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Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

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Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#41

Post by IBM »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #32
IBM wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Google Search are ad businesses, and looking at those businesses they're very small compared to Apple. There's also tons of competition there already and it's outside of the skillset of Apple. Apple is making a car not self-driving technology. They may develop self-driving technology, but the business will be making a finished product that they sell to customers, not licensing technology to others (which…

>Facebook and Google Search are ad businesses, and looking at those businesses they're very small compared to Apple. FB maybe, but Google? Back in February Google was larger than Apple in terms of market cap. As of right now Apple is back on top, $506B to Google's $491B, explain again how Google is "very small compared to Apple"?

Google's business is 90% ads and they did $16.35 billion in profit in the last year compared to Apple's $50 billion (from Yahoo Finance). Should Apple focus their efforts to get a chunk of the ad $ out there or focus on a business that utilizes their competencies?

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#42

Post by dragontamer »

elchief wrote: post #30
partiallypro wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automotive is a low margin, high liability industry. I think Google is approaching this correctly in staying out of the hardware (for the most part.) Apple developing a full car that has to meet x & y regulation from every single different country could end up being a big disaster. Tesla isn't even profitable and has a cash burn that makes a winter furnace seem tame. I don't see how Apple can escape that reality too.…

Tesla makes 25% margin on their cars.

IIRC, Tesla has had only one profitable quarter since 2003, its founding.

Last quarter, they had 1.4 Billion in cash and had a $280 Million shortfall. In ONE quarter.

That's AFTER accounting for the +$350 Million-ish they brought in from the Model 3 pre-orders btw. I don't think they are going to repeat the +350ish thousand preorders at +$1000 cash per anytime soon.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#43

Post by BinaryIdiot »

partiallypro wrote: post #28
darawk wrote: post #16

Is this a surprise? Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? I think the big question here is not are they working on a car, but can they deliver a car that represents a significant improvement over what's out there. And that i'm highly skeptical of, unless they deliver full autonomy. But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. So, I agree they're working on a car…

Automotive is a low margin, high liability industry. I think Google is approaching this correctly in staying out of the hardware (for the most part.) Apple developing a full car that has to meet x & y regulation from every single different country could end up being a big disaster. Tesla isn't even profitable and has a cash burn that makes a winter furnace seem tame. I don't see how Apple can escape that reality too.…

> Automotive is a low margin, high liability industry.

It's a lower margin for the classic companies that use a dealer model to sell cars. Direct sales like Tesla have pretty decent margins. It's unlikely Apple would use a dealer model. That's pretty outdated and will eventually go away (though not without kicking and screaming from the existing dealers).

Don't forget many Android phones have awful margins but the iPhone? HUGE margins. Apple sells premium products. Ultimately it won't matter what the margins are for any of the existing companies when they move into a new industry.

> I'm sort of surprised that Microsoft & Amazon are sort of just sitting back, watching. I guess neither of them care so long as the back end is running on their cloud.

I would be surprised if both companies haven't done some research into this. Microsoft's R&D is pretty famous for working on tons of moonshot ideas, many of which never see the light of day. Amazon seems to move into whatever space they think they can get into. Right now they're kicking ass with their brand new AI initiatives so I think they have their hands full (if I were them I'd shove Alexa into every product I could).

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#44

Post by comex »

steve19 wrote: post #31
CPLX wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. Why? Apple is possibly the world's most effective company at synthesizing industrial design and software in premium devices sold to consumers. Google is a web/cloud services and advertising company. The reason presumably is that you can't see what Apple is doing in public, while Google has a car that still can't drive itself in t…

They seem to frequently fail at software. iTunes is a dog, Mac OS X is getting worse and worse, the Mac App store is horrendous. iCloud is a joke. They do nice interfaces, and iOS is great. I have no doubt they would produce an amazing luxury car with a beautiful software UI, but I do not see them morphing into a machine learning software powerhouse anytime soon, at least compared to Google. Google Now easily beats S…

Google Maps' advantage has a lot more to do with data than algorithms. Google Now is probably a better example, though I've never used it myself.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#45

Post by aetherson »

The idea that Apple is going to "pivot" is fatuous.

Are they working on some non-phone products that they hope will be big? I'm sure they are.

Could they conceivably find that one of those products achieves massive traction and overshadows the iPhone (especially as the market for smartphones cools)? Sure, though I'd bet against it actually playing out like that.

Is Apple making a big planned play to radically deemphasize smartphone sales in a desperate gamble to become a car company? Of course they aren't.

Even if the smartphone market's high-water mark was 2015, Apple has a hugely successful, almost grotesquely profitable product that will -- assuming they don't do something absurd like pivot away from it -- be the source of incredible value for at least a decade and probably much more. On the back of the iPhone, Apple has grown to a market cap that -- even after recent losses, and despite a weirdly low P/E -- is massively higher than the combined market caps of the top five auto companies.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#46

Post by vacri »

darawk wrote: post #16

Is this a surprise? Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? I think the big question here is not are they working on a car, but can they deliver a car that represents a significant improvement over what's out there. And that i'm highly skeptical of, unless they deliver full autonomy. But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. So, I agree they're working on a car…

Apple has made plenty of turkeys in the past couple of decades. It's just that when they succeed, they really hit it out of the park.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#48

Post by comex »

inmyunix wrote: post #35
IBM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple doesn't pre-announce things or do concept videos (the only exception I can think of in recent memory was announcing the Mac Pro at WWDC). Things get announced when it's a product ready to be sold. It's tough to say this is the wrong strategy considering the success they've gotten because of it. And there are plenty of counter examples from their Silicon Valley rivals who like to generate PR for blue sky researc…

Watch.

Yeah, 7 1/2 months was a pretty huge announcement-to-launch delay for Apple (though the original iPhone went 5). But that's nothing like a "concept video" or "blue sky research" - it was announced as a final product design with the same look and feature set it shipped with (though not with a price), and was probably delayed due to manufacturing issues. The car, on the other hand, is still years out.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#49

Post by cageface »

aetherson wrote: post #45

The idea that Apple is going to "pivot" is fatuous. Are they working on some non-phone products that they hope will be big? I'm sure they are. Could they conceivably find that one of those products achieves massive traction and overshadows the iPhone (especially as the market for smartphones cools)? Sure, though I'd bet against it actually playing out like that. Is Apple making a big planned play to radically deempha…

There are no guarantees that the iPhone will generate anything like the profits of the last several years indefinitely. There are a number of strong headwinds including the end of carrier subsidies, market saturation, a weak global economy, increasingly mature competition at much lower price points etc. I don't think they're in crisis but they do have a real problem on their hands.

Of course they have a lot of room to slash margins to compete so I'm not too pessimistic but the iPhone was really a once in a generation kind of product and I think they've taken most of the easy profits off the table already.

Re: Apple R&D Reveals a Pivot Is Coming

#50

Post by rixed »

darawk wrote: post #16

Is this a surprise? Isn't it well known that Apple is working on a car? I think the big question here is not are they working on a car, but can they deliver a car that represents a significant improvement over what's out there. And that i'm highly skeptical of, unless they deliver full autonomy. But there is just no way Apple is going to beat Google to market with that technology. So, I agree they're working on a car…

Maybe they are working on a non autonomous car? The car industry is somewhat similar to the phone industry at the time it was dominated by Nokia and telcos: not evolving, slow to integrate new technologies, terrible legacy UIs ... There is a lot of room for improvement outside of autonomy. I can hear the press mocking the development of a"manual " car like it's the 20th century again, and being ridiculed by Apple commercial success once again, as happened for the iPhone and iPad. Indeed. Autonomous cars are extraordinary difficult to produce but they may be even more difficult to sell while a radically new design of a non autonomous car may still be a great success. Customers are in average much less interested by Autonomous cars than engineers, in my experience.
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