Apple Forecasted to Report First Quarterly Revenue Decline Since 2003

[Razeus]

Gradually, people's perception of Apple has changed. The implicit consumer/company covenant that had been developed under the Jobs years whereby it was understood that you paid more, but you were looked after, has all but disappeared.

Apple is now double-dipping on its users - overcharging for a faster charger for the iPad Pro 12.9 - a charger that it should have shipped with. Raising the prices on iPad 9.7, and then overcharging for a keyboard and stylus. Shipping a phone with mediocre battery life, and then overcharging for a ridiculous battery case. Don't get me started on the base 16GB storage or the 2GB Ram on a "Pro" iPad. Instead of fixing the pathetic Appstore search, we're seeing rumours regarding paid search results.

The modern Apple way is you pay more, and then expect to keep paying. Apple used to sell their products segmented into Good, Better and Best. That is now long gone.

The real problem is that as phones become standard part of living, people are just going to go with the cheapest option. And we know Apple ain't cheap. Plus, I feel like they are starting to nickel and dime customers for everything.

"Oh, this Macbook as one port, but you can get a $50 attachment. Oh, the iPad Pro is great for artists - but the pen is separate. Oh, the rMBP is a year old with a 2013 CPU, but it still $2500.

 

[spiderman0616]

Plus you're NEVER going to find a guy that puts his heart into the company the way the guy that built the company did.

I never got the impression that Tim Cook doesn't put 100% of his being into Apple. To imply that he doesn't care or isn't trying hard enough is ridiculous.
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The only thing Apple really cares about right now is their cash cow iPhone, but being a one-hit wonder could create problems in the future.

"One hit wonder"? That's 100% incorrect.

 

[bbrks]

The stock market is the worst evil that ever happened to mankind. Period.

 

[RickInHouston]

I sincerely hope you do not encounter them, but the horrible display/graphics bugs (and numerous other issues) in both the Surface and XPS products firmly eliminated those from replacing my rMBP.

Here's to hoping for some great new Macs this summer.

And what about the bugs in apple laptops that finally get attention YEARS later? Does that make you feel good you stay with a company?

 

[Razeus]

Apple REALLY needs to get on board with Machine Learning. Once these phones are in everyone's hands, making the smartphone actually "smart" is where the profits will go. I'll tell you first hand Google is WAY ahead of the game, while Apple is still forcing me to do everything myself. Microsoft and their Cortana project is way ahead of what Siri can do and Siri has been around for ever.
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I never got the impression that Tim Cook doesn't put 100% of his being into Apple. To imply that he doesn't care or isn't trying hard enough is ridiculous.
[doublepost=1461684262][/doublepost]
"One hit wonder"? That's 100% incorrect.

...I re-read my post and I never said Tim didn't care or isn't trying.

What I said was that you'll never find someone who put their heart into the company they way Steve did. Tim can try, but he could never treat it as something special as it wasn't his baby to begin with.

 

[American Hero]

Plus, I feel like they are starting to nickel and dime customers for everything.

The nickel and dime scheme started years ago, right after Jobs died.

2011: Basically a repackaged iPhone 4 with Siri, a software upgrade, shifted antenna bands and a new processor, all for $199+ tax on a two year contract.

2012: A sudden change to the head phone jack (although I admit it was needed), however it still required people to buy an adapter or a new accessory to make everything work properly again.

2013: iPhone 5C released with a plastic case and ugly colors to save on production costs.

2014: Apple Pay is released, but charges the banks money, slowing the roll out significantly.

2015: Lack of an upgrade in storage to 32 GB base model iPhones, so grandma walks into an AT&T store three weeks later wondering why she can't update her phone software.

2016: An iPhone SE built with iPhone 5S externals left in storage.

 

[guychicago]

An earnings beat is highly unlikely this quarter. However with sentiments already being so low on $AAPL it may not move up or down too much AH. Sold mine at $112. Will get in again if this goes below $100.

 

[Mr. Dee]

Can't analyst just look at 52 billion as a lot of revenue? Why is this such a disappointment if sales are not constantly growing? I bet some of these analyst drive the same 10 year old car, live in the same apartment or house for the past 20 years, still use an iPhone5s, eat the same amount of food. An iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 are pretty much the same for general task. Were they really expecting everybody to be star struck with a Kim Kardashian bank account to buy a brand new iPhone every single year? Ridiculous! Even Saudi Arabia is realizing oil is not their future anymore and are beginning to diversify.

The gravy train will end for everyone in every facet of life. It happens.

 

[igorsky]

"One hit wonder"? That's 100% incorrect.

You will never change the perception of anyone who believes in this ridiculous meme. It's like the facts that they make billions, and outsell competitors, in all their other product categories don't exist.

 

[spiderman0616]

Can't analyst just look at 52 billion as a lot of revenue? Why is this such a disappointment if sales are not constantly growing? I bet some of these analyst drive the same 10 year old car, live in the same apartment or house for the past 20 years, still use an iPhone5s, eat the same amount of food. An iPhone 6s and iPhone 6 are pretty much the same for general task. Were they really expecting everybody to be star struck with a Kim Kardashian bank account to buy a brand new iPhone every single year? Ridiculous! Even Saudi Arabia is realizing oil is not their future anymore and are beginning to diversify.

The gravy train will end for everyone in every facet of life. It happens.

This will be the 21st highest earnings ever reported in history EVER, and Wall Street is going to punish the stock price for not being high enough. Meanwhile, the tech press will spin it as "nobody wants iPhones anymore" because that generates clicks and traffic to their sites. It doesn't matter that none of that goes along with common sense. Bashing Apple and labeling them "Doomed" is big business for a lot of people.

 

[Razeus]

Apple stock is TREMENDOUSLY undervalued and has been for a while. This is based in P/E, PEG, and P/B, ROE, C/S. I'll buy more if it goes below $100, especially if they jack up their dividends and continue the share buybacks. I have the stock priced at $200. Even if they don't sell more iPhones, this company is a cash cow.

 

[joueboy]

Like I said over and over again that first day sales was just a marketing strategy. They just keep adding more countries every year just so it breaks the opening day sales record from last year. Other than that obviously the sales is declining. I'm one of those people who don't get excited anymore with the release of new macs and ios devices. I still love my iPhone but the experience between iOS and Android are very close. With that in mind the only thing to decide on is the price of the device. I can't imagine Apple still sticking to 16GB. That wouldn't be an issue if there's an expandable memory. Add that to a very limiting capacity the iCloud is not enough. It's just a matter of time before a family like me will realize how expensive to have eveyone an iPhone.

 

[kodos]

Sometimes, you don't want to appoint a successor that will outshine your accomplishments. By putting a dud in place to succeed you is one way of making that happen. While Steve talked a good game about making Apple a company like (the old) HP that will endure forever, I do wonder if part of his reasoning in putting in a nice enough guy (but hopeless when it comes to innovation) like Tim Cook was to make sure that Steve's accomplishments would be seen as the pinnacle of Apple.

For a guy who bought a new car every six months so he could park in the handicapped parking spot, that seems narcissistic enough.

I think Tim will go down like Sculley - the guy who was responsible for Apple's decline. Except this time he will bring Apple down from even greater heights. Under Tim's guard, they did the obvious - big screen iPhone, but other than that the best that can be said of the other introductions have been "well, it isn't a disaster".

I think that Ive has "checked out", and passion is no longer there at Apple. They have gotten fat and lazy. I looked at an iPhone 6S next to a Note 5 the other day. It is shocking how long in the tooth the Apple design is. Now, I will grant that iOS still remains the superior ecosystem and user experience. But (design!) was one of the pillars of Apple. Now, it just looks lazy.

 

[geoff5093]

I feel that Tim Cook's time as caretaker CEO is done.

He's guided Apple to outstanding profits, but has not shown that he can take Apple to new heights in the long-term. The Apple Watch is not a worthy successor to the Mac, the iPhone and the iPad, in my opinion.

In the five years that he has been CEO, he has never shown the passion for Apple products that Steve Jobs did. As a result, the public has become less enthusiastic also.

Finally, the area that Apple most needs attention is services. Eddy Cue is not the right man to lead this area, to put it mildly. Apple needs a major culture change to instil the right ethos for making high quality services. It goes against their traditional culture in a fundamental way, and requires strong leadership to overcome resistance in Apple. Tim Cook is not able to give this leadership, nor does he have the headhunting chops to find the right person; he is too nice, and doesn't have the sharpness in this field.

It's time for new blood.

100% agree. Whenever I watch a keynote, you just see and hear him reading from the teleprompter, there is no passion or enthusiasm in his voice that gets us to want to buy those products like Jobs had.

 

[Armandodj]

Everyone has their own opinion towards Apple because of the new revenues report sure. Now everyone has something negative to say until the reveal the iPhone in September. Please! Every company has his ups and downs....

 

[bpeeps]

Steve Jobs wouldn't have

Who knows how Apple would be performing if Steve were alive

I hope the irony is not lost.
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This thread has turned into every bit the dumpster fire I thought it would.

You've done an excellent job hosing down the fire though.

 

[tampageek]

Tim forgot that apple is not just about iphones - it's about the ecosystem that works seamlessly together. That includes COMPUTERS!!!!

 

[brinary001]

This quarter is never supposed to wow anyone with its numbers. Product launches in it are rare, it's between the holiday and summer seasons, and also far from Apple's best quarter which is always going to be the one that sees new iPhones launch.

 

[RedOrchestra]

I'll buy more if it goes below $100 ... I have the stock priced at $200.

Absolutely mind-boggling post from someone who obviously won't be investing in the stock.

 

[apolloa]

Here's what I know: This is NOT the forum you want to come to if you just want to talk about Apple products. It is always such a troll fest. And there are a lot of users here who think they know things but really don't seem to understand how the world works. The site itself doesn't help when it posts click bait. Not saying there aren't good, intelligent people here too. There are just a lot more that take every opportunity they can to cut Apple, its products, and its users down.

My worry is not that Apple can't continue to innovate and release good stuff. My worry is that bad mouthing Apple makes a lot of websites a lot of money and the more popular Apple gets, the more the media will want to take them down. There are a lot of perfectly logical reasons why Apple is going to post a decline today, but you rack up a lot more clicks and ad revenue by reporting FUD. This phenomenon gets worse and worse with each passing year, and in my opinion, Apple has always been far too willing to just let the media run with the narrative and make it into whatever the want. This was a problem under Steve Jobs as well. He preferred to say nothing and let the loudmouths tell the story. The current guard is much the same.

I know a lot of people have the attitude of "Hey, how will Apple get better if we don't rip into them now and then?" That's all well and good, but people have become incredibly hypercritical over the littlest things. There are big things that Apple needs to improve too, but I think many have lost perspective on the huge amount of positive things Apple is doing. The entitled, hypercritical attitudes about Apple have gotten way out of control, and while people might think their intentions are good, this is what's eventually going to take Apple down. The people that just read the headlines and move on or take everything they see in dumpster fire threads like this one as fact (and this is the majority of people) are eventually going to start believing all this BS if they don't already.

Apple isn't doing enough to recognize these PR problems and they never had. Steve Jobs once famously said, "You have to ignore the ignorant people." Well, yes, you can do that for awhile, but it doesn't scale to the situation Apple is in now, where for some reason, people just seem to want to watch them burn. It makes no sense to me at all, but it's what I truly believe will be Apple's ultimate demise.

I think you have totally ms-read Apple sir. They base their entire marketing strategy on their snobiness, they rely on their fans being equally snobby, the media treats Apple EXACTLY as they want them to. Apple will blacklist ANY media outlet from it's events if they bad mouth them, Apple literally blackmails sites etc to be biased towards them if they want to attend Apple events.

Everything you just stated as a problem is purely by Apple's design and marketing strategy.
And what site, or company for that matter, do you truly know off where you should not be able to criticise them? NO company is always right.

I have seen plenty of fools on here which literally believe Apple can never do anything wrong ever, that's sad, to sell yourself so much to a corporation who only cares about your wallet and NOTHING else.

 

[dumastudetto]

This will be the 21st highest earnings ever reported in history EVER, and Wall Street is going to punish the stock price for not being high enough. Meanwhile, the tech press will spin it as "nobody wants iPhones anymore" because that generates clicks and traffic to their sites. It doesn't matter that none of that goes along with common sense. Bashing Apple and labeling them "Doomed" is big business for a lot of people.

It's hard to argue that a company is not less valuable if profits from their core business are in decline. Apple is not doomed, but the value of the stock is going to track the performance of its main drivers of revenue and profit and future expectations thereof.

 

[bpeeps]

Can posters not be critical of Apple - as long as they can back up opinions? The keyword is *opinion*, which is not black and white.

While many people here, like myself, enjoy Apple products, can also see the shortcomings of the company - AS WELL as the good stuff Apple does.

Goto AppleInsider if you don't want to read criticisms.

Its a discussion forum. A discussion forum that only allowed praise for Apple would be exceedingly boring, and non-sensical.

And a discussion forum that showcases mostly complaints and hate is definitely boring and nonsensical.

 

[tampageek]

Everyone has their own opinion towards Apple because of the new revenues report sure. Now everyone has something negative to say until the reveal the iPhone in September. Please! Every company has his ups and downs....

This isn't about ups and downs - it's about thinking your favorite child (iphone) walks on water - and that somehow makes it OK to ignore your other children. Apple is a computer company first. Updates should make things better, not more buggy with features and usefulness taken away. Less is NOT more.

 

[d5aqoëp]

Good. Hopefully revenue decline might encourage them to update some of their products. Once they stop caring about squeezing as many profits from 16GB storage phones and aged tech in their computers, they might consider giving people a bit of value for money.

If they know they'll have revenue decline regardless of what they do, they might stop penny pinching.

This kind of reply which echoes sentiment of loyal Apple fanbase should give Tim Cook sleepless nights.

 

[dumastudetto]

This quarter is never supposed to wow anyone with its numbers. Product launches in it are rare, it's between the holiday and summer seasons, and also far from Apple's best quarter which is always going to be the one that sees new iPhones launch.

That's why they measure against the same quarter a year ago to track performance.