NY Times made a mess of this story and slanted it toward their agendas. Horrible reporting.<p>Apple beat most estimates. Revenues grew. All time high revenue from services. Forward guidance was raised.<p><a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/" rel="nofollow">https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/07/apple-reports-third-q...</a>
And the stock increased over 4% in after-hours trading, as increases in non-iPhone hardware sales and services overcame the decrease in iPhone sales. Earnings per share slightly beat the consensus forecast.<p>An interesting quote from Cook in the press release:
<i>"The balance of calendar 2019 will be an exciting period, with major launches on all of our platforms, new services and several new products"</i>
That iPhones were less than half their revenue, while still growing overall revenue, is a positive sign. Apple has done a good job of diversifying their revenue base over the last few years. It will be interesting to see how large wearables and services can become as revenue sources, I suspect they are still quite early in their growth.
I have thought long and hard about upgrading my iPhone 8 to one of the new X models, but I don't like the lack of a home button. I guess I am officially old now, but I dont want to look at my phone to unlock it. I like that I can reach in my pocket, and unlock it with my thumb as I retrieve it. It may be user error, but I see several co-workers have to really train the phone on their face to unlock with Face ID. That would drive me nuts. the swipe up gesture just seems annoying, and on my iPhone 8 is unreliable to bring up the control panel. they need to do what they did before and copy the other vendors that put the fingerprint reader on the back of the phone so that the nice bezel free design can be implemented.
This is how it did compared to expectations<p>EPS: $2.18 vs. $2.10 estimated by Refinitiv consensus estimates.<p>Revenue: $53.8 billion vs. $53.39B estimated by Refinitiv consensus estimates.<p>Q4 Revenue guidance: $61 billion to $64 billion versus $60.98 billion estimate by Refinitiv consensus estimates.<p>iPhone revenue: $25.99 billion vs. $26.31 billion estimated by FactSet.<p>Services revenue: $11.46 billion vs. $11.61 billion estimated by FactSet.<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/apple-earnings-q3-2019.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/30/apple-earnings-q3-2019.html</a>
I'm bullish on AAPL because of their planned services. Anything they roll out has a gigantic audience and will have immediate revenue impact. They have a tremendous bully-pulpit inside their users devices, incomparable email lists, and a habit of making TV commercials people like to watch. The fact that they are adding 4 lines of business (banking, ad-free gaming, news, and streaming) is going to sustain double-digit, high-margin growth for the foreseeable future.<p>If I had money play with I would buy after this earnings report dropped; but it looks like the stock price isn't getting beat up.
Apple beat out EPS and Revenue estimates and the stock is trading up in after-hours. This is a headline for the cap-wearing anti-Tech Company crowd, as has been typical of the New York Times over the last year or two.
I don't understand why these articles think that people will just keep buying, like in the past decade the lifespan of devices has become bigger and bigger. I'm typing this post on a 2013 Macbook and I'm sure a lot of other users are using older laptops than that, that run perfectly fine. Like does the media just expect people to be buying new stuff again and again?<p>I don't know if I'm just missing the point or something...
Why would you link the NYTimes for a business article? They don't have a clue. These results are excellent (particularly wearables growth) and they guided Q3 revenues well ABOVE Sell side estimates. China decline rate improved dramatically to only -4% Y/Y.
“Is Apple still capable of innovation?” must be one of the most tedious and clapped out topics in all of tech. No one can even remotely agree on a definition of what constitutes “innovation” and yet people keep showing up to dash themselves against the rocks chasing their 5 minutes.<p>If you’re sitting at home playing armchair quarterback with this stuff, all I can say is I hope you’re not responsible for managing any actual money.
I believe that Apple’s next big thing will come in the form of AR consumer hardware and a detached Watch. Recent expansions of their chip design org and acquisition of Intel’s modem business reinforce my confidence in their execution, iPhones are still big business and services are rising. There is little reason to doubt that Apple has more than enough resources to take it through until the next breakthrough.
2019 is another year I’m stuck with my iPhone 8 from 2017. I use to upgrade every year then some genius at Apple thought bigger phones are the only way to go from here on out. Maybe that person no longer works there?<p>Also Touch ID over Face ID or offer both or I’m not interested along with millions of others!
At these valuations Apple makes sense only when seen as an alternative to other investments. S&P 500 as a whole has P/S ratio that indicates lower return of investment for the next decade. At least Apple will be able to make profits.
I think the trouble is that the devices are getting too good and there is really only incremental improvement every year so the upgrade cycle is getting longer.<p>I typically get the latest phone every year (but it starts to feel unnecessary) - iPad's and Mac's, however, last a lot longer (several years) for me these days.<p>I wonder where the real innovation is going to come from? AI, AR?
Do you think they would ever monetize iMessage? Imagine making iMessage cross platform, but only available to paying iCloud Subscribers. So I could pay $10 / month for upgraded iCloud storage and get iMessage on my Android phone. I'd pay for that.
I just visited a local shop where I tested different smartphones including iPhones. Lots of similarly looking models, most with Android. Most are below 300 Euro. An average buyer cannot probably see big difference between phones priced at 1000 and 200 Euro.
Not related to article but..
I have a change request for HN, put some kind of marker next to links which require payment/signingIn/signingUp or whatever the f<i></i>k stops you from consuming content right away.
Apple needs new sources of revenue. Anything marginal like cheaper iphone models won't cut it.<p>I like the recent wave of acquisitions. Smart cars? Smart homes? Iterations of Apple Watch - deeper connection to the body itself?<p>What's next for them?
Clearly they shouldn't have stopped producing the iPhone SE or it's successor in the same shape.<p>Also they messed up really hard when they introduced the new MBP keyboards which now all have to be replaced.<p>The iPad started to be useful much too slow and in the meanwhile less and less people would even consider it when comparing with a surface.<p>There is one more thing: The ecosystem seemed to be cool some day. Now it's nothing special anymore and it's not really magical how many things don't work together (because software, bugs, whatever...).<p>I buy the nice devices as used parts because they had times when they produced some cool stuff that I still like to use. Maybe not with their OS but this will probably change when less money gives them more pressure to be innovative again.
No surprise. No innovation. All stopped around 2011.<p>They've been coasting since then. Difference sizes of the same product. The watch was about as far as they've wandered out of their comfort zone.
Doesn't Google pay Apple ~10 billion$ for TAC nowadays? I am hoping someone with time will lookup the increase in Google's spend and Apple's revenue.
The iPhone costs too much now.<p>People are realizing they can buy a OnePlus 6T or Samsung 9 for half the price.<p>My wife has been fed up with our older Android phone and said - we're going back to the iphone. We looked up the prices for the latest, second latest, third latest iphone models and then she said - why don't we get another OnePlus.
'Apple experience' for me today is lag. Beginning from lagging volume bar on iPhone, going through iTunes, and up to UI. Everything feels slower than on a much cheaper Android phone with 3.5mm jack.
there’s something wrong with Apple lately. They ship hardware that’s worse than what they had five years ago, and their software has more and more embarrassing bugs. Seems like management problems.
Services are making up for it, but they are losing a vast amount of their base customers.<p>13% drop in sales won't make their services popular.<p>They should have launched 5 years ago, they had way more advantage then.<p>They do still have a big consumer base, but 13% is a lot and it doesn't seem to go upwards.
Apple: Revenue Growth 1% (quarterly)<p>Huawei: Revenue Growth 23.2% (half-yearly)<p>Apple: Revenue ~$258 billion<p>Huawei: Revenue ~$105 billion<p>Apple: R&D $14 billion[0]<p>Huawei: R&D $15 billion[1]<p>Apple: Employee Count ~132,000<p>Huawei: Employee Count ~188,000†<p>---<p>I'm going to take an unusual step here. Please, please don't downvote this post for pointing this out! I'm just highlighting for contrast, not for criticism. Trying to start a conversation.<p>---<p>[0] <a href="https://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-aapl-earnings-after-the-bell-tuesday-can-the-iphones-slump-be-reversed-cm1185985" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasdaq.com/article/apple-aapl-earnings-after-the...</a><p>[1] <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/09/WS5cac0859a3104842260b5265.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201904/09/WS5cac0859a31048422...</a><p>† “Huawei had over 188,000 employees as of September 2018, around 76,000 of them engaged in Research & Development (R&D)” (I presume Apple has tens of thousands employed in r&d, anybody any idea roughly how many?)<p>edit: <i>sigh</i>
Multiple factors I can think of, I'm sure there's more<p>* Competing brands with better hardware quality (Pixel's camera vs iPhone)
* Competing brands with less opinionated design choices (headphone jacks, expandable storage, et all)
* Highly specialized supply chains prevent flexibility in part choices/manufacturers (ex: designing custom screws for iMac chassis, rather than using off-the-shelf parts)
* Unnecessary complexity in designs (The HDMI/lightning adapter is actually a computer that essentially runs a program in RAM)
* Trade wars cooling relationships with everything from shippers
* Walled garden of iMessage preventing soft user migration