Tim Cook and Apple really needs to change their strategy with dealing with Wall Street. Growing iPhone units alone is not good enough anymore. Being super top secret is not good enough anymore. You got to give investors something to look forward to. If Cook confirmed they were working on a car I bet the stock would have not been hit so hard.
At this point I'm not 100% sure Tim Cook is the right CEO right now. He was the right CEO to maximize iPhone unit sales with his vast knowledge of the supply chain. But in this point in Apple's history I think its less about pushing out more units but rather growing services. They may need a new CEO who understands how to grow new services and who is an expert in M&A to put that $200 billion in cash to work.
Apple's biggest problem right now is its over reliance on iPhone. Until that is solved they will forever be haunted by these supply check stories. They need to grow more services or acquire companies.
Stock is at $95 right now. Stock has lost about $50,000,000,000 in value just this week.
I go back and forth on Cook. He probably was the right guy to be interim CEO when Steve was sick because that was mainly managing Apple operationally. And maybe he was the only one the other SVPs would report to. But I never thought he was very good at giving the world Apple's vision and when you watch a keynote you get a lot of what and how (Schiller & Ive) but very little why. And because Apple is so secretive everyone is left guessing where it might be going next. What was the point of letting CBS into Apple's design studio when all we saw were a bunch of tables draped in sheets?
If Wall St. calls to get to rid of Cook, who are they going to replace him with? Apple is not your cookie cutter company & it won't take a cookie cutter MBA-type to run it.
I go back and forth on Cook. He probably was the right guy to be interim CEO when Steve was sick because that was mainly managing Apple operationally. And maybe he was the only one the other SVPs would report to. But I never thought he was very good at giving the world Apple's vision and when you watch a keynote you get a lot of what and how (Schiller & Ive) but very little why. And because Apple is so secretive everyone is left guessing where it might be going next. What was the point of letting CBS into Apple's design studio when all we saw were a bunch of tables draped in sheets?
If Wall St. calls to get to rid of Cook, who are they going to replace him with? Apple is not your cookie cutter company & it won't take a cookie cutter MBA-type to run it.
I don't know but with Jeff Williams now COO I don't think it needs to be an operations type.
If people remember, the first few earnings calls Tim Cook did were not great and the stock actually went down after the call finished. He's gotten a lot better but sometimes I feel his answers are too long. For this quarter I hope he doesn't allow him self to get sucked down the rabbit hole of supply chain minutiae and channel inventory. I don't see that doing anything for the stock.
In Apple's description of Supplier Responsibility, http://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/, it looks like there are more than 600 suppliers. Unless someone is tracking all of them, noting how much each is going up and down compared to normal for this year, plus constantly adding new ones, then they know very little. So to answer your question, I need about 600 more with a lot more detail on each one.
Many of these aren't "channel checks" but companies that have warned or recently posted disappointing quarters and guidance. Today, it was Cirrus Logic and Qorvo that warned. Cirrus is the sole source for iPhone and iPad (Mac and
iPod, too) codecs and has been since at least 2012, and that business
still makes up something like 70% of their revenue. When they have a
major shortfall, it's either Apple crushing them on ASPs (2013) or
declining sales to Apple, NOT Apple shifting to another supplier. Ditto for Dialog and the power management chip
in the iPhone and iPad, and that company is even more dependent on
Apple. Other major suppliers
like NXP have recently reported disappointing quarters and guidance. To believe Apple isn't slowing, you have to believe Apple is crushing all these companies on ASPs which IMO is not terribly plausible.
It is important to note that both Cirrus Logic and Qorvo are not listed in the top-200 supplier list by Apple. If I'm not mistaken, Cirrus is not even a supplier anymore.
It is important to note that both Cirrus Logic and Qorvo are not listed in the top-200 supplier list by Apple. If I'm not mistaken, Cirrus is not even a supplier anymore.
It is important to note that both Cirrus Logic and Qorvo are not listed in the top-200 supplier list by Apple. If I'm not mistaken, Cirrus is not even a supplier anymore.
Oh my, the cluelessness.
So, what's your fracking point bud. Explain yourself or stop commenting.
One thing I don't hear being discussed is the possibility of a lot more inventory in stock then in most prior years.
When the iPhone first came out you could get it one way, with one SIM, in one color, and with 2 or 3 storage choices. Now there are still 3 storage choices, along with multiple SIMs for multiple carriers, and multiple case colors and multiple screen sizes. In addition, now that the iPhone is sold world wide, each box is printed in various languages and the iPhone is loaded with an iOS for the appropriate language.
It would seem that those choices would require more inventory on site to fulfill the wider range in customer choices.
The post-Foxcomm pipeline needs to have grown much wider in just eight years.
Who cares about that? All you have to do is go to iFixit and look at the teardowns. This is not some obscure knowledge I've been talking about in this thead and another one where I went into far more detail on Cirrus Logic.
Who cares about that? All you have to do is go to iFixit and look at the teardowns. This is not some obscure knowledge I've been talking about in this thead and another one where I went into far more detail on Cirrus Logic.
Well somebody said they weren't listed in the report so that's what I was refuting.
I stand corrected, my bad. I also saw that one of the companies that merged to form Qorvo is also listed as a supplier. Having said that, i still maintain that it is silly to read much in supplier data.
Who cares about that? All you have to do is go to iFixit and look at the teardowns. This is not some obscure knowledge I've been talking about in this thead and another one where I went into far more detail on Cirrus Logic.
Well somebody said they weren't listed in the report so that's what I was refuting.
I appreciate that, but that supplier list is basically useless compared to other sources like iFixit and Chipworks. For example, it fails to list Qorvo, but it does list Triquint, and it is Triquint and RFMD, the two companies that merged to form Qorvo, whose chips appear in the teardowns. I've yet to see a Qorvo-branded chip. And Cirrus is very well known as the Apple codec and (for the phones and iPods) amp supplier. For someone to say that it "is not even a supplier anymore" demonstrates extreme cluelessness.
Well somebody said they weren't listed in the report so that's what I was refuting.
I appreciate that, but that supplier list is basically useless compared to other sources like iFixit and Chipworks. For example, it fails to list Qorvo, but it does list Triquint, and it is Triquint and RFMD, the two companies that merged to form Qorvo, whose chips appear in the teardowns. I've yet to see a Qorvo-branded chip. And Cirrus is very well known as the Apple codec and (for the phones and iPods) amp supplier. For someone to say that it "is not even a supplier anymore" demonstrates extreme cluelessness.
Funny, Cirrus is off 3% pre-market but Apple is up about 1%.
My quick math shows a different story: a 25% drop in calendar Q4 iPhone sales. Several analysts report an installed base of 400 million in dec14 and an estimated 500 million in dec15. Using the 21% in the article get you to 85 million, of which you need to subtract 10 million for the first weekend that falls in Q3. 13% of 500 million is 65 million minus about 10 million is 55 million. A 25% drop from 75 million in 4Q14 (which is about what was reported) to an implied 55 million for 4Q15. Please response respectfully and substantively when pointing out where my reasoning fails.
The install base grew much more than 100,000,000 from Q4 2014 to Q4 2015. Apple sold about 230,000,000 iPhones during that period. Do you seriously think that 130,000,000 iPhones went offline during that same period?
I think this earnings call will be brutal unless Apple shocks everybody with good numbers and decent guidance. UBS just came out with a note basically saying people aren't upgrading like Apple expected. Pacific Crest (known AAPL bear) was even more damning saying:
Management’s confidence now looks highly likely to be misplaced, which suggests that it was either ignorant of the challenges it faced or deliberately overstating underlying trends. The former seems unlikely, which suggests that management has taken a much more aggressive tone as growth in the high-end smartphone market has slowed. This reduces our confidence in Apple’s commentary going forward.
It actually floors me that a comment like this would be made before Apple has reported the December quarter or provided any guidance for March. They're basically calling Tim and Luca liars based on nothing more than supply chain rumors and sell-side analyst research notes based on those rumors.
I think this earnings call will be brutal unless Apple shocks everybody with good numbers and decent guidance. UBS just came out with a note basically saying people aren't upgrading like Apple expected. Pacific Crest (known AAPL bear) was even more damning saying:
Management’s confidence now looks highly likely to be misplaced, which suggests that it was either ignorant of the challenges it faced or deliberately overstating underlying trends. The former seems unlikely, which suggests that management has taken a much more aggressive tone as growth in the high-end smartphone market has slowed. This reduces our confidence in Apple’s commentary going forward.
It actually floors me that a comment like this would be made before Apple has reported the December quarter or provided any guidance for March. They're basically calling Tim and Luca liars based on nothing more than supply chain rumors and sell-side analyst research notes based on those rumors.
don't matter. If the results are bad the stock sees $80. Which would be a great time to reload for a quick run to $120 once the iPhone7 comes out.
My quick math shows a different story: a 25% drop in calendar Q4 iPhone sales. Several analysts report an installed base of 400 million in dec14 and an estimated 500 million in dec15. Using the 21% in the article get you to 85 million, of which you need to subtract 10 million for the first weekend that falls in Q3. 13% of 500 million is 65 million minus about 10 million is 55 million. A 25% drop from 75 million in 4Q14 (which is about what was reported) to an implied 55 million for 4Q15. Please response respectfully and substantively when pointing out where my reasoning fails.
The install base grew much more than 100,000,000 from Q4 2014 to Q4 2015. Apple sold about 230,000,000 iPhones during that period. Do you seriously think that 130,000,000 iPhones went offline during that same period?
Not offline but they upgraded (which does not expand the user base) so roughly 40% of iPhone sales are new users. This is also about the number that the Bernstein analyst stated in an CNBC interview recently. What have you seen as user base for dec14-15?
Comments
Explain yourself or stop commenting.
When the iPhone first came out you could get it one way, with one SIM, in one color, and with 2 or 3 storage choices. Now there are still 3 storage choices, along with multiple SIMs for multiple carriers, and multiple case colors and multiple screen sizes. In addition, now that the iPhone is sold world wide, each box is printed in various languages and the iPhone is loaded with an iOS for the appropriate language.
It would seem that those choices would require more inventory on site to fulfill the wider range in customer choices.
https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple_Supplier_List_2015.pdf
Having said that, i still maintain that it is silly to read much in supplier data.
It actually floors me that a comment like this would be made before Apple has reported the December quarter or provided any guidance for March. They're basically calling Tim and Luca liars based on nothing more than supply chain rumors and sell-side analyst research notes based on those rumors.