discountopinion

This is very good news if true and looks like Apples short term plan of having AI providers bid for distribution is working well.
Google's Gemini reasoning models are very good and can only help to improve Apple's customer experience

Apple Silicon has really been instrumental to Apples whole product lineup. Really it is the best move of any company I can think of.

Still using M1Max and it is by far the best Mac I have ever owned. Hoping to retire another intel iMac soon but cant justify it yet as it is humming along so well. Apple does not get enough kudos for its engineering of longevity in its products which frankly is one of the best environmental things a company can do.

The Apple Silicon team should be even more lauded than it is and also Tim Cook for taking the punt and going all in on it. Stuff of legends.

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.