Apple’s Covid-19 Response • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#31

Post by unlinked_dll » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 7:59 AM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #13

blowski wrote: post #10

I wonder which companies will benefit from this pandemic, long-term. If there’s a surge in remote working, for example, seems like that could be good for FAANG, bad for transport companies, commercial real estate, public events. Is there any analysis out there about this?

Streaming sites like Netflix, maybe?

Maybe Disney, more likely. Hollywood has essentially frozen production and from what I'm hearing they're really not setup for working remote in pre/post (especially the latter). Combine with delayed releases, cancellation of film festivals (which are marketplaces as much as exhibitions for content) and the new releases this year appear to be on a giant delay.

Disney is interesting because they have the deepest bench, so to speak in terms of catalog. They also have the kids stuff, and all the kids are at home. They also had their stock dip below $100 with the crash this week, had to shutdown their parks, and quite recently reorganized the entire direct to consumer business. I'd put some money on Disney coming out on top there.

Netflix relies on new content to reduce churn. If production is halted I don't know how that looks for them. However if you take out their capex on production, they suddenly become stupidly profitable. So who knows.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#32

Post by dzhiurgis » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 8:00 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #10

I wonder which companies will benefit from this pandemic, long-term. If there’s a surge in remote working, for example, seems like that could be good for FAANG, bad for transport companies, commercial real estate, public events. Is there any analysis out there about this?

Food delivery, medical (esp respiratory support), funeral services. Probably not really long tho.

Better way to think is what is NOT going to change - food, shelter, utilities, telco, etc.

Will go down - luxuries, appliances, home improvement, cars, etc.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#33

Post by totalZero » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 8:07 AM UTC

blowski wrote: post #10

I wonder which companies will benefit from this pandemic, long-term. If there’s a surge in remote working, for example, seems like that could be good for FAANG, bad for transport companies, commercial real estate, public events. Is there any analysis out there about this?

AWS will make bank on the infrastructure for so much remote work.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#34

Post by RubberbandSoul » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 8:31 AM UTC

totalZero wrote: post #33

blowski wrote: post #10

I wonder which companies will benefit from this pandemic, long-term. If there’s a surge in remote working, for example, seems like that could be good for FAANG, bad for transport companies, commercial real estate, public events. Is there any analysis out there about this?

AWS will make bank on the infrastructure for so much remote work.

That's on the condition that they can keep up with demand or even keep their existing infrastructure running. If the electronics supply chain starts breaking down they can't just throw new hardware at an increasing workload. On top of that there's the fact that existing hardware like hard drives has a best-before date based on the cumulated read/write operations they can handle. I think there's going to be a big demand for engineers and developers that can squeeze out maximum performance out of existing pipes. Data compression is going to be big too, as well as smarter hw drivers for hard drives.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#35

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 8:41 AM UTC

jonknee wrote: post #21

jodrellblank wrote: post #6

Apple’s committed donations to the global COVID-19 response — both to help treat those who are sick and to help lessen the economic and community impacts of the pandemic — today reached $15 million worldwide. Not that it's Apple's job to fix COVID-19, but this is the equivalent of an average US houshold income family crowing about donating $1.80 of their yearly $63k income. Using Apple's annual profit, not revenue. […

And then the next part: > We’re also announcing that we are matching our employee donations two-to-one to support COVID-19 response efforts locally, nationally and internationally. Plus everyone is still getting paid: > All of our hourly workers will continue to receive pay in alignment with business as usual operations. We have expanded our leave policies to accommodate personal or family health circumstances create…

[deleted]

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#36

Post by totalZero » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 8:57 AM UTC

My intuition is that this is a supply chain / inventory management closure, not a virus risk closure. They have 509 stores in 25 countries (incl China). I don't believe that they would close over 90% of those stores simultaneously due simply to generalized viral transmission risk.

I find it guileful that they announced the closure in the middle of the night at the end of the week, a day after having announced the opening of their four remaining China stores to great fanfare from the equity market.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#37

Post by busymom0 » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 9:04 AM UTC

caymanjim wrote: post #14

Bragging about unrelated topics in the first paragraph, and touting a $15M donation while sitting on $200B in cash. So magnanimous. By the way, get back to work.

Seems like you missed the next part where he’s talking about matching two-to-one and also everyone getting paid even when closed. That’s more than enough they are doing. Also I dislike when people comment on why so and so is only donating X amount of money.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#38

Post by bramkrom » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 9:16 AM UTC

Good to read they're doing what they can. In the meantime, there's business like ours (in travel, 70-ish people, not profitable) that are fighting to survive this crisis. Would've liked to see an extension of the deadline for the apple sign-up requirement. I know we're late, but this means we need to spend valuable time redesigning our sign-up whereas what we currently need to do is redesign our entire business model to stay alive. Curious how others in the market feel about this

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#39

Post by keidjfks » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 9:18 AM UTC

briandear wrote: post #3

chadd wrote: post #2

"We will be closing all of our retail stores outside of Greater China until March 27" - Does this mean all stores globally closed, except inside China, which are back open?

Yes. And all retail employees will continue to be paid.

At least in Europe, they need to continue paying wages, unless they established some (potentially illegal) freelancing scheme over employment.

Re: Apple’s Covid-19 Response

#40

Post by jonknee » Sat, Mar 14, 2020, 9:54 AM UTC

unlinked_dll wrote: post #31

ehsankia wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Streaming sites like Netflix, maybe?

Maybe Disney, more likely. Hollywood has essentially frozen production and from what I'm hearing they're really not setup for working remote in pre/post (especially the latter). Combine with delayed releases, cancellation of film festivals (which are marketplaces as much as exhibitions for content) and the new releases this year appear to be on a giant delay. Disney is interesting because they have the deepest bench,…

Disney is also hemorrhaging cash with their parks closed. Along with resorts and cruises. And their TV advertising just vanished with losing all live sports. The next earnings season is going to be insane.