Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#471

Post by lunchables » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 1:35 PM UTC

klauslovgreen wrote: post #413

I think the trouble is that the devices are getting too good and there is really only incremental improvement every year so the upgrade cycle is getting longer. I typically get the latest phone every year (but it starts to feel unnecessary) - iPad's and Mac's, however, last a lot longer (several years) for me these days. I wonder where the real innovation is going to come from? AI, AR?

Airpods and Apple Watch are both relatively new products in Apple-terms and have many years of incremental improvements ahead of them.

If you are looking for something as big as the iPhone, I think you might be disappointed. But, it is a pretty poorly kept secret that they are working on self-driving cars and some kind of "TV".

And Apple has been pretty clear about focusing on growth in services now that they have this massive base of deployed devices.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#472

Post by scarface74 » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #392

scarface74 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did not create the smart phone market. By 2004-2005 the average middle class American had cell phones. Cheap prepaid phones could be bought for less than $100 with minutes. The Nokia candy bar phone was already selling well in developing countries. The BlackBerry, Windows Phones, and Palm phones were already selling. It was already clear when Apple was entering the market that the cell phone was gaining ubiquity…

fucking cloud computing they should provide a cloud on which you can use Metal compute

How does that dovetail with Apple’s strengths as a vertically integrated consumer electronics company? What would they bring to the table that would help them compete with the other cloud players? Amazon had first mover advantage and Microsoft had a large enterprise base to draw from and an inside and outside enterprise sales force. Apple has none of that. Google is struggling in the cloud with large companies partially because of no enterprise sales experience and no reputation in the enterprise. Apple would be even less competitive.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#473

Post by george_morgan » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

OrgNet wrote: post #467

m-p-3 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, they'll definitely make some money with Apple Music and Apple News+

Apple News+ includes fake news? why the plus?

News+ is the new subscription service, in addition to the free service ('News').

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#474

Post by ajross » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 1:45 PM UTC

mruts wrote: post #434

roboys wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that AAPL goes on regular stock buy back sprees with its warchest instead of risking innovation helps with the stability of what should be a declining stock price.

Why should the stock price be declining? Also companies do buybacks when the stock is cheap, not exepensive.

A stock buy-back increases the stock price, by definition (by creating demand for it where there was none). Absent buy-backs, the stock price would be lower. That statement doesn't require a "should".

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#475

Post by pwinnski » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 1:50 PM UTC

dmoy wrote: post #344

mort96 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When are we going to stop expecting exponential growth though? Or should the exponential growth just continue indefinitely? Is there no value in having a nice S-curve, ending up as one of the most profitable companies in history, and then just staying insanely profitable for a long time in a sustainable way?

If that's .93% over last year, then it's negative after inflation. So there may not be an expectation of exponential growth forever, but literally declining revenue vs inflation is a different conversation.

Are you suggesting that we had 7% inflation last year, or am I misunderstanding you?

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#476

Post by mruts » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 2:13 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #474

mruts wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the stock price be declining? Also companies do buybacks when the stock is cheap, not exepensive.

A stock buy-back increases the stock price, by definition (by creating demand for it where there was none). Absent buy-backs, the stock price would be lower. That statement doesn't require a "should".

Of course, but that doesn’t mean Apple’s stock would be declining without the buybacks.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#477

Post by electriclove » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 2:16 PM UTC

roboys wrote: post #383

xbmcuser wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats the reason Buffet has now invested in Apple as he prefers a stable earnings. His investment indicated to me that Apple will be a stable investment going forward and won't have the upward and downwards swings of fast growing company where there can be large swings up or down with each quarter earnings

The fact that AAPL goes on regular stock buy back sprees with its warchest instead of risking innovation helps with the stability of what should be a declining stock price.

The size of these buybacks is quite incredible as they have reduced the Number of Outstanding Shares by 50% in the last 7 years. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/AAPL/apple/shares-...

I agree that this is stabilizing the stock price. I also think that they are still spending plenty of money on innovation, it's just that they have too much money to know how to spend it appropriately.

The stock is an incredible value (even still) because share repurchases and dividends continue to occur and they continue to make tons of money. And it will benefit from upside when they have another hit. Yes, I am long.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#478

Post by Ididntdothis » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

neotek wrote: post #320

Ididntdothis wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And take the escape key off the TouchBar. I hit it all the time by accident. I really wanted to give the TouchBar a fair shake but after two months I still think it’s beyond useless.

I feel your pain, it's my number one problem with the Touch Bar, the second being that it's almost entirely useless in its default mode. I have two solutions for you, though: firstly, download BetterTouchTool[1] and install the GoldenChaosBTT[2] preset. It's the killer app for the Touch Bar, it turns it into a genuinely useful feature that you'll find yourself using all the time, and BTT in general is an incredibly p…

Thanks for the tip. I got BTT and now I only have brightness and volume sliders on the Touch Bar and no escape. Much better. Will probably do some customization but it’s already a big improvement.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#479

Post by vanilla_nut » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

romaaeterna wrote: post #153

gonational wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one of these major launches is a MacBook Pro with the same (or better) specs (esp video graphics) as their latest MacBook Pro, but without a TouchBar, they will get at least $2,500 from me. If one of these major launches is an iPhone X-like phone with a thumbprint reader (home button or otherwise), they will get at least another $1,000 from me.

I have an pre-touchbar macbook pro on my desk that I've been using as an in-place workstation. For some reason, I pulled it out of its place and opened it up this past week, and I was blown away by the improved typing experience. I think that I'll be upgrading back to the old one going forward. And I promise that the next laptop I buy (or my company buys for me) won't have a touch bar or a butterfly keyboard.

I used a 2017 at work for a year and eventually decided to move back to a 2015 -- I just couldn't do the keyboard any more.

I also recently purchased a refurbished 2015 with top tier specs as a personal laptop.

Apple has definitely lost out on thousands of dollars of revenue from just me due to the touchbar/butterfly keyboard feel/butterfly keyboard reliability/usb-c only decisions. And don't even get me started on my inability to replace my iPhone SE with a decent, small phone.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#480

Post by atonse » Wed, Jul 31, 2019, 2:35 PM UTC

amfsn wrote: post #411

bb123 wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why the NYT has this agenda?

NYT has an anti-tech agenda in general because tech is killing newspapers. It's also a contrarian position because most people love their tech, and contrarian positions and outrage drive clicks.

Uhhh I'm not so sure tech is so innocent here. The honeymoon period with big tech ended after 2016, when society finally realized exactly how much influence big tech has over our minds, and how they absolutely show no responsibility towards the power they wield to alter people's realities, instead hiding behind silly excuses about just being platforms.

This isn't just about contrarian views. This is the fact that, thanks to big tech, any nut job can have the same real-estate and influence as a more established journalistic organization that has many people that internally also argue about how to convey messaging to the public.

I say all this as someone who frequently criticizes the mainstream media for also drumming up drama where it doesn't exist, and misinforming the public. So I'm hardly a cheerleader for them. But at least there is some sort of self-policing going on, and a realization of the responsibility they carry in society. There isn't much of that the big tech companies like Facebook.