Market data & competition.
When the iPhone launched, Steve Jobs introduced it as being three products in one:
When the Apple Watch launched, Tim Cook introduced it as being three things:
The bank robber Willie Sutton did not say, when asked why he robbed banks, “because that’s where the money is.” He did agree with the idea however saying “Go where the money is…and go there often”.
Regardless of it being apocryphal, this idea came to be called Sutton’s Law and is often taught to medical students. It’s similar to the notion of Occam’s Razor: when an obvious or simple answer competes with an obscure or complicated answer, pick the obvious one first.
These are sound analytical rules of thumb. When thinking about what products and services could arise in the immediate future, those most obvious and with fewest assumptions should be put forward first. The what part is relatively easy. The tough question is more about when will they emerge?
We now know that Apple will announce new products on September 9th1. This gives us an idea of when something will happen, answering the tougher question. It leaves the simpler question of what will emerge.
I put forward my predictions as follows:
One more item has surfaced on the potential of payments processing which I want to address now.
Handling payments, to me, is a perfectly plausible activity for Apple mostly because the company has made quite a few comments on the value of their “customers with credit cards” and the effort that went into Touch ID (which seems to be extravagant relative to the value of rapid unlocking).
But one word of caution: if Apple does enable payments it’s important to realize that being a (payment) bit pipe is not a particularly profitable business. It will undoubtedly bind value to the iOS devices which make it possible, but I don’t think there will be a direct capture of profit from the transactions themselves.
Continue reading “Going where the money is”
iTunes/Software/Services revenues grew at 12%. This was the second fastest segment growth last quarter, with the Mac growing at a slightly faster 13% rate. Apple mentioned in the quarterly earnings conference call the for the first nine months of its fiscal year (i.e. since September) the line item iTunes/Software/Services has been the fastest growing part of the business. The following graph shows the growth scorecard for Apple’s line items and it shows how the iTunes store is the only line that has been consistently green (growing above 10% for at least seven years.
In addition to its revenues, iTunes can also be measured in terms of billings (or gross revenues). The billings growth rate is even higher at more than 25%. This is mostly to the more rapid growth of apps relative to a decline in music. As Apple only records the 30% it keeps as “revenue” for apps the overall growth in apps is less visible in its accounts.
The relative performance of billings vs. reported revenues is shown in the following graphs: Continue reading “How big is Apple’s Ecosystem?”
Gartner’s own press release has an interesting spin:
“After Two Years of Decline, Worldwide PC Shipments Experienced Flat Growth in Second Quarter of 2014, According to Gartner”
Gartner’s actual figure is 0.1% growth. Gartner and IDC measure slightly different quantities as “PC” but they don’t disagree much. IDC still shows declining PC sales at about -1.7%. However both also include the Mac in their accounting of PC. If we were to remove the Mac and measure “Windows PC”1 Gartner’s figures would show -0.8% drop in PC ex-Mac shipments.
The difference in growth between the Mac and non-Mac PCs is shown in the following graph.
As Apple puts it, the Mac grew faster (and hence gained share) for 31 out of the last 32 quarters. It missed on this perfect record during the fourth quarter of 2012 when the then fresh new iMac was impossible to buy due to production issues.
So as far as the Mac is concerned the slowing of the decline in PC unit shipments isn’t at its expense. Continue reading “Is the PC back?”
Seven years after the iPhone was launched, 70% of the US population is using smartphones. Smartphones existed before the iPhone so the category is older than seven years but as far as adoption goes this is nearly the fastest ever.
The CD Player reached 55% in seven years and the Boom Box about 62%. If measuring the period between 9% penetration and 90%1 the smartphone in the US will have a lifespan of about 9 years starting in 2008. Before this period, the product was largely experimental and participating vendors2 mostly failed. After this period most products will be “commoditized” with decreasing margins and increasing consolidation.
The rapidity of growth is all the more remarkable given the penetration is at the individual, not household level. The total user base is therefore over 270 million rather than the 115 million usually targeted by consumer technology, nearly 60% more purchases. This is also remarkable because the product has a shorter lifespan of use (two years) than is typical for other consumer technology products3
We are therefore now in the “Late Majority” phase of the US market. This is not a surprise. The inflection point in the market occurred in mid 2012 so we’ve been in this phase for two years already. It’s not therefore controversial to predict two years of continuing though decelerating growth.
As Geoffrey Moore explained, the marketing of technology products needs to be varied as we get into different phases of the market. Innovators (first 2.5%) need to be sold on the premise of novelty itself. Early adopters (next 13.5%) seek status and exclusivity. Early majority (34%) seek acceptance and Late Majority (34%) seek pragmatic productivity. Laggards (last 16%) seek safety.
One aspect of this adoption cycle that is misunderstood is the role of pricing. The assumption is that pricing matters more as adoption increases. This is misunderstood because pricing always matters and therefore it never matters. Pricing is one of many elements of marketing mix and at any time there are product choices across a wide spectrum of pricing. Pricing is also a signal which can be elaborately obfuscated through bundling and unbundling.
One way to illustrate this is to consider how Apple products behave in the late phases of markets. Apple products have notoriously firm pricing.
The revenue per unit of Macs, iPods, iPhones and iPads remains stubbornly consistent. This is not to say that each unit sold is the same price. The company tweaks “the mix” of mid, low and high products to keep the average selling price constant. But fundamentally the average remains constant which means that regardless of market phase, Apple retains its margins.
So as we look forward to the last two years of growth for smartphones, how will Apple fare? Continue reading “Late late majority”
New market disruptions take root in non-consuming contexts. For instance, mobile phone photography began not because early phone cameras were good. They weren’t good at all but good enough when a camera was not within reach. The quality was poor but the photo taken would not have otherwise been taken, making a lousy photo better than no photo.
The result is that the total number of photos taken this year will be ten times higher than the total number of photos taken before the advent of mobile phone cameras.1
This rush to use the phone as a camera has meant that phone makers are keen to improve their product (so as to compete effectively with it against each other) and as a consequence they overtake the incumbent camera makers in quality as well as quantity.
The same phenomenon was experienced by fixed component “Hi-Fi” audio products. The quality of mobile music was poor but it was convenient and convenience translated into consumption and consumption translated into quality improvement and eventually the evaporation of usage of the traditional category.
Now consider how ad dollars are getting spent. The following chart shows the eMarketer forecast for ad spending mix across different media in the US.
It would appear that the “Mobile” media is competing effectively against the other media types, especially the non-Mobile digital (i.e. PC-based experiences).
However, if we look at the absolute spending forecast the picture shows that Mobile is responsible for most of the growth in the overall spending. Continue reading “Competing effectively against your most potent competitor”
Catalin Stelian Andrei, Editor of The Day, INTERNET PROTV asked me twenty questions:
1. What phone do you have in your pocket right now? Why that model?
I carry the iPhone 5. The last iPhone I bought was an iPhone 5C which I gave to a family member.
2. Apple is going to launch, form all we know, an iPhone with a bigger screen, long after their market rivals. Is Apple one step behind, being forced to take this road in the fight with Android and Windows Phone devices? Because many smartphone users were hoping that an big screen iPhone, a redesigned model, will be lauched long time ago, and that didn’t happen.
Making bigger phones is easier than making smaller phones. First because miniaturization has always been the most difficult engineering challenge, and second, because a smaller phone has a smaller battery making efficiency much more important. The larger the phone, the simpler it is. The third reason smaller is more valuable is that it’s easier to carry and use. The largest phones cannot be put in pockets and cannot be used with one hand. In the history of consumer, electronics size reduction has been the most consistent measure of performance, and the most rewarding. Usually the most exceptional reductions in dimensions create the highest price and profit bands. There have been niches for larger portable devices but they are consistently a small part of the overall market. If Apple were to introduce a larger device I hope they will be able to solve usability problems and make the category attractive to a larger audience.
3. What do you expect from the new iPhone 6?
I expect it to run the latest version of iOS and, with the new apps developers will ship, that should make the most impact in people’s lives. I imagine health maintenance and home automation will become valuable new franchises. Of course iOS 8 will also run on older iPhones, but I suspect the newest iPhone will somehow run the new software better and have smoother integration with services.
4. What’s the “not to do” lesson that Apple needs to learn for the now iPhone from it’s own past experience or their competitors?
The biggest challenge is to move rapidly with scale. The company has managed to grow from zero phones a year to hundreds of millions. That’s great but it’s still frustrating to wait one year for major improvements. The “cycle time” of innovation for Apple remains one year. I wish it could be faster but perhaps this is also too fast for some. In some services like maps and iCloud and iWork, which are independent of hardware (mostly,) speed is of the essence.
5. The iPhone is the most expensive smartphone on the market right now. In Romania, it certainly is. But where does Apple gains it’s most money from, selling products to users or selling services, like iTunes, App Store? And having that in mind, what will be their next step: better – breakthrough products or bigger, more complete services?
The answer to where a company “gets its profits” is best answered by asking where a buyer “gets his value” from the product. For instance you might answer the question of where a car company gets its value by saying that it’s from making people be in more than one place in a day. So the “differentiation” of a car is in answering the question slightly differently. If it’s hard to see a difference to this answer between cars then it’s hard for any one company to make a profit. For a company like Apple, we need to ask what its users value about the experience and why they are willing to pay for that. My hypothesis is that the brand’s value is in making life a little bit easier. That’s what Apple competes on. Of course, some people are not willing to pay to have an easier life and some even want to make their lives more complicated so Apple’s proposal to make life easier, for a price, is not accepted by everybody—which is ok by them. But for many, paying for comfort, productivity and ease of mind is worth quite a bit. The reason Apple is able to gain a premium over the competition is that this value proposal (of paying for simplification) is either weak or non-existent for competitors. Indeed, many competitors compete on the basis of making life more complicated.
6. What does innovation means for Apple right now? What are their options for assuring a next decade of success? A new Steve Jobs person or a Steve Jobs tipe of group thinking. How hard is that to achieve?
Innovation is meaningful invention—bringing useful creations to a large number of people who then make use of that creation. The interesting aspect of making money from innovation is that it’s a rare phenomenon, requiring many disciplines to work together. It’s like a big movie that somehow works and becomes widely popular but costs little to make. Many movies are made, few are successful and very few of those which are successful are built at low cost. What we know about technology innovation is that it’s a combination that comes together under strong leadership but that leadership alone is not sufficient. The myth of Steve Jobs is that he was both necessary and sufficient to success. The truth is that he was necessary but not sufficient. To make successful innovations requires strong leadership and teamwork and a process of incentives and passion that is hard to create a formula for. How this works at Apple is its biggest secret.
7. Who are the key Apple employees right now? Do they need another Jobs or do they already have him?
All Apple employees are key. I would say that’s the magic formula. There is no chief magical officer (and there never was.)
8. What will be the next best thing for Apple? […]
I don’t know. It’s probably not knowable. Continue reading “Twenty Questions from Catalin Stelian Andrei”
In How close to saturation is the smartphone I highlighted that the US is not nearly saturated at 68.8% penetration at the end of March. Since the US is not the highest penetrated, one may wonder whether other “developed” countries are far further along.
There is no data on all the countries in the world on the same resolution as that in the US, but thanks to Charles Arthur, Kantar shared data on the UK and we can have a clear trajectory for that country.
The most recent data for UK was as of February 2014 when penetration was 70%.
In February the US figure was 68.2%, so the US is 1.8% behind in penetration. The equivalent picture of the US is below: Continue reading “How close is the UK to smartphone saturation?”
The increase in net sales of iTunes, Software and Services in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the first quarter of 2013 was due to growth in net sales from the iTunes Store, AppleCare and licensing. The iTunes Store generated a total of $2.4 billion in net sales during the first quarter of 2014 versus $2.1 billion during the first quarter of 2013. Growth in the iTunes Store, which includes the App Store, the Mac App Store and the iBooks Store, was driven by increases in revenue from App sales reflecting continued growth in the installed base of iOS devices and the expansion in the number of third-party iOS Apps available. Net sales of digital content, including music, movies, TV shows and books, from the iTunes Store was relatively flat in the first quarter of 2014 compared to the first quarter of 2013.
Apple Inc. Form 10-Q.
During the last quarter Apple changed the pricing for iWork and OS X to zero1.
I estimate the net effect to have been a reduction in revenues from those software titles of about $350 million for the quarter. Nevertheless, increases in services and app revenues means that the iTunes total reported revenues increased to a new record.
The total with estimated contributions by media and service components is shown below right.
Note that revenues do not reflect total billings. As Apple reports only the 30% of App transaction values, the full iTunes/Software/Services transaction values are shown in the above graph on the left. Continue reading “Fortune 130”
Exactly one year ago, on January 7th, 2013, Apple announced that the App Store reached 40 billion downloads1. Here are additional data points from that release:
This year, on January 7th, 2014, Apple announced a new set of data points:
The obvious:
The less obvious: Continue reading “Of bits and big bucks”
