thompr

sog35 said:

Here we go again.

This is probably the 15th time these supply chain rumors have come out since November.
And each time the stock losses $10 billion to $30 billion in value.

Yet Tim Cook says absolutely NOTHING.
The stock is down nearly $180 billion since these rumors have started.
Yet Cook does nothing.

Cook will say all he needs to say at the conference call.  If the rumors were true, it's baked in.  If not, AAPL will eventually come back.

 You suffer from a lack of patience, not to mention integrity. (Weren't you supposed to be gone now?)

bdkennedy said:

Siri couldn't get me to my local animal shelter last week and kept me running around in circles...

Are you a doggy?

twolf2919 said:

Price is THE decider on whether this headset will be a success.  This author - and others who’ve made the same point that Apple has had supposed failures many times before turn into successes - doesn’t seem to realize this.  When has Apple *ever* introduced a completely new product category at an initial price point of $3k?  Maybe the original Apple 2 (adjusted for inflation) - but nothing since then.   Sure, there are several niche “pro” products in THS range and beyond, but nothing with hoped for mass market appeal.  And  Apple clearly wants this to eventually become the next iPhone.  And I think the AR glasses originally promised for this timeframe had/has this potential - but not some dorky headset costing as much as a used car.

If we define "mass market appeal" and "success" such that Apple needs to sell a hundred million units per year right out of the gate, then no doubt you are correct.  But I believe there might be a market for ten million units, even at $3000, if the device is compelling enough. Here's my reasoning...

There is a VERY large set of people that eat/drink/sleep everything Apple.  There is a large set of people with enough disposable income such that $3000 is not a big deal.  There is a smaller set of people that are technophiles who desire everything that's perceived as cool and cutting-edge.  Assuming the device is cool enough to interest those technophiles, then I think the initial wave of buyers will belong to the intersection of these 3 sets.  My hunch is that there are enough people in the intersection that Apple's main problem will be supply at first.  The units will sell out and remain sold out until that set of people is satisfied.  If the rumored challenges with manufacture are true, then there might be unmet demand for quite some time.

From the business perspective, having unmet demand is problematic.  But it's a good problem to have relative to the reverse.  You have a great chance of solving it by throwing money and time at it (unless there are intractable manufacturing challenges).

You probably agree with me so far, but you might be asking the important question, "yeah, but what about AFTER the initial wave of buyers is satisfied?".  Good question , sir!

To me, the question of whether this headset experiences CONTINUED success (i.e. after the initial wave) is whether the device is actually compelling enough to reach beyond the technophiles.  The worldwide intersection of the first two sets above is large indeed, so if you can reach past the technophiles, then success will come even at the rumored $3000 asking price.  I know this because I, myself, am in the first two sets but not the 3rd.  I will be watching very closely on Monday, and if I see something that's clearly better than what we've seen before (from Meta, et. al.) then there's a decent chance I'll preorder one whenever possible.  And I don't think I'm unique in terms of Apple-love and disposable income.  There are tens of millions of "me"s around the world.  Maybe a hundred million.

Since Apple has been working on this thing for the better part of a decade, and since the ARKit for developers has been available for many years too, I'm not going to bet against Apple releasing a product that reaches beyond technophiles.  If they can, then I think they will have a product that can move 10 M units yearly.  That's $30 billion in revenue.  

That's a success in my book.

JP234 said:

macxpress said:

JP234 said:

genovelle said:

I bet Steve Balmer winces every time he reads his quote saying the iphone had no chance of gaining significant market share. 

I'm sure he's crying all the way to the bank. One of the ones he owns.

Maybe he's not, but I bet Microsoft is. He's the exact reason why Microsoft was completely left out of the smartphone space. He never took its competitors seriously and when you have companies like Apple entering your space you damn well better sit up straight and pay attention. 

Suppose you'd invested $1,000 in Microsoft on June 29, 2007, when the iPhone was introduced. What do you suppose it would be worth today?

At Friday's market close, that would now be $20,703.70.

Of course, by calculating the same metric, $1,000 in Apple on that day is now worth (are you sitting down?): $1,206,333.33

I doubt Microsoft is crying. But I bet Apple is popping the corks on Dom Perignon Vintage 2007! (BTW, it's because, adjusted for splits, Apple stock was worth 15¢/share on the day the iPhone was introduced. Microsoft was worth $16.20, over 100 times as much as Apple). Each currently have a market cap. approaching $3 trillion. Put away the kleenex!

It seems like you looked up AAPL's share price in June of 2007 and then divided by 28.  That would be the right thing to do, since there have been two stock splits since then, one of them 4-1 and the other 7-1.

So you looked it up and found that it was about 4 dollars and change.  Then you divided by 28 to get your value of 15 cents.

The problem is whatever you used to look it up had already accounted for the splits.  The 4 dollars and change was already split-equivalent.  (The price of the pre-split shares on that day was in the mid-120's.)

So the stock has essentially grown by a factor of:    $180(ish) divided by $4.50(ish) = 40(ish)

So if you had invested $1000 on that a day, you would now have somewhere in the neighborhood of $40,000, not $1.2 M.

You accounted for the 28-1 split twice.

Metriacanthosaurus said:

eightzero said:

No mention of the value of TouchID to applePay though.

Because this isn't a thing. ApplePay has nothing to do with Touch ID. Apple's security mechanisms are why Apple Pay is acceptable to the industry. Touch ID is a convenience feature, that lets you skip entering a password. It has nothing to do with the overall security protocols in place. For this reason, Touch ID is interchangeable with any equally high quality convenience feature that Apple develops.

And within the last sentence lies the rub.  The system developed needs to be equally convenient when used with ApplePay, and that may not turn out to be the case.

Do you use ApplePay at retail checkout counters?  When you place the phone near the NFC system, the iPhone switches to ApplePay mode instantly, regardless of what app it was in or even if it was previously asleep.  At that moment, the phone needs to confirm that YOU are the one holding it while it is still very near the NFC system so it can complete the confirmation of payment.  The current mechanism, i.e. relying on TouchID, is perfectly convenient because your thumb is right there to do the trick.

Contrast that with any other system of ID confirmation, whether it be entering a PIN, scanning your face, or even scanning your retina (not that that is even in the cards right now, but just for the sake of argument).  Given the position and angle that these readers are at relative to your face (often a couple of feet away and at an obtuse angle with respect to your face) I wonder how well the face scanning will work from that position.  How broad of an angle in space will the 3D sensors cover (so your face is even in its view), how near does your face need to be (to give it enough "voxels on target"), and how well will it work if your face is not nearly perpendicular to the beam pattern (how complete is your stored 3-D "face model")?  It's entirely possible that Apple will have to design in a few extra steps, such as either:

(1) after ApplePay is invoked, requiring you to tilt and/or lift your phone a bit to scan your face (or type in a PIN) and then place it back down again, which NFC systems may not even support, or...

(2) scan your face (or enter PIN) first mere seconds before placing the phone down on the NFC system.  (Of course, this would require the iPhone to be awake and make you launch ApplePay prior to placing the phone.) 

Note: a third option is that the user has to bend over to get his/her face near and directly over the phone while it is still near the reader.  I think this will cause some consternation for many users.  Maybe not for geeks such as me and many AI readers here, but I can imagine that a non-trivial fraction of users won't want to contort like this in public.

Just two seconds of thought on this and you realize that from a user experience perspective, the current TouchID implementation holds a lot of value for ApplePay.  Any other "high quality convenience feature that Apple develops" to support this ID verification is going to have to be designed with these things in mind, and I (for one) am somewhat concerned that it won't be as good for this use case as TouchID is.  Maybe this is a first-world problem, and maybe you will scoff at me for my concern over a few extra steps, but my observation is that Apple commonly designs for solving first-world problems.  The original implementation of ApplePay with TouchID clearly indicates they worked hard to do just that.  Here's hoping whatever they come up with regarding ApplePay and ID verification (non TouchID) is just as slick.

P.S. I have similar concerns with unlocking the phone any time it is laying on a level surface and my face is not directly above the phone.  Yes, I sometimes do that to see what is onscreen (such as a score, stock price, or whatever page/app I left it on) without having to pick the device up.

... the only way they could get even some Republicans to vote for it was to bribe them or threaten them.

... which is basically what "negotiation" in DC is: bribes and threats.

So Trump only "negotiated" with the Republicans in Congress.  Since they are in the majority, that's all he needed to do.  It would have been a monumental waste of energy to negotiate with the Democrats, who are neither likely to meet him halfway nor are necessary to achieve his goal.

Calamander said:

charlesn said:

Yes, absolutely doomed. It's so sad. No doubt the VR headset will be relegated to the trash bin of history alongside the many other widely predicted failures for Apple: the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, the Watch. It's just one useless product after another that nobody buys. 

A few years ago I agreed with you - I also predicted iPhone 1, iPod 1 (I had the first model) to be massive successes. 

I didn't predict iPhone would wipe the floor with the competition for the next 20 years, OK, but I knew it was a new class and a new paradigm.

Was lukewarm at iPads, and watch. 

The watch is particularly strange - it doesn't really do anything useful for me, but I guess a lot of people love tracking their health and like the looks... I bought one but found it completely useless. But it has a fashion appeal and Apple did extremely well capitalizing on that. Who knew?!

The VR headset to me sounds about as useful as getting hit with a stick. It's the first real post - Jobs product, and the VR hype is already gone. 

Crypto is more interesting; and now AI, is about 1000 times more interesting - because AI does useful stuff, out of the box. It does amazing things, when you realize you no longer need marketing people or programmers - it can do it all. 

VR headset - has no real life usefulness. I get that the gamer market is large but is a VR set so much better at gaming - like 10x better? I don't think so. It is cool, has novelty value, but people have yet to find anything where it's really a 10x revolution in product. 

This one will tank. Mark my words. 

Apple sells about 40 million Apple Watches per year.  Yes, I use mine for tracking health.  And I enjoy the silent notifications and the ability to leave my phone in pocket or wherever.  Perhaps you don't find the Apple Watch useful, but a lot of people do.  It has become a very successful product.

Apple sold 58 million Air Pods last year.  Maybe you don't find them useful either.  But other people apparently love them.

These are both post-Jobs products.  So when you say that the headset will be the first REAL post-Jobs product, it seems like you are making the mistake of extrapolating your value judgments to the rest of the world.  YOU personally don't consider these products useful, therefore why would anyone else?

OK, so maybe you'll be correct this time and the headset will tank.  (I'm not going to act like I know.)  Let's set a number on first year sales that define success/failure/tank and then make a prediction.  We can check back next year, just for fun.  I'll start...

I predict that Apple will move at least ten million units of the headset in the first year.  At $3000 a pop, that's $30 billion in revenue.  I consider that a success for the first year, and the numbers will rise from there.  Sure, that's nowhere near the success of iPhone.  But, if your success bar is set at smartphone numbers (which has become a true NEED), then there won't be any other successful products for a very long time, if ever.

What do you predict in terms of units sold in the first year?

PERockwell said:

For a company that values things like consumer safety and privacy, I'm a bit appalled that Apple is using TikTok for their marketing. The inane TikTok "challenges" have caused physical harm. A rash of school cancellations in my area last month were a direct result of a TikTok challenge that threatened violence in the schools.  And TikTok seems blissfully unaware that they have any responsibility in promoting them.

No thanks.

So because some TikTok challenges promote violence, you are "appalled" by any and all TikTok challenges?

mdriftmeyer said:

Watch was a grand slam. Definitely buying one.

GPS makes it a must buy for parents wanting to give a watch to their child and know where they are and if anything deviates from their location they can track them down. You call it big brother, I'll call that use smart parenting.

Law Enforcement will appreciate it when tracking children for Amber alerts and more.

The child would still need to be carrying a phone with them  in order for parents to track.   So how does GPS in the watch actually help anything with regard to tracking? 

rogifan_old said:

Facebook is up 12% after hours. Why? Yes they reported good numbers but more importantly they have a good story to tell and they tell it well. What is Apple's story? All we got on the conference call was FX, FX and more FX. Oh and a pretty useless slide about "services" which at this point are mostly App Store and iTunes downloads. Until Apple finds its story and tells it in a compelling way I think the stock is stuck in the mud.

Easy to sell a story when your future growth prospects are potentially bright.  Not so easy when you have already set unprecedented records for performance and have nowhere to go but down.  (Not in my eyes, that is, but in the eyes of many.)

So there is no "story to tell" for Apple other than by the numbers.  And yes, the stock will probably be a slow gainer over the coming years, not a juicy growth story as in years past.  There is nothing Tim could say that would change the perception, because the perception is halfway right.