Yes, it was interesting to see the stock plunge. They well deserved it
Bitching about innovation isnt totally justified. Smartphones have reached a certain technological maturity. See PCs,, CPUs for examples thereof and no one company can reliably and repeatedly out-innovate everyone else at this point. Until the next inflection point. Not Apple’s fault, really.
But upping your revenues by increasing prices wo new value is a bit like stretching a rubberband. You’ll keep your customers. Until they leave and never come back.
Trouble is, APPL’s valuation is circa $100/ human being. That’s, roughly, profits expected pp, for everyone. Rich people, dirt poor 3rd worlders, 45 yr olds, 3 yr olds. Apple haters. Doubt they’ll get that selling the product lines they do, to their customer bases. How to move the needle?
They have phenomenal brand appeal, but they need to sell new things or new customers.
- cars. Well executed that’s a whole new ball park to chew up $100/pp.
- enterprises. Macos is almost a Linux. And Windows is bound to have upset more than a few.
- the 80-90% of people still running Windows PCs despite Win 10. Can’t do that w $3k laptops.
- product X.
- dividends???
I aint no marketing expert so certainly messing up. But they’ve reached peak capitalization unless they switch gears. $2k phones aint gonna do it. Nor will price wars with Android phones. None of the above options are risk free. Or necessarily even clever.
Bottom line: at this level of cap, I see them very much prisoners of their own success. And a bit of an indictment of capitalism’s expectations, much as I usually defend that system.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
