gmgravytrain

A MacMini with that sort of GPU? No. Apple would not do something like that. Apple will continue to milk the MacMini with lame components and maintain a high profit margin. Apple leaves me dumbfounded. The most powerful MacMinis can't do 4K video and yet dirt-cheap Android boxes can. Refurbished MacMinis sell out so quickly on the Apple store, so there must be some demand yet Apple had to see fit that MacMinis aren't even user-upgradeable. Pathetic. Apple seem to be throwing away so many opportunities just so they can focus on the iPhone.

jbdragon said:

Is Google trying to copy the iPhone even more then they have already? The Pixel hasn't sold in great numbers. Android in general doesn't make a whole lot of profits for anyone other then Samesung and even that is a fraction of the iPhone. Does Google have a lot of money to dump into making their own chips? Let alone a high end market to sell enough phones to even make it worth it? One thing is for sure, it's not going to happen overnight.

They're doing it to effectively drive Google's share price higher. You should realize investors don't always need to see results. All they really want is to hear about how a successful product might increase future returns. You should realize that most of Google's moonshot projects never produce profitable results but each of those projects brings more investors on board and Google's share price rises that much higher. That's what makes Google more valuable to Wall Street than Apple.

All Google has to do is keep pushing more ambitious projects. Let everyone know they're making strides to being just like Apple and their share price will jump in accordance. Once Google can boast that it's Pixel's SoC is as powerful as Apple's A-series processors, Google will be claimed to have stolen Apple's hardware crown and Apple will be devalued even further than it already is.  It's all about creating favorable perceptions and Google is the master at that.  Apple is creating very poor perceptions of its company and that's destroying its value.

It's amusing how iPhone production delays undermine Apple but Tesla vehicle delivery delays do nothing to undermine Tesla. I would think that when Tesla takes advance payment and gives a delivery date it should certainly be met. Apple hasn't given any delivery date for the iPhone 8 so why should Apple be accused in any way of the iPhone being "late."  I have never heard anyone say that Tesla's share price will fall due to late deliveries and late deliveries happen fairly often.

Apparently, certain companies are expected to meet certain standards and others aren't. Apple is not being given a free pass like Tesla is being given. As an Apple shareholder, it doesn't matter to me if the iPhone actually does take longer to produce as long as the finished product is working properly to Apple's higher standards. The quality of the finished product is most important to me as both a shareholder and consumer. Rushing an unfinished product to market is just too risky and the consequences are much higher than shipping a merely "late" product. We're only talking about an iPhone and not some actual life-saving device.

Anyway, it doesn't change my opinion that too many analysts are just downright crooks and never have to take any responsibility for their lies and deceptions.  I honestly don't pay any attention to them but I think too many potential Apple investors do.

Soli said:

Have they really bought back 1.5 billion share? I'd love for that to continue.

Wall Street made it really easy for Apple to buy back those shares over the past couple of years by devaluing the company so much. Apple was able to buy back those shares on the cheap. Look how many shares Microsoft has to pay dividends for (7.72B shares) as opposed to Apple's (5.21B shares). Yet for some reason, the greedy SOBs keep complaining Apple isn't doing enough for shareholders or that Apple is poorly managing their finances. Does that really make any sense to make that sort of claim? Microsoft doesn't make nearly as much profit as Apple and carries more debt, but yet it's Apple that's always the focus of being a poorly run company.

If Apple wants to buy back a bit more stock, I can't complain but I'd certainly prefer to see some nice acquisition made with that cash hoard. I'm not qualified to tell how Apple needs to be run. This is just a personal wish. Truthfully, are there really that many companies who are better than Apple at handling finances? I'd sure like to know which companies are run a whole lot better than Apple. Are all of the FANG stocks run better than Apple because they show faster share price gains?

tzeshan said:

pepe779 said:

This report is heavily biased though. All it does is it takes advantage of the sheer amount of combinations of android phone makers and all of their individual phone models. This way the iPhone will ALWAYS win easily. Yes, it's not Apple's fault that the android world is so fragmented, but at the same time this is not really a fair method of comparing these two worlds, because Apple and most of the other brands clearly have a different product strategy. Compare the the entire Apple iPhone line with the entire Samsung Galaxy line for example, which is a more accurate comparison in my opinion, and you will get completely different numbers (in millions of units):

Samsung Q1 '17: 80.2
Apple Q1 '17: 50.8

Let's also not forget these are SHIPMENTS only, not sales, so the title of this article is clearly wrong and misleading.

On the contrary, this is the better method than grouping all phones under the iOS and Android lines.  Or under individual companies to show Samsung has higher market share than Apple.  It make people mistakenly think Samsung Galaxy S7 sells better than iPhone 7.  This report is clearer.  It clearly shows that Samsung grabbed higher market share by selling much cheaper model instead of S7. The other methods won't reveal this truth. 

I don't even see the purpose of these reports. Who do they serve? Certainly not the consumer. It doesn't serve individual companies because they already know how much they ship or sell and whether they're making any profits or not. Does a report like this help investors in any way? All they would have to do is wait for quarterly earnings to find out if a particular company was doing well or not. Are these reports only good for offering misinformation or numbers without any clear context? I really don't understand what type of value these reports offer. Who can possibly use a report like this and for what reason? Knowing how many units a company ships per quarter, doesn't actually tell anything useful about a particular company. So what if a company ships a lot of units? It might be good if all those shipped units are sold but if all those units being sold are losing money for the company then the report wouldn't be all that meaningful in terms of useful information to get a clear picture of that particular company.

Each time I read some article about how more Android devices are shipped than iOS devices, it really doesn't offer much in terms of context, so how is it useful to anyone. Do people really put out these articles or reports to mislead people? Is this some phenomenon that equates to the theory that more is always better or big numbers are always better than smaller numbers? I just don't get it.  It's probably fairly obvious Samsung ships an awful lot of smartphones at various price levels, but it should matter that the company is making or losing money on its entire line of smartphones.  Companies need to be profitable to survive.