Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–527 of 527 posts

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#521

Post by rubicon33 »

criddell wrote: post #236
rubicon33 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please show me where I said they shouldn't exist? There's definitely a market for them, so I think they should exist. It's just - if I'm being honest - you're either a fool, or very rich, to be buying some of these "veblen goods" (given the more than adequate alternatives)

Very rich? If you replace it every year and spend $1000 each time, that's only around $3 / day. There are an awful lot of people that can afford that. When you consider how a phone is the primary computing device for a lot of people, it's an even easier decision.

When you start getting really serious about retirement savings, you'll understand why a difference of 0.50 cents per day v.s. $3.00 per day, is actually a big deal.

Enough of those differences, and things start to really add up. Enough things add up, and you realize that money could have been making you ~8% in an index fund for the last year. Suddenly, the iPhone, the multiple Starbucks, the BMW, the designer clothes... all things rationalized as "just a few bucks a day" ... end up costing way more than that.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#522

Post by lunchables »

sjaknanxnnx wrote: post #504
lunchables wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or continue to invent new products (iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Watch, Airpods ...) then iterate on those products over years and years. Also while simultaneously driving their services revenue, which continues to be a growth area for them.

These other devices are all cheaper and less popular than the iPhone. This quarter the category that includes the AirPods and Watch made one fifth what the iPhone did. To contribute 10% of company revenue growth, this category needs to double. Maybe the category has room to double once, but will it 10x over the next five years? You would need performance like that to justify a high PE ratio.

You said this:

>AAPL seems to have hit its peak in the device market, and can only grow revenues at this point by effectively raising prices on existing customers (that’s what the services category amounts to). This strategy can only take them so far.

Which is inaccurate. They have continued to add new products, like the Watch and AirPods. So when do you think they hit "peak device" ? You mean peak iPhone? No argument from me, they might have. But there are ways to grow revenue without just increasing prices, as those other products have demonstrated. They have also proven that the can grow revenue with their services, which is now a bigger revenue generator than iPhone.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#523

Post by dmoy »

pwinnski wrote: post #475
dmoy wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The inflation rate last year was about 2.5%.

If apple made $100 in 2018 q3 and 101 in 2019 q3, then they made less than 100 in 2019 q3 using constant 2018 dollars. It is declining revenue. That's a bit scary. For one quarter might just be a blip.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#524

Post by auggierose »

scarface74 wrote: post #472
auggierose wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 partia…

I can see that this is the obvious reason why Apple is not doing this. It is a short-sighted view though. Is the Mac Pro (MacBook Pro, etc) a consumer electronics product? Not really. So why do they provide it? Yeah. Same reason they should provide a cloud based on Metal.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#526

Post by jcranberry »

scarface74 wrote: post #505
jcranberry wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not iPhones, but there's probably some of that with their computers.

Apple has been selling computers that cost more than their competitors for over 40 years. Do you think they have been that successful just based on a “status symbol”? The average person doesn’t even care about computers that much anymore. Besides, computer sales are only 11% of their revenue. https://sixcolors.com/images/content/2019/financials-2019-7-...

You've overreacted--I didn't say it was solely due to being a status symbol.

Re: Apple Reports Declining Profits and Slowing Growth Again

#527

Post by electriclove »

electriclove wrote: post #477
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.

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 incredibl…

Correction: reduced by 33%
Post reply on HN