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iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

nytimes.com

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Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#111

Post by mongol »

mmanfrin wrote: post #79
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #70

I'm curious what other people think about the ecosystem as a catalyst, in particular Apple Pay. It seems to be that squeezing between iPhone owners and everyday purchases would be very lucrative.

It seems to be that squeezing between iPhone owners and everyday purchases would be very lucrative And something that Banks will very strongly oppose. How many places can you use Apple Pay right now? I love Android Pay, but the only store I can use it at is Walgreens -- no where else I go takes it. Banks still hold a huge amount of power at the point-of-sale market, and they will not give up their margins to Apple.

Can Apple become a bank?

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#112

Post by Retric »

bsirkia wrote: post #47

Incredible that this is the first time in 13 years that Apple hasn't posted quarterly growth. I'm sure there will be lots of "Apple has lost its ability to innovate" articles based on this, but growing for the last ~52 straight quarters is insane. And I don't think one quarter without growth is enough evidence to conclude "Apple may be reaching the saturation point among potential customers in some countries" or "oth…

Innovation had little to do with this, US cellphone companies stopped heavily subsidizing phones. Apple's profits dropped.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#113

Post by allisthemoist »

noir-york wrote: post #83

$175 billion in buy backs?! Wow, its expensive propping up the share price to keep Wall Street happy... There is only so much hardware innovation, there are only so many people on the planet with $600 to spend on a mobile phone. Apple should really move whole heartedly into services (as evidenced by revenue up 20%); build a gmail / dropbox competitor - stop thinking of itself as a consumer hardware maker, that era is…

Why do you think the era is over? Are people buying less cellphones and laptops?

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#114

Post by madeofpalk »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #91
bsirkia wrote: post #47

Incredible that this is the first time in 13 years that Apple hasn't posted quarterly growth. I'm sure there will be lots of "Apple has lost its ability to innovate" articles based on this, but growing for the last ~52 straight quarters is insane. And I don't think one quarter without growth is enough evidence to conclude "Apple may be reaching the saturation point among potential customers in some countries" or "oth…

IMHO biggest Android advantage is being open. Hardware and software is obviously better on iOS, but being closed platform I keep getting disappointed every week because I can't do x or y. I doubt that many people base their purchasing decisions on this though.

Ignoring of course the fact that the most important parts of Android is not open source (Google Play Services, which is at the centre of a very misguided EU anti trust case), just because Android is 'open' it doesn't mean you can do more things on it. If something is possible on Android that's because of a design decision that Google took. Besides, what happens when you run iNot someone that you can't so on Android? You going to download the source code and make a change and flash it to your decide? I doubt it.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#115

Post by simonh »

toyg wrote: post #61

Apple is not doomed, but I think they've taken their eyes off the ball a bit. Watch and iPad Pro are me-too products, and the switch to flat interfaces cost them a lot of differentiation IMHO. They've cheapened their brand and they don't seem to know what market they should really disrupt.

Personally I'm not interested in the watch, but the iPad Pro is far from me-too. The display on the 9.7" is outstanding, the pencil is top notch, it's light, powerful, sounds great. At this point Apple is just knocking it out of the park in tablets on every front. Nobody else makes anything that comes close.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#116

Post by allsystemsgo »

wslh wrote: post #85
cowpewter wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The iPad Pro is actually really awesome for artists. Pro + Pencil is a better experience than a Wacom Cintiq display, and it's a whole tablet for about the same price point, not just a display.

Any experience on the Microsoft Surface? It seems it works very well for artists also.

Apple Pencil is pretty incredibly and trumps the stylus offered by Microsoft IMHO.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#117

Post by FussyZeus »

bsirkia wrote: post #47

Incredible that this is the first time in 13 years that Apple hasn't posted quarterly growth. I'm sure there will be lots of "Apple has lost its ability to innovate" articles based on this, but growing for the last ~52 straight quarters is insane. And I don't think one quarter without growth is enough evidence to conclude "Apple may be reaching the saturation point among potential customers in some countries" or "oth…

Apple doesn't innovate terribly much, there were smart phones before the iPhone, the iPhone was just a better one. There were tablets before the iPad and the iPad was just a better tablet.

Apple's strength isn't in coming up with NEW things, I would say quite the opposite as they're usually very late into any given market. Apple's strength is coming up with products that are better than the ones that came before, in their Apple-y way.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#118

Post by jonknee »

radley wrote: post #103
ericabiz wrote: post #4

I run a repair shop. We've repaired over 3,000 Apple devices for customers. We are always chatting with our customers, so we get a ton of feedback from them about what they're doing with their phones. We hear a few things consistently: 1) Providers have switched from "free upgrades every 2 years" to a plan cost and a monthly phone cost, so people now really know how much their phone costs--and many would rather save…

I don't think buyers had much choice in colors. We're a dev shop and we couldn't get basic silver / grey devices with the specs we wanted. All they had was gold or pink.

Um, what? You can order whatever color you would like:

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone6s

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#119

Post by rrggrr »

nugget wrote: post #40
rrggrr wrote: post #13

50.6b net income on 39.4% gross margins. A bit early to be writing Apple's obituary or anything even close. Retail is suffering nationwide and I suspect Apple is caught up in this decline.

More likely mobile is headed quietly down the path of the PC - fewer generational improvements means people keep devices longer and there isn't as much of a reason to buy new hardware so sales flatline. Great business still but Wall Street hates that narrative. They want the next hot growth market -- VR perhaps when its killer app moment arrives.

I'll say this: Amazon Echo cut Apple's growth balls right off. That's a $2b revenue business Siri can kiss goodbye.

Re: iPhone Sales Drop, and Apple’s 13-Year Surge Ebbs

#120

Post by klipt »

cowpewter wrote: post #74
toyg wrote: post #61

Apple is not doomed, but I think they've taken their eyes off the ball a bit. Watch and iPad Pro are me-too products, and the switch to flat interfaces cost them a lot of differentiation IMHO. They've cheapened their brand and they don't seem to know what market they should really disrupt.

The iPad Pro is actually really awesome for artists. Pro + Pencil is a better experience than a Wacom Cintiq display, and it's a whole tablet for about the same price point, not just a display.

Artists (e.g. Gabe of Penny Arcade fame) were saying similar things about MS's Surface Pro 3 years ago: https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2013/02/22/the-ms-sur...

Is the iPad Pro a big improvement on that?

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