Apple has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to provide transparency. Like it or not, unit sales is a key metric of a company that sells hardware. Apple’s services business can be seen as a shift away from this but they can and should share this unit sales information going forward. If I owned Apple’s stock or was the manager of a fund that owns it, I would press for unit sales to continue to be openly shared.
I can see Apple’s strategy here as they choose to be less transparent as unit sales decline and price increases make up for the difference. After all, winning on market share can still be a very unprofitable venture that is not sustainable.
By still showing unit sales figures and adding this visibility such things as Apple Watch sales, Apple shows an honest reality to shareholders. It helps them understand how Apple is going up market and the success of various business lines. It also allows them to hold the board and management team accountable. By choosing to not be opaque, Apple has an opportunity to lead here - doing so by example. I hope they they reconsider their stance. Shareholders can and should bring this as a requirement. As consumers of their product, we should also expect nothing less.
You don’t really invest, do you? No other major hardware company is reporting per product unit sales, so your claim is bunk.
Your second claim is also ludicrous, as customers of the units have no bearing in this conversation between corporation and investor. I suspect you are only a consumer and this comment is the tip-off.
Actually, I do invest. I used to work at a publicly traded company and we included unit sales data in our quarterly conference call, broken out by market segment. If you read the transcript of Dell’s recent earnings call you will note that they specifically call out their market share in several different segments they participate in, telling investors more than just the revenues by various segments. (This is just one example; don’t get hung up on Apple vs Dell)
I agree with you that the 10k (for example) is important, especially items such as gross margin, operating income, inventory levels and the balance sheet.
I also agree that privately held companies have an advantage over publicly held ones in keeping certain financial items outside of public scrutiny.
Yet leading indicators in terms of share of market are important too. Tim likes to brag that Apple sells more watches than anyone. That figure becomes harder to believe if he doesn’t release the number that they sell.
I guess the watch makers will have to stop releasing Unit Sales.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
Maybe in the future Apple wants to embarrass the other(s) with ASP & Profits per share of stock. Being a stock holder (my largest piece of paper) , I am interested in stock price going up, dividends coming down to me, & some kind of meaningful comparison that will let me know if Apple is hitting on all cylinders. While I like the products, I don't buy all of them every year. I keep them until I think I might benefit by change.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
I am curious what card they have to play next year. This year was the bigger X and the XR. One would assume the XR keeps the same design next year. Outside of the XS losing the notch I’m not sure what they could announce that wouldn’t be incremental and expected. Everyone knows it will have a better chip and camera. What else?
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
I am curious what card they have to play next year. This year was the bigger X and the XR. One would assume the XR keeps the same design next year. Outside of the XS losing the notch I’m not sure what they could announce that wouldn’t be incremental and expected. Everyone knows it will have a better chip and camera. What else?
That's the multibillion dollar question of course. What's Apple's next big move? Over the longer term we've seen that Apple has always been able to pull a new rabbit out of the hat even when WE though they had no more tricks up their sleeve. They are smart and ahead of us in their thinking and innovation. However, this pattern cannot repeat indefinitely, at least not on the hardware side. The software and services side is a whole lot different and much more open ended. This lends credence to Apple trying to "educate/control the narrative" beyond just hardware wizardry. They recognize that a good chunk of future value will come from software, services, and content generation than simply from hardware. They see the wall ahead of them and are constructing the ladders to put themselves over that wall - it's called software, services, content - all of which they control, and of course continued advances in technology and hardware - only some of which they control.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
I am curious what card they have to play next year. This year was the bigger X and the XR. One would assume the XR keeps the same design next year. Outside of the XS losing the notch I’m not sure what they could announce that wouldn’t be incremental and expected. Everyone knows it will have a better chip and camera. What else?
What do you mean by "what card"? Most years there is no screen-size increase but they still have a plethora of new features, and now that they design their own chips the number of improvements are growing in ways that we may not be able to imagine.
PS: Everything they've ever done with the iPhone has been incremental. You can see this by looking at all previous iPhones (except for perhaps the original, but even that ws only possible because of the iPad and Mac) and seeing the incremental changes or "relating to or denoting an increase or addition" they've made.
PPS: Am I wrong, or was there a time when you weren't just coming here to troll Apple?
The best bit of the slide was how irrelevant surface sales are, a little blip waaaay out on the end. Although I find 0.3m hard to believe, you see them around a fair bit.
anyway, back on topic, what What NHT and Soli said.
Here in the UK I see people with Surface tablets more often than iPads, but both are much less common than laptops. How about comparing iPads to the rest of the tablet market, Timmy? Once upon a time Apple was miles out ahead in terms of tablet sales. I do think they have missed the boat a bit with the iPad: iPad is still essentially a giant iPhone, whereas the Surface tablet is a full blown Windows PC. I find I still can't do a lot of things I need to on an iPad, so I still need a "proper" computer to do the rest. I expected the iPad's OS to slowly evolve toward more of desktop metaphor, but it seems Apple pretty much abandoned it software wise between about 2012 and 2016, and even now it's still really a giant iPhone. The UI still feels simplified and lacking power. For some of course this is great, it allows you to focus on one task and carry it out really well, but as soon as you try and do something that's not in Apple's very structured workflow, it's a real hassle.
Also in the U.K. I don’t know a single person with a Surface of any description but know plenty of people with iPads.
The best bit of the slide was how irrelevant surface sales are, a little blip waaaay out on the end. Although I find 0.3m hard to believe, you see them around a fair bit.
anyway, back on topic, what What NHT and Soli said.
Here in the UK I see people with Surface tablets more often than iPads, but both are much less common than laptops. How about comparing iPads to the rest of the tablet market, Timmy? Once upon a time Apple was miles out ahead in terms of tablet sales. I do think they have missed the boat a bit with the iPad: iPad is still essentially a giant iPhone, whereas the Surface tablet is a full blown Windows PC. I find I still can't do a lot of things I need to on an iPad, so I still need a "proper" computer to do the rest. I expected the iPad's OS to slowly evolve toward more of desktop metaphor, but it seems Apple pretty much abandoned it software wise between about 2012 and 2016, and even now it's still really a giant iPhone. The UI still feels simplified and lacking power. For some of course this is great, it allows you to focus on one task and carry it out really well, but as soon as you try and do something that's not in Apple's very structured workflow, it's a real hassle.
Also in the U.K. I don’t know a single person with a Surface of any description but know plenty of people with iPads.
I do see the Surface used on a regular basis (I don't know anyone with one), but they pale in comparison to iPads, and of course cheap Android-based tablets far outnumber any Surface I've seen simply because of homeless people, the elderly whom I assume are on tight budgets, and because they're used as cheap kiosks that are almost always broken.
Although, I also do see iPads used as working kiosks a lot for Square and other vendors, plus being used as a kiosk that will often have that popover telling the user to input their iCloud password. Even just with iPads being used by businesses (not consumers) they still outnumber all the other tablets I see.
Finally, I can't prove it because I've recorded no data on this, but it seems to me that I'm seeing fewer and fewer laptops and more iPads. Although, if I do see a laptop it's usually from Apple. I see a lot more 12" MacBooks than I would've expected so I'm betting on a large number of rMBAs in the coming years.
Apple has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to provide transparency. Like it or not, unit sales is a key metric of a company that sells hardware. Apple’s services business can be seen as a shift away from this but they can and should share this unit sales information going forward. If I owned Apple’s stock or was the manager of a fund that owns it, I would press for unit sales to continue to be openly shared.
I can see Apple’s strategy here as they choose to be less transparent as unit sales decline and price increases make up for the difference. After all, winning on market share can still be a very unprofitable venture that is not sustainable.
By still showing unit sales figures and adding this visibility such things as Apple Watch sales, Apple shows an honest reality to shareholders. It helps them understand how Apple is going up market and the success of various business lines. It also allows them to hold the board and management team accountable. By choosing to not be opaque, Apple has an opportunity to lead here - doing so by example. I hope they they reconsider their stance. Shareholders can and should bring this as a requirement. As consumers of their product, we should also expect nothing less.
You don’t really invest, do you? No other major hardware company is reporting per product unit sales, so your claim is bunk.
Your second claim is also ludicrous, as customers of the units have no bearing in this conversation between corporation and investor. I suspect you are only a consumer and this comment is the tip-off.
Probably many people here are just consumers and indeed the health of the platform matters to us. As for investors in general they are not happy with the non disclosure of unit sales.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
I am curious what card they have to play next year. This year was the bigger X and the XR. One would assume the XR keeps the same design next year. Outside of the XS losing the notch I’m not sure what they could announce that wouldn’t be incremental and expected. Everyone knows it will have a better chip and camera. What else?
And now that you’ve reAd this article it’s understandable why Tim Cook decided not to give a breakdown on iProducts sold in the future while the Anal_ists (no mispelling) are good at what they do they really don’t know. So why give them something to guess on. It’s revenue vs revenue and profit Vs profit that counts Not how many or ASP
That’s the exact opposite I get from this. It looks like Apple will need to counter IDC with real figures in the future.
EVENTUALLY, possibly as soon as iOS 13, these folks are going to HAVE to count iPads as computers. I have a desktop machine, but the devices i use most are my 12.9 iPad Pro with a keyboard on a desk and my 9.7 iPad in bed.
Sure i occasionally NEED to get on my desktop, but i can get 90% done on my iPads. And hopefully with iOS 13 it can be 99%
WHat is a computer? Anything that has a computer chip and can get what you need done done
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
I am curious what card they have to play next year. This year was the bigger X and the XR. One would assume the XR keeps the same design next year. Outside of the XS losing the notch I’m not sure what they could announce that wouldn’t be incremental and expected. Everyone knows it will have a better chip and camera. What else?
What do you mean by "what card"? Most years there is no screen-size increase but they still have a plethora of new features, and now that they design their own chips the number of improvements are growing in ways that we may not be able to imagine.
PS: Everything they've ever done with the iPhone has been incremental. You can see this by looking at all previous iPhones (except for perhaps the original, but even that ws only possible because of the iPad and Mac) and seeing the incremental changes or "relating to or denoting an increase or addition" they've made.
PPS: Am I wrong, or was there a time when you weren't just coming here to troll Apple?
The move from the 6 / 7 / 8 series form-factor design to iPhone X series form-factor design was anything but incremental. It was a big form factor change and UI change in terms of how one interacts with the device.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for Apple to keep reporting quarterly unit sales? I’m glad they’re not but analysts will turn just go off bogus estimates from firms like IDC.
No, it wouldn't.
See above.
Wall Street is obsessed with iPhone unit sales figures. They’re not going to stop just because Apple decided not to disclose that information. Eventually they will but in the meantime they’ll go off of bogus data from IDC and stupid supply chain rumors printed in the WSJ.
Makes me wonder if Apple is worried about bad news coming up this year. The only thing Apple has to worry about is people switching out of iOS to Android. As long as the numbers of people switching between the two stay close Apple will be able to rely upon yearly sales as people upgrade every 2 to 4 years. How many people are still using iPhones 6 and 6S? That's why Apple is giving them a choice with the XS, XSMax, and XR.
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
I am curious what card they have to play next year. This year was the bigger X and the XR. One would assume the XR keeps the same design next year. Outside of the XS losing the notch I’m not sure what they could announce that wouldn’t be incremental and expected. Everyone knows it will have a better chip and camera. What else?
When looking at the new iPad Pro, the hardware design language is gorgeous. I would love to see this hardware design language influence the design of the next iPhone => flat back, flat edges
I still don't see the point of all of these obsessions with market shares. The only reason people wanted to see unit sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs so that they can see the numbers. Numbers means market shares. It doesn't necessary mean growth of the whole company. It's something people can talk about, criticising, predicting, comparing (to Androids or Windows). But marketshare is never Apple's target. Undeniably Androids or Windows devices will always have bigger market shares due to their average lower price point. Apple's market share will always be smaller, ever. However profit is always Apple's target. And 'Unit Sales' is not the indicator of Apple's profit. Not at all.
The smartphone market might be growing slightly but most of it is at the low- to mid-range price devices. I think there must be slim pickings at the iPhone's nose-bleed, premium-range level. I say nose-bleed level because that's all reviewers seem to talk about, the high price of the iPhone. That's how all iPhone reviews start and end with, the price. Apple will continue to be compared with Chinese-made smartphones which usually cost much less than the iPhone despite having similar features. To most reviewers, iOS, the A12 Bionic, Face ID and Apple customer service are rather unique to Apple but those things obviously don't count for iPhones having a higher price tag. Maybe they're right. Most cheaper Android smartphones are 'good enough' for consumers.
Apple has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to provide transparency. Like it or not, unit sales is a key metric of a company that sells hardware. Apple’s services business can be seen as a shift away from this but they can and should share this unit sales information going forward. If I owned Apple’s stock or was the manager of a fund that owns it, I would press for unit sales to continue to be openly shared.
I can see Apple’s strategy here as they choose to be less transparent as unit sales decline and price increases make up for the difference. After all, winning on market share can still be a very unprofitable venture that is not sustainable.
By still showing unit sales figures and adding this visibility such things as Apple Watch sales, Apple shows an honest reality to shareholders. It helps them understand how Apple is going up market and the success of various business lines. It also allows them to hold the board and management team accountable. By choosing to not be opaque, Apple has an opportunity to lead here - doing so by example. I hope they they reconsider their stance. Shareholders can and should bring this as a requirement. As consumers of their product, we should also expect nothing less.
Maybe you're right. As an Apple shareholder, I honestly thought that the thing that really matters was revenue and profits no matter what product or service Apple got them from. I just happen to know that since Apple now derives most of those revenues and profits from the iPhone, then Apple may be trying to hide iPhone unit sales going forward. I know iPhone sales are hitting a wall as the entire smartphone market is saturated and it's unpleasant to know this. I just thought Wall Street is a little too focused on iPhone sales every quarter. To me, as an Apple shareholder, if Apple finds another revenue stream to offset iPhone revenue and profit losses then what's there to cry about. Money is money. I know I'm not a financial genius so maybe I don't see things that big investors do. I get that you believe Apple is trying to hide reality in weak iPhone sales, but I'm not selling my Apple stock just because of a shortfall of iPhone sales in a quarter. A 7% dump seems a bit much to me. I'll bet Warren Buffett wasn't one of the dumpers. As far as weak guidance is concerned, I like that Apple is not trying to raise iPhone sales expectations for the next quarter. Maybe Apple is just sandbagging, but I don't care. The global economy going forward is quite uncertain for all companies. I'm not going to petition for continued iPhone sales transparency just yet. I'm going to see wait and see what happens next quarter's ER with the new method. Then I'll decide.
Crap like Warren's piece won't change until and unless editorial guidance at VERGE changes. A point I've made elsewhere about comparable journalism - especially tech; but, in politics as we all know too well.
I can't comment on either at the VERGE because previous emphasis on editorial bias got me banned. But, I bet the average geek - cripes, the average Jane or Joe Investor - knows exactly what I mean. How often have folks serious about topics they know well given up on articles they might have read because the headline that's supposed to tempt you already made clear the editorial wish of the publisher? Not the facts or even conclusions a legit article might provoke.
Comments
Makes me wonder what Apple will come out with next year. 5G seems nice but not as compelling as the move to 4G LTE was. I will get excited when they come out with lighter Solid State batteries in the phones. Give me a phone that goes 48 hours and I'll switch from my 7Plus and 8Plus.
Being a stock holder (my largest piece of paper) , I am interested in stock price going up, dividends coming down to me, & some kind of meaningful comparison that will let me know if Apple is hitting on all cylinders. While I like the products, I don't buy all of them every year. I keep them until I think I might benefit by change.
PS: Everything they've ever done with the iPhone has been incremental. You can see this by looking at all previous iPhones (except for perhaps the original, but even that ws only possible because of the iPad and Mac) and seeing the incremental changes or "relating to or denoting an increase or addition" they've made.
PPS: Am I wrong, or was there a time when you weren't just coming here to troll Apple?
Although, I also do see iPads used as working kiosks a lot for Square and other vendors, plus being used as a kiosk that will often have that popover telling the user to input their iCloud password. Even just with iPads being used by businesses (not consumers) they still outnumber all the other tablets I see.
Finally, I can't prove it because I've recorded no data on this, but it seems to me that I'm seeing fewer and fewer laptops and more iPads. Although, if I do see a laptop it's usually from Apple. I see a lot more 12" MacBooks than I would've expected so I'm betting on a large number of rMBAs in the coming years.
Hek I’m still using a 5s.
Although I am typing this on a 2017 iPad Pro.
I can't comment on either at the VERGE because previous emphasis on editorial bias got me banned. But, I bet the average geek - cripes, the average Jane or Joe Investor - knows exactly what I mean. How often have folks serious about topics they know well given up on articles they might have read because the headline that's supposed to tempt you already made clear the editorial wish of the publisher? Not the facts or even conclusions a legit article might provoke.