Is Apple's silence killing it right now?

Interesting blog post from music veteran Bob Lefsetz:

http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2013/01/16/perception-3/

But there’s no leader at Apple. Tim Cook is charisma-challenged. He starts to speak and credibility goes out the window. Phil Schiller has more gravitas, and Jonny Ive eclipses even him, but who’s really driving this car? Everybody knows Cook is an efficiency expert. Who’s the heart and soul of the enterprise, and where is it going?

The vacuum is such that way down the food chain, where the rubber meets the road, where people buy stuff, Apple is losing steam. It’s gone from trustworthy monolith to dying empire, all based on spin. People in the press and online saying Apple is toast with few facts to back it up.

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I agree with pretty much everything he says. Apple needs to start controlling their narrative better and I don't know if Cook is the guy to do it. Someone else - maybe Schiller or Ive - needs to be the spokesperson for th company. Apple's stock is down 30% over the past few months in large part due to perception not reality. It's frustrating to see Apple just sit there and take it. Even if they have a blowout quarter, if their guidance is the least bit soft (and it will be because they always provide conservative guidance) the stock will get hammered. Because Q4 earnings is reality and these days it's all about perception with Apple, not reality.

What I find really reprehensible though are these negative rumors coming out right before earnings release when most companies go quiet because they don't want to do/say anything that could be perceived as as trying to influence the stock. Neither one of those rumors has any hard facts in them, they were based on unnamed sources and conclusions were drawn that likely had not basis in fact. And they obviously knew that a week before earnings release Apple wasn't going to comment. I don't think it's a coincidence that AAPL ended Friday at $500. Somebody's making a lot of money off of the Apple FUD going around right now.

Pakaku said:

I doubt Apple feels the need to say anything, and they assume the profits they make on iPhones, iPads, Macs, etc speak for themselves.

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Yeah their approach is to let the numbers speak for themselves but we get numbers once a quarter, the FUD happens daily. Of course Apple can't respond to all of it, but at some point perception becomes reality when they respond to none of it.

ucfgrad93 said:

Do you expect Apple to daily respond and refute the ramblings of uninformed people on the internet?

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Where did I say that?

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zioxide said:

Nobody gives a **** what some random hack blogger writes on his website.

They're the largest company in the world by market capitalization, worth nearly $475 billion. They're doing fine.

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Might be some random blogger but I thought what he had to say was interesting. I guess we'll see next week if a really good quarter changes current perception but somehow I doubt it will.

NOV said:

Agreed with djtech42. There is still always the risk of Apple imploding if they don't come up with innovative new products before 2014. If they don't manage that I think Tim Cooke will be challenged from competitors who want to be in charge. From then on it's all gonna be very nasty.

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There's that overused word innovation again. That's some of the BS spin Apple allows to hang out there. Explain all this innovation others are doing that Apple isn't. People pick and chose what they want to call innovative. A phone with a bigger screen is innovative but packing all this technology into something that's super thin and light apparently isn't. That's just iterative. The tech press dinged the iPhone 5 for looking too much like the 4, yet raved about the Lumia 920 design even though it looks just like the N90 and Lumia 900. Why the double standard?

golf1410 said:

I don't think they are doing fine. I don't know what the hell is wrong with Apple stock. It was 700 bucks per share and now it is 500 bucks. Why investors do not invest in Apple anymore? They don't trust Cook?

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FUD pure and simple.

Apple should have Schiller and Ive be the spokespeople for the company. Schiller is better on stage than Cook is, and Ive is someone that can really make you want whatever they're selling. After the iPhone 5 keynote someone on Twitter joked that Ive could sell hair care products to himself. Let Cook run the show operationally but let others be the face of the company.

Anuba said:

Silence, killing Apple? Um, no... silence helped build Apple.

The problem isn't silence, but predictability. Apple used to have surprise upon surprise coming outta left field. There'd be an event and Steve would come out and unveil something that we knew little to nothing about, often an entirely new product category. Designs would change wildly.

But now we've got this combination of accurate rumors/leaks and releases that follow established patterns. 3G, 3GS, 4, 4S, 5... then, lemme guess, oh... 5S...? Amaziyawn. And then... 6? And it will be available in... drumroll... black or white? With some minor spec improvements? And it will be... wait for it... THINNER? ZOMG! I so didn't see that coming.

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Really? This seems a bit like revisionist history. iPod came out in 2001 and it was a whole 6 years before the iPhone. And then another 3 before the iPad. It's not like we has revolutionary products every year under Jobs.

MacNut said:

At what point does the saturation level peak. How many people are going to buy an iPad every year that is basically the same. The iPhone 5 is a flop because it is just taller, no big change over the 4S. This is why Samsung is eating their lunch. I wonder if Apple peaked too soon and now they can't top themselves.

Apple needs something huge to draw attention to themselves. And not bad attention that maps was. They have gotten stagnant.

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How exactly is Samsung eating Apple's lunch? And what evidence is there that the 5 is a flop? And by evidence I don't mean rumors from the WSJ or the comments sections from anti-Apple sites like Engadget and c|net. Do you have sales figures no one else has that proves the 5 is a flop?

See this is the BS that Apple absolutely nothing to counter and eventually perception become reality. So by the time Apple does report quarterly results the meme is already set that no matter what they report it's going to be spun negatively. They could report 60M iPhone and 20M iPad sales and we'd still hear that Apple is doomed and Samsung is winning.