Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#61

Post by discardorama » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 10:05 PM UTC

MCRed wrote: post #56

stephen-mw wrote: post #38

I'm long in apple for several reasons: 1. Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the market. Historically you pay a P/E _premium_ for these types of stocks, not a discount. The company is downright cheap. 2. ApplePay has a ton of potential. Just in the other news thread others were complaining that moving to chip & pin cards is basically just changing the f…

I've always found the idea of diversification as a rule, or for its own sake to be troubling. Say you have 100k. You could put it all in Apple, or put 99k in Apple and then buy puts to protect against a sudden decline in Apple with the remaining 1k. (might cost more, not sure.) Or you could split it up into 6 companies. Are any of the other 5 going to be as high quality as apple? I think diversification comes from th…

> I've always found the idea of diversification as a rule, or for its own sake to be troubling.

I agree with you in general, but sometimes you get bit there too.

Back in 2007, I felt that the US economy was in trouble. So I thought I'd be smart and went the full diversification route in my Fidelity retirement portfolio: split it among market funds for different economies around the world. Eastern Europe seemed to be poised for growth, so some $$ there; China was ticking up, so that got some; same for Latin America, Canada and Asia.

But then guess what happened? US got jolted and recovered. But my diversified funds? Most of them are still below what I bought them for in 2007. Especially that f*cker "Mathews China Fund" ($MCHFX). FML.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#62

Post by mkr-hn » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 10:06 PM UTC

liquidise wrote: post #45

mkr-hn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know a few people who use a Mac. Most people I know use Windows (and Android). As always, anecdotes are not the same as data.

Under the age of 32? 100% of windows users i know of in that demographic do so exclusively for PC gaming. Anecdotes will always be less useful, but this strikes me as a repeatable trend among college campuses and young professionals... to say nothing of a generation of children growing up with iPads.

I'm not really interested in dueling anecdotes. Do you have something concrete?

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#63

Post by wfjackson » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 10:08 PM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #11

It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)

>It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone

iPad sales were flat or dropping even before the bigger iPhones landed.

http://hyderabadjunction.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/iPho...

And over the past few quarters, PC sales either stopped declining or are actually increasing or flat. So the post-PC trend doesn't seem to be in full swing.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#64

Post by wiredfool » Mon, Oct 20, 2014, 11:15 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #48

idlewords wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My (non-tech) friend was sighing about this too, until he thought some more and realized he would have certainly sold it at $20. Which would possibly be an even worse feeling.

This happened to me with Tesla. I bought a hundred shares at $35, and had a sell order that said, "sell if it drops more than 10%." Two months later, around $80, it fell to $70 or something like that, and mine automatically got sold. Then it jumped to $250. But I was gambling with it (it's the only time in my life I've bought a single company's stock like that), and I think in retrospect the result is quite good. I j…

Would you guess I did the same thing (procrastinated) with Tesla? Thought hard about it at <20, popped to $30 and I thought the run was over.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#65

Post by dntrkv » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 12:48 AM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #11

It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)

I don't see any reason to believe that is the case. I think a more logical explanation would be that consumers aren't gonna buy a new iPad every year. I bought an iPad 2 for my parents and they're still using it to this day and have no issues with it. Maybe next year I will get them an updated version. But if you look at the iPhone, most people are on a 2 year upgrade schedule.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#66

Post by adevine » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 12:49 AM UTC

mkr-hn wrote: post #62

liquidise wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under the age of 32? 100% of windows users i know of in that demographic do so exclusively for PC gaming. Anecdotes will always be less useful, but this strikes me as a repeatable trend among college campuses and young professionals... to say nothing of a generation of children growing up with iPads.

I'm not really interested in dueling anecdotes. Do you have something concrete?

This is 4 years old, and I suspect Apple's position has only improved since then, but see http://fortune.com/2010/08/07/big-macs-on-campus/ . To your "dueling anecdotes" point, it's also clear from this article that some universities are much more Mac-centric than others, given that one survey of 5 universities showed 70% of incoming freshmen came with Macs.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#67

Post by gress » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 1:07 AM UTC

wfjackson wrote: post #63

jusben1369 wrote: post #11

It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)

>It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone iPad sales were flat or dropping even before the bigger iPhones landed. http://hyderabadjunction.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/iPho... And over the past few quarters, PC sales either stopped declining or are actually increasing or flat. So the post-PC trend doesn't seem to be in full swing.

PC sales have only stopped declining because of the Mac. If you take that out of the equation, the PC is still dropping.

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#68

Post by gress » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 1:08 AM UTC

kolbe wrote: post #53

stephen-mw wrote: post #38

I'm long in apple for several reasons: 1. Apple's P/E is way to low for a company that literally sells the best and highest rated products on the market. Historically you pay a P/E _premium_ for these types of stocks, not a discount. The company is downright cheap. 2. ApplePay has a ton of potential. Just in the other news thread others were complaining that moving to chip & pin cards is basically just changing the f…

I don't know who in the world would want to own AAPL at 20x earnings. They're one big breakthrough by Samsung or Google (or whomever) from having their revenues cut by 90%.

How is Samsung not 'one big breakthrough by Apple' from having its revenues cut by 90%?

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#69

Post by sytelus » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 1:13 AM UTC

jusben1369 wrote: post #11

It's fascinating to me that the iPad is flat and being effectively cannibalized by the iPhone. Can anyone think of a similar example where a newer form factor gets re-absorbed or passed by the previous form factor? (I probably need a more elegant way to say this)

iPads are cannibalized by 3X-5X cheaper Android tablets[1], not iPhone. People have bought iPhone because it costs upfront $200. That's a magic price. Above that price demand swiftly drops.

[1] According to Gartner, there were 68% more tablets sold in 2013 compared to 2012. Android’s share of the tablet market rise from 45.8% in 2012 to 61.9% in 2013 while Apple’s share has fallen from 52.8% all the way down to 36%.

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2674215

Re: Apple Reports Fourth Quarter Results

#70

Post by BashiBazouk » Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 1:14 AM UTC

MCRed wrote: post #49

The interesting conundrum here, as I see it, is that the iPad is losing its purpose. Before, it was between phones- which were small-- and laptops-- which were big. But the Air is becoming a lot more mainstream, laptops overall are becoming knife thin, and phones are getting bigger. I think the iPad was meant to replace the PC for most use cases-- e.g. the email, web surfing etc. and I think it's been somewhat succes…

I don't know about that. I went to buy a iphone 6 and realized it would not fit in my jeans pocket very well. Decided to pass for now. Since getting an ipad I hardly use the phone for much more than email, camera and actual phone calls and the laptop is really gathering dust. I would much rather have a smaller phone and a tablet than an over sized phone.