discountopinion

For me the largest difference in use between an iPhone and AVP is that the iPhone is used casually and spontaneously whereas a pair of goggles requires focus and feels like requiring determined purpose. Many iPhone users are screen junkies and spend a lot of time every day using the phone and iPhone helped create the casual gaming segment.

AVP will not fit into this niche at least when the iPhone fills this need. AVP needs to offer people something that is beyond the iPhone fix and this may take time to create.

I suspect that AVP may need to come in a rugged mod as industry, engineering, construction, medicine and other fields seem to have more of a business case at this stage.

Also AVP + Optimus may be an interesting telepresence idea for hazardous environments when Optimus comes to market and help train Optimus for specific use cases. Anyone dropping 30k on a robot will drop Xk on AVP and training infra.

IDK if I am correct, but I am always careful about what analysts are projecting and saying.

It can be that they are talking their own book... i.e. they talk down stocks when they have large clients that want to accumulate a position and buy into weak demand or increasing sales. They talk up a stock when they have large clients that want to offload a large position without moving the market down and thus increase the buy-side demand to sell into stronger prices.

No analyst in my mind would publicly talk up a stock without having all their key stakeholders first move on the signals and insight they have produced before the wider market benefits. Naturally all equities analysts will have the same interest or indeed may want to poison the well for the competition by dropping signals early.

Or maybe I am jaded

Overall it was a healthy development for the Apple business. Services keeps on its stable growth and the very positive outcome from my side was the bump in iPhone sales. Clearly the Apple intelligence hype is triggering upgrades and hopefully this will be a strong trend in the next couple of generations of devices. 

I think a potentially key missing step in Apple's AI strategy is developer friendly ways for all the GenAI startups to somehow securely tap into the growing on-device capability of Apple Silicon as a way to offset their capital burn on tokens consumption on the server side. Video AI is a clear hit among enthusiasts and likely burns tremendous amounts of tokens and capital for the startups. Apple's hybrid approach for their own models, which effectively pushes much of the Capex of compute to the customer device purchase, may paint a path for others to follow, should Apple release SDK guardrails to do so.

Apple has figured out a way to scale services revenue and investing in Apple Intelligence while keeping costs largely flat, unless they book Apple Intelligence build out in R&D which has been growing year on year.

As a shareholder I am happy with the outcomes. As a customer I am eagerly awaiting next gen AirPod Max, HomePods, and broader home automation.

Beautiful machines, cannot afford them at all sadly. Will stick with M1 series for some years more.

The Canalys analysis is just odd.

Apple taking market share in the quarter that has their new models being released is great. 

I doubt the 16 sales were lack lustre. It seems more to me that the Apple customer base upgrades/buys whenever they need the phone and may be less focused on waiting for the next version. This is a very good thing for Apple.

This year feels like year of the pivot for Apple on many fronts. It is ok, Apple is still awesome.

They were caught napping on GenAI and it feels like many products have been compliance refreshed rather than massively updated. Apple are exceptional at what they do and thus my conclusion is that they have mind-blowing stuff cooking in the kitchen that are not quite finished as they had to do some internal 180 degree turns lately.

M3 -> M4 feels like poorly planned transition as a result of AI pivot. 

All in all it is a good thing. Apple have realigned. Also they have likely devoted substantial energy on meaningful innovation in health tech like the hearing aid and hearing test. I for one highly appreciate these innovations. They cannot be easy to pull off and likely have pulled resources from other areas.

I wish AirPods Max would have been a block buster update. It was a compliance update to ensure continuing sales in the EU. Here is waiting for the H3 chip and to see what their AI wizards can cook up for Audio.

I am in the market for a new Apple TV, updated HomePods and HomePod minis (have 1 and 2 and many minis), M4+ iMac and a either a new MacBook Pro or I may just go for a Mac Studio. Oh and also a properly updated Apple Watch Ultra please. Oh and iPads.

I look forward to making all devices in the family be Apple Intelligence ready. Let's do it.