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Predictably Profitable, Unpredictably Valuable
Predicting Apple’s yearly revenues has been fairly easy. The following graph shows the relationship between budgeted spending on Machinery, Equipment, Internal-use software, Land & Buildings and the shipment of iOS device revenues. The company conveniently publishes a full-year forecast of these expenditures every fiscal year so by October we know roughly how sales will be during the Continue reading
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Predicting The Second Quarter
The last quarter of 2016 was Apple’s biggest ever. $78.4 billion in revenues. 78.3 million iPhones. Both records. Earnings of $3.36 ((On shares priced at the time around $105 or 3.2% yield quarterly earnings)) and cash reached new highs. The growth was modest but Services is now not just the second largest revenue but also Continue reading
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Contact Less
In September 2016 Apple Pay came to support the world’s largest public transit system. It happened through the integration with Japan’s FeliCa and gave Apple Pay access to 160 million daily transactions. This, along with many other milestones don’t get a lot of attention. Apple Pay is in what could be considered an attritional competition with non-consumption. There are Continue reading
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iPad Optics
The iPad has an installed base of over 300 million. This is a far larger audience than that of the Mac (which has somewhere between 100 million and 150 million). And whereas the iPad acquired this audience in about 7 years, the Mac took 33 years. Curiously however, it is the iPad that is seen as the more fragile Continue reading
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Gravity
Apple is doomed. So are you. As mortals we are used to the idea of death. We do not dwell on it even though it’s inevitable. We do know that we’ll die but what we don’t know is when we’ll die. That certainty/uncertainty makes us, more or less, do everything that we do. And so Continue reading
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The First Trillion Dollars is Always the Hardest
In its first 10 years, the iPhone will have sold at least 1.2 billion units, ((Includes forecast for first six months of 2017)) making it the most successful product of all time. The iPhone also enabled the iOS empire which includes the iPod touch, the iPad, the Apple Watch and Apple TV whose combined total unit sales will Continue reading
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The Genealogy of the MacBook Pro
I was an early user of the first MacBook Air. When that product was launched I saw in it something different: a dedication to a new measure of performance: thinness and conformability. The key image used to launch the Air was the laptop sliding neatly into an inter-office envelope. The implication was that the laptop does Continue reading
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Wherefore art thou Macintosh?
Managing the Mac product line must be one of the most challenging problems at Apple. That may not be obvious given the product’s success. Consider what it has achieved: The product is in its 32nd year of market presence. A longevity that in unmatched by any other PC maker. Apple reached a top five position in the ranking of PC Continue reading
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Post-keynote Apple event San Francisco – September 8
I will be presenting my latest analysis of Apple at the Sustain event in San Francisco on Thursday Sept 8th, the day after Apple’s keynote, along with Ben Bajarin, Carolina Milanesi who will alsob equipped with their latest market insights. There is a time to disrupt and there is a time to sustain. Sustain event is about understanding Apple’s Continue reading
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Mini Me
Horace and Henri go for a drive. The Critical Path is sponsored by Wealthfront, the automated investment service that makes it easy to invest your money the right way. Get your first $15,000 managed for free when you visit Wealthfront.com/5by5. Support also comes from Braintree, code for easy online payments. If you’re building a mobile Continue reading
