gmgravytrain

I believe Wall Street expects Apple to simply keep growing iPhone sales numbers quarter after quarter which I consider pure greed. I know when I was growing up I was taught to hold onto a product that was still in good working order and useful. We'd buy a good product and keep it for a few years until it broke or became too costly to repair. I honestly don't know where this changed to simply toss out a working product to buy a newer and upgraded product EVERY year. Do most consumers really have some unlimited cash flow where they just buy electronics items to discard them while they're still functional?  Hardly.  Sure, I can understand there may be a few people like that but I doubt they're in the majority. iPhones are relatively expensive, so unless the owner can sell an older iPhone to someone else to buy a new iPhone, this Wall Street dream of consumers buying a new iPhone every year is just ridiculous.

Most of the products I have around the house, I paid a decent amount of money for and I expect to hold onto them for a long time. Maybe Apple has tapped out the consumer market who can afford to have old iPhones thrown into drawers just to buy a new one. I don't care what amazing new features an iPhone (or any smartphone) offers, there has to be a serious incentive to buy a new one every year. Most consumers can only afford cheap Android smartphones and that's the reason I believe as to why Apple can't sell increasing numbers of iPhones every year.  Wall Street would prefer companies build some crappy junk product that needs to be replaced every year.  They're damn fools for wanting to live that way.

Wall Street sees consumers holding off on buying new products as a bad thing, but we ought to have some concerns about our ecology and how we utilize our money.  The longer a good product can last a consumer, I would consider that a good thing as a consumer.  I'm not looking for some dazzling new trinket every year and I find it hard to believe most consumers are.  The people I know aren't like Wall Street's description of consumers.  The people I know have more pressing issues of spending their money on more than some new smartphone.  I would think a flagship smartphone would easily be good for at least two years use.

Apple should concentrate on supporting older iPhones with paid services.  With a growing base of functional iPhones, Apple should be able to make a steadily growing income supply services even if they can't sell iPhones in record numbers every year.  The larger the iPhone base grows every year, it should represent a decent amount of revenue on top of outright iPhone sales.  Why Wall Street doesn't see this aspect, I have no idea.