gmgravytrain

rogifan_new said:

elijahg said:

But but but market share doesn't matter..! Just make them even more expensive so the profit margin is >80%! /sarcasm

Honestly I’m not sure how Apple competes in India. I thought Apple’s MO was to be an aspersional brand, to acquire customers as they move into the middle class. Is that possible in India?

All Tim Cook can do is wait for India's consumer to make more money in the future. I heard about phone sales in India and at this point in time there's almost nothing Apple can do. People in India are happily buying phones closer to feature phones and they're running KaiOS that can cost as low as $22 and basically just sip data from low-end phone plans. Even the telecoms hate that cheap stuff. Almost no one in India is going to buy an iPhone and even if M. Gandhi is reborn carrying an iPhone, Apple loses. No one at Apple can be held responsible for this. This is the proverbial trying to get blood from a beet sort of scenario. Anyone who starts criticizing Apple about not grabbing phone market share is a damn idiot and should be tossed into the Ganges sewer-way. They need to stop focusing on these billions of potential consumers and grasp the reality of the India consumer's current state. Sure Apple can acquire customers over time but it's going to be slow, slow going. For the news media to be spouting about the iPhone failing in India, they're just stupid and narrow-minded. Apple is building nothing suitable for the typical Indian consumer masses. As an Apple shareholder, I'd tell the Indian consumer NOT to buy an iPhone and buy something practical in terms of cost. Spend their money on education, health and sanitation before thinking about owning an iPhone. It would be like some homeless dude leasing a BMW to drive around in and that makes no sense at all. Apple doesn't need the India consumer right now so if only a token amount of iPhones is sold there each year, good for Apple.

lkrupp said:

We are bombarded daily with gleeful reports that Apple is failing in China. More negative tripe or fact?

The only thing that matters is what Apple reports on quarterly earnings. So no matter what negative news the media throws out, the bottom line is what Apple is earning. There are always going to be the liars and miscreants who try to deceive investors from believing in Apple. They're losers. I read those negative articles but I usually doubt those unverified sources. I believe in Apple because the company has more cash and resources than all of its rivals. So far, my belief in the company has paid off. If Buffett is helping to back Apple then that's all the more reason to hold Apple.

Soli said:

bonobob said:

linkman said:

Intel is running up against the fact that wavelengths of light can get only so short (10 nm is pretty stinking short) and physics is going to win at attempts to get much smaller. A transistor can't get smaller than an atom. Progress on ICs is getting slower and will need some sort of breakthrough (like power reduction, using neural-type processing, memristors, light instead of electricity, etc.) before we can see performance improvement rates that we've experienced over the last 40 years.

On the other hand, Apple's current lineup of iPhones is rocking a 10nm SOC, so physics is not the limitation.  Intel is just behind on the manufacturing tech.

Edit: Missing apostrophe.

I don't understand how Intel is measuring in a different way from others, but I'm told that Apple's SoC's at 10nm are actually more inline with 14nm.

I'd seen some youtube article telling about how nanometer designs can measured differently, so one of a larger size can be equivalent to another of a smaller size. I think it has to do with the way the gates are designed or just liberal ways of measuring gate size. This video explains it in some detail:

linkman said:

Intel is running up against the fact that wavelengths of light can get only so short (10 nm is pretty stinking short) and physics is going to win at attempts to get much smaller. A transistor can't get smaller than an atom. Progress on ICs is getting slower and will need some sort of breakthrough (like power reduction, using neural-type processing, memristors, light instead of electricity, etc.) before we can see performance improvement rates that we've experienced over the last 40 years.

Actually, there are working 5nm transistors that should be going into production in 2020. It's just amazing. https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/05/ibm-creates-a-new-transistor-type-for-5nm-silicon-chips/ I'd heard if we could go to some other materials from silicon, transistor gates could be made much smaller without having an electron tunneling problem.

But he's a professional, so the show must go on! What a diva. Or maybe he's just anti-Apple.