And maybe it's too soon to tell what direction the COVID-19 outbreak will take, along with the cost of global measures taken against it. Will it die out, will it smolder while spreading around the world, or will it--together with the flu--overwhelm our medical facilities, too?
And the fact that it has managed to only kill Chinese people so far is very strange.
Android OEM Samsung last year ceded the Chinese market to the home-grown OEM's rather than continue to fight a losing battle against those state-supported low-cost manufacturers. They no longer depend on Chinese sales for any significant income and haven't for some time. Add to that Samsungs wise choice a decade ago to rely less on Chinese factories and more on Vietnamese ones that now account for half of the devices Samsung sells.
As it turns out Samsung may be impacted less than Apple, better positioned to weather the "Corona-virus effect" as they have less exposure to and dependence on China.
I lived in Vietnam for six months last year. If you think there’s not bush meat markets there you should go take a closer look. A disaster could hit anywhere. Samsung may be impacted by this issue less than Apple, but clearly they weren’t ready for another issue, of their own making a couple years ago. Are Note 7s still banned from air travel?
Samsung uses plants in a number of regions around the world. Vietnam is a major one not the only one.
As for airlines banning Galaxy phones not as far as I know. Are some Macs for similar battery problems? You'd probably know for sure but again, I think that was taken care of too some time back. New battery tech can't come soon enough.
Why is Kara Swisher a tech journalist? I seriously don’t get it. Does Mark Gurman have anything interesting to say since his Apple connections seem to have dried up long ago?
Apple's supply chain will recover faster than its competitors.
China is making decision today about which factories can open and which workers are allow to travel and this decision is based on which companies they manufacturer for. China's government is giving higher priority to companies who manufacture for Apple verse factories to Chinese only markets. China know if they hurt non-Chinese companies it going to be more costly to China then hurting companies who only sell to Chinese. China is asking each company for a list of their customers and if they have more outside China customers they get the okay to open and bring back workers. The only issue is the tier 2 and 3 supplier do not always know who the end customer so those companies are being held up from opening.
If the Market over reacts they will loose on Apple's bounce back once they get over the hump in the road.
I believe there is an expectation (hope) that the coronavirus will be better under control in the coming 3 months, which means that the ill revenue effects on Apple will be limited to the next two quarters. If this had happened during the holiday season, the stock price would be punished severely. The negative impact on Samsung and Android is much greater due to Samsung's timing of new product announcements - right in the midst of the chaos. The cancellation of the Barcelona Mobile conference destroyed the typical spark in interest & demand for new Android products, and the much needed press coverage/marketing buzz android relies on. Combine that with a fall off in demand in China - a huge Android market - and you have a greater impact on Apple's competition than Apple itself. It could even be an opportunity for Apple to capitalize on. Cook was very smart with addressing this early and head-on. The market doesn't like surprises - this move actually helped shed some light on expectations. If there are some interesting new product announcements by Apple in March, you may see a fairly quick return to pre-corona price levels as Wall Street looks for something new Apple can sell (especially a value priced model) and start to focus on the much anticipated Apple September 2020 announcements/super cycle on the horizon.
One of the best comments I've read on this subject!
Joe, I like you! Full disclosure ... I've been trading stocks and Apple for decades - I've been burnt, I've missed opportunities, but I've also made a ton of money. I put my money where my mouth is and I own my decisions ... I have very large positions in Apple, so I am biased. But I can say with confidence that times like these require being patient and not panicking... This too shall pass... The underlying strength in Apple's brand, products and strategy has not changed due to a virus.
Apple has only launched AW and AirPods since the release of iPad 10 years ago.
In the meantime, R&D spending has gone through the roof. It is IBM-isk in the low number of products coming out the pipeline. The focus on R&D spending as % of sales and number of patents/yr are a cancer to any org - Apple included
Cook talks about how Apple will remembered on “contributions to Health”. Great. So, what is It doing other than incremental improvements to the Watch? Apple is moving way too slow - like it is running in sand
Ditto on the massive effort on Apple Titan car. Too much R&D spend, too slow, no go to market plan (still), no timelines
I think it is okay (and healthy) to question Apple’s recent innovation record
Apple has only launched AW and AirPods since the release of iPad 10 years ago.
In the meantime, R&D spending has gone through the roof. It is IBM-isk in the low number of products coming out the pipeline. The focus on R&D spending as % of sales and number of patents/yr are a cancer to any org - Apple included
Cook talks about how Apple will remembered on “contributions to Health”. Great. So, what is It doing other than incremental improvements to the Watch? Apple is moving way too slow - like it is running in sand
Ditto on the massive effort on Apple Titan car. Too much R&D spend, too slow, no go to market plan (still), no timelines
I think it is okay (and healthy) to question Apple’s recent innovation record
I'm pretty sure that you are using a different definition of "innovation" than I am;
Definition of innovation: The process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay.
Apple has only launched AW and AirPods since the release of iPad 10 years ago.
In the meantime, R&D spending has gone through the roof. It is IBM-isk in the low number of products coming out the pipeline. The focus on R&D spending as % of sales and number of patents/yr are a cancer to any org - Apple included
Cook talks about how Apple will remembered on “contributions to Health”. Great. So, what is It doing other than incremental improvements to the Watch? Apple is moving way too slow - like it is running in sand
Ditto on the massive effort on Apple Titan car. Too much R&D spend, too slow, no go to market plan (still), no timelines
I think it is okay (and healthy) to question Apple’s recent innovation record
Yes, “only” launched the only smart watch that has completely disrupted the market, and the most successful wireless headphones, both combined making up a wearables segment the size of a $20 Billion Fortune 150 business alone for Apple.
Even pretending those are the only things they’ve launched since 2010, which is false on its face, that’s a remarkable achievement.
in terms of foldable phones, as steve said, "...we just can't ship junk". It can't be more obvious to Apple engineers that OLED panels have more potential applications when they folded and hid the panel in iPhone X. But to use it as a foldable screen brings too much sacrifice to the product: the ugly crease, being less durable and reliable, complicated mechanics, much higher cost, while the positive feature is that it just looks cool. It's like the touchscreen before Multi-touch came out, none of these makes any sense.
While Apple is improving the iPhone on the software/service side, such as the Maps, iCloud and truly great Files, AR, Music&TV, watching and testing new materials and novel technologies that would make more sense is a much better strategy in the long run.
Except Wuhan and the province Hubei, Covid-19 is under control world wide. Outside China there are 900 confirmed cases and 124 have cured. Only three have died. Much less than the influenzas deaths this year.
Ugh ... there's no telling when this COVID-19 outbreak will end - heck there's no telling if it's going to visit us soon (our numbers have been frozen in amber and we're not testing symptomatic patients, even on request).
This thing probably has a R naught waaayyy higher than most popular estimates - and stock prices are just staying up buoyed by good thoughts.
Apple's got way too much reliance on China - they've got 10,000 CNC milling machines in their China facilities, and you don't just throw ten into a first class envelope and mail 'em to India.
Between the demand, manufacturing, and parts-sourcing ends, they're pretty much stuck in China for the foreseeable future.
If they activate a factory and they get a single COVID-19 case, they go into lockdown with all workers quarantined (despite what the schizophrenic central government wants to do). And I sincerely hope they're UVing all product through each macro stage of the assembly line. (Their JIT production/delivery model is way too fast for my comfort level).
I wonder what kind of drugs Daniel was on when he wrote this piece?
It is supposed to be about analyst reactions to Apple's recent restatement of its forward guidance. But that restatement was strictly about the impact public health policy in China to contain the Corona Virus had impacted its sales and manufacturing operations. But Daniel effectively blows right past that to discuss pretty much every other thing (mostly long term) that could or did impact Apple.
The truth is: the analysts did not over react to Apple's updates because: 1) they were related to the impact of the Corona Virus and 2) it is increasingly becoming clear that those impacts will be minor and short lived as the virus is being controlled and contained effectively. Yes, things could turn for the worse, but right now it's looking like China's efforts are working and things will soon return to normal.
OTOH, it seems the coronavirus thingy seems to have quelled the protests in Hong Kong. Haven't seen a word about that in weeks. Guess they went home to shelter in place. So Apple has that going for it.
No, the riots stopped when Trump surrendered in his trade war with China with his "Phase One" nonsense and stopped inciting the rioters.
And maybe it's too soon to tell what direction the COVID-19 outbreak will take, along with the cost of global measures taken against it. Will it die out, will it smolder while spreading around the world, or will it--together with the flu--overwhelm our medical facilities, too?
And the fact that it has managed to only kill Chinese people so far is very strange.
That's not accurate, but it's also not "strange" that most of the deaths have initially occured where the outbreak is centered.
The deaths now reaching above 1,500--mostly in China--are tragic but not hard to understand given that it took off in a densely populated city. Wuhan is +11M people, more dense than NYC (+8M). There are a lot more people in China (1.4 Billion) than in the US (330 million).
Last year, 710,000 Americans were hospitalized for flu, 58% of them were 65+. That was despite ~160m flu vaccines being distributed. Every year, 10,000 to 50,000 Americans die from flu. That's a CDC estimate because we can't exactly be sure why a death occurs to somebody sick in a hospital. Children dying from flu are reported; adults are generally described as dying from pneumonia or something general like old age.
We also have no idea exactly how many people a person with a cold or flu can infect. Yet these media reports from china act like China should immediately know and be able to report exactly how many people a given person can infect in a very densely populated city from an entirely new strain of virus. American media histrionics and hypocrisy!
Coronavirus is closer to a version of the common cold than flu, but it's similar in that it kills weaker, older people. Funny that US evangelicals have so far not come to the conclusion that god sent this virus specifically to kill them for their sins. They've been so sure about other ones.
And maybe it's too soon to tell what direction the COVID-19 outbreak will take, along with the cost of global measures taken against it. Will it die out, will it smolder while spreading around the world, or will it--together with the flu--overwhelm our medical facilities, too?
And the fact that it has managed to only kill Chinese people so far is very strange.
Not strange at all. China took extreme action to contain the virus and its actions are turning out to have been extremely effective. Thanks China! The U.S. could have never pulled off what you did.
Can you even imagine the U.S. quarantining entire cities of tens of millions? Ordering factories, schools and shops to close? Telling families that only a single member was allowed out of the house and on which days? Building major new hospitals in a matter of days? And so on.
Had this virus arisen in the U.S. not only would it have rapidly become a nationwide epidemic but a world wide pandemic. And meanwhile, the U.S. has done nothing to help China contain or manage this outbreak. Shameful!
Apple has only launched AW and AirPods since the release of iPad 10 years ago.
In the meantime, R&D spending has gone through the roof. It is IBM-isk in the low number of products coming out the pipeline. The focus on R&D spending as % of sales and number of patents/yr are a cancer to any org - Apple included
Cook talks about how Apple will remembered on “contributions to Health”. Great. So, what is It doing other than incremental improvements to the Watch? Apple is moving way too slow - like it is running in sand
Ditto on the massive effort on Apple Titan car. Too much R&D spend, too slow, no go to market plan (still), no timelines
I think it is okay (and healthy) to question Apple’s recent innovation record
Except that Swisher was just being lazy with a cliche trope about "Apple not innovating" which is total bullshit, apart from being incorrect and misleading. There was no honest question of how much Apple was delivering for its innovation investment. But the answer to that question is also that Apple spends much less than its peers and delivers far more in terms of new, expansion and profits anyways.
It's easy to get lost in counting Apple's big innovations" as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc, but it's not three innovations. Apple has now delivered 19 years of the worlds best selling, most profitable phone. It's also a camera, camcorder, computer, mobile music, TV, game device, and so on. It's an everything product. And yet its also sold ten years of tablets in a world of competitors that can't manage to sell any material number of tablets even at break even for any period of time. And on top it is now selling its 6th gen watch in a climate where nobody else can compete. And now AirPods.
To look at that and ask, where is the results for apple's minimal R&D?! is just asinine beyond words. It's literally the laziest, least insightful thing a person who writes about tech could sit in front of a camera and say to an audience. So shame on her.
Where are the pundits reminding us that Google and Microsoft haven't innovated their R&D into a functional hardware business, even after just trying to copy Apple verbatim? They get a full pass for failing for the last 15 years of peak smartphone and Apple gets drilled about failing to "innovate?" That's just bullshit beyond the pale. It's like looking at the British empire in 1850 and asking, where are Britain's colonies!? They haven't added a new continent lately!
Apple has only launched AW and AirPods since the release of iPad 10 years ago.
In the meantime, R&D spending has gone through the roof. It is IBM-isk in the low number of products coming out the pipeline. The focus on R&D spending as % of sales and number of patents/yr are a cancer to any org - Apple included
Cook talks about how Apple will remembered on “contributions to Health”. Great. So, what is It doing other than incremental improvements to the Watch? Apple is moving way too slow - like it is running in sand
Ditto on the massive effort on Apple Titan car. Too much R&D spend, too slow, no go to market plan (still), no timelines
I think it is okay (and healthy) to question Apple’s recent innovation record
Except that Swisher was just being lazy with a cliche trope about "Apple not innovating" which is total bullshit, apart from being incorrect and misleading. Apple has now delivered 19 years of the worlds best selling, most profitable phone.
Your math is off, only 13 years since it was released and something less than that when it became the best selling and most profitable (10 years maybe?)... Might want to edit that. But otherwise yeah, got the point you were attempting to make.
Ugh ... there's no telling when this COVID-19 outbreak will end - heck there's no telling if it's going to visit us soon (our numbers have been frozen in amber and we're not testing symptomatic patients, even on request).
This thing probably has a R naught waaayyy higher than most popular estimates - and stock prices are just staying up buoyed by good thoughts.
Apple's got way too much reliance on China - they've got 10,000 CNC milling machines in their China facilities, and you don't just throw ten into a first class envelope and mail 'em to India.
Between the demand, manufacturing, and parts-sourcing ends, they're pretty much stuck in China for the foreseeable future.
If they activate a factory and they get a single COVID-19 case, they go into lockdown with all workers quarantined (despite what the schizophrenic central government wants to do). And I sincerely hope they're UVing all product through each macro stage of the assembly line. (Their JIT production/delivery model is way too fast for my comfort level).
China is similar in land area to the USA. Fires in California, or floods in the South don't shut down the entire country. Three mile island didn't turn the whole country into a wasteland. About 40,000 Americans die in car crashed every year. That doesn't stop all economic activity across the country.
Also, a factory is probably one of the easiest facilities to keep clean. The rapid spread of this virus is largely related to lots of people living in close quarters with janky plumbing. It's more surprising that this sort of thing isn't occurring more often in China and in emerging nations with extremely dense populations.
China's shutdown of massive transportation and big events to contain a rapid spreading of a cold virus is excessive caution. If this were a really deadly plague, we wouldn't be reading of 1500 deaths after two months of 11 million people being confined in a megacity.
Except Wuhan and the province Hubei, Covid-19 is under control world wide. Outside China there are 900 confirmed cases and 124 have cured. Only three have died. Much less than the influenzas deaths this year.
You are looking at it from the absolute numbers point of view. The real threat is in how quickly and easily this virus spreads as well as the mortality rate of this virus, which is 290 times as high as of the common flu virus.
That’s the reason that China has over 60 million people under a lockdown in their apartments and another 780 million people under travel restrictions. That’s the reason that China almost completely shut down their economy for so long.
The real picture here is the scale of the effort to contain the virus and not the scale of the numbers of those infected and those who died from the virus. Without these extraordinary measures to contain the virus, there would have been hundreds of millions of infected and many millions dead by now, and the numbers would be continuing to rise exponentially.
Unless it heralds a long term, devastating change on human civilization (like the Black Plague, for example), Covid 19 will turn out to be another one of those serious but fleeting adverse blips that history throws out once in a while. That AAPL took even a middling hit because of it is a credit to the guile of stock manipulators who filled cyberspace with shrill warnings of Apple's impending downfall and an embarrassment to their gullible victims who swallowed this tripe hook, line, and sinker and sold in panic.
Comments
As for airlines banning Galaxy phones not as far as I know. Are some Macs for similar battery problems? You'd probably know for sure but again, I think that was taken care of too some time back. New battery tech can't come soon enough.
China is making decision today about which factories can open and which workers are allow to travel and this decision is based on which companies they manufacturer for. China's government is giving higher priority to companies who manufacture for Apple verse factories to Chinese only markets. China know if they hurt non-Chinese companies it going to be more costly to China then hurting companies who only sell to Chinese. China is asking each company for a list of their customers and if they have more outside China customers they get the okay to open and bring back workers. The only issue is the tier 2 and 3 supplier do not always know who the end customer so those companies are being held up from opening.
If the Market over reacts they will loose on Apple's bounce back once they get over the hump in the road.
Cook talks about how Apple will remembered on “contributions to Health”. Great. So, what is It doing other than incremental improvements to the Watch? Apple is moving way too slow - like it is running in sand
Ditto on the massive effort on Apple Titan car. Too much R&D spend, too slow, no go to market plan (still), no timelines
I think it is okay (and healthy) to question Apple’s recent innovation record
Definition of innovation: The process of translating an idea or invention into a good or service that creates value or for which customers will pay.
Yeah, that would be Apple.
Ugh ... there's no telling when this COVID-19 outbreak will end - heck there's no telling if it's going to visit us soon (our numbers have been frozen in amber and we're not testing symptomatic patients, even on request).
This thing probably has a R naught waaayyy higher than most popular estimates - and stock prices are just staying up buoyed by good thoughts.
Apple's got way too much reliance on China - they've got 10,000 CNC milling machines in their China facilities, and you don't just throw ten into a first class envelope and mail 'em to India.
Between the demand, manufacturing, and parts-sourcing ends, they're pretty much stuck in China for the foreseeable future.
If they activate a factory and they get a single COVID-19 case, they go into lockdown with all workers quarantined (despite what the schizophrenic central government wants to do). And I sincerely hope they're UVing all product through each macro stage of the assembly line. (Their JIT production/delivery model is way too fast for my comfort level).
No, the riots stopped when Trump surrendered in his trade war with China with his "Phase One" nonsense and stopped inciting the rioters.
The deaths now reaching above 1,500--mostly in China--are tragic but not hard to understand given that it took off in a densely populated city. Wuhan is +11M people, more dense than NYC (+8M). There are a lot more people in China (1.4 Billion) than in the US (330 million).
Last year, 710,000 Americans were hospitalized for flu, 58% of them were 65+. That was despite ~160m flu vaccines being distributed. Every year, 10,000 to 50,000 Americans die from flu. That's a CDC estimate because we can't exactly be sure why a death occurs to somebody sick in a hospital. Children dying from flu are reported; adults are generally described as dying from pneumonia or something general like old age.
We also have no idea exactly how many people a person with a cold or flu can infect. Yet these media reports from china act like China should immediately know and be able to report exactly how many people a given person can infect in a very densely populated city from an entirely new strain of virus. American media histrionics and hypocrisy!
Coronavirus is closer to a version of the common cold than flu, but it's similar in that it kills weaker, older people. Funny that US evangelicals have so far not come to the conclusion that god sent this virus specifically to kill them for their sins. They've been so sure about other ones.
Except that Swisher was just being lazy with a cliche trope about "Apple not innovating" which is total bullshit, apart from being incorrect and misleading. There was no honest question of how much Apple was delivering for its innovation investment. But the answer to that question is also that Apple spends much less than its peers and delivers far more in terms of new, expansion and profits anyways.
It's easy to get lost in counting Apple's big innovations" as iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, etc, but it's not three innovations. Apple has now delivered 19 years of the worlds best selling, most profitable phone. It's also a camera, camcorder, computer, mobile music, TV, game device, and so on. It's an everything product. And yet its also sold ten years of tablets in a world of competitors that can't manage to sell any material number of tablets even at break even for any period of time. And on top it is now selling its 6th gen watch in a climate where nobody else can compete. And now AirPods.
To look at that and ask, where is the results for apple's minimal R&D?! is just asinine beyond words. It's literally the laziest, least insightful thing a person who writes about tech could sit in front of a camera and say to an audience. So shame on her.
Where are the pundits reminding us that Google and Microsoft haven't innovated their R&D into a functional hardware business, even after just trying to copy Apple verbatim? They get a full pass for failing for the last 15 years of peak smartphone and Apple gets drilled about failing to "innovate?" That's just bullshit beyond the pale. It's like looking at the British empire in 1850 and asking, where are Britain's colonies!? They haven't added a new continent lately!
But otherwise yeah, got the point you were attempting to make.
China is similar in land area to the USA. Fires in California, or floods in the South don't shut down the entire country. Three mile island didn't turn the whole country into a wasteland. About 40,000 Americans die in car crashed every year. That doesn't stop all economic activity across the country.
Also, a factory is probably one of the easiest facilities to keep clean. The rapid spread of this virus is largely related to lots of people living in close quarters with janky plumbing. It's more surprising that this sort of thing isn't occurring more often in China and in emerging nations with extremely dense populations.
China's shutdown of massive transportation and big events to contain a rapid spreading of a cold virus is excessive caution. If this were a really deadly plague, we wouldn't be reading of 1500 deaths after two months of 11 million people being confined in a megacity.
long.