brucemc

foggyhill said:

canukstorm said:

Best article I've read so far on the "State of iPhone" is this one written by Apple Analyst Neil Cybart. TLDR: iPhone has moved from a stage of sales growth to one of sales stability. https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2018/2/21/the-goldilocks-era-for-iphone-has-begun

Has more with the industry as a whole, the only place where they'd be unit growth is at the very very low end, like selling sub $50-100 "smartphones", and you'd need to sell 10 of those to cover a lost sale at the top.

Your install base may become bigger, but not your sales cause sales cycle are getting longer.

If Apple is Apple to serve well their existing customers, the ecosystem will slowly get more and more of the Android top to mid-range replacement phone cycle sales and build it's user base and increase the breadth of what it can offer them.

By the time phone sales are half what they are now in 5-6 years, phones will be replaced every 5-6 years and Apple will  be a lot more diversified.

Perhaps I am a bit too optimistic, but I don't see iPhone sales falling by 50% in 5 (or 6) years time.  I follow Neil over at Above Avalon, and based on his estimates the iPhone user base still has a few years of "growing the base", after which the majority of new iPhone sales will be upgraders (of course likely to see a trickle of new users getting new iPhone or switching).  But by that time, the iPhone user base is likely north of 900M users.  

I don't know if anyone has published what the "average" iPhone upgrade cycle is - certainly more than 2 years, but is it more than 3 years on average (some upgrade every year, some every 4 - majority in middle)?  So let's say it is 3 years now on global average.  I don't see that expanding to 5-6 years (like PC's got to) for reasons of:
- battery as noted.  These devices don't plug in, and while a declining battery in a PC is an inconvenience, it can be crippling to a phone
- breakage (self explanatory)

The iPad was/is different IMO as it was not nearly as mobile, and could remain plugged in much longer as it remains at home more, resulting in longer upgrade cycle.

With perhaps a peak of 900M user base, and upgrade cycle of 4 years, sales would still be around 200M units per year, with a slow decline per year.

wreighven said:

eightzero said:

"it isn't perfect" is a bit of an understatement. I'd pronounce it "adequate." Running the workout app eats battery. Perhaps this has been addressed by Apple, but any day I run that app for a 30 minute walk costs me about 3 hours of battery. My wife has the 38mm version. She is quite active, and gets maybe 12 hours out of her original AW. If you want "all day" battery...well...get a fitbit.

The badge things are quite spotty. Sometimes they simply delete themselves. I "earned" on last month (saw it show up as complete) and then it simply disappeared. 

I like my AW, and didn't buy it for the fitness stuff. I like the idea of "closing rings" and it is sort of entertaining on its own. But it isn't really for a serious athlete, or anyone that is using it consistently for fitness. And perhaps the intent - it was intended to get people to stand up once an hour. It does that fairly well.

My opinion, YYMV. 

I agree with all of your points, if they're applied to the original Apple Watch.  I upgraded to the Series 3 (gray ceramic Edition with cellular) last month, and have found it to be a night and day difference in terms of quality of heart beat readings, battery life, etc.  I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who is interested in a "fitness tracker", and it can do so much more.  I workout 1.5 hours per day (one hour HIIT and 2ish miles of running), and frequently get two full days of battery life.

I do a lot of camping too, and not having to take my Watch charger on a weekend campout (Friday evening to Sunday morning) is a nice bonus.

If you have the means, I'd highly recommend upgrading.  It's a completely different device!

I echo this.  I had the original AW (purchased June 2015), and I noticed that the battery life was getting shorter with watchOS 4 as well as some degradation over 2.5 years.  Where I used to be able to do 30-60 min workouts and still have a good 20-30% battery at the end of the day, I was not always making it to end of day sometimes.

Received the non-cellular Series 3 AW for Christmas (company mobile plan doesn't allow the add on, so no point to get the cellular version), and was a significant improvement.  Beyond the new (from original) features of GPS, water proof, brighter screen - the battery life improvement over original AW was significant.  More than double.  As noted, I can easily go 2 days, with workouts, and never using batter saving mode.  Also, while not a big deal, I do quite like the Siri "talk back" feature with Series 3.

rogifan_new said:

How do they know this when nobody is providing sales figures? 

Apple has provided a number of clues (the Other category + statements) which some analysts use (along with their broader revenue models) to estimate what the sales are.  They have been tracking them since launch in this manner.  Check out www.aboveavalon.com for one.

Not 100% accurate by any means, but provides the broader story.  So was Q1 2018 (Apple FY) AW shipments 8M, 7.5, 8.5, or even 9?  That is difficult to say.  Was it 5M or 8M - the models are much more accurate than that.

Now, the Canalys info in this story seems off - they say 8M units, but that shipments were up 33%, which does not align with Apple's statement of "more than 50% growth".

zone said:

Interesting as all the negative people who said this wouldn't work. Just like the Apple Home Pod speaker right now. When will people learn that its Apple slow march to perfection that makes their products so good? Never enough credit for their accomplishments...

Indeed, the Apple Watch must have been the most derided Apple product (for probably 2 years) in decades - unquestionably called a failure / flop by the tech-blog-o-sphere echo chamber.  Yet here in its 3rd year of availability it is showing massive growth (50% yoy growth for many quarters), hitting some strong absolute numbers (estimated of course!), and with increasing engagement and usefulness.  Some estimates put AW unit sales at more than Amazon Echo products over the last 3 years, at many times the ASP.

While not as universally panned, AirPods had its fair share of negative stories in the first few months (truly wireless done by another company first, expensive for wireless buds, only one size, too small - I could lose them, only works with all features in the Apple ecosystem, etc)

HomePod is the current child.  While I don't expect that product to have the same sales trajectory as AW and AirPods, I am sure in 3 years the units (estimated:) sold will be much higher than the negative Nancies proclaimed would be the case.

clarker99 said:

77.3m iPhones for 13 weeks extrapolates to ~83m iPhones if quarter was same 14week period as last yr AND a $100 ASP increase. Incredible.

Well, I don't think the math is quite that linear (e.g. Christmas gifts are not determined by the length of the quarter).  But no doubt it had an impact of likely a few million units.

I will admit I was a bit more bullish than the results showed.  I thought with the 3 models, and excitement around the new form factor, that Apple would sell a few more iPhones than last year's quarter (maybe 79-80M).  I wasn't thinking a super cycle like the 6, but a general increase over a few years.  ASP was up quite high as thought, which showed the that the X performed quite well (and of course Tim confirmed that).

People seem to be holding on to their phones longer (many iPhone 6 are working fine - especially with a battery upgrade:).  Oh well, better to have a satisfied & growing installed base than not.  At 1.3B active devices, that roughly translates to (my finger waving) 100M Macs, 350M iPads, 800M iPhones and 50M other (AW, ATV).  Nothing wrong with ~800M iPhones, with the vast majority upgrading (at some point).  

Growth needs to come from services and wearables, as the other lines will grow at most (over a few years view) of single digits.