retrogusto

ihatescreennames said:

Somebody is going to be dusting off and updating their resume. 

Dusting off, perhaps, but an updated resume might not be to their advantage.

One big potential negative for Apple is that Google just lost the antitrust case regarding its huge payments to Apple and others to be the default search engine on other companies’ devices. These payments have given Apple billions in recurring revenue each year, for something that costs Apple essentially nothing. So if understand correctly, and Google has to stop giving Apple these billions every year, that will impact EPS and margins. It was fun while it lasted. 

Apple cares very much about their Services business, which has better growth and margins than other divisions at Apple, and in many cases yields recurring revenue which shareholders love. And for Services to thrive, they need as many active users on their devices as possible. So this provides a strong motivation for them to get more people using Apple devices, even if the margins on some of the older devices may not compare favorably with the latest models. And there’s always the hope that the customer will upgrade to a higher tier next time, and maybe sooner than they would if they started with the best Pro model. 

This does seem smart. EyeSight is cool, but hardly essential to the user experience, and the next-gen iPhone processors (or subsequent models) should be at least as capable as the M2 in the AVP, especially if they are designed with this application in mind, as long as there aren’t significant latency issues caused by having the processor on a different device. 

iPhones have gotten consistently thicker since iPhone 6, a decade ago, and I still see that as the ideal form factor. The cameras have obviously gotten incrementally better over the years, and water resistance was an important addition, but there’s not much I do on a daily basis that was noticeably worse with my iPhone 6. I text, I make calls, I navigate, I listen to music, I read stuff online, take the occasional snapshot. Like most of you, I still want the best phone I can get, and don’t mind paying for it, even if I know it will only make a difference in certain situations, like getting caught at the top of a mountain with no cell service. But I also really appreciate having a thin, light phone, and never use a case for that reason.