscalculated' in Tim Cook's own words. As a result it looks like it had to reimburse Samsung for not achieving planned shipments of oled displays and issue a profit warning.
Fair point.
If Huawei has reached the point where it has the U.S senate running scared and trying to chop it down by any means possible you can be sure that competency was the underlying reason.
Competency may well be one of the reasons. It's rare for such an action to be taken for only one reason, though. The US seem rather concerned that their national security is under threat, so that's another possibility.
"telling us as loudly as possible that Apple's market share of units sold is dangerously flat or even shrinking. Often, it's "waning" or "collapsing," or some other dramatic term suggesting immediate demise for a company..."
You are mixing things up here. Firstly, Apple's unit sales have been flat. That is reality.
Respectfully, you have quoted "market share of units sold" and then argued the point as though the author wrote "units sold" - so in this case, I believe you are in error.
You might find some unbalanced fool out there making those claims but it simply isn't representative of what is being said.
There are enough of them for The Macalope to have a career. Perhaps this is a case of perception bias? As a long-term Mac user I seem to come across many such articles, but no doubt that's due to my choice of reading material.
"The physical Apple Card wears out, but not the digital experience that's driving consumer attention"
I feel confident in pointing out that if this had been a Samsung/Google/Huawei card 'wearing out' it would have got far more than half a sentence dedicated to it.
"This minority of the market is driving the development of the majority of the tech that is having a real impact. That, in turn, is driving commercial interest in Apple as a brand".
Can you name some of those technologies? Because for the last three years most of them have come from Huawei and Samsung (NOT Apple) and yes, they are driving commercial interest but NOT in Apple.
Released to the market is not always equivalent to "having a real impact," but I'm willing to be persuaded. Bear in mind that Apple's viewing their performance as a whole, so if iPhone capabilities increase sales of Macs rather than iPhones that's just fine in their books. Mac sales have been outperforming the PC industry as a whole, iPads have been selling pretty well in enterprise... I think it's reasonable to say that there is commercial interest in Apple as a brand.
"Interest in Apple is why the vast volumes of phones from Huawei and Samsung are desperately trying to look like an iPhone. Yet those companies have not attracted significant proprietary app development despite their efforts to do this. Neither has successfully launched new companion wearables like Apple Watch or AirPods, and neither has competently introduced new Services fueling the extraordinary growth Apple has seen from its App Store, iCloud, and other new Services offerings-- including the new Apple Card attracting an unusual level of attention, given that it is merely a credit card with some clever new app features."
No. Huawei and Samsung are not trying to look like the iPhone. Much less 'desperately'.
'Not attracted significant propietary app development'? They run Android. Perhaps I am missing something here.
I think the author's argument stands - most Android developers support the Android OS rather than a particular phone. But that's something of a moot point, as you say.
No successful companion wearables? They have released successful companion wearables. Lots of them! And growing!
I did not know that. Thanks!
"Large volumes of low and middle-tier phones are establishing their brands as basic and cheap".
Utter nonsense! Think about a Samsung or Huawei handset and the first, and only, thing that springs to mind is anything but 'basic and cheap'. It is completely the opposite! You think premium flagship with a price to match.
And then you think "they make a lot of non-premium phones as well" which is not what people think about Apple.
tech savvy users will even put the phones ahead of Apple in many areas.
(a) the author acknowledges this in the very next quote you provide (b) tech-savvy users are not the entire market. By a wide margin.
"While both brands currently hold a lead in certain areas over Apple, ranging from 5G modems to screen size variants, the reality is that the largest Android licensees have always held various inconsequential leads over Apple at various times over the last decade, including 4G and 3G before it."
Certain areas? "Really, George?" Come on.
"Yet this has never mattered before."
It has but you just haven't seen it and it still matters and you still don't see it. Three years of flat sales, a profit warning and YoY contraction make those leads consequential (Competition, in a word) but let's not forget Apple's role in this. If people aren't seeing value (and I'd argue that many aren't) for the asking price, then Apple should be doing more. By the time Apple releases a tri-camera phone, it will be 18 months late to market in competitive terms. So late in fact that tri-cameras aren't even newsworthy in the wider industry anymore and only the top of the line iPhone is rumoured to carry that setup. I hope prices come down if these phones turn out to be another marginal improvement over the last generation. Low light improvements? Another 18 months late. More than x2 optical zoom. Another 18 months. Fast charging? Ten years late!
No. Those leads haven't been inconsequential in the slightest.
Again, first to market with features is not as important as having the best version of those features in the market. And maybe the capabilities Apple will provide with the rumoured three-camera setup will be more useful to a larger number of people than what is currently available - which is something Apple has historically done pretty well. The original iPhone, after all, only had 2G networking and no copy and paste - yet people lusted after it because what it could do it did better than anything else on the market.
"The two ultra premium-class products making the most original feature leap in smartphones this year were the foldable phone-tablets introduced by Samsung and Huawei. Yet they were both delayed for months, squandering their potential to captivate any real interest among consumers during the sleepy period between iPhone launches. Both represented a lot of work for nothing in 2019."
'Most original' is subjective. Folding phones may be original (or not) but the first generation models were never brought to market with anything other than a tiny niche in mind. None of their 'potential' has been squandered at all. Until they arrive there is no market and the potential is exactly the same as it was when they were announced. The quiet period for these phones (in unit sales terms) doesn't exist and there is no sleepy period between iPhones. P30 Series, S10 Series, Note 10 series, Magic II, Honor 20 Series, One Plus 7 series... . No sleep til Hammersmith!
Indeed.
And sorry to bring up the original iPhone again, but it too was released aiming for a tiny fraction of the global phone market. So perhaps there is something to these folding phones after all... except the original iPhone didn't break within hours of getting into users' hands, so the public perception of the two is somewhat different.
On the other hand, when they do reach the market, they will definitely absorb attention from the iPhone. People will be rushing to publish reviews and see how quickly they break! LOL! Seriously, iPhone is going to have a harder time getting airtime this year (as if the Mate 30 Series wasn't already enough). To make matters worse, the Mate X has been seriously upgraded and might even have a 5G modem on the Kirin 990 SoC.
The most original feature IMO was the x10 periscope lens on the P30 Pro.
I still predict that they will be compared to the iPhone. In as favourable a light as possible, of course (and the reverse will also be true).
I won't continue as time doesn't permit.
No kidding. Responding to it feels like it took forever.
Firstly, it is greatly appreciated that you provided a civil and reasoned reply.
I normally skip DED editorials completely or stop a few paragraphs in. There is too much unnecessary negativity IMO and recently a lot the information isn't even accurate.
As we both lack time I will simply flesh out some points that you picked up on.
With regards to Huawei handsets I was referring to competing smartphone handsets (competition with Apple). In other words, Android phones. That is 2012 with the little toe in the market. The ramp up in competition has really happened over the last 5 years. The Samsung/Apple duopoly didn't exist in the feature phone era.
With regards to Huawei and Samsung desperately trying to look like Apple, the original reference was clearly present and you are right that you might be persuaded today but also last year and the year before. Of course phones as devices are converging into one rectangular full screen slab but there is still a lot to distinguish them from iPhones. When questioned (and I have questioned this notion in the past) people normally pull out one or two models and then run out of arguments.
By using the present:
"Huawei and Samsung are desperately trying to look like an iPhone."
He is simply distorting things to support a 'narrative' he is inventing. If anything the opposite could actually be true. One of the things that made the Mate 20 Pro stand out was its camera array. That one element was the design highlight and it is likely to appear on the Pixel and new iPhone. The difference is that I have no issue with other brands using it and much less to claim that Apple is desperately copying Huawei. Of course Samsung's original copy was almost a clone but that is history. Who would pick up a modern Samsung and see a desperate Apple copy? Ironically, not even DED but he has no problem slipping that in and hoping it sticks. Just like the 'dangerously' and 'demise' references I also mentioned.
On the Macalope subject, they are not alone. If you look you will find but it remains a distortion of overall reality. For near on a decade, Apple was the darling of mainstream press receiving accolades that were not merited and often containing incorrect information but no one picked up on that. There is bias everywhere and ideally it would be called out and contrasted. When it comes to purely opinion pieces you are thrown a lot more slack but this piece is overflowing with bias.
Regarding CoreML my point was that Apple still swims in the CE pool and hasn't looked far beyond that (until now with 6G dabblings). They are not pumping out technology like Huawei. They are not making Ascend 910 clusters or Kunpeng Servers, laying thousands of KM of undersea cable, no Tiangang equivalents, no aviation business, core communications infrastructure, no solar business, no independent chipset business attending all scenario deployments and a very long etc.
In spite of all that DED still wants to throw darts around.
I'm sure Apple would like to be in those businesses but, today, they aren't and it is by executive design. I have no issue with that but when you start throwing 'competency' around the argument disintegrates when scrutinised.
Regarding folding phones, remember they have yet to reach 'user's hands' and the Mate X specifically has shown no issues to date and has been the daily driver for Huawei executives and engineers all year plus numerous hands ons. Still, when they do eventually reach the public, durability will be the number one consideration and for that we have to wait.
Regarding flat units or marketshare, good call, but their is no difference to what I was pointing out. Whichever one you take they are both flat or contracting.
Regarding 'first to market' sometimes what you mention does happen but it hasn't happened with any of the tech Huawei has brought to market. The P20 Pro hit the tri-camera ground running and they haven't let up since then. It has literally been on one trailblazer after another. The results have been what has catapulted it to its current status. Over the last few years there have been far too many Huawei presentations with comparison slides showing nothing because the iPhone didn't have the capability of doing what Huawei phones have done. Far too many people first try to mock Huawei or Samsung and feel they can't point the finger at Apple for not providing competitive hardware. It's a personal thing but clearly I'm in the camp that says they should be doing more.
Regarding 'premium', making mid range phones or even low end phones has no bearing on their 'brand' which has been rising in awareness terms. In fact, Honor was often considered the sub-brand but even that is changing now. When Huawei released the Harmony OS Smart Screen, it released under the Honor brand. The graph for brand value seems to be moving in the right direction.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1982 and have experienced firsthand the negativity and hatred of Apple by so many pundits, analysts, and self appointed experts over the years.
It is just the same w.r.t. Electric Vehicles. There are big players behind a lot of anti-EV rhetoric possibly Big-oil/coal. They are spending huge amounts of money to discredit EV's as a whole and in particular Tesla.
There will be people looking at making billions taking down Apple, Amazon and the rest.
The big automakers are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to electrics, and in case you were unaware, half of the Koch Brothers died yesterday. The oil industry is still a powerful entity, but coal is on its deathbed for power production.
Of note, Tesla isn't in a strong position to fight off the big automakers. Case in point is the Porsche Taycan, which competes head on with the the Model S, Jaguar iPace which competes withe the Model X, and a number of Model 3 competitors, especially the Nissan Leaf.
You lost credibility when you mentioned the Nissan Leaf as a competitor to a Tesla. Sorry.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1982 and have experienced firsthand the negativity and hatred of Apple by so many pundits, analysts, and self appointed experts over the years.
It is just the same w.r.t. Electric Vehicles. There are big players behind a lot of anti-EV rhetoric possibly Big-oil/coal. They are spending huge amounts of money to discredit EV's as a whole and in particular Tesla.
There will be people looking at making billions taking down Apple, Amazon and the rest.
The big automakers are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to electrics, and in case you were unaware, half of the Koch Brothers died yesterday. The oil industry is still a powerful entity, but coal is on its deathbed for power production.
Of note, Tesla isn't in a strong position to fight off the big automakers. Case in point is the Porsche Taycan, which competes head on with the the Model S, Jaguar iPace which competes withe the Model X, and a number of Model 3 competitors, especially the Nissan Leaf.
You lost credibility when you mentioned the Nissan Leaf as a competitor to a Tesla. Sorry.
Yeah, you're right.
Tesla would go bankrupt if they had to compete on price and quality of Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, or even the Bolt, all of which are available with ranges exceeding the entry level Model 3.
They sure as shit won't be able to compete the Model S with the Taycan in either build or quality.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1982 and have experienced firsthand the negativity and hatred of Apple by so many pundits, analysts, and self appointed experts over the years.
It is just the same w.r.t. Electric Vehicles. There are big players behind a lot of anti-EV rhetoric possibly Big-oil/coal. They are spending huge amounts of money to discredit EV's as a whole and in particular Tesla.
There will be people looking at making billions taking down Apple, Amazon and the rest.
The big automakers are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to electrics, and in case you were unaware, half of the Koch Brothers died yesterday. The oil industry is still a powerful entity, but coal is on its deathbed for power production.
Of note, Tesla isn't in a strong position to fight off the big automakers. Case in point is the Porsche Taycan, which competes head on with the the Model S, Jaguar iPace which competes withe the Model X, and a number of Model 3 competitors, especially the Nissan Leaf.
"Should Tesla be worried? Absolutely. Even from the passenger seat, it's clear the Porsche is dynamically superior in every way. And if the numbers we've seen hold up under our testing, go-fast Teslas such as the Model S 100D may not have a decisive range advantage over the Taycan, especially when driven hard. Combine that with noticeably better build quality—even on the preproduction car—and the cachet of that Porsche badge, and it all adds up to one thing: The Taycan is a game-changer."
($130000 vs $38000) Thats what I mean: ill informed.
Your reading comprehension is evidently limited.
I compared each model of Tesla with a comparable competitor; the Taycan is a competitor of the Model S.
The base Model 3 currently at $36,200 would compare with the Nissan Leaf:
You can get a Nissan Leaf S for just under $30,000 and still receive the full federal tax credit, whereas Tesla's is now down to $1875 until the end of the year when it goes to zero.
Which do you think the consumer is going to prefer on price?
I would throw in the Kia Niro EV as well which also qualifies for the full $7500 federal tax credit.
Model 3 and Taycan compare in performance (at least thats the intention of Porsche). Nissan Leaveit is a dog of a car, and cannot be compared. Actual sales numbers (of model 3) tell it all.
I’ve been an Apple user since 1982 and have experienced firsthand the negativity and hatred of Apple by so many pundits, analysts, and self appointed experts over the years.
It is just the same w.r.t. Electric Vehicles. There are big players behind a lot of anti-EV rhetoric possibly Big-oil/coal. They are spending huge amounts of money to discredit EV's as a whole and in particular Tesla.
There will be people looking at making billions taking down Apple, Amazon and the rest.
The big automakers are committing hundreds of billions of dollars to electrics, and in case you were unaware, half of the Koch Brothers died yesterday. The oil industry is still a powerful entity, but coal is on its deathbed for power production.
Of note, Tesla isn't in a strong position to fight off the big automakers. Case in point is the Porsche Taycan, which competes head on with the the Model S, Jaguar iPace which competes withe the Model X, and a number of Model 3 competitors, especially the Nissan Leaf.
"Should Tesla be worried? Absolutely. Even from the passenger seat, it's clear the Porsche is dynamically superior in every way. And if the numbers we've seen hold up under our testing, go-fast Teslas such as the Model S 100D may not have a decisive range advantage over the Taycan, especially when driven hard. Combine that with noticeably better build quality—even on the preproduction car—and the cachet of that Porsche badge, and it all adds up to one thing: The Taycan is a game-changer."
($130000 vs $38000) Thats what I mean: ill informed.
Your reading comprehension is evidently limited.
I compared each model of Tesla with a comparable competitor; the Taycan is a competitor of the Model S.
The base Model 3 currently at $36,200 would compare with the Nissan Leaf:
You can get a Nissan Leaf S for just under $30,000 and still receive the full federal tax credit, whereas Tesla's is now down to $1875 until the end of the year when it goes to zero.
Which do you think the consumer is going to prefer on price?
I would throw in the Kia Niro EV as well which also qualifies for the full $7500 federal tax credit.
Model 3 and Taycan compare in performance (at least thats the intention of Porsche). Nissan Leaveit is a dog of a car, and cannot be compared. Actual sales numbers (of model 3) tell it all.
"With its expected production start in late 2019, the Porsche Taycan will come with a range of about 400 kilometers (250 miles). Furthermore, the owners will be able to charge their high-performance battery-powered machines to about 80% charge in just 15 minutes. With a gorgeous design, impressive performance figures and fast charging, it's no wonder that pre-orders for this vehicle are flying through the roof. And to be honest, if Porsche can deliver on their promises in all three categories, and if they can deliver it in substantial numbers from the start, we might have what many are calling a "Tesla Killer" on our hands."
Comments
The Volt has always looked much more attractive to me, as has the I-Pace. As I understand it, 2019 is the last year for Volt production? That is/would be a shame as I don't like the Bolt and Spark at all.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201359
I guess we'll see if that lasts. Keep up the great work, DED!
The difference is that DED didn’t mention Google or Android. That’s what usually gets them bleating.
Thats what I mean: ill informed.
I compared each model of Tesla with a comparable competitor; the Taycan is a competitor of the Model S.
The base Model 3 currently at $36,200 would compare with the Nissan Leaf:
https://www.nissanusa.com/vehicles/electric-cars/leaf/build-price.html#configure/A/version
You can get a Nissan Leaf S for just under $30,000 and still receive the full federal tax credit, whereas Tesla's is now down to $1875 until the end of the year when it goes to zero.
Which do you think the consumer is going to prefer on price?
https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/the-ins-and-outs-of-electric-vehicle-tax-credits.html
Electric Vehicles
Federal Tax Credit
BMW i3
$7,500
Chevrolet Bolt
$7,500 (1/1/19-3/31/19) ($3,750, 4/1/19-9/30/19. $1,875, 10/1/19-3/31/20)
Fiat 500e
$7,500
Ford Focus Electric
$7,500
Hyundai Ioniq Electric
$7,500
Kia Soul EV
$7,500
Mercedes-Benz B-Class EV
$7,500
Nissan Leaf
$7,500
Tesla Model 3
$3,750 (1/1/19-6/30/19) ($1,875, 7/1/19-12/31/19)
Tesla Model S
$3,750 (1/1/19-6/30/19) ($1,875, 7/1/19-12/31/19)
Tesla Model X
$3,750 (1/1/19-6/30/19) ($1,875, 7/1/19-12/31/19)
Volkswagen e-Golf
$7,500
I would throw in the Kia Niro EV as well which also qualifies for the full $7500 federal tax credit.
AFAIK, Apple has never sold more 'devices' than the rest of the world combined and you yourself have written articles on Apple being the top seller in some shape or fashion of some models. Handset sales remain a key metric in Apple's business. That is undeniable in spite of your sarcasm.
The wobble Apple took at the start of the year was largely caused by lower than expected iPhone sales.
Actually sales are clearly very important and have been the key driver for Apple for years. That's why they actually do matter and are important. Even today.
While revenue from iPhones, for the first time in a long while, made up less than 50% of the total recently (and might even become a trend), that percentage is likely to jump back over 50% after Apple's blowout Christmas quarter and that will happen largely through increasing handset sales.
After a profit warning and three years of flat unit sales, you are now picking up something new to downplay problematic handset unit sales. Sales that would have been seen in even poorer light if it weren't for DT trying to crush Huawei.
Less than a year ago, sales (or analysts hitting on them) were important enough for you to pen this piece:
https://iphone.appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/18/bogus-hot-takes-about-low-iphone-x-demand-being-repeated-about-iphone-xs
You even wrote a piece claiming Apple in China was doing fine in the very same 24 hours that Apple issued a profit warning. Speculation swings both ways and can be wrong. No news there.
Why wasn't this piece written back then if unit sales aren't actually important? Why waste so much energy focussing on pure speculation by different analysts/journalists? Analysts and journalists will speculate but they also report the official numbers too. Just like they report on Apple Card.
In fact, the current situation is partly because Apple has lagged behind competitors for a few years now in a broad range of handset technologies. Price is clearly another factor. If people talk about Huawei and Samsung it is because of what they have delivered. If people largely stopped talking about the latest iPhone series shortly after release it is because the release was not worthy of more attention. Apple really didn't deliver with the 2018 iPhone refresh. The Apple Watch was far more newsworthy.
If Huawei and Samsung have delivered and left Apple to catch-up in key areas it is because they are competing and as a result of that competition, Apple is apparently trying to move things up a gear. At last! But all indicators (read rumours) point to another relatively 'light' iPhone refresh. We'll see what actually gets presented but, unlike sales forecasts, rumours on upcoming iPhones have historically not been that bad.
'Competency' seems to be your way of writing Samsung and Huawei off in some way. I have no idea why you want to tread there.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The Fold was a PR disaster but the rest of the handset division has been on a roll. Far better than the S9 Series.
Huawei hasn't put a foot wrong so far in spite of U.S attempts to literally kill the company.
In fact, Huawei moved into the handset business and broke the Apple/Samsung duolpoly. No mean feat. It has key technology literally at every step of the way from the top right down into wearables and everything in between.
If you want to talk about competency, where was Apple while all this was happening? Why wasn't Apple developing 5G in 2009 like Huawei? If Huawei managed to outdo Apple on handset hardware in just a few short years, why hasn't Apple done the same in the other direction? Was it really so hard not to see 5G in terms of another industrial revolution and make a strategic move?
No Apple hoarded it's cash and is still focussing on consumer facing earnings. Only now is it trying to pick up the pieces of not seeing the strategic moves its competitors saw long ago and make its own 5G modem (buying in IP and know how).
Now, AI is another prospective big money earner for the next six years both at enterprise and consumer levels.
On Friday, Huawei released Ascend which will be included in earbuds and rise up through watches, handsets, IoT, TVs, cars, servers and entire data centers. Alongside that, it released MindSpore. That is competency and Mindspore will go open source like HiAI has been for three years now.
Where is the Apple equivalent silicon and supporting software frameworks? I've read rumours of Apple being interested in 6G development but missing 5G almost entirely isn't 'competency' in my book.Apple 'miscalculated' in Tim Cook's own words. As a result it looks like it had to reimburse Samsung for not achieving planned shipments of oled displays and issue a profit warning.
If Huawei has reached the point where it has the U.S senate running scared and trying to chop it down by any means possible you can be sure that competency was the underlying reason.
Apple Card was announced in March 2019 and went live on the 20th of August so it is a little premature to count any eggs on that one.
"telling us as loudly as possible that Apple's market share of units sold is dangerously flat or even shrinking. Often, it's "waning" or "collapsing," or some other dramatic term suggesting immediate demise for a company..."
You are mixing things up here. Firstly, Apple's unit sales have been flat. That is reality. However, where did you get 'dangerously' from? Secondly, unit sales did shrink. That is reality. However, where did you get "suggesting the immediate demise" from?
iPhone sales are still key to the company's coffers but they have enough non-iPhone business and cash to avoid its demise. You are throwing these things in for dramatic effect but they are false. You might find some unbalanced fool out there making those claims but it simply isn't representative of what is being said.
"The physical Apple Card wears out, but not the digital experience that's driving consumer attention"
I feel confident in pointing out that if this had been a Samsung/Google/Huawei card 'wearing out' it would have got far more than half a sentence dedicated to it.
The 'digital experience that is driving consumer attention' is so low that I, nor anyone I know, even has an interest in it. Many iPhone users included. Being limited to Apple Pay obviously reduces consumer attention to less than 15% of the world's smartphone base. This is supposing that I have my facts right because it hasn't really drawn my attention at all.
Now, if it wasn't less than 15%, consumer attention would probably be higher but that conflicts with the idea of marketshare not being relevant in the first place. Marketshare is important. Tim Cook even hinted during the last earnings call that less services would be tethered to the iPhone and they would see how that worked out. That was interesting for a few reasons and time will tell if it has an impact on the 'ecosystem'.
"the reality remains that Apple is selling the most premium devices to the valuable end of the market. "
The most, but less than before. That is also reality. Huawei and Samsung have better flagships in the 'valuable end' of the market and, whichever way you look at it, the pie that makes up the 'valuable end' has more non-Apple takers than before.
"This minority of the market is driving the development of the majority of the tech that is having a real impact. That, in turn, is driving commercial interest in Apple as a brand".
Can you name some of those technologies? Because for the last three years most of them have come from Huawei and Samsung (NOT Apple) and yes, they are driving commercial interest but NOT in Apple. That's why everyone has been raving about NON-Apple phones (and I'll include One Plus and others in that group). It's why the latest iPhone hasn't drawn much interest at all since launch and any buzz died down very early on.
"Interest in Apple is why the vast volumes of phones from Huawei and Samsung are desperately trying to look like an iPhone. Yet those companies have not attracted significant proprietary app development despite their efforts to do this. Neither has successfully launched new companion wearables like Apple Watch or AirPods, and neither has competently introduced new Services fueling the extraordinary growth Apple has seen from its App Store, iCloud, and other new Services offerings-- including the new Apple Card attracting an unusual level of attention, given that it is merely a credit card with some clever new app features."
No. Huawei and Samsung are not trying to look like the iPhone. Much less 'desperately'.
'Not attracted significant propietary app development'? They run Android. Perhaps I am missing something here.
No successful companion wearables? They have released successful companion wearables. Lots of them! And growing!
https://www.cnet.com/news/huawei-wearables-shipments-quadruple/
I mentioned Ascend further up. What do you think Ascend Nano was designed for? DaVinci cores are already present in the Kirin 810. The Kirin 990 will have an NPU based around Ascend Tiny (or perhaps Ascend Lite). You can expect its already successful wearables business to grow along with IoT.
Both have 'Services' and both will also grow. Even for Apple, Services is a relatively new leg to the earnings table but you are no doubt looking at 'Services' from short sighted CE perspective. Both Samsung and Huawei offer services outside the CE realm too. Huawei offers cloud services to industry as well as end users. Does Apple? Does Apple have an equivalent to the Ascend 910 Cluster?
https://www.anandtech.com/show/14756/hot-chips-live-blogs-huawei-da-vinci-architecture
That will have services attached to it.
"Large volumes of low and middle-tier phones are establishing their brands as basic and cheap".
Utter nonsense! Think about a Samsung or Huawei handset and the first, and only, thing that springs to mind is anything but 'basic and cheap'. It is completely the opposite! You think premium flagship with a price to match. Stop anyone in the street and ask them to name a Huawei phone. I guarantee you it won't be a Y Series phone. That is the power of the brand and is why Huawei is (or was, until Trump threw a tantrum) selling more and more premium phones. The same applies to Honor. Not only that but tech savvy users will even put the phones ahead of Apple in many areas.
"While both brands currently hold a lead in certain areas over Apple, ranging from 5G modems to screen size variants, the reality is that the largest Android licensees have always held various inconsequential leads over Apple at various times over the last decade, including 4G and 3G before it."
Certain areas? "Really, George?" Come on.
"Yet this has never mattered before."
It has but you just haven't seen it and it still matters and you still don't see it. Three years of flat sales, a profit warning and YoY contraction make those leads consequential (Competition, in a word) but let's not forget Apple's role in this. If people aren't seeing value (and I'd argue that many aren't) for the asking price, then Apple should be doing more. By the time Apple releases a tri-camera phone, it will be 18 months late to market in competitive terms. So late in fact that tri-cameras aren't even newsworthy in the wider industry anymore and only the top of the line iPhone is rumoured to carry that setup. I hope prices come down if these phones turn out to be another marginal improvement over the last generation. Low light improvements? Another 18 months late. More than x2 optical zoom. Another 18 months. Fast charging? Ten years late!
No. Those leads haven't been inconsequential in the slightest.
I only got the XR after a big increase in the trade-in discounting. Without that it was a no sale because IMO the value wasn't there.
"The two ultra premium-class products making the most original feature leap in smartphones this year were the foldable phone-tablets introduced by Samsung and Huawei. Yet they were both delayed for months, squandering their potential to captivate any real interest among consumers during the sleepy period between iPhone launches. Both represented a lot of work for nothing in 2019."
'Most original' is subjective. Folding phones may be original (or not) but the first generation models were never brought to market with anything other than a tiny niche in mind. None of their 'potential' has been squandered at all. Until they arrive there is no market and the potential is exactly the same as it was when they were announced. The quiet period for these phones (in unit sales terms) doesn't exist and there is no sleepy period between iPhones. P30 Series, S10 Series, Note 10 series, Magic II, Honor 20 Series, One Plus 7 series... . No sleep til Hammersmith!
On the other hand, when they do reach the market, they will definitely absorb attention from the iPhone. People will be rushing to publish reviews and see how quickly they break! LOL! Seriously, iPhone is going to have a harder time getting airtime this year (as if the Mate 30 Series wasn't already enough). To make matters worse, the Mate X has been seriously upgraded and might even have a 5G modem on the Kirin 990 SoC.
The most original feature IMO was the x10 periscope lens on the P30 Pro.
I won't continue as time doesn't permit.
Apple has stopped divulging unit sales of the iPhone arguing that the overall value of their customers is their most important metric. This doesn't mean they're not measuring handset sales and taking action to correct unsatisfactory results, but it does mean that they are treating individual devices as less important as long as total sales across all products keep growing.
This article questions why the mindshare of Apple Card is so much greater than the marketshare of the devices sold by the company. The older article pointed out that on a repeated basis, an argument of "the iPhone isn't selling well" (with no evidentiary support) has been made by people purporting to be credible and published by media purporting to be unbiased.
Apple is rarely first to deliver new technologies. The original iPhone was 2G, not 3G, and didn't have copy and paste, etc, etc. Apple's approach is to try and figure out the best possible implementation of the capabilities offered by a given set of new technologies. You know this.
You also know that being first to market with something does not guarantee long-term profitability, and Apple is ruthless when it comes to profitability.
I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make here. Do other companies also have outsized mindshare when they release new products? Sure. But when company X comes out with feature Y, one of the first reactions is "Apple doesn't have this" (usually with a side serve of "...and therefore is doomed.") - so Apple gets brought into the conversation when another company releases something. Conversely, when Apple releases something, Samsung/Huawei/Whoever gets mentioned because one or more of their products has some feature that "Apple is totally late to the game" on.
From Wikipedia:
"In July 2003, Huawei established their handset department and by 2004, Huawei shipped their first phone, the C300. The U626 was Huawei's first 3G phone in June 2005 and in 2006, Huawei launched the first Vodafone-branded 3G handset, the V710."
It seems clear that Huawei was competing in the handset business before Apple was. I'm not sure your argument holds water - there were multiple handset manufacturers even after Apple entered the market. I seem to recall that only Apple and Samsung were making any profits from smartphones for a while, so from that perspective you might have a point. Huawei's mobile division has been profitable since at least 2015 (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-telecoms-mobileworld-huawei-idUSKBN1670LN, I couldn't find any other articles giving figures for just the mobile division although I saw claims that the division was also profitable in 2014 and 2013), and we should probably count the whole company anyway since we're looking at Apple from the perspective of the entire company.
Apple has been developing its products in secret, as has been its modus operandi for at least the past twenty years. With 5G, it may have judged the technology as not ready for prime time (since the availability of 5G service in their home market is probably roughly the same as the 3G service in 2006). It may also have judged that its modem suppliers were reliable enough sources of components that Apple could delay investing in that space.
Both of those judgements may turn out to be errors. Could be that Apple needs to pay more attention to the infrastructure and consumer habits in China and not be judging the world on what's happening in the US, but it's really hard for any company to downplay the importance of (a) its home turf and (b) what is currently it's largest market.
Apple's got CoreML, now up to v3. Their marketing focus seems to be more on Augmented Reality rather than general AI when it comes to the phones, but from what I can tell both companies are using AI for image enhancement and machine learning. Are the two products equivalent? I don't know, I think it's probably too early to tell.
I also think that claiming Apple is "missing 5G almost entirely" is premature at this point. What's the projected lifespan of 5G networking? What coverage is available now in infrastructure terms? Will Apple be able to compete effectively enough using third party components until/if it develops its own capabilities in-house?
Fair point.
Competency may well be one of the reasons. It's rare for such an action to be taken for only one reason, though. The US seem rather concerned that their national security is under threat, so that's another possibility.
Respectfully, you have quoted "market share of units sold" and then argued the point as though the author wrote "units sold" - so in this case, I believe you are in error.
There are enough of them for The Macalope to have a career. Perhaps this is a case of perception bias? As a long-term Mac user I seem to come across many such articles, but no doubt that's due to my choice of reading material.
You appear to have missed this. Released to the market is not always equivalent to "having a real impact," but I'm willing to be persuaded. Bear in mind that Apple's viewing their performance as a whole, so if iPhone capabilities increase sales of Macs rather than iPhones that's just fine in their books. Mac sales have been outperforming the PC industry as a whole, iPads have been selling pretty well in enterprise... I think it's reasonable to say that there is commercial interest in Apple as a brand.
I might be persuaded that they are not trying that today. But history begs to differ:
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/huawei-iphone-screws-ifixit/
https://bgr.com/2018/04/24/iphone-x-vs-huawei-p20-pro-notch/
https://www.valuewalk.com/2017/11/huawei-copies-iphone-x-face-id-animoji/
https://bgr.com/2012/08/08/apple-samsung-patent-lawsuit-internal-report-copy-iphone/
I think the author's argument stands - most Android developers support the Android OS rather than a particular phone. But that's something of a moot point, as you say.
I did not know that. Thanks! And then you think "they make a lot of non-premium phones as well" which is not what people think about Apple.
(a) the author acknowledges this in the very next quote you provide
(b) tech-savvy users are not the entire market. By a wide margin.
Again, first to market with features is not as important as having the best version of those features in the market. And maybe the capabilities Apple will provide with the rumoured three-camera setup will be more useful to a larger number of people than what is currently available - which is something Apple has historically done pretty well. The original iPhone, after all, only had 2G networking and no copy and paste - yet people lusted after it because what it could do it did better than anything else on the market.
Indeed.
And sorry to bring up the original iPhone again, but it too was released aiming for a tiny fraction of the global phone market. So perhaps there is something to these folding phones after all... except the original iPhone didn't break within hours of getting into users' hands, so the public perception of the two is somewhat different.
I still predict that they will be compared to the iPhone. In as favourable a light as possible, of course (and the reverse will also be true).
No kidding. Responding to it feels like it took forever.
I normally skip DED editorials completely or stop a few paragraphs in. There is too much unnecessary negativity IMO and recently a lot the information isn't even accurate.
As we both lack time I will simply flesh out some points that you picked up on.
With regards to Huawei handsets I was referring to competing smartphone handsets (competition with Apple). In other words, Android phones. That is 2012 with the little toe in the market. The ramp up in competition has really happened over the last 5 years. The Samsung/Apple duopoly didn't exist in the feature phone era.
With regards to Huawei and Samsung desperately trying to look like Apple, the original reference was clearly present and you are right that you might be persuaded today but also last year and the year before. Of course phones as devices are converging into one rectangular full screen slab but there is still a lot to distinguish them from iPhones. When questioned (and I have questioned this notion in the past) people normally pull out one or two models and then run out of arguments.
By using the present:
"Huawei and Samsung are desperately trying to look like an iPhone."
He is simply distorting things to support a 'narrative' he is inventing. If anything the opposite could actually be true. One of the things that made the Mate 20 Pro stand out was its camera array. That one element was the design highlight and it is likely to appear on the Pixel and new iPhone. The difference is that I have no issue with other brands using it and much less to claim that Apple is desperately copying Huawei. Of course Samsung's original copy was almost a clone but that is history. Who would pick up a modern Samsung and see a desperate Apple copy? Ironically, not even DED but he has no problem slipping that in and hoping it sticks. Just like the 'dangerously' and 'demise' references I also mentioned.
On the Macalope subject, they are not alone. If you look you will find but it remains a distortion of overall reality. For near on a decade, Apple was the darling of mainstream press receiving accolades that were not merited and often containing incorrect information but no one picked up on that. There is bias everywhere and ideally it would be called out and contrasted. When it comes to purely opinion pieces you are thrown a lot more slack but this piece is overflowing with bias.
Regarding CoreML my point was that Apple still swims in the CE pool and hasn't looked far beyond that (until now with 6G dabblings). They are not pumping out technology like Huawei. They are not making Ascend 910 clusters or Kunpeng Servers, laying thousands of KM of undersea cable, no Tiangang equivalents, no aviation business, core communications infrastructure, no solar business, no independent chipset business attending all scenario deployments and a very long etc.
In spite of all that DED still wants to throw darts around.
I'm sure Apple would like to be in those businesses but, today, they aren't and it is by executive design. I have no issue with that but when you start throwing 'competency' around the argument disintegrates when scrutinised.
Regarding folding phones, remember they have yet to reach 'user's hands' and the Mate X specifically has shown no issues to date and has been the daily driver for Huawei executives and engineers all year plus numerous hands ons. Still, when they do eventually reach the public, durability will be the number one consideration and for that we have to wait.
Regarding flat units or marketshare, good call, but their is no difference to what I was pointing out. Whichever one you take they are both flat or contracting.
Regarding 'first to market' sometimes what you mention does happen but it hasn't happened with any of the tech Huawei has brought to market. The P20 Pro hit the tri-camera ground running and they haven't let up since then. It has literally been on one trailblazer after another. The results have been what has catapulted it to its current status. Over the last few years there have been far too many Huawei presentations with comparison slides showing nothing because the iPhone didn't have the capability of doing what Huawei phones have done. Far too many people first try to mock Huawei or Samsung and feel they can't point the finger at Apple for not providing competitive hardware. It's a personal thing but clearly I'm in the camp that says they should be doing more.
Regarding 'premium', making mid range phones or even low end phones has no bearing on their 'brand' which has been rising in awareness terms. In fact, Honor was often considered the sub-brand but even that is changing now. When Huawei released the Harmony OS Smart Screen, it released under the Honor brand. The graph for brand value seems to be moving in the right direction.
https://www.interbrand.com/best-brands/best-global-brands/2018/ranking/huawei/
Independently of our differing opinions thank you again for providing a healthy and reasoned response.
Tesla would go bankrupt if they had to compete on price and quality of Nissan, Hyundai, Kia, or even the Bolt, all of which are available with ranges exceeding the entry level Model 3.
They sure as shit won't be able to compete the Model S with the Taycan in either build or quality.
Nissan Leaveit is a dog of a car, and cannot be compared.
Actual sales numbers (of model 3) tell it all.
Edit, for the fun of it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=266&v=N4TJDidF-fw
Testa folks are so fucking '50's!
and this;
https://insideevs.com/news/341836/porsche-taycan-electric-range-distance-you-can-drive-in-24-hours/
"With its expected production start in late 2019, the Porsche Taycan will come with a range of about 400 kilometers (250 miles). Furthermore, the owners will be able to charge their high-performance battery-powered machines to about 80% charge in just 15 minutes. With a gorgeous design, impressive performance figures and fast charging, it's no wonder that pre-orders for this vehicle are flying through the roof. And to be honest, if Porsche can deliver on their promises in all three categories, and if they can deliver it in substantial numbers from the start, we might have what many are calling a "Tesla Killer" on our hands."
and finally, the course record: