cloudguy

StrangeDays said:

rotateleftbyte said:

prismatics said:

robin huber said:

Yes, because Apple knows nothing about long term service and support. 

In terms of cars, they actually don't.

Very true. They won't be able to get out of stopping support and spares production after 5 years. Then there is the right to repair. There is no way that Apple would ever be charging me through the nose to change the brake pads. These are commodity items and any half-decent mechanic including myself can change them. The same goes for tyres and wiper blades.

Apple will be on a huge learning curve. What has worked for their business so far won't work when you get into the Automotive business.

Apple is the only PC company from 45 years ago to still standing -- and not only still standing, but the most successful PC company. And not only the most successful PC company, but the most successful public company in history. If all that proves anything, it's that they know how to adapt. If you're still betting against Apple at this point, dunno what to say, I hope you aren't a betting man.

1. HP was founded in 1932.
2. Acer was founded in 1976.

So you are wrong there. 

The most successful PC company ... has 8% market share for #4 overall? 1/3 the market share of #1 and 1/2 the market share of #3? Only 6 million more sold than #6? In their best year in history? Again wrong.

Apple is the most successful public company in history ... because of the iPhone and the iPad. The services related to the iPhone and iPad make more profit than the rest of their divisions combined. 

Bet against Apple? No. But take the position that Apple isn't necessarily going to dominate or redefine every single space that it enters? Well we have the HomePod, Apple TV, Apple TV+ and Apple Arcade as evidence. And when you consider that most of the actual innovation in the mobile space the past 6-7 years (if not more) has come from Android then you should revise that to how Apple fans should stop dismissing Apple's competitors. Even when they trip over and embarrass themselves - Microsoft with Zune and Windows Mobile, Samsung with Bixby and Tizen, Google With Android Things and wearables, Dell with bankruptcy - they generally stick around and do very well for themselves. The same will happen in the car industry too.

gilly33 said:

Aww oh-oh. Are they getting scared already. Big duh of course a car comes with long term commitment. Guess Apple hasn’t shown long term commitment to their core products. Thanks Toyota. 

No, they aren't scared already. Why should they be? Look at Apple's current product line.
1. PCs: selling them since the 1970s. 8% market share in 2020, usually lower.
2. smartphones: practically invented the market in 2007. Usually 15% market share.
3. tablets: again, invented the market in 2010. Usually 35% market share. 
4. Apple Watch: basically invented the market in 2015, 50% market share.
5. Apple Music: at best #3 in music streaming to Spotify and YouTube. Tidal, Amazon Music and Pandora are still around.
6. AirPod. Didn't invent the market  - Samsung did - but despite great mindshare and profit margin but everyone else - Sony, Bose, Anker, JBL, Samsung and a host of others - have had no problems competing and even driving innovation here.

And those are the successes. Not as successful:
7. HomePod. Less than 3 million units of the original since 2018, practically no one talks about the Mini.
8. Apple TV. Apple (again) invented this category in 2007 and are in 4th place behind Roku, Fire TV and the various Android TV devices. The gap between #3 and #4 is so big that they may even be behind smart TV-only platforms like Samsung, LG and Opera. 
9. Apple Arcade. The last time you heard anyone talking about it was when exactly? If it had a fraction of the regular users that xCloud and Nvidia GeForce Now does we would have heard about it. The last real news from this effort was Apple ending commitments with publishers (fulfilling certain financial obligations but maintaining the exclusivity, preventing the games from ever being released anywhere). 
10. Apple TV+. Launched 18 months ago and is basically giving it away.

This "Apple, destroyer of competition" thing isn't true at all. The only place where it has been true is the iPod. And no, it wasn't the iPhone that crushed Blackberry, Nokia, Java JMS and Windows Mobile. If you have 15% market share you can't crush anyone. It is Android and their 85% market share that killed off everyone else. Just like it was Microsoft who crushed everyone else in the PC market (until Google was able to parlay their Android and Chrome browser success into some ChromeOS market share). 

dkhaley said:

I'm not convinced that Foxcon would be able to be a quality automotive partner. Vehicles and electronics are constructed very differently. Just looks what happens when an auto company designs their own head units for a car. Uggh.

Another option would be for Apple to use some of its $76 billion in cash and marketable securities to purchase a controlling interest in an existing automotive company. For instance, the market cap of GM is $81 billion.

See above (and I have made this point before).

1. It takes two to tango. No car company would agree to sell to Apple.
2. Even were Apple to find a willing seller, the antitrust regulators would never approve it. Remember: they never actually approved Google's purchase of tiny failing FitBit. Google just went ahead and did it because they know that the Biden administration is going to break them up into 2 or more companies by 2023 anyway.
3. And what - exactly - would Apple and their progressive environmentalist reputation do with GM's polluting factories? Their extensive line of internal combustion engine cars, including the ones that they are still legally obligated to manufacture and service? Are GM's extensive network of automobile retailer franchises going to be converted into AppleCare centers? And what if GM's massive union workforce? Shifting from ICE cars to AVs and EVs would mean laying the vast majority of them off.

You really haven't figured it out: Apple is able to be the corporate good guy that everyone loves because they never get their hands dirty. They outsource the polluting factories that pay low wages for people in terrible working conditions in authoritarian regimes like China and Viet Nam to their partners like Foxconn. Buying a car company would mean having to deal with their own factories and workers and all that entails. 

larryjw said:

Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA). 

It's okay for Apple and these other manufacturers to walk away from negotiations. That's their best alternative -- at this point. 

What has been reported is that Apple has been negotiating with companies who manufacture in the US. At this point, it looks like Apple Car jobs will not be coming to the US. One may bitch and moan about China, et al, taking American jobs, but the truth might be more like Americans, at the least their employers, don't see an upside to more American jobs. 

Apple has succeeded partnering with companies who were hungry and succeeding against companies that too satiated to try something different. 

Is Foxconn hungry? It does seem so. 

Yeah, none of this is true. As I have stated several times, Apple wants to impose the same terms on the automobile industry that they are used to getting from the electronics industry. They refuse to acknowledge that the two spaces are entirely different. With the electronics industry you can survive on very low margins because the volume is huge. TSMC - for example - can get by on maybe $1-$5 per CPU that they make (just throwing it out there) because their chips are in like 2 billion smartphones, tablets, PCs etc. that are sold each year and the same facilities/equipment can be used for multiple clients (Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, MediaTek, Nvidia etc.) In automobiles the volume is much lower and the facilities and equipment can't be reused. While a parts facility can make parts for multiple manufacturers, a factory to assemble cars from those parts will usually only make cars for one company, and often even a single line of cars for one company (diesel pickups, gas SUVs and electric compacts aren't made at the same factory).

Another thing: these companies aren't going to line up to help Apple make cars that will compete with their own for nothing. In addition to not making very much money in return for the significant effort required in manufacturing Apple's cars, helping Apple enter the market will make their own plight worse, as it will be yet another big name competing for the very small pool of high end carbuyers. Even if they aren't going to be directly competing with Apple, any company that partners with Apple is going to want IP to help their own cars compete with Toyota, Ford and everybody else. Again, this is different from electronics where the only major Apple supplier that is still competing directly with Apple with their own products is Samsung. TSMC, Foxconn and the rest aren't. 

Multiple car companies have stated that it isn't in their financial interests to be Apple's Foxconn equivalent. They aren't going to make anything worth mentioning in margins. They aren't getting a percentage of each car sold. They aren't going to be getting facilities to manufacture their own cars. They won't even get IP that they can use to make their own cars better. Yet Apple fans insist on regurgitating stuff like "partnering with companies who were hungry and succeeding against companies that too satiated to try something different" when in fact these companies aren't partnering with Apple because they would lose more money than they would gain and would probably wind up going out of business.

Foxconn isn't "hungrier" than these car companies. Instead, they are able to survive and thrive in a totally different industry where they can turn low margins into profits with high volumes and use their facilities to build products for multiple companies, and they don't need to make and sell their own line of phones, tablets and PCs as their primary revenue source for survival. And if that wasn't the case, Foxconn wouldn't do business with Apple either. It wouldn't be in their interests to.