iPhone X was world's best-selling smartphone model in first quarter

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Comments

  • Reply 61 of 77
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    You can’t sell shitty products at high prices indefinitely unless you’re Gibson. Oh, snap.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 62 of 77
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    jungmark said:
    avon b7 said:
    netmage said:
    avon b7 said:

    Well, if Apple is the second largest smartphone handset manufacturer annually (far behind Samsung and very slightly ahead of Huawei), and only made one phone, it would have the top selling model. It doesn't have just one model but it does have very few. Both Samsung and Huawei have different strategies to Apple and have far more models.

    Clearly they are unlikely to have a top seller (but it isn't impossible) with so many models available.

    Huawei has far more marketshare than Apple in China but has no single model in the top 5 (or top 10 IIRC).

    Apple has three current high end models for sale, how many high end models do Huawei and Samsung have?

    The key is to realize the many economy model phones that other companies sell are not in Apple's market and aren't competition for iPhone, so they don't split the share that matters and at which Apple thoroughly dominates both in profits and market share. 
    The key in tems of unit sales is how many you ship in a full year. That's where the big picture is.
    Unit sales is not the big picture, profit is. Profit is the air corporations breathe. Repeat: profit is the air corporations breathe. 

    Youre worshiping at the Church of Marketshare because you’re loyal to a cheap chinese knockoff brand, and sales is all one can cheerlead... They copy their designs and don’t rule profit. What else is there to celebrate?
    I’m curious about this. I don’t remember in the early to mid 2000s Apple fans being obsessed with how much profit the company was making. And profit being the measure of whether the company was great or not. I own some Apple shares so yes I want to see the company do well financially but as a user of their products I care about them making great products that people want to buy and that make a difference in the world. I don’t really care if they’re generating the most profits. And when Apple does increase share in markets of course they highlight it and celebrate it. This idea that market share can only come from selling cheap garbage is nonsense.
    Profit is always a measuring stick. If it wasn't, Apple would have sold iPod and imacs on razor thin margins. 

    The difference for Apple's market share comes from having desirable "great" products rather than the cheap shogun/spaghetti approach by everyone else. 
    What Steve Jobs told Walter Isaacson:

    "My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products," Jobs told Isaacson. "[T]he products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."


    Indeed.

    And with great products comes humungous profits.

    -- Peter Parker
    watto_cobraStrangeDays
  • Reply 63 of 77
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    avon b7 said:
    netmage said:
    avon b7 said:

    Well, if Apple is the second largest smartphone handset manufacturer annually (far behind Samsung and very slightly ahead of Huawei), and only made one phone, it would have the top selling model. It doesn't have just one model but it does have very few. Both Samsung and Huawei have different strategies to Apple and have far more models.

    Clearly they are unlikely to have a top seller (but it isn't impossible) with so many models available.

    Huawei has far more marketshare than Apple in China but has no single model in the top 5 (or top 10 IIRC).

    Apple has three current high end models for sale, how many high end models do Huawei and Samsung have?

    The key is to realize the many economy model phones that other companies sell are not in Apple's market and aren't competition for iPhone, so they don't split the share that matters and at which Apple thoroughly dominates both in profits and market share. 
    The key in tems of unit sales is how many you ship in a full year. That's where the big picture is.
    Unit sales is not the big picture, profit is. Profit is the air corporations breathe. Repeat: profit is the air corporations breathe. 

    Youre worshiping at the Church of Marketshare because you’re loyal to a cheap chinese knockoff brand, and sales is all one can cheerlead... They copy their designs and don’t rule profit. What else is there to celebrate?
    I’m curious about this. I don’t remember in the early to mid 2000s Apple fans being obsessed with how much profit the company was making. And profit being the measure of whether the company was great or not. I own some Apple shares so yes I want to see the company do well financially but as a user of their products I care about them making great products that people want to buy and that make a difference in the world. I don’t really care if they’re generating the most profits. And when Apple does increase share in markets of course they highlight it and celebrate it. This idea that market share can only come from selling cheap garbage is nonsense.

    In the mid-2000s and before, Apple fans were completely obsessed with profit because until that point, the company was still on something of an earnings roller coaster. The lesson that Jobs taught the industry is that market share is a secondary concern to profitability. 

    It's sad to see the Android fans circle the wagons and banging the market share drum, when it is, at best, a mediocre short-term measure of a company's performance. Market share is simply the percentage of sales within a market over a given period. It lacks granularity and long-term prospective. During the wilderness years, the Mac's market share fell to about 3%. The problem was that everyone thought this meant that only 3% of the computer bods used Macs. In fact, even during these times, the Mac's user base was round about 10%.

    Apple doesn't care about market share; it cares about the expansion and stickiness of its user base of high quality, high value customers. This they can do even if there market share falls (it just takes longer).
    Apple doesn't care about taking market share from Android; it cares about creaming off the top-tier of Samsung customers.

    Apple isn't concerned with the folk who buy cheap above all else.

    The Android OEM would love to be able to build a platform that allowed them to differentiate themselves from the competition, but they can't. Why? Because they have no profit. The reason that Apple can spend billions on R&D is because they have the spare capital to do so. Building your own mainstream OS from scratch (and I'm talking from the kernel upward) is hard; very few companies have done it successfully. Microsoft? AT&T? IBM? Apple? It takes patience and money.


    edited May 2018 watto_cobra
  • Reply 64 of 77
    nunzynunzy Posts: 662member
    nunzy said:
    tmay said:
    I would surmise that Apple continues to have the majority of revenue and profit share in China, thanks to Apple's very profitable iPhone line.

    ...waiting for a retort from the "but marketshare!!" contrarians on AI...
    Apple doesn't care about market share. All that matters is sensing profits to Wall Street.

    Apple absolutely cares about market share.

    The problem is people mistakenly include the market share numbers from ALL price points when comparing against Apple. Do people think Ferrari cares about their market share compared to Ford? Of course not. Ferrari only cares about market share in the exotic segment, which includes companies like Lamborghini.

    Apple has the highest market share (by far) of high-end flagship devices, which is the only market they compete in. You can bet they’re very interested in (and happy about) their market share of this segment. 
    Apple cares about market share only if and as it is relevant to total profits. If they could make higher total profits by raising prices, would they decide not to for the sake of market share?
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 65 of 77
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    netmage said:
    avon b7 said:

    Well, if Apple is the second largest smartphone handset manufacturer annually (far behind Samsung and very slightly ahead of Huawei), and only made one phone, it would have the top selling model. It doesn't have just one model but it does have very few. Both Samsung and Huawei have different strategies to Apple and have far more models.

    Clearly they are unlikely to have a top seller (but it isn't impossible) with so many models available.

    Huawei has far more marketshare than Apple in China but has no single model in the top 5 (or top 10 IIRC).

    Apple has three current high end models for sale, how many high end models do Huawei and Samsung have?

    The key is to realize the many economy model phones that other companies sell are not in Apple's market and aren't competition for iPhone, so they don't split the share that matters and at which Apple thoroughly dominates both in profits and market share. 
    The key in tems of unit sales is how many you ship in a full year. That's where the big picture is. On top of that, if you have just ONE release cycle per year, sales will peak around that cycle. Huawei has one flagship per quarter.

    With Apple's new product spread, it has competitors in every tier, right up into the premium and even ultra premium bands.

    It's just one of the reasons its sales have been largely flat for the last few years.
    " That's where the big picture is"

    Dude, you need an intervention.

    So which part didn't you understand ?

    One of Apple's biggest problems is its release cycle. It gets one shot per year. Just one, and in probably one of the most dynamic industries there is.

    So, while this year's trend is the notch (love it, hate it or not care about it), Apple has just one phone with a notch. The rest of its line looks decidedly 'out'. For anyone interested in the fashion side of phones, Apple's entire line except for iPhone X is a harder sell. And ironically, the iPhone X is also a hard sell (and getting harder as the refresh approaches) on price.

    It makes no difference that the X is the best selling model. In Q2 It sold less than in Q1 and in Q3 it will sell less than in Q2. If Samsung made the same amount of models as Apple it would probably produce the highest selling model too. It would still be irrelevant in the bigger picture.

    Why? Because what really counts isn't how many phones you sell in a single quarter (or even two) but how many you sell in a year (and at sufficient profit of course) but not that you have the most revenues, highest ASP etc (as has been shown in my previous posts).

    Huawei is a complete newbie in the laptop market. Has very little experience and only sells in 12 countries but its low standing, low revenues and lower profits have already sent a warning shot across the bow of the established players in that field:

    http://channeleye.co.uk/dell-worries-about-huawei/

    Why is Dell even giving stage time to Huawei (a knock off vendor to a few people here)? It's because Joyce Mullen knows quite a bit more than what some people posting here do in the retail space and has seen what has happened in mobile. The 'growing like crazy' reference wasn't on laptops it was on mobile.

    It's fine to sing and dance about Apple's quarterly performance in China but when you look at the bigger picture you sing and dance a lot less:

    Apple's iPhone unit sales in China:

    2015: 71 million
    2016: 59 million
    2017: 49 million
    2018 (estimate): 47 million
    Source: UBS estimates/Gartner

    It doesn't matter if the Chinese market is contracting at a rate of 1,2 or 3% per quarter or per year if that impact of decline isn't universal (and it isn't because some manufacturers are bucking the trend) and in the last 3 closed years that hasn't been Apple. Apple has seen constant decline and even those estimates for 2018 show another fall. I wonder why? Could it be because of Apple's release cycle? That's definitely one possibility.

    We'll have to see how the numbers tally up in February/March next year to know for sure.

    Apple's first two quarters have been excellent. Having the 'top selling'  model is great (if purely a research estimate) but in the bigger picture it has just a tidbit of of genuine interest because the information underlying it really doesn't mean much in the bigger picture.

    So, in summary. No, I don't need an intervention, dude.

    Apple unit sales remain largely flat.
    Its percentage of industry profits had fallen to as low as 60% late last year.
    It is sacrificing profit by maintaining the iPhone 6. Instead of keeping its model spread limited in options and using its habitual upsell tactics across the board to maximise revenues on unit sales, it went in the opposite direction offering its widest spread ever at all price points.
    It is trying to increase marketshare as a result and trying to pull Android switchers over too.

    Competition in all of Apple's operating tiers has NEVER been so intense. I said that last year in the run up to Christmas. That has carried over into this year and intensified still further.

    Apple got a breather with the US government intervention that stalled Huawei's plans for the US. If the US government intensifies it's actions on protectionism, Apple is in the cross-hairs of the Chinese government in any second round of action. Tim Cook knows it and you can be 100% sure that that point was rammed home in the private meeting Cook had with Trump. You think it won't happen, I hope it doesn't, but the threat is VERY real. And if it does, how do you think Apple will fare?

    Atherton Research thinks this could be the outcome:


    https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/04/18/study-what-if-china-bans-apple-to-retaliate-for-u-s-sanctions-against-huawei-zte/amp/



    edited May 2018
  • Reply 66 of 77
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    Rayz2016 said:
    avon b7 said:
    netmage said:
    avon b7 said:

    Well, if Apple is the second largest smartphone handset manufacturer annually (far behind Samsung and very slightly ahead of Huawei), and only made one phone, it would have the top selling model. It doesn't have just one model but it does have very few. Both Samsung and Huawei have different strategies to Apple and have far more models.

    Clearly they are unlikely to have a top seller (but it isn't impossible) with so many models available.

    Huawei has far more marketshare than Apple in China but has no single model in the top 5 (or top 10 IIRC).

    Apple has three current high end models for sale, how many high end models do Huawei and Samsung have?

    The key is to realize the many economy model phones that other companies sell are not in Apple's market and aren't competition for iPhone, so they don't split the share that matters and at which Apple thoroughly dominates both in profits and market share. 
    The key in tems of unit sales is how many you ship in a full year. That's where the big picture is.
    Unit sales is not the big picture, profit is. Profit is the air corporations breathe. Repeat: profit is the air corporations breathe. 

    Youre worshiping at the Church of Marketshare because you’re loyal to a cheap chinese knockoff brand, and sales is all one can cheerlead... They copy their designs and don’t rule profit. What else is there to celebrate?
    I’m curious about this. I don’t remember in the early to mid 2000s Apple fans being obsessed with how much profit the company was making. And profit being the measure of whether the company was great or not. I own some Apple shares so yes I want to see the company do well financially but as a user of their products I care about them making great products that people want to buy and that make a difference in the world. I don’t really care if they’re generating the most profits. And when Apple does increase share in markets of course they highlight it and celebrate it. This idea that market share can only come from selling cheap garbage is nonsense.

    In the mid-2000s and before, Apple fans were completely obsessed with profit because until that point, the company was still on something of an earnings roller coaster. The lesson that Jobs taught the industry is that market share is a secondary concern to profitability. 

    It's sad to see the Android fans circle the wagons and banging the market share drum, when it is, at best, a mediocre short-term measure of a company's performance. Market share is simply the percentage of sales within a market over a given period. It lacks granularity and long-term prospective. During the wilderness years, the Mac's market share fell to about 3%. The problem was that everyone thought this meant that only 3% of the computer bods used Macs. In fact, even during these times, the Mac's user base was round about 10%.

    Apple doesn't care about market share; it cares about the expansion and stickiness of its user base of high quality, high value customers. This they can do even if there market share falls (it just takes longer).
    Apple doesn't care about taking market share from Android; it cares about creaming off the top-tier of Samsung customers.

    Apple isn't concerned with the folk who buy cheap above all else.

    The Android OEM would love to be able to build a platform that allowed them to differentiate themselves from the competition, but they can't. Why? Because they have no profit. The reason that Apple can spend billions on R&D is because they have the spare capital to do so. Building your own mainstream OS from scratch (and I'm talking from the kernel upward) is hard; very few companies have done it successfully. Microsoft? AT&T? IBM? Apple? It takes patience and money.


    At 3% marketshare Apple almost ceased to exist. That 3% marketshare had a profound effect on software availability, pricing and features. In essence the lifeblood of the Mac.

    The phone market is different to a point but marketshare is important and Apple is actively pursuing it.
  • Reply 67 of 77
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    nunzy said:
    nunzy said:
    tmay said:
    I would surmise that Apple continues to have the majority of revenue and profit share in China, thanks to Apple's very profitable iPhone line.

    ...waiting for a retort from the "but marketshare!!" contrarians on AI...
    Apple doesn't care about market share. All that matters is sensing profits to Wall Street.

    Apple absolutely cares about market share.

    The problem is people mistakenly include the market share numbers from ALL price points when comparing against Apple. Do people think Ferrari cares about their market share compared to Ford? Of course not. Ferrari only cares about market share in the exotic segment, which includes companies like Lamborghini.

    Apple has the highest market share (by far) of high-end flagship devices, which is the only market they compete in. You can bet they’re very interested in (and happy about) their market share of this segment. 
    Apple cares about market share only if and as it is relevant to total profits. If they could make higher total profits by raising prices, would they decide not to for the sake of market share?
    That is exactly what they did. 

    If you want to squeeze more out of users, abandon the iPhone 6, reduce model options in upper tiers and upsell. Upsell is still there but not as agressive. The availability of iPhone 6 and the rest of the spread (running right through the middle ground) shows that profit is not the be all and end all.

    They are trying to increase units sales (more services options) and with it marketshare.


    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 68 of 77
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    avon b7 said:
    netmage said:
    avon b7 said:

    Well, if Apple is the second largest smartphone handset manufacturer annually (far behind Samsung and very slightly ahead of Huawei), and only made one phone, it would have the top selling model. It doesn't have just one model but it does have very few. Both Samsung and Huawei have different strategies to Apple and have far more models.

    Clearly they are unlikely to have a top seller (but it isn't impossible) with so many models available.

    Huawei has far more marketshare than Apple in China but has no single model in the top 5 (or top 10 IIRC).

    Apple has three current high end models for sale, how many high end models do Huawei and Samsung have?

    The key is to realize the many economy model phones that other companies sell are not in Apple's market and aren't competition for iPhone, so they don't split the share that matters and at which Apple thoroughly dominates both in profits and market share. 
    The key in tems of unit sales is how many you ship in a full year. That's where the big picture is.
    Unit sales is not the big picture, profit is. Profit is the air corporations breathe. Repeat: profit is the air corporations breathe. 

    Youre worshiping at the Church of Marketshare because you’re loyal to a cheap chinese knockoff brand, and sales is all one can cheerlead... They copy their designs and don’t rule profit. What else is there to celebrate?
    Church of marketshare doesn't exist.

    No one said corporations don't breathe profit.

    What will you say if the Xiaomi IPO is a success? They hope to turn the company into a 100 billion dollar company with a declaration to shareholders that net hardware margins will be capped at 5%.

    If revenues were so important (above any other factor) nobody would be able to get a new iPhone for under 400 euros. Its mere presence takes potential sales away from higher priced phones in its own line and remember, 'upsell' is in Apple's DNA.

    No. Apple wants marketshare. That's why it wants Android switchers. Not only for revenues but to take users away from Android. Yes marketshare is very much a goal for Apple.
    As I stated before, was Xiaomi even making 5% before their declaration?

    Likely not, so it appears to be a con.
    Correct. I think it was around 3% but can't remember where I read that. That doesn't make it a con though.

    I'm definitely curious about the move though. On paper the IPO should fall flat on its face with such a move. How can you sell that kind of promise to investment funds? 

    Obviously, for consumers, the draw (with the correct marketing approach) could be huge.

    Xiaomi already has product portfolio of +300 but a lot of it is rebranding. No doubt, things like the MiBox and others will get even more tie-ins with their system.

    To a point it reminds me of the Sony of old but with far less quality across the board in those +300 products and interconnected. Of course some actually stand out for price/quality and I've seen a huge amount of Xiaomi scooters in Barcelona.

    Their plan is to expand internationally. I haven't owned anything by them as they didn't have local support infrastructure. They do now though.

    We'll see. The Sony of old collapsed under its own weight.
  • Reply 69 of 77
    nunzynunzy Posts: 662member
    avon b7 said:
    nunzy said:
    nunzy said:
    tmay said:
    I would surmise that Apple continues to have the majority of revenue and profit share in China, thanks to Apple's very profitable iPhone line.

    ...waiting for a retort from the "but marketshare!!" contrarians on AI...
    Apple doesn't care about market share. All that matters is sensing profits to Wall Street.

    Apple absolutely cares about market share.

    The problem is people mistakenly include the market share numbers from ALL price points when comparing against Apple. Do people think Ferrari cares about their market share compared to Ford? Of course not. Ferrari only cares about market share in the exotic segment, which includes companies like Lamborghini.

    Apple has the highest market share (by far) of high-end flagship devices, which is the only market they compete in. You can bet they’re very interested in (and happy about) their market share of this segment. 
    Apple cares about market share only if and as it is relevant to total profits. If they could make higher total profits by raising prices, would they decide not to for the sake of market share?
    That is exactly what they did. 

    If you want to squeeze more out of users, abandon the iPhone 6, reduce model options in upper tiers and upsell. Upsell is still there but not as agressive. The availability of iPhone 6 and the rest of the spread (running right through the middle ground) shows that profit is not the be all and end all.

    They are trying to increase units sales (more services options) and with it marketshare.


    Introducing or retain a product != pricing strategy. What they charge for those products is a pricing strategy.

    The price for those products is set at a level which is expected to maximize total profits.
  • Reply 70 of 77
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    avon b7 said:

    Lots of wanking, I surmise, over the fantasy of Apple's collapse, but do recall, that Apple has proven itself nothing if not adaptable and resilient, backed by a double buttload of cash. More to the point, you are basically arguing that Apple is generating a shit load of revenue and profit in China that they could lose, yet you continue to point out how Apple is failing in China.

    Certainly, it can't be both.

    More to the point, do you really want a hyper competitive Apple redirecting those so called redundant employees to moving the supply chain from China to democratically governed nations? I'm thinking that China banning Apple is pretty much a scorched earth economic policy, and would likely lead to the collapse of the world's economy into deep recession from all of the investment leaving China. This isn't a fantasy. 

    I'm guessing that Huawei wouldn't do so well in the economy either, and I assume that you remember how bad Spain suffered even just a few years ago. Yet you seem to look forward to that carnage.
    edited May 2018 nunzywatto_cobrabrucemc
  • Reply 71 of 77
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    Lots of wanking, I surmise, over the fantasy of Apple's collapse, but do recall, that Apple has proven itself nothing if not adaptable and resilient, backed by a double buttload of cash. More to the point, you are basically arguing that Apple is generating a shit load of revenue and profit in China that they could lose, yet you continue to point out how Apple is failing in China.

    Certainly, it can't be both.

    More to the point, do you really want a hyper competitive Apple redirecting those so called redundant employees to moving the supply chain from China to democratically governed nations? I'm thinking that China banning Apple is pretty much a scorched earth economic policy, and would likely lead to the collapse of the world's economy into deep recession from all of the investment leaving China. This isn't a fantasy. 

    I'm guessing that Huawei wouldn't do so well in the economy either, and I assume that you remember how bad Spain suffered even just a few years ago. Yet you seem to look forward to that carnage.
    How can I be looking forward to the carnage when I explicitly stated I hope it doesn't happen?

    Apple is resilient because of its cash hoard  but look what happened to the share price on the news of iPhone X slowing (a slowing which is completely logical btw). 

    The loss of China would would have a gigantic impact on Apple. And that's from whichever way you look at it. Relocating manufacturing would be extremely difficult without the assistance of Chinese expertise. Prices would go up. It would cost Apple literally billions in lost revenue and restructuring.

    "Certainly, it can't be both"

    It certainly can. Such is the importance of China (even a poorly performing China) for Apple.

    The YoY growth for Apple in China is good news (great even) but if 2018 unit sales are less than 2017 it will be difficult to point to revenues (as TC surely would) as a way to distract opinion from the downward trend.

    "Investment leaving China"?

    What about investment in the US? China is the largest non-US holder of US debt and has already begun reviewing new purchases because of what it sees as US protectionism.

    A full blown tit-for-tat trade war would be bad for everyone but China has made it clear it will do what it has to do and some analysts have already claimed that Apple is very much in the next packet of Chinese retaliation should the situation worsen.

    edited May 2018
  • Reply 72 of 77
    nunzynunzy Posts: 662member
    China needs Apple more than Apple needs China.
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 73 of 77
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    nunzy said:
    China needs Apple more than Apple needs China.
    What a strange thing to say...how does China need Apple?

    It's not just the market.

    Apple's entire business is built upon being able to manufacture in China (as is everybody else's). There is literally no other option at the moment. 
    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 74 of 77
    tmaytmay Posts: 6,309member
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    Lots of wanking, I surmise, over the fantasy of Apple's collapse, but do recall, that Apple has proven itself nothing if not adaptable and resilient, backed by a double buttload of cash. More to the point, you are basically arguing that Apple is generating a shit load of revenue and profit in China that they could lose, yet you continue to point out how Apple is failing in China.

    Certainly, it can't be both.

    More to the point, do you really want a hyper competitive Apple redirecting those so called redundant employees to moving the supply chain from China to democratically governed nations? I'm thinking that China banning Apple is pretty much a scorched earth economic policy, and would likely lead to the collapse of the world's economy into deep recession from all of the investment leaving China. This isn't a fantasy. 

    I'm guessing that Huawei wouldn't do so well in the economy either, and I assume that you remember how bad Spain suffered even just a few years ago. Yet you seem to look forward to that carnage.
    How can I be looking forward to the carnage when I explicitly stated I hope it doesn't happen?

    Apple is resilient because of its cash hoard  but look what happened to the share price on the news of iPhone X slowing (a slowing which is completely logical btw). 

    The loss of China would would have a gigantic impact on Apple. And that's from whichever way you look at it. Relocating manufacturing would be extremely difficult without the assistance of Chinese expertise. Prices would go up. It would cost Apple literally billions in lost revenue and restructuring.

    "Certainly, it can't be both"

    It certainly can. Such is the importance of China (even a poorly performing China) for Apple.

    The YoY growth for Apple in China is good news (great even) but if 2018 unit sales are less than 2017 it will be difficult to point to revenues (as TC surely would) as a way to distract opinion from the downward trend.

    "Investment leaving China"?

    What about investment in the US? China is the largest non-US holder of US debt and has already begun reviewing new purchases because of what it sees as US protectionism.

    A full blown tit-for-tat trade war would be bad for everyone but China has made it clear it will do what it has to do and some analysts have already claimed that Apple is very much in the next packet of Chinese retaliation should the situation worsen.

    Stop with the FUD.

    I did a number of Google searches, over a couple of days; there is literally only a couple of articles to this effect. an outright ban of Apple products in China, and none with authors with any relevant knowledge on the subject.

    So I'm calling you out for your bullshit about China banning Apple, which you push because that's all you have to support your worldview of Huawei dominance. 

    Here's a more realistic view;

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/why-apple-aapl-stock-can-withstand-a-chinese-trade-war-cm943938

    The truth is, there is a far higher likelihood of Tariffs imposed by the U.S. on products imported from China, including Apple's, over an outright ban of Apple products in China by the Chinese government. The fact is that Apple competes in many countries with high import tariffs, some in the range of 50%.

    For the record, China has comparable bans in place against a number of American companies, so U.S. restrictions on sales, not the outright bans on Huawei and ZTE that you have been stating, aren't going to trigger a wider trade war any time soon. If anything, the Chinese are putting pressure on certain products from a small number of states that are reliant on agriculture.

    China has no desire to stop the flood of the IP and manufacturing processes from the U.S. that they want to modernize their industry and military.

    https://www.ped30.com/2018/05/05/apple-iphone-x-bungee-jump/

    “We estimate the Apple iPhone X shipped 16.0 million units and captured 5 percent marketshare worldwide in Q1 2018. For the second quarter running, the iPhone X remains the world’s most popular smartphone model overall, due to a blend of good design, sophisticated camera, extensive apps, and widespread retail presence for the device.”

    Oh, and the highest ASP as well.

    You can stop your FUD about Apple's iPhone X as well; it's doing very, very well, contrary to your spin. 

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-buffett-saw-value-acted-122427195.html

    edited May 2018 StrangeDayswatto_cobra
  • Reply 75 of 77
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    avon b7 said:
    netmage said:
    avon b7 said:

    Well, if Apple is the second largest smartphone handset manufacturer annually (far behind Samsung and very slightly ahead of Huawei), and only made one phone, it would have the top selling model. It doesn't have just one model but it does have very few. Both Samsung and Huawei have different strategies to Apple and have far more models.

    Clearly they are unlikely to have a top seller (but it isn't impossible) with so many models available.

    Huawei has far more marketshare than Apple in China but has no single model in the top 5 (or top 10 IIRC).

    Apple has three current high end models for sale, how many high end models do Huawei and Samsung have?

    The key is to realize the many economy model phones that other companies sell are not in Apple's market and aren't competition for iPhone, so they don't split the share that matters and at which Apple thoroughly dominates both in profits and market share. 
    The key in tems of unit sales is how many you ship in a full year. That's where the big picture is.
    Unit sales is not the big picture, profit is. Profit is the air corporations breathe. Repeat: profit is the air corporations breathe. 

    Youre worshiping at the Church of Marketshare because you’re loyal to a cheap chinese knockoff brand, and sales is all one can cheerlead... They copy their designs and don’t rule profit. What else is there to celebrate?
    I’m curious about this. I don’t remember in the early to mid 2000s Apple fans being obsessed with how much profit the company was making. And profit being the measure of whether the company was great or not. I own some Apple shares so yes I want to see the company do well financially but as a user of their products I care about them making great products that people want to buy and that make a difference in the world. I don’t really care if they’re generating the most profits. And when Apple does increase share in markets of course they highlight it and celebrate it. This idea that market share can only come from selling cheap garbage is nonsense.
    Note that I didn’t even mention Apple, @rogifan_new, because it wasn’t a comment about Apple. Nope, I stated that profit is the air corporations breathe, which is refuting the absurdly stupid comment I was replying to which claimed the “big picture” is unit sales. 

    This is is a business discussion (which may be why you don’t get it. I’ve run my own product businesses in the past and so the point is very relevant).
    edited May 2018
  • Reply 76 of 77
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:
    tmay said:
    avon b7 said:

    Lots of wanking, I surmise, over the fantasy of Apple's collapse, but do recall, that Apple has proven itself nothing if not adaptable and resilient, backed by a double buttload of cash. More to the point, you are basically arguing that Apple is generating a shit load of revenue and profit in China that they could lose, yet you continue to point out how Apple is failing in China.

    Certainly, it can't be both.

    More to the point, do you really want a hyper competitive Apple redirecting those so called redundant employees to moving the supply chain from China to democratically governed nations? I'm thinking that China banning Apple is pretty much a scorched earth economic policy, and would likely lead to the collapse of the world's economy into deep recession from all of the investment leaving China. This isn't a fantasy. 

    I'm guessing that Huawei wouldn't do so well in the economy either, and I assume that you remember how bad Spain suffered even just a few years ago. Yet you seem to look forward to that carnage.
    How can I be looking forward to the carnage when I explicitly stated I hope it doesn't happen?

    Apple is resilient because of its cash hoard  but look what happened to the share price on the news of iPhone X slowing (a slowing which is completely logical btw). 

    The loss of China would would have a gigantic impact on Apple. And that's from whichever way you look at it. Relocating manufacturing would be extremely difficult without the assistance of Chinese expertise. Prices would go up. It would cost Apple literally billions in lost revenue and restructuring.

    "Certainly, it can't be both"

    It certainly can. Such is the importance of China (even a poorly performing China) for Apple.

    The YoY growth for Apple in China is good news (great even) but if 2018 unit sales are less than 2017 it will be difficult to point to revenues (as TC surely would) as a way to distract opinion from the downward trend.

    "Investment leaving China"?

    What about investment in the US? China is the largest non-US holder of US debt and has already begun reviewing new purchases because of what it sees as US protectionism.

    A full blown tit-for-tat trade war would be bad for everyone but China has made it clear it will do what it has to do and some analysts have already claimed that Apple is very much in the next packet of Chinese retaliation should the situation worsen.

    Stop with the FUD.

    I did a number of Google searches, over a couple of days; there is literally only a couple of articles to this effect. an outright ban of Apple products in China, and none with authors with any relevant knowledge on the subject.

    So I'm calling you out for your bullshit about China banning Apple, which you push because that's all you have to support your worldview of Huawei dominance. 

    Here's a more realistic view;

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/why-apple-aapl-stock-can-withstand-a-chinese-trade-war-cm943938

    The truth is, there is a far higher likelihood of Tariffs imposed by the U.S. on products imported from China, including Apple's, over an outright ban of Apple products in China by the Chinese government. The fact is that Apple competes in many countries with high import tariffs, some in the range of 50%.

    For the record, China has comparable bans in place against a number of American companies, so U.S. restrictions on sales, not the outright bans on Huawei and ZTE that you have been stating, aren't going to trigger a wider trade war any time soon. If anything, the Chinese are putting pressure on certain products from a small number of states that are reliant on agriculture.

    China has no desire to stop the flood of the IP and manufacturing processes from the U.S. that they want to modernize their industry and military.

    https://www.ped30.com/2018/05/05/apple-iphone-x-bungee-jump/

    “We estimate the Apple iPhone X shipped 16.0 million units and captured 5 percent marketshare worldwide in Q1 2018. For the second quarter running, the iPhone X remains the world’s most popular smartphone model overall, due to a blend of good design, sophisticated camera, extensive apps, and widespread retail presence for the device.”

    Oh, and the highest ASP as well.

    You can stop your FUD about Apple's iPhone X as well; it's doing very, very well, contrary to your spin. 

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-buffett-saw-value-acted-122427195.html

    Here we go again:

    https://dazeinfo.com/2018/04/20/china-bans-apple-huawei-fortune/

    https://www.investopedia.com/news/taiwan-semi-warns-trade-war-would-hurt-apple/

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/14/china-threatens-to-cut-sales-of-iphones-and-us-cars-if-naive-trump-pursues-trade-war

    http://fortune.com/2018/03/26/data-sheet-apple-china-trade-war/

    https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/22/596011975/how-china-may-fight-a-trade-war-with-the-u-s

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-07/the-u-s-businesses-at-risk-from-trade-war-with-china-quicktake

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/12/tech-investors-in-apple-and-other-stocks-in-crosshairs-of-trade-war.html

    Tim Cook, Donald Trump, China:

    https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/business/apples-tim-cook-to-meet-with-trump-amid-china-trade-tensions/articleshow/63919645.cms

    That just a cursory copy/paste.

    What you see in a Google search doesn't have to be what I see in a Google search. This is the second time you have called FUD on something simply because your Google search didn't bring back enough results for you.

    My Google searches return results in four languages. How many do you use?

    However, the amount of search results is moot when you have this one to hand:

    http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1017696.shtml

    Global Times is the state run Chinese news outlet. If there is one outlet that speaks almost literally in the name of the government it is that one. It is the mouthpiece of the government. You could have a million sites claiming something but they ALL pale into comparison to that one.

    That editorial (yes, an editorial) contains a message. A very clear message. Since then they've had over a year to plan and wait on Donald Trump's actions. 

    You are welcome to call it FUD but believe me, the US government, Tim Cook, Boeing etc all take those kinds of messages very seriously.

    You are way off base if you think TC didn't speak specifically about this issue with Donald Trump in their private meeting.

    After spending more than a year testing the Kirin 970 SoC on AT&T networks and closing the deal to have them distribute Huawei handsets this year, the (done) deal collapsed in a question of hours due to alleged political pressure.

    These things come seemingly from out of nowhere and you probably won't get much time to react if they happen. The Huawei deal was done and WIDELY reported in the press before it fell through and Richard Yu was royally pissed off. You are not going to get a telegram advising you long before these things happen. You have to listen to the messages coming out of China and interpret them.

    So please don't try to support your FUD claims on your lack of Google results. By your own admission you didn't come up blank, did you?

    What is more, no one has even claimed any of this would happen. All that has been claimed is that the risk is real. And it is.




    edited May 2018 spheric
  • Reply 77 of 77
    sphericspheric Posts: 2,544member
    Obviously, China can regulate whatever the fuck they want, but iPhones aren’t actually imported, are they?
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