brucemc

Xaviercross1971 said:

Buying back stock is a good short term way of increasing stock value as is continuing to raise prices.  Neither is a good way for long term growth.  They need to find the next big thing and reach Asia, not buy their own stock. The reality is 10 years from now China and India will be the economic powers in the world.  Raising prices and buying back stock does nothing to grow those markets.  Apple has reached it's peak here in the states.  Nobody is switching OS's anymore.  Either your an Apple person or your not.  If Apple wants to continue to grow, it needs to figure out a way to compete overseas.  The more it raises prices to make the bottom line look good, that harder it is to compete in Asia.  

My sense is Tim Cook is only concerned about the short term.  He'll do what he can to keep the stock high as possible during his term.  However, they'll be long term mistakes.  Cook will be Apple's Steve Ballmer. 

Perfect example of yesterday thinking.  Hate to break it to you, but we have been reading this same meme for the last decade with Apple, but somehow their approach is successful in creating the most valuable public company in the world, spinning off the most cash ever, with the highest rates of customer satisfaction in every industry they play in.

Share buybacks have a mixed history in the industry, as it pertains to long term value creation, true.  But you have to look at the different circumstances.  In many cases, the companies are taking on debt to fund the buybacks, whereas Apple is using excess cash (even when they issued debt, it was offset on their balance sheet with growth in overseas cash).  Apple simply can only wisely use so much cash - it is a horrible problem to have!!  Buying up shares is reducing the count, meaning the earnings-per-share (a VERY important metric to share price valuation) go up.  It really is that simple.  And the ramp up in Apple stock over the last 12 months is evidence of that.

Apple is clearly investing in the future, as we can see.  They are investing in (music, video) services.  They are investing in health market.  They have the leading wearables platform, with Apple Watch and AirPods.  They are most likely heavily investing in the next wearable - smart glasses.  They are investing in autonomous systems & transportation.  They invest in each of their existing major product lines.  But you can only invest so much.  And - thank god! - Apple is smart enough to avoid huge value destructive purchases that fail about 80% of the time.  Apple's culture - producing this most successful of companies - would not fit well with large acquisitions.  

You can go on-and-on about prices as much as you want, but the truth is Apple is pricing their products at what they can sell them at.  Keeping prices, or raising them, is incredibly difficult and requires you to add value - which Apple is doing.  Lowering prices is simple, and if that is required, Apple knows how to do that.  They always can if necessary in the future.  Apple's installed base of iOS is probably about 1/3 that of Android, and vastly more valuable.  There is simply no need to destroy that value to chase some low end at this time.

Finally, there are many lower priced Apple products for sale - from the "grey market".  I can go and buy a good quality, 1-year old iPhone for mid-market prices ($300-$500) from any number of retailers or private resell.  I can get a 2-year old phone for a good bit less than that.  All of which will work on the latest OS with better performance than a similarly priced new Android device.  

magman1979 said:

SpamSandwich said:

Bloody Canadians.

As a Canadian, I've seen the reporting quality by the CBC going down the toilet considerably over the last few years, favouring sensationalism and skewed facts to support their own conclusions.

Also of note, go check the comments sections on ANY news story they publish regarding Apple, negative or not; it gets FILLED with the most vile, anti-Apple, Fandroid-troll rhetoric you can imagine, which gives you a glimpse into the type of readers / viewers the CBC seems to attract, and thus they choose to cater to for click bait articles and news stories. And try to post any pro-Apple comments, or post any pro-Apple evidence to counter the CBC article, and not only will you get vilified and bullied, but the admins of the CBC site often delete your post.

It's disgusting, makes it look more like BGR.com TBH.

The CBC should stand for Communist Broadcasting Corporation.  The fact that Apple is the most successful public company in the world is all they need to want to produce a biased report.

I have probably watched 30 mins of CBC news in the last 3 years, and every time I tune in for a few minutes, I remember why I try to avoid it.

The CBC gets a $1B CAD annual subsidy from the Canadian government - without that it wouldn't exist.

techrules said:

Google will keep iterating and will slowly gain share.  This is typical Google MO.   They took years and years before Chrome became a thing and now completely dominates.   Google alway comes late and when people think the segment is dead and wins the space.

Laptops the same way.  Google Chromebooks in 2018 grew 50% yoy while Mac sales peaked in 2015 and Windows years ago.  Only one growing is Chromeboiks but took years.  Same with K12 for Google and now over 64% share in the US.

Even search took a while as well as Gmail.  The only over night success that comes to mind is the Google WiFi.  It has taken 18 months for the Google home to over take the Alexa devices.

Guess the other they will lead from the beginning and would guess keep it is self driving cars.   But in most cases Google comes late and takes years to domintate.

You know that Google doesn't sell the VAST majority of Chromebook units into education, right?  Google produced a high end Chromebook that had few sales.  The low cost Chromebooks in education are sold by PC vendors.  Google makes no revenue off these sales...though it is of course useful at obtaining young new users for their services.

greg uvan said:

nunzy said:

What would happen if Apple banned Spotify from all of its devices?

They might lose a couple of device sales, but probably not many. Apple has the ability. But do they have the nerve?

They'd be subject to anti competition legislation. It's something of a mystery to me that they aren't already, for the fact that the Music app comes prebundled with every iPhone. Doesn't it feel a bit like Internet Explorer being bundled with Windows and giving MS an unfair advantage over Netscape? 

I'm an Apple Music subscriber, however, and I quite like it. But, I'm one of those weirdos who likes iTunes. I've been using iTunes since it ran on Mac OS 9. My whole history and collected music library, ratings, playlists, etc are in iTunes. It just makes sense to stay with iTunes, which now makes a music streaming service available. For me, it never made sense to even bother with Spotify because it was a complete foreign environment. 

I don't believe that Apple should (or ever would) "ban" Spotify or other services from iPhone.  Their record over the past decade indicates that they don't seem interested in doing so.  And many arguments that having service flexibility is in Apple's best interest for their products which are "platforms" (iPhone/iPad, Mac).

As for "anti competition" [based on monopoly practices I assume you mean], that is hard to justify at a global level when Apple's installed base might be 30% of the total smartphone market.  Microsoft had greater than 90% of the entire PC OS market at the time.

Eric_WVGG said:

The “flat button” on my watch kind of sticks. I do a lot of bouldering, suspect that sweat plus chalk dust are to blame. (Climbing is also responsible for a nice little scrape up in the corner, guess I’ll be going with stainless steel for the sapphire screen next time...)

If I don’t rinse the watch periodically after some sweaty workouts, or just plain work, I find similar.  

I just rinse with warm running water, pushing the crown and side button while doing it. No problems.