Market
Market data & competition.
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The iPad Operating System
WWDC 2019 included a vast list of releases and it’s quite difficult to summarize. The focus is always on software updates but this year the list seems more exhaustive than usual. The highlights for me are: WatchOS now includes direct App Store access. This continues the separation of the Watch from the iPhone, on a… Continue reading
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The Pivot
The iPhone is the most successful product of all time. Over 1.6 billion have been sold. Including the iOS products it spun off, the total is over 2.2 billion. Of those 2.2 billion sold, 1.5 billion are still in use. There are about 1 billion iPhone users. Economically speaking, iPhone sales have reached one trillion… Continue reading
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AiriPods
The Apple Watch is now bigger than the iPod ever was. As the most popular watch of all time, it’s clear that the watch is a new market success story. However it isn’t a cultural success. It has the ability to signal its presence and to give the wearer a degree of individuality through material… Continue reading
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mini
We want things to get better. The desire of improvement and an increase in performance is seemingly innate. The old adage goes that using the word “new” is the most effective way to increase sales. “New & Improved” if you want to be redundant. For many in technology, New & Improved means faster with more… Continue reading
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A Billion Users
In the latest Apple Earnings report, Apple announced a few details that are relevant to the forecast of the business: The global active installed base for iPhone reached an all-time high at the end of December, surpassing 900 million devices. This represents growth y-o-y in each of five geographic segments, and growth of almost 75… Continue reading
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Preview of the holiday quarter
Every October, at the end of its fiscal year, Apple files its Form 10K or annual report. In this report the company includes a section titled “Capital Assets” which details expenditures for capital equipment. This is last year’s entry: The Company’s capital expenditures were $14.9 billion during 2017. The Company anticipates utilizing approximately $16.0 billion… Continue reading
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Just in Time
The iMac launched May 6 1998, exactly 20 years ago. It is not the most significant computer to ever exist. It was a clear descendant of the original Mac which established the “all-in-one” desktop computer category. That category, to which it still belongs, is a modest segment. The last time Apple reported portable sales separately… Continue reading
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The Number
The first number that Tim Cook mentioned in the fourth quarter investor conference call was the number of active Apple devices. The 1.3 billion monthly active devices is the most important measure of the health of Apple’s business. It’s the primary way the company chooses to measure itself and it’s the best instrument available to… Continue reading
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Apple Remarks to Investors in FQ1 2018 Earnings Conference Call, Categorized and Annotated
The following is a transcript of the comments from Tim Cook (CEO) and Luca Maestri (CFO) at Apple’s Q1 2018 Earnings Conference Call February 1, 2018. I color coded my interpretation of the comments into four categories: Grey: Background and promotional commentary Red: Strategy and signals of what management considers important and may include data beyond… Continue reading
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The iOS Economy, Updated
In its latest update on the App Store Apple reported that iOS developers earned $26.5 billion in 2017. A year ago the figure was $20 billion. The growth rate is then about 33%. The cumulative payments to developers can be calculated as $86.5 billion. This amount was generated in a span of less than 10 years, with… Continue reading