
Apple's warning is a bad omen for Wall Street bulls - spking
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-stocks-apple/apples-warning-a-bad-omen-for-wall-street-bulls-idUSKCN1OX01P
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themagician
So many comments about product features and dongles, USB-C and certain design
elements of Apple notebooks… these are all trivial.

Apple’s growth for the last 10 years has been very heavily weighted towards
the iPhone, and now everyone has one… or two or three or their are on their
11th. The market saturated. Everything is an iPhone, even non-iPhones. It
wasn’t going to continue forever. It’s why they’ve been creating new products
like the Apple TV and Apple Watch. But they haven’t yet found something like
the iPhone that literally everyone wants. Maybe they find a universal
computing platform, maybe they don’t. But Apple’s future doesn’t rest on
adding back the headphone jack or getting rid of the touchbar or so-called
“game changing” or “killer” features on existing platforms.

If you want Apple to sell one billion devices again then it’s gotta be some
real sci-fi level shit. As pretty as the iPhone was, it’s the software that
made it magic and set a new standard for how we interact with machines. That
“next thing” is probably voice, but no one even seems close. Siri, Alexa,
Google Now, Cortana… it’s BlackBerry, Nokia, Palm, etc.. Give me that
Hollywood-level magic where the machine gets it right 99% of the time, goes
beyond what I thought possible and responds instantly. Impossible? Maybe. But
so was a fully optimized touch-based OS before someone did it.

~~~
sparkling
> That “next thing” is probably voice, but no one even seems close.

Am i the only person who has zero interest in voice control? I got a iPhone 4S
very early, the first phone that had Siri installed and i can not remember
ever using it. Not even trying it out just for fun.

~~~
nlh
Not at all - I can't stand voice UI (at the moment). The problem with voice UI
as I see it is that until it's perfect, it's horrible. Even if Siri is 80%
great, the 20% of the time I have to repeat myself 3, 4, 5 times to get what I
want, I've now spent more time than if I'd just using touch UI in the first
place. Eventually that gets better, but until then it's too frustrating /
slower than just typing.

~~~
mercer
Aside from that I don't imagine voice will ever be 'dominant' as a UI until we
can do so without making sounds.

So much of my day consists of using technology while other people are doing
the same thing in my vicinity, and even just that _one_ person in the room
with a non-silent device is already annoying, let alone a room full of people
talking to themselves.

~~~
c1sc0
Subvocalisation or telepathic interfaces should solve that. I think that is
actually closer than we think it is.

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nitinreddy88
I am an iphone/MBP user for past few years and currently using iphone 7/MBP
2018. While apple products and quality is superior, i dont see any
improvements in iphone XS compared to my current phone.

1\. Camera quality is not really that differentiating factor to spend 1200$

2\. 99.9% usage doesn’t require higher cpu

If apple continues to play premium game without game changing features, soon
it will be staginated

Regarding MBP, they screwed beautiful piece in the latest iteration

~~~
Retric
Yet, somehow BMW successfully sells new cars with minor changes every year.
Eventually in the premium market it's less about the upgrade vs simply having
a new device.

The question is what peoples upgrade cycles will look like. IMO an average
around 4 years is probably about right for cellphones.

~~~
ummonk
I don't think people buy a new BMW every few years.

~~~
jonknee
No, they lease them. That's actually pretty close to what Apple wants to do as
well (Tim even noted it in his CNBC sit down).

------
whoisjuan
The reality is that phone cycles are becoming longer since the price of the
devices keeps going up.

The iPhone 6 basic model was $649 USD at launch. The iPhone X basic model was
$999 USD at launch. The most recent Pixel starts at $799 USD the basic model.

I'm still bullish on Apple because their ecosystem strategy is pretty smart
and you can see that reflected in their small customer churn. Basically, lower
demand today means potential higher demand later. However, this is a golden
opportunity for Google to come and disrupt the cycle entirely with a killer
product and generate the Apple fan base churn that nobody has been able to
pull.

I just don't see what technology could produce that. Perhaps Soli
([https://atap.google.com/soli/](https://atap.google.com/soli/)), which got an
FCC approval today.

~~~
ummonk
Environmentally, I think this is a good thing. Given Apple's longer software
support for its hardware, you can pay more for an iPhone now but hold on to it
longer, reducing e-waste.

~~~
sparkling
Agreed. Not we just need the batteries to keep up with this.

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pxeboot
I know it doesn't apply to most HN readers, but iPhone pricing has really
gotten out of reach to most of the world. Doesn't seem surprising that sales
have begun to stagnate.

~~~
tinbad
I don’t know. In the US, the cheapest brand new iPhone (7) is $449. I think
it’s just more that Apple has heavily expanded their offering upmarket.

~~~
wvenable
There is a problem with perception, though. For $449 you get a phone that, by
Apple's own marketing, is _4_ generations behind. Subjectively it's a much
less appealing product but still almost $500.

~~~
blago
iPhone 7 is only two generations behind and a very capable device. I use one
and it probably has at least another 2 years of good life left.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Actually, reading your comment made me realize that perhaps one thing that is
making people less likely to upgrade is that there are now so many versions
and models that it's not readily visible how "old" your phone is, so there is
less status-climbing pressure to upgrade.

I mean, when I read your comment, I couldn't remember _how_ old the iPhone 7
actually was - I had to Google it. The iPhone XR, XS Max, XS, X, 8 Plus, 8, 7
Plus and 7 were all released in a span of just over 2 years. With so many
different models, I think there is probably less social pressure to upgrade
because it's no longer like "OMG, why do you have the 3-year old iPhone?!"
when no one can remember when all the jumble of versions came out anyway.

~~~
blago
You may have a point there

------
jonknee
This may be interesting to people. AAPL currently has a 3.38% share in the S&P
500 (VOO, SPY, etc) and a cool 9.72% share in the tech heavy NASDAQ 100 index
(QQQ). Should be quite a volatile morning for QQQ.

~~~
noitsnot
I would like to believe it's built-in to a certain extent thanks to the past
few months, which includes the warning iPhone sales numbers weren't going to
be reported with earnings. Let's say it dives further, since it just went
below the 52 week low. Aapl might lose 40-50% of it's all-time high value
which seems petty odd. What do I know, though. I've only started following
them during the bull run where no one could do wrong. Aapl had increasingly
record sales and the stock repeatedly stalled, probably due to fears of what
just occurred.

~~~
jonknee
AAPL dove 7.55% in after hours once the news hit, so a large gap down is very
likely. Some skepticism was definitely baked in, but this is a very unusual
move (no pre quarter warnings since 2002!).

All big tech joined in the selling as well so something like QQQ is going to
be hit a lot harder than the S&P (QQQ down over 2% in AH).

~~~
noitsnot
Yes, the large gap down is a given, since 7.5% was already in after-hours. I
guess I was thinking more long-term overall dive than daily. The markets have
been pretty volatile for the past month or so. It's odd but a one day 500+ Dow
drop isn't really unusual at this point.

------
ohnope
I hope they don’t do anything drastic, like roll back their admirable focus on
making iOS work astoundingly well on older phones, potentially delaying the
need for people to upgrade. But I doubt that was a key factor in the
lackluster holiday sales.

~~~
pxeboot
Hopefully not. The long usable lifespan is one of the reason resale values are
so high, which helps many justify the high price of a new phone.

------
bitrrrate
I just don’t get how an already highly profitable, premium device maker raking
in billions of dollars a year makes people nervous by not making as money
billions as expected. It’s a simplistic view I know but come on.

Really, Apple will hit an innovation wall at some point and decline as a
company. Even Bezos has said as much about Amazon.

~~~
JohnWatsman
you seem to fundamentally misunderstand the market. The worry isn't that apple
as a company is going to cease to make a profit. The issue is that given the
new information on how apple is performing, people would like convert their
shares into cash given what they can get versus what they expect to receive in
the future by retaining those shares.

Is your argument that in a rational market apple reporting worse than expected
performance should have no affect on the value of the company?

It's one thing to pinpoint why the _specific information_ being released is
inconsequential, or to argue that the magnitude of the market's reaction is
disproportionate or moving the stock in the wrong direction, but your argument
seems to be simply raise the question. You're essentially responding to
information that says maybe apple isn't as great of a company as we all
thought it was yesterday by saying "apple is a great company."

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Nerdfest
I'm not really sure why this has anything to do with "Wall Street". Just
because something changes for one company doesn't mean it's a trend. Apple is
in trouble because they pushed their prices beyond where even the ardent fans
will buy it without thinking.

This big thing though is the amount of free advertising they're getting as the
darlings of the media has dropped _drastically_. This is a huge part of how
they got to the point they are now. It used to be that a new model launch was
front page news ... that's no longer the case, and the biggest Apple stories
seem to be their mistakes.

I think people don't really get how much that free media coverage has helped
their sales. For a few years "tech" stories meant Apple stories.

------
ccnafr
You didn't need a warning from Apple. Has anything good ever come from a trade
war?

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thenanyu
I think they have one trick left to play in the short term — I wouldn't be
shocked if many people would upgrade their iPhones (who otherwise wouldn't do
so) if they released a USB-C version.

------
gesman
20% loss on AAPL is in order. However crowd’s sentiment is quite pessimistic.

No bull market ended with crowd being pessimistic.

IMHO smart money are gaming news outlets to score few upcoming wins at the
expense of average investor

~~~
jonknee
AAPL is down 30.3% in the last 3 months (before tomorrow's plunge!). The
market sniffed this one out a while ago.

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etherealny
The market has to e saturated

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olivermarks
Apple has stopped innovating, it's as simple as that...

~~~
jjtheblunt
That's completely mistaken, as Apple innovates in silicon, which is invisible
in itself but drives things like incredible battery life, smooth scrolling,
etc.

~~~
olivermarks
I meant innovating to create new product lines and compelling reasons for
buyers to upgrade. I didn't mean technical innovation, rather the marketing
genius that enabled Steve Jobs to launch exciting new products that people
would stand in line all night to buy the day they became available.

~~~
deepakhj
Airpods? Apple Watch?

~~~
olivermarks
relatively small markets, more gadgets than core products like the iphone

