discountopinion

Btw i see a lot of questions on how people could vote for Trump.. well i ask myself that as well but consider also that likely a large chunk of his support base own no or small quantities of equities and thus likely do not give two flying quacks about the chaos in the markets. They will care when/if inflation kicks off though.

I am trying to make lemonade out the lemons that Trump gave us.
Ok Looking at the bright side of the chaos…

Firstly - devices may be 80% of revenue but only about half of net profits. Services division is the best growing with 75% gross margin. Unlikely that tariffs will be as impactful to the services? Also potentially it may be possible to fairly quickly pivot services into a regional revenue model thus having the services “produced” in a local region and avoiding tariffs.

Apple exec team has one of the best logistics persons in the world - Tim Cook. Highly unlikely that Apple has not war gamed any and all scenarios around tariffs and Trump as the tariffs are not a surprise and have been telegraphed loudly and for a long time by the US govt. 

The stock market kneejerk reaction is risk off which is not based on individual company fundamentals or ability to weather the storm. 

Apple has a massive cash pile dedicated to share buybacks which will now achieve a lot more with the same cash. Apple is likely calmly retiring shares at a steep discount and lowering the EPS impact that tariffs may introduce.

Apple has a very tariff sensitive manufacturing strategy though compared to say Tesla that sources most of its components at its local manufacturing hubs in the US, Europe and China.

Apple has a high profile commitment to invest in the US which may now be at risk and Trump has used it as a case study of how his America First strategy is winning. Likely this gives Tim Cook some influence in agreeing better terms for Apple as a Presidential exception and Trump can sell it as similar to the Gold VIsa for 5 million USD.. i.e. invest X in the US and become tariff exempt.

I dont know if China considers the Apple phones manufactured in China to be caught by the tariffs. If not and the above deal with Trump works then the 2 largest markets for Apple are recovered and Europe will likely consider the Apple products as manufactured in China or India (?).

Chaos makes business hard to predict and there are many risks. There are some truisms though in classic thinking - China represents chaos as both danger and opportunity. Notable investors like Baron Rothschild paraphrased “on the sound of gunfire - invest”.

The company coming best out of all of this will be Berkshire Hathaway with 300 Billion USD of dry powder.

I think it is great that Apple offers security updates to older devices. Very good and helps reshape their ecosystem towards iCloud use and enables families to pass down older devices to others. 

Personally I love the iPad Pro 13"M2  model. It is also a corporate board room staple.
I am conflicted about the iPadOS software as I feel it is a bit restricted but on the other hand very familiar. Using it with the Magic Keyboard and a bluetooth mouse is wonderful albeit frustrating in some ways as the iPad apps do not adapt well enough to a mouse being used.

Moving to M5 is great and Apple Intelligence is likely one of the drivers along with improved battery life if also including the new C1 chip or the like.

I wonder how a 15-16" iPad Pro would fare in the market. Provided that Apple can do their magic on total unit weight it may be a massive boon for creatives and executives.

Tricky balancing act for Apple balancing the number of SKUs to meet different needs, strong competition and small market share.

Everyone that enjoys my HomePod 2 home cinema and music sessions are impressed with the sound quality and experience. If they can build on this with a HomePod 3 then i will buy them day 1. I am that satisfied with them from a sound perspective. Abillity to combine more than 2 speakers into groups for even better immersive sound. I would love to group 4 large HomePods rather than the two HomePod 2s i use for the AppleTV. Moar speakers please so we can take the sound volume to 11.

Apple Intelligence for a decent Siri experience will be essential as Siri is just embarrassing at this stage. Latency is everything so running things off a dedicated hub at home may not be good enough.
Mesh wifi options may be helpful to take a leaf from Amazon and use speakers as network extenders and full HomeKit hubs for Thread and Zigbee may be another.
Mesh cluster inference/compute load sharing may be a potential benefit with model sharding like exolabs but home wifis will likely make this non performant.

All of the above does pressure the BOM so unlikely to get the full list.

Another neat angle would be travel accessories for HomePod mini as bringing your own Apple Music when travelling is dope.