"Cook didn't even mention the millions of Huawei Androids that were diverted from Western markets to the domestic Chinese market in a desperate rash of discounting promotions this year. That's pretty clearly because Huawei's phones are not being sold to iPhone users, despite the constant insistence that Huawei is somehow pushing Apple out of business in China, when clearly that's not the case. "
Please provide supporting links to back this claim up.
As for the supposed claim by certain watchers that Apple wouldn't be able to shift X series phones, why did Apple pay a 'penalty' clause to Samsung for not reaching the contracted orders for displays?
Clearly someone got their estimates very, very wrong.
Yet another research published that Apple market shares dropped and Android are taking over....units shipped does mean unit sold.
I agree with you, in general shipped does equal sold.
In Apple's case yes, because they don't flood their channels and in general, manufacture just in time. But that's not necessarily true for other manufacturers who do lots of channel stuffing.
Most companies will not ship products until they are either already paid for or there's a contractual obligation to pay for them (ie 30 day terms). Apple is not special in that regard. So yes essentially shipped DOES mean sold. The products were paid for.
Not true, product get shipped to the store shelf all the time without any commitment to pay, it is call consigned inventory, only when the unit is sold does the manufacturer get paid. Also in consigned inventories agreement there is usually a clause which states if product does not move at specific rate and time frame the store shelf has the right to return product.
I suspect that Apple does not have these sort of agreement with most of the dealers, with that said, I also suspect they do since we have seen BOGO deals on Apple products and these come about due to consignment agreements to help move products.
Great piece. Joanna Stern and Mark Gurman certainly are mainstream "pro trolls", who are building their brand on writing a negative narrative a about anything Apple. They aren't the first. It's lame that folks like John Gruber of Daring Fireball give them legitimacy.
"Cook didn't even mention the millions of Huawei Androids that were diverted from Western markets to the domestic Chinese market in a desperate rash of discounting promotions this year. That's pretty clearly because Huawei's phones are not being sold to iPhone users, despite the constant insistence that Huawei is somehow pushing Apple out of business in China, when clearly that's not the case. "
Please provide supporting links to back this claim up.
As for the supposed claim by certain watchers that Apple wouldn't be able to shift X series phones, why did Apple pay a 'penalty' clause to Samsung for not reaching the contracted orders for displays?
Clearly someone got their estimates very, very wrong.
Yet another research published that Apple market shares dropped and Android are taking over....units shipped does mean unit sold.
I agree with you, in general shipped does equal sold.
In Apple's case yes, because they don't flood their channels and in general, manufacture just in time. But that's not necessarily true for other manufacturers who do lots of channel stuffing.
Most companies will not ship products until they are either already paid for or there's a contractual obligation to pay for them (ie 30 day terms). Apple is not special in that regard. So yes essentially shipped DOES mean sold. The products were paid for.
Not true, product get shipped to the store shelf all the time without any commitment to pay, it is call consigned inventory, only when the unit is sold does the manufacturer get paid. Also in consigned inventories agreement there is usually a clause which states if product does not move at specific rate and time frame the store shelf has the right to return product.
I suspect that Apple does not have these sort of agreement with most of the dealers, with that said, I also suspect they do since we have seen BOGO deals on Apple products and these come about due to consignment agreements to help move products.
That is not how product is typically sold, for so many obvious reasons that you shouldn't even have to be told.
Yes unpaid consignment with no assurance of payment is a thing, but not something generally done by companies and particularly not with higher priced goods. In general shipped=sold just as I said.
Don't confuse not being purchased yet by an end user as the product not being sold. It's only sold by a company once (don't be anal about some silly edge-case exception to that), most often to a distributor/reseller/retailer who must then make their own sale of the product. Apple doesn't get paid again by the customer after getting paid by Target for iPhone's shipped to them, nor does the sale count twice. It was counted when Target paid for them.
This article is pure hyperbole. It was a good quarter in spite of iPhone which is now less than 50% of Apple’s quarterly revenues. Sure Wall Street loves services revenue but would anybody here really call services a great product from Apple? Tim gave no color or numbers on Apple News+ which leads one to believe it’s not doing that great. I’m not surprised. The News app isn’t that great and bolting on magazines and a few newspapers for $10/mo didn’t make it better. Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
Not hyperbole. The numbers refuted the DOOM predictions by the pro naysayers. Again. Link us to facts that prove otherwise.
And yes, services is a great product for Apple to sell, in addition to their already unfathomable success with products. What's your deal? You pretend like also selling services is DOOM, which is silly nonsense. Services are all around you. You are surrounded by services. If Apple can sell both at a profit, why in hell wouldn't they?
"Cook didn't even mention the millions of Huawei Androids that were diverted from Western markets to the domestic Chinese market in a desperate rash of discounting promotions this year. That's pretty clearly because Huawei's phones are not being sold to iPhone users, despite the constant insistence that Huawei is somehow pushing Apple out of business in China, when clearly that's not the case. "
Please provide supporting links to back this claim up.
As for the supposed claim by certain watchers that Apple wouldn't be able to shift X series phones, why did Apple pay a 'penalty' clause to Samsung for not reaching the contracted orders for displays?
Clearly someone got their estimates very, very wrong.
Yet another research published that Apple market shares dropped and Android are taking over....units shipped does mean unit sold.
I agree with you, in general shipped does equal sold.
In Apple's case yes, because they don't flood their channels and in general, manufacture just in time. But that's not necessarily true for other manufacturers who do lots of channel stuffing. Then they have giant sales or do deals with the carriers to get rid of the phones (or whatever).
As far as Apple's overall success is concerned, fiscal 2018 was a record year. Not every year can be a record year. But one has to look at long term growth, and I continue to think it's absolutely incredible that Apple's net income is now larger than its revenue just 10 years ago. In fact, its net income for the first three quarters of this fiscal is almost as large as its gross from all four quarters in 2009. Has any other company as old as Apple ever accomplished that?
It's true that Apple hasn't recently released any "blow your mind" products. But who has? And I can't even think of what such a product might be unless it's time travel, holography, AI/robotics (which I still think is the long-term future for Apple) or an electric car that gets 500 miles per charge.
The question is how well will Apple's streaming video services do once all the new services from AT&T, Disney and others are launched and whether they can maintain growth in services in that world.
As far as the press is concerned, they've always gotten Apple wrong. I have to laugh almost every quarter when the press says that Apple is going to fail, Apple beats their expectations, they either turn that into a negative (as the NY Times did today) or say, "OK, well they did okay this quarter but they won't the next". I've posted this before, but here are some quotes from the past:
John C. Dvorak, 1984
“The Macintosh uses an experimental pointing device called a "mouse". There is no evidence that people want to use these things. I don’t want one of these new fangled devices."
former Apple VP Gaston Bastiaens, January 1996.
“Within the next two months, Sony will acquire Apple. … Sony will be the white knight who will step into the picture."
Michael Dell, October 1997
"I'd shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders."
Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, 1998. "The iMac will only sell to some of the true believers. The iMac doesn’t include a floppy disk drive for doing file backups or sharing of data. ... The iMac will fail.
10/5/2000 Michael S. Malone
Apple R.I.P.
…“Nevertheless, the bloom is off the rose. The incredible run-up Apple stock has enjoyed since Steve's return is over, and the sheen of success that had enveloped the company has been tarnished.
A temporary setback? Don't be too sure. Unlike, say, Hewlett-Packard, Apple has always been a company that deals poorly with failure. When things go bad at Apple, they go very bad. “
5/21/2001 Cliff Edwards
Commentary: Sorry, Steve: Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work
“New retail outlets aren't going to fix Apple's sales “
12/23/2006 Bill Ray (Mobile)
“Why the Apple phone will fail, and fail badly”
It's the Pippin all over again”
1/14/2007 Matthew Lynn
Apple iPhone Will Fail in a Late, Defensive Move
“…Don't let that fool you into thinking that it matters. The big competitors in the mobile-phone industry such as Nokia Oyjand Motorola Inc.won't be whispering nervously into their clamshells over a new threat to their business…
The iPhone is nothing more than a luxury bauble that will appeal to a few gadget freaks. In terms of its impact on the industry, the iPhone is less relevant”
3/28/2007 John Dvorak
Apple should pull the plug in the iPhone
Commentary: Company risks its reputation in competitive business
“… Now compare that effort and overlay the mobile handset business. This is not an emerging business. In fact it's gone so far that it's in the process of consolidation with probably two players dominating everything, Nokia Corp…and Motorola Inc.”
You've made my day. Such a collection of dumbass. Tripp Mickle (Mick Tripple ? Trick Mipple ?) being the Crown Prince of the tribe.
Of course you stopped reading. You have a fragile narrative to protect!
On a piece containing 'fake data and false reporting' in the title, I prefer to have an assurance that that isn't popping up in the article itself. That would be supremely ironic.
At the very least, the claim should be backed up, don't you think?
As for 'narratives', I don't have one. They serve no purpose to me. So fragility doesn't come into it.
This article is pure hyperbole. It was a good quarter in spite of iPhone which is now less than 50% of Apple’s quarterly revenues. Sure Wall Street loves services revenue but would anybody here really call services a great product from Apple? Tim gave no color or numbers on Apple News+ which leads one to believe it’s not doing that great. I’m not surprised. The News app isn’t that great and bolting on magazines and a few newspapers for $10/mo didn’t make it better. Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
Whether a product is good is not always relevant to its success in the marketplace. Investors couldn't care less about the product so long as the company makes money.
Right which is why investors love ‘services”. But as a consumer I wouldn’t say Apple’s services are great products. Maybe Arcade and TV+ will be.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But my household loves iTunes rentals, loves Apple Music, loves Apple TV Channels, and loves our iCloud Drive. Inversely, Dropbox has been turning the screws on both customers and free-tier users so badly that we're ditching it completely. Once iCloud Drive has folder-sharing ability, there will be no reason to ever use even the free-tier Dropbox.
Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
I think the tech media has a plate piled high with crow when it comes to Mac laptop numbers. The endless negativity about Apple's design choices harming the product look like they're about as accurate as Bloomberg's spy chip hype.
The Mac negativity isn’t really coming from the press...it’s coming from Mac enthusiasts and some tech writers.
Which, as usual, are an extreme minority of never-happy, and do not represent normals. That has always been the case. AI staffer Mike W. reminds people of this every month.
This article is pure hyperbole. It was a good quarter in spite of iPhone which is now less than 50% of Apple’s quarterly revenues. Sure Wall Street loves services revenue but would anybody here really call services a great product from Apple? Tim gave no color or numbers on Apple News+ which leads one to believe it’s not doing that great. I’m not surprised. The News app isn’t that great and bolting on magazines and a few newspapers for $10/mo didn’t make it better. Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
Whether a product is good is not always relevant to its success in the marketplace. Investors couldn't care less about the product so long as the company makes money.
Right which is why investors love ‘services”. But as a consumer I wouldn’t say Apple’s services are great products. Maybe Arcade and TV+ will be.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But my household loves iTunes rentals, loves Apple Music, loves Apple TV Channels, and loves our iCloud Drive. Inversely, Dropbox has been turning the screws on both customers and free-tier users so badly that we're ditching it completely. Once iCloud Drive has folder-sharing ability, there will be no reason to ever use even the free-tier Dropbox.
I don't think Dropbox will miss giving you free services. I would think the intent is to push those free users into paid accounts or off the service altogether. They're not a charity AFAIK
Of course you stopped reading. You have a fragile narrative to protect!
As for 'narratives', I don't have one. They serve no purpose to me. So fragility doesn't come into it.
Oh, you absolutely have a narrative. It's been noted and discussed a million times over by nearly every regular, so don't pretend otherwise. Your purpose here is to spin a yarn about your favorite cheap Chinese knockoff brand.
This article is pure hyperbole. It was a good quarter in spite of iPhone which is now less than 50% of Apple’s quarterly revenues. Sure Wall Street loves services revenue but would anybody here really call services a great product from Apple? Tim gave no color or numbers on Apple News+ which leads one to believe it’s not doing that great. I’m not surprised. The News app isn’t that great and bolting on magazines and a few newspapers for $10/mo didn’t make it better. Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
Whether a product is good is not always relevant to its success in the marketplace. Investors couldn't care less about the product so long as the company makes money.
Right which is why investors love ‘services”. But as a consumer I wouldn’t say Apple’s services are great products. Maybe Arcade and TV+ will be.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But my household loves iTunes rentals, loves Apple Music, loves Apple TV Channels, and loves our iCloud Drive. Inversely, Dropbox has been turning the screws on both customers and free-tier users so badly that we're ditching it completely. Once iCloud Drive has folder-sharing ability, there will be no reason to ever use even the free-tier Dropbox.
I don't think Dropbox will miss giving you free services. I would think the intent is to push those free users into paid accounts or off the service altogether. They're not a charity AFAIK
So do we discount all the free-tier Spotify users? You've missed the point. Dropbox is a product, of differing tiers. The free-tier is intended to convert into paying. But they have screwed both paying customers by jacking up the prices while offering an amount of storage few actually want*, and now also screwed free-tier users by reducing the number of devices it can be used on to the point of being practically useless. Then they have included a new social-collaboration focus that neither group has any apparent interest in.
Thus, the point made that not only are we no longer paying for Dropbox, but we aren't even interested in the free-tier, is valid and alarming. If you can't entice free users, and your pay users feel screwed, what exactly is the strategy?
Dropbox seems desperate.
* Without a contract, the cheapest monthly Dropbox is now $12/mo, for 2TB. This is completely overkill. Cheapest monthly iCloud is $1/mo for 50GB. Then $3/mo for 200GB, and then $10/mo for the 2TB option. iCloud offers much better value proposition. While I was willing to pay something for a small amount of Dropbox storage, no way am I paying $12 for a very large amount. Dropbox is leaving a price umbrella for what is arguably the most popular value proposition. But don't take my word for it:
This article is pure hyperbole. It was a good quarter in spite of iPhone which is now less than 50% of Apple’s quarterly revenues. Sure Wall Street loves services revenue but would anybody here really call services a great product from Apple? Tim gave no color or numbers on Apple News+ which leads one to believe it’s not doing that great. I’m not surprised. The News app isn’t that great and bolting on magazines and a few newspapers for $10/mo didn’t make it better. Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
Whether a product is good is not always relevant to its success in the marketplace. Investors couldn't care less about the product so long as the company makes money.
Right which is why investors love ‘services”. But as a consumer I wouldn’t say Apple’s services are great products. Maybe Arcade and TV+ will be.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But my household loves iTunes rentals, loves Apple Music, loves Apple TV Channels, and loves our iCloud Drive. Inversely, Dropbox has been turning the screws on both customers and free-tier users so badly that we're ditching it completely. Once iCloud Drive has folder-sharing ability, there will be no reason to ever use even the free-tier Dropbox.
I don't think Dropbox will miss giving you free services. I would think the intent is to push those free users into paid accounts or off the service altogether. They're not a charity AFAIK
So do we discount all the free-tier Spotify users?
I thought that was exactly what commenters here do. Unless free accounts morph into paid ones why invest in them? Companies use different incentives to accomplish that. Barely useful or restrictive free tiers is one of those. Tiny cloud storage allowances (iCloud), compressed files rather than full-size originals (Google Photos), or "special" introductory offers that become full-paid if not cancelled (Hulu) are also methods of getting there.
Unless "free" tiers are effective at attracting new paid users why would they do that, especially over a long term which Dropbox has done? The whole purpose is profit.
You think Dropbox feels desperate? They ARE desperate. 10 years in and an IPO does that.
Of course you stopped reading. You have a fragile narrative to protect!
As for 'narratives', I don't have one. They serve no purpose to me. So fragility doesn't come into it.
Oh, you absolutely have a narrative. It's been noted and discussed a million times over by nearly every regular, so don't pretend otherwise. Your purpose here is to spin a yarn about your favorite cheap Chinese knockoff brand.
Quite the opposite. As I have stated a million times. LOL. If I post on Huawei for example, it is almost always due to something popping up in a previous comment that needs some balance injected into it. I happen to know a fair bit about Huawei and Apple so I'm pretty well placed to inject that balance for the benefit readers who are not members (as well as members of course). From there is it up to the reader to form their own opinion.
That, in no way constitutes a 'narrative'. It constitutes - knowledge and opinion - and everyone (myself included) can benefit from that.
If I don't know what I'm talking about I prefer to stay out of the discussion unless I'm giving a simple personal opinion.
Market analysts have been circling Apple like vultures since the IPO, predicting Apple's imminent demise. One week they all lower estimates, and the next week they all raise estimates. Talk about chaos and disarray.
This article is pure hyperbole. It was a good quarter in spite of iPhone which is now less than 50% of Apple’s quarterly revenues. Sure Wall Street loves services revenue but would anybody here really call services a great product from Apple? Tim gave no color or numbers on Apple News+ which leads one to believe it’s not doing that great. I’m not surprised. The News app isn’t that great and bolting on magazines and a few newspapers for $10/mo didn’t make it better. Honestly I think the only place where people need to eat crow is with the Watch which has become a big hit. 75% of sales this quarter were to new Watch owners. That’s fantastic.
This from Above Avalon's (Neil Cybart) article today:
"The narrative facing Apple’s Services is all wrong. Instead of Services being Apple’s revenue growth engine, Services are becoming Apple’s gross margin driver."
Thanks for sharing. I like most of Neil Cybart’s commentary but it should be noted that he has a strong design bias and really felt the company revolves around Jony Ive. A to of his analysis is through that lens.
rogifan_new said: The Mac negativity isn’t really coming from the press...it’s coming from Mac enthusiasts and some tech writers.
The tech press has constantly promoted the idea that there's something significantly wrong with the butterfly keyboard. That can't really be debated.
But I would separate the tech press (like The Verge or Ars Technica) with the broader press covering Apple. I don’t think CNBC, Marketwatch, Bloomberg, FT etc. focus much on the Mac at all. Their obsession is iPhone sales and now services.
"Cook didn't even mention the millions of Huawei Androids that were diverted from Western markets to the domestic Chinese market in a desperate rash of discounting promotions this year. That's pretty clearly because Huawei's phones are not being sold to iPhone users, despite the constant insistence that Huawei is somehow pushing Apple out of business in China, when clearly that's not the case. "
Please provide supporting links to back this claim up.
As for the supposed claim by certain watchers that Apple wouldn't be able to shift X series phones, why did Apple pay a 'penalty' clause to Samsung for not reaching the contracted orders for displays?
Clearly someone got their estimates very, very wrong.
Yet another research published that Apple market shares dropped and Android are taking over....units shipped does mean unit sold.
I agree with you, in general shipped does equal sold.
In Apple's case yes, because they don't flood their channels and in general, manufacture just in time. But that's not necessarily true for other manufacturers who do lots of channel stuffing.
Most companies will not ship products until they are either already paid for or there's a contractual obligation to pay for them (ie 30 day terms). Apple is not special in that regard. So yes essentially shipped DOES mean sold. The products were paid for.
Not true, product get shipped to the store shelf all the time without any commitment to pay, it is call consigned inventory, only when the unit is sold does the manufacturer get paid. Also in consigned inventories agreement there is usually a clause which states if product does not move at specific rate and time frame the store shelf has the right to return product.
I suspect that Apple does not have these sort of agreement with most of the dealers, with that said, I also suspect they do since we have seen BOGO deals on Apple products and these come about due to consignment agreements to help move products.
That is not how product is typically sold, for so many obvious reasons that you shouldn't even have to be told.
Yes unpaid consignment with no assurance of payment is a thing, but not something generally done by companies and particularly not with higher priced goods. In general shipped=sold just as I said.
Don't confuse not being purchased yet by an end user as the product not being sold. It's only sold by a company once (don't be anal about some silly edge-case exception to that), most often to a distributor/reseller/retailer who must then make their own sale of the product. Apple doesn't get paid again by the customer after getting paid by Target for iPhone's shipped to them, nor does the sale count twice. It was counted when Target paid for them.
I never understood this other than some wanting to believe Samsung and others ship all these phones to retailers and they just sit on the shelves. But if there’s all these phones people aren’t buying someone is taking a write down for that inventory. I have a hard time believing any phone manufacturer has all this unsold inventory constantly being written down.
Comments
I suspect that Apple does not have these sort of agreement with most of the dealers, with that said, I also suspect they do since we have seen BOGO deals on Apple products and these come about due to consignment agreements to help move products.
Yes unpaid consignment with no assurance of payment is a thing, but not something generally done by companies and particularly not with higher priced goods. In general shipped=sold just as I said.
Don't confuse not being purchased yet by an end user as the product not being sold. It's only sold by a company once (don't be anal about some silly edge-case exception to that), most often to a distributor/reseller/retailer who must then make their own sale of the product. Apple doesn't get paid again by the customer after getting paid by Target for iPhone's shipped to them, nor does the sale count twice. It was counted when Target paid for them.
And yes, services is a great product for Apple to sell, in addition to their already unfathomable success with products. What's your deal? You pretend like also selling services is DOOM, which is silly nonsense. Services are all around you. You are surrounded by services. If Apple can sell both at a profit, why in hell wouldn't they?
At the very least, the claim should be backed up, don't you think?
As for 'narratives', I don't have one. They serve no purpose to me. So fragility doesn't come into it.
You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But my household loves iTunes rentals, loves Apple Music, loves Apple TV Channels, and loves our iCloud Drive. Inversely, Dropbox has been turning the screws on both customers and free-tier users so badly that we're ditching it completely. Once iCloud Drive has folder-sharing ability, there will be no reason to ever use even the free-tier Dropbox.
Which, as usual, are an extreme minority of never-happy, and do not represent normals. That has always been the case. AI staffer Mike W. reminds people of this every month.
So do we discount all the free-tier Spotify users? You've missed the point. Dropbox is a product, of differing tiers. The free-tier is intended to convert into paying. But they have screwed both paying customers by jacking up the prices while offering an amount of storage few actually want*, and now also screwed free-tier users by reducing the number of devices it can be used on to the point of being practically useless. Then they have included a new social-collaboration focus that neither group has any apparent interest in.
Thus, the point made that not only are we no longer paying for Dropbox, but we aren't even interested in the free-tier, is valid and alarming. If you can't entice free users, and your pay users feel screwed, what exactly is the strategy?
Dropbox seems desperate.
* Without a contract, the cheapest monthly Dropbox is now $12/mo, for 2TB. This is completely overkill. Cheapest monthly iCloud is $1/mo for 50GB. Then $3/mo for 200GB, and then $10/mo for the 2TB option. iCloud offers much better value proposition. While I was willing to pay something for a small amount of Dropbox storage, no way am I paying $12 for a very large amount. Dropbox is leaving a price umbrella for what is arguably the most popular value proposition. But don't take my word for it:
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/06/13/dropbox-sucks
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/06/13/meet-the-new-dropbox/
Unless "free" tiers are effective at attracting new paid users why would they do that, especially over a long term which Dropbox has done? The whole purpose is profit.
You think Dropbox feels desperate? They ARE desperate. 10 years in and an IPO does that.
That, in no way constitutes a 'narrative'. It constitutes - knowledge and opinion - and everyone (myself included) can benefit from that.
If I don't know what I'm talking about I prefer to stay out of the discussion unless I'm giving a simple personal opinion.