No Need to Fret, Apple Is Doing Fine

The New York Times ^ | January 27, 2016 | by Farhad Manjoo

[Swordmaker]

Stuart Goldenberg

Let's get this out of the way first: Despite what you may have heard, the iPhone is not dying. Neither, by extension, is Apple.

It's true that in an earnings report on Tuesday, after weeks of speculation by Wall Street that iPhone sales would finally hit a peak, Apple confirmed the news: IPhone sales grew at their lowest-ever rate in the last quarter. And the company projected total sales of as much as $53 billion in the current quarter that ends in March, which would be a decline of 8.6 percent from last year and Apple's first revenue drop in more than a decade.

But if Apple is now hitting a plateau, it's important to remember that it's one of the loftiest plateaus in the history of business. The $18.4 billion profit that Apple reported on Tuesday is the most ever earned by any company in a single quarter.

It's necessary to start with these caveats because people have a tendency to react strongly, almost apoplectically, to any suggestion of weakness on Apple's part. Like pickles, cilantro and Ted Cruz, Apple inspires extreme opinion. The doubters are now ascendant. Apple's share price has fallen more than 11 percent over the last year, in stark contrast to gains by the other four American tech giants. . .

Apple's iPhone business is now so huge it sounds almost fantastical -- Apple books more revenue from the iPhone (about $154 billion in its last fiscal year) than Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard or IBM generate from all of their operations. Two-thirds of the world's countries have gross domestic products smaller than annual sales of the iPhone.

[Up Yours Marxists]

I don’t need to show you diddly squat about my portfolio. I assure you I’ve been trading stocks long before you. And made far more than one might imagine.

Companies come and go. Arrogance is not a good way to play the market. Many companies have taken the top spot, only to be dethroned a short time later.

Apple may have taken the prize from HTC. But HTC took the prize from Nokia. And Nokia took the prize from Qualcomm. And Qualcomm took the prize from Motorola. The list continues.

Bottom line: complacency is the death of technology companies. What has Apple done do curb this?

[Swordmaker]

Apple may have taken the prize from HTC. But HTC took the prize from Nokia. And Nokia took the prize from Qualcomm. And Qualcomm took the prize from Motorola. The list continues.

ROTFLMAO! What are you blithering about? HTC, Nokia, Qualcomm, and Motorola have never, ever been had the records that Apple has been making in Financial numbers. What are you smoking? Nor have they ever been the largest corporation in the world by market cap, or posted the largest revenue of any corporation ever. The numbers of smartphones that Apple sold in one quarter has not been outsold by any company, ever.

Yes, Nokia used to sell the largest number of phones of any manufacturer. HTC was never in the running for that crown as Samsung beat them out for that and still holds that title for yearly sales. You mentioned HP before, but they don't sell phones. Are you referring to computers? Micron? Micron moved on to other products than Flash memory such as SSD drives. They are still doing pretty well in DRAM (Crucial Memory is Micron) and SSDs, so what are you talking about?

Complacency? You claim Apple is complacent, but you have failed to demonstrate any such thing. You are delusional.

[IncPen]

I don’t need to show you diddly squat about my portfolio. I assure you I’ve been trading stocks long before you. And made far more than one might imagine.

Yes, yes, everyone's a millionaire on the internet.

I bet Tim Cook can't sleep at night wondering what you think of his management...