When I read these double-plus ungood reports from industry analysts I'm always reminded of the slogans from George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four: "WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH."
To me, the crucial TURNING POINT and needed LIFT in Apple's 2013 potential fortunes was the occasion of Samsung's rather inappropriate Broadway Extravaganza Introduction of its new Galaxy S4. ALL eyes were on this launch and this latest Samsung product ended up drooping rather than soaring (especially in the shadow of the preceding S3 which had been beginning to encroach into Apple's rarified territory), as the most innovative, highest quality, buzzed-about handset. Later, the disappointment and widespread panning of Samsung's Gear only added fuel to the fire to the perception that Samsung was fumbling the ball, rather than seizing its golden moment. Subsequently, with Apple's brilliant Developers' Conference Keynote and the solid staging of its rollout of its (truly useful) feature-laden iPhone 5S and iPad updates jettisoned Apple far ahead with, as one example, its amazing first-weekend 9-million sales of the new iPhones.
Thank you, Tim Cook, for keeping your sanity in this minefield of shock-headlines tech punditry and hopelessly confused fraternity of investment analysts, for adroitly leading and keeping the Apple team together, for getting the China Mobile deal done, and for bringing Angela Arendts on board to expand retail into China next year. Thank you, Apple Board for realizing Tim has one of the toughest jobs in corporate America, and for lending him all of your support and encouragement. Thank you DED as always for your thoughtful diligence, perspective, and faith. Thank you, all investors, for hanging in there until hopefully, some day soon, sanity to the market and Apple's rich mindset returns again. Let us hope that in 2014, the market will learn to differentiate the fact that market share numbers are not the be-all and end-all as there are many disparate types of operating systems, use cases, and levels of quality and usefulness in devices variously sold around the world.
Really? Did Google create all those ads they served? No. They only provided the platform for advertisers to make money for themselves in which Google takes a cut.
Do you not think they'd find another platform to sell there wares on if Apple's didn’t exist?
Pray tell which platform would that be? Nobody is even close to Apple for revenue generated by, well, anything. Moving from Apple would be like taking your goods out of Walmart and selling them through local dollar stores.
Nice counter point, though I hope you're wrong about iOS. If nothing else Apple needs to release 7.1 to fix bugs, especially with Safari. Constant crashes and reloading of tabs is annoying to say the least and doesn't seem to fit Jony Ive's ethos about making the best possible products they can.
No crashing issues with Safari on the ten devices in our household.
Safari on the iPad air sucks. Almost as badly as the AI site. Period.
Another questionable aspect about Samsung's "marketing" budget (which of course is running 4 times that of Apple's), is that some of this budged goes to commissions or "spiffs" to the employee-salespeople at stores like Best Buy or Verizon Mobile in consideration for selling SAMSUNG or other makers' devices. By contrast Apple does NOT pay commissions. And this fact is not revealed to the unwary shopper who probably assumes she is getting an unbiased product demonstration. This no doubt hurts Apple's sales as the playing field is not really level at the third-party retail level.
Critics had Apple wrong in 2013 and most likely will get it wrong for 2014. Without having knowledge of Apples internal operation and strategy any Analyst putting out info and predictions are purely guesses at best. Its time the market players and public start to realize this. Apple has to be tight on security of their upcoming products and features and theres really no way to know what they're up to. A perfect example would be the iTV which for two years now has been touted as the next big thing but never came to be so far
Apple is unique in its category ! Don't bet against them.
i believe that the xbox was actually very popular and microsoft made a tonne of money off of it.
They also lost a ton of money on it for the first few years and dug a multibillion dollar hole in the ground that they are only starting to come out of. Yes they sold a lot of consoles. But they also replaced a lot of them for free. Failure rates of at least 30% were being whispered about Xbox 360. 30%! Yikes!
Wall Street and the rest of the tech industry wants Apple to just go away and die. Apple has taken too much money from the rest of the mobile industry and it's too much for the industry leaders to put up with. They just have to try and discredit Apple for everything. They want to make Apple look as incompetent as possible. It's always Apple that is struggling the hardest and making the worst decisions about everything while things run smoothly for every other tech company. You'll never hear about Amazon having Kindle shortages or Hewlett-Packard having supply problems. Of all the tech companies on the planet, Apple is the main company that is doomed to failure.
Even the China Mobile deal is considered a waste of time for Apple because supposedly the Chinese consumer can't afford to buy iPhones. The company that charges the most for its products is always going to be the biggest loser and that is always Apple. There are hundreds of models of Android and Windows Phones that likely have at least some problems but if there is just one small problem with the iPhone, Apple is going to have to run a gauntlet of bad press and pundits yelling that Apple is doomed because Steve Jobs died and all of Apple's innovation died with him. If it's such common knowledge that Apple is doomed they should just let the company die in peace instead of constantly trying to beat the company with a club at every chance. Apple's share price is already in the toilet but Wall Street is going to beat it down as far as possible because they're absolutely certain Apple has no future revenue growth. It's just a given that Apple will fail.
Wall Street and the rest of the tech industry wants Apple to just go away and die. Apple has taken too much money from the rest of the mobile industry and it's too much for the industry leaders to put up with. They just have to try and discredit Apple for everything. They want to make Apple look as incompetent as possible. It's always Apple that is struggling the hardest and making the worst decisions about everything while things run smoothly for every other tech company. You'll never hear about Amazon having Kindle shortages or Hewlett-Packard having supply problems. Of all the tech companies on the planet, Apple is the main company that is doomed to failure.
Even the China Mobile deal is considered a waste of time for Apple because supposedly the Chinese consumer can't afford to buy iPhones. The company that charges the most for its products is always going to be the biggest loser and that is always Apple. There are hundreds of models of Android and Windows Phones that likely have at least some problems but if there is just one small problem with the iPhone, Apple is going to have to run a gauntlet of bad press and pundits yelling that Apple is doomed because Steve Jobs died and all of Apple's innovation died with him. If it's such common knowledge that Apple is doomed they should just let the company die in peace instead of constantly trying to beat the company with a club at every chance. Apple's share price is already in the toilet but Wall Street is going to beat it down as far as possible because they're absolutely certain Apple has no future revenue growth. It's just a given that Apple will fail.
There's a reason why Apple won't go away and die.... people keep buying their stuff.
Oh sure... Apple isn't the #1 hardware vendor by volume... nor do they have the #1 platform in mobile or desktop.
But so what? As long as people keep buying their stuff... Apple will stay in business. That's why Apple won't go away and die.
It sucks for all the Apple haters out there... but what are they gonna do?
What is the point of the Samsung/Google road map picture?
If Apple had invented laptops, All in Ones and OSes then it would have a degree of creditability. As it stands it is as silly as those photos that compared the original iphone to the handsets with small screens and numeric keyboards.
Good report as I too can not understand how these analysts can get away with nonstop misinformation. I am curious if you are planning to fact check the recently released report by The NPD Group. Thanks for all your hard work.
But this sort of deluded criticism of Apple has been going on in the IT industry for the past 30 years. Some people never ever learn from their errors.
We see exactly the same crap coming from so-called IT 'experts' (aka drips-under-pressure), who constantly criticise Apple products because Apple goes out of its way to prevent idiots 'fiddling' with its hardware or software and opening up the Apple ecosystem to virus writers and cyber criminals as Microsoft so successfully did in the 1980s and 1990s. These people seem to be completely oblivious of the fact that the vast majority of Apple's customers are not tech-heads who can build a computer from scratch over a long weekend. So they go out and buy generic Linux boxes and Windows devices rather than 'expensive' and reliable Apple devices. All fool them!
And yet when one attempts to point out that it is the Microsoft/Google strategy of 'openness', cheapness and poor quality control, that allowed the malware writers and cyber-criminals to prosper and cause billions, or maybe even trillions, of dollars of losses to individuals and corporations around the globe, these same IT 'experts' are nowhere to be seen. In fact most IT blogs will not even publish posts that point to the damage companies like Microsoft and Google have done to the value, security and reliability of the Internet.
It seems the vast majority of people in the IT industry are far more concerned with convincing themselves and all users of IT devices that Apple is, and always has been, rotten to the core. The IT industry still has an awful lot to learn about itself, and if it doesn't start that learning process on its own initiative, someone or something much bigger, uglier and nastier will call it to account for its real failures over recent years, rather than the perceived failures of Apple they constantly whinge about.
Comments
Thank you, Tim Cook, for keeping your sanity in this minefield of shock-headlines tech punditry and hopelessly confused fraternity of investment analysts, for adroitly leading and keeping the Apple team together, for getting the China Mobile deal done, and for bringing Angela Arendts on board to expand retail into China next year. Thank you, Apple Board for realizing Tim has one of the toughest jobs in corporate America, and for lending him all of your support and encouragement. Thank you DED as always for your thoughtful diligence, perspective, and faith. Thank you, all investors, for hanging in there until hopefully, some day soon, sanity to the market and Apple's rich mindset returns again. Let us hope that in 2014, the market will learn to differentiate the fact that market share numbers are not the be-all and end-all as there are many disparate types of operating systems, use cases, and levels of quality and usefulness in devices variously sold around the world.
Happy New Year!
See, that doesn’t matter. It wasn’t the argument.
It's my argument so yes it is. Nobody asked you anything, you decided to chime in so please keep up.
Nah.
Yeah, see, he said for, not from.
There was never an argument to make. No one ever said anything against it. Or maybe you meant:
Which is explicitly false, anyway. And the vice versa, which you also claimed. As is your theory (which is nothing more than one, mind) that:
No.
Pray tell which platform would that be? Nobody is even close to Apple for revenue generated by, well, anything. Moving from Apple would be like taking your goods out of Walmart and selling them through local dollar stores.
Safari on the iPad air sucks. Almost as badly as the AI site. Period.
Another questionable aspect about Samsung's "marketing" budget (which of course is running 4 times that of Apple's), is that some of this budged goes to commissions or "spiffs" to the employee-salespeople at stores like Best Buy or Verizon Mobile in consideration for selling SAMSUNG or other makers' devices. By contrast Apple does NOT pay commissions. And this fact is not revealed to the unwary shopper who probably assumes she is getting an unbiased product demonstration. This no doubt hurts Apple's sales as the playing field is not really level at the third-party retail level.
Fixed another one for you.
Critics had Apple wrong in 2013 and most likely will get it wrong for 2014. Without having knowledge of Apples internal operation and strategy any Analyst putting out info and predictions are purely guesses at best. Its time the market players and public start to realize this. Apple has to be tight on security of their upcoming products and features and theres really no way to know what they're up to. A perfect example would be the iTV which for two years now has been touted as the next big thing but never came to be so far
Apple is unique in its category ! Don't bet against them.
i believe that the xbox was actually very popular and microsoft made a tonne of money off of it.
They also lost a ton of money on it for the first few years and dug a multibillion dollar hole in the ground that they are only starting to come out of. Yes they sold a lot of consoles. But they also replaced a lot of them for free. Failure rates of at least 30% were being whispered about Xbox 360. 30%! Yikes!
Failure rates of at least 30% were being whispered about Xbox 360. 30%! Yikes!
Is that over the lifetime of all revisions of all models? First-gen had at least 60% failure.
Wall Street and the rest of the tech industry wants Apple to just go away and die. Apple has taken too much money from the rest of the mobile industry and it's too much for the industry leaders to put up with. They just have to try and discredit Apple for everything. They want to make Apple look as incompetent as possible. It's always Apple that is struggling the hardest and making the worst decisions about everything while things run smoothly for every other tech company. You'll never hear about Amazon having Kindle shortages or Hewlett-Packard having supply problems. Of all the tech companies on the planet, Apple is the main company that is doomed to failure.
Even the China Mobile deal is considered a waste of time for Apple because supposedly the Chinese consumer can't afford to buy iPhones. The company that charges the most for its products is always going to be the biggest loser and that is always Apple. There are hundreds of models of Android and Windows Phones that likely have at least some problems but if there is just one small problem with the iPhone, Apple is going to have to run a gauntlet of bad press and pundits yelling that Apple is doomed because Steve Jobs died and all of Apple's innovation died with him. If it's such common knowledge that Apple is doomed they should just let the company die in peace instead of constantly trying to beat the company with a club at every chance. Apple's share price is already in the toilet but Wall Street is going to beat it down as far as possible because they're absolutely certain Apple has no future revenue growth. It's just a given that Apple will fail.
There's a reason why Apple won't go away and die.... people keep buying their stuff.
Oh sure... Apple isn't the #1 hardware vendor by volume... nor do they have the #1 platform in mobile or desktop.
But so what? As long as people keep buying their stuff... Apple will stay in business. That's why Apple won't go away and die.
It sucks for all the Apple haters out there... but what are they gonna do?
What is the point of the Samsung/Google road map picture?
If Apple had invented laptops, All in Ones and OSes then it would have a degree of creditability. As it stands it is as silly as those photos that compared the original iphone to the handsets with small screens and numeric keyboards.
We see exactly the same crap coming from so-called IT 'experts' (aka drips-under-pressure), who constantly criticise Apple products because Apple goes out of its way to prevent idiots 'fiddling' with its hardware or software and opening up the Apple ecosystem to virus writers and cyber criminals as Microsoft so successfully did in the 1980s and 1990s. These people seem to be completely oblivious of the fact that the vast majority of Apple's customers are not tech-heads who can build a computer from scratch over a long weekend. So they go out and buy generic Linux boxes and Windows devices rather than 'expensive' and reliable Apple devices. All fool them!
And yet when one attempts to point out that it is the Microsoft/Google strategy of 'openness', cheapness and poor quality control, that allowed the malware writers and cyber-criminals to prosper and cause billions, or maybe even trillions, of dollars of losses to individuals and corporations around the globe, these same IT 'experts' are nowhere to be seen. In fact most IT blogs will not even publish posts that point to the damage companies like Microsoft and Google have done to the value, security and reliability of the Internet.
It seems the vast majority of people in the IT industry are far more concerned with convincing themselves and all users of IT devices that Apple is, and always has been, rotten to the core. The IT industry still has an awful lot to learn about itself, and if it doesn't start that learning process on its own initiative, someone or something much bigger, uglier and nastier will call it to account for its real failures over recent years, rather than the perceived failures of Apple they constantly whinge about.
Oh, look - a reprise of the 'all the media, market researchers and tech commentators have an axe to grind against Apple' argument.
Do you seriously think this is true? Apple gets loads of positive media attention - probably more than any other tech company.