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This article presents yet more evidence that Apple has passed its peak and is now in the process of slow decline.

Measuring company performance mainly on growth or marketshare is not only wrong in my opinion—it is also dangerous. Unfortunately that is what most investors do.
If you look at everything—revenue, profit, gross margin, cash balance, management, people, carbon footprint, customer satisfaction, investments etc they look to be in very good shape.

And just hang in there—one day investors, analysts and journalists will start criticizing Samsung and Google—and start loving Apple again. Until the day when they start criticizing Apple again while loving Samsung and Google and so on. Back and forth.
Meanwhile, enjoy your Apple products.
 
Rule #1 in software engineering: asians are good in hardware, but very bad in software.

Some Asian countries are very bad at anything demanding creativity. The entire school system in China, for example, is designed to churn out production workers. I've seen this first hand
 
iOS shipments stacked by quarter: http://twitpic.com/clgjd8

Image

The headline here sounds like BusinessInsider or WSJ.

There isn't yet a long term "slow growth" trend anywhere on the books.

Actually that image you posted shows that the growth is slowing. Look at the difference between iPhone shipments from Q1 2011 compared to Q1 2012. There's an increase of close to 20,000 shipped units. Now compare the difference between Q1 2012 and Q4 2012/Q1 2013. The difference is probably about 12,000 shipments.

Growth, while still ocurring, is ocurring at a slower pace than before, and instead of waiting around for positive growth to become negative growth, Foxconn (a business that exists to earn money and maximize profits) are looking to diversify to minimize the impact of a halt in growth and/or diversify so that Apple's success has less impact on Foxconn's success.
 
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Why not? They seem to be doing a good job manufacturing Apple products, which isn't an easy task.

Wait before you judge

What evidence is there to suggest that they cannot? :confused:

Sounds as naive a presumption as somebody in the last decade saying: "Why on Earth would Apple, a company who do nothing but build computers, think they can take over the music industry and make phones"

They have their own TV sets, running their own firmware. Works very well too. They have also built TV's and written firmware for others for years. Same goes for monitors and other related products. They do a fair amount of 'off brand' stuff, most of which they do the firmware for.

Why on earth would you assume a company with all their money and manpower wont be able to setup a dedicated software division :rolleyes:

Simple. They can hire people who can write software. Well, that's what most companies do to get software written..

I company of that size almost certainly has huge group of software developers already in place wring software for internal use. In fact I'd say most software developers work for internal departments like that. They might already employ 1,000 developers who write software for all those machines and accounting and reporting.

Foxxcon might market their internal software to other manufactures not to consumers. We don't know.

Why do you think it's so hard?

Hey bro, as long as they don't hire someone like Forstall, they'll be fine.

:apple:

Yeah, because we don't want those Chinese to get all uppity there. :rolleyes:

It's called moving up the ladder to take your lucrative job. When Samsung started, they made mostly off label electronic components for other companies like IC chips, RAM and capacitors. They're now a pretty big company.

I'm not judging, I'm... doubting, a little bit.

Because creating good apps and producing vast amounts of hardware cheaply require different mindsets, I'd imagine (I admit I've never tried producing vast amounts of hardware, or consumer grade software, so I could be totally wrong).

The hardware production requires great business management - getting lots of people and facilities, making sure they're all doing their job, working hard, etc. Certainly there must be some creative thinking involved in getting the best processes in place, although I suspect a lot of the manufacturing process is dictated by the designers.

Writing great apps isn't a problem you can solve by throwing lots of people at it. Certainly, you can get as many coders as you can hire and get plenty of reasonably, perhaps very, efficient code written quite quickly, but what you need are creative people with the freedom to experiment and the imagination to come up with great stuff. It's a totally different proposition. Certainly, you could hire people to do that, any business could, but it'd just be one business entering a completely different market, basically from scratch - there'd be no synergy.

The example of Samsung kinda supports my view, I think. They the epitome of the let's do everything, throw it at the wall and see what sticks kind of company, both in terms of businesses and features (and even with the features, it tends to be obvious things everyone's already thought of but haven't implemented yet because they don't have a nice way of doing so), and what's the result? Average hardware and below average software. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Foxconn's effort prove just as uninteresting.

I'm sort of thinking aloud here, be glad to hear reasoning to suggest why I might be wrong.
 
Measuring company performance mainly on growth or marketshare is not only wrong in my opinion—it is also dangerous. Unfortunately that is what most investors do.

I actually think that the real danger lies in the ironic fact that most investors measure company performance based on the stock price.
 
<insert tasteless joke>

Are they making Foxconn approved suicide nets?

</insert tasteless joke>
 
Why on Earth would foxconn, a company who do nothing but build hardware to other people's designs, think they can write software?

They are a multi-billion dollar company. I'm sure they could afford to hire a couple of programmers.
 
Apple is going to have the upper hand in the accessories market since they'll have the proper phone dimensions before other companies. Plus, most Apple users trust Apple products more than any other, so the cases will likely sell in the tons. It's a smart move.
 
Foxconn: We want to be the Samsung of China.

Samsung is the Samsung of China. Most of its products, from refrigerators to phones, are made there, not S. Korea. BTW Hon Hai DBA Foxconn isn't a Chinese company either. It's Taiwanese.
 
Writing great apps isn't a problem you can solve by throwing lots of people at it. Certainly, you can get as many coders as you can hire and get plenty of reasonably, perhaps very, efficient code written quite quickly, but what you need are creative people with the freedom to experiment and the imagination to come up with great stuff. It's a totally different proposition. Certainly, you could hire people to do that, any business could, but it'd just be one business entering a completely different market, basically from scratch - there'd be no synergy.

The example of Samsung kinda supports my view, I think. They the epitome of the let's do everything, throw it at the wall and see what sticks kind of company, both in terms of businesses and features (and even with the features, it tends to be obvious things everyone's already thought of but haven't implemented yet because they don't have a nice way of doing so), and what's the result? Average hardware and below average software. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Foxconn's effort prove just as uninteresting.

I'm sort of thinking aloud here, be glad to hear reasoning to suggest why I might be wrong.

I'm not expecting to see vast amounts of user facing apps from Foxconn, but they are likely to be able to do cloud based infrastructure better than Apple can (which isn't saying much), and that could be an area in which their hardware expertise and low margins can build a successful business.

Said cloud services will probably have some basic apps for accessing that cloud data (whatever it is - it could be a video reception client if Foxconn go afer Akamai for example), but I doubt Foxconn consider doing poker games and task keeper apps part of their core competency.
 
I stopped reading at "Slowing Apple Growth".

I keep looking for the quote from Foxconn, that their Apple business is declining, and that cutbacks & changes are due to Apple, and nothing to do with other electronics companies who have been experiencing negative 'growth' for how many years now??

WSJ has lost all creditability with negative Apple stories, so I don't see any need to take this nonsense seriously at all - except to note that Wall St manipulation of Apple's stock price continues unashamedly.

Looks to me like Apple's taking on other manufacturers, and maintaining its Foxconn manufacturing levels - which won't suit Wall St, at all.
 
Samsung is the Samsung of China. Most of its products, from refrigerators to phones, are made there, not S. Korea. BTW Hon Hai DBA Foxconn isn't a Chinese company either. It's Taiwanese.
Then it's Samsung of Taiwan. If Foxconn would develop, build and sell their own products, you pretty much have Samsung minus the refrigerators and washing machines.

The thing is that Foxconn knows how to manufacture an iPhone, HTC One or Sony Xperia Z, while Samsung either doesn't or doesn't care to build one. The question is whether they can design a phone on par with them, because if you're starting to build phone accessories, that's how it will end.
 
Then it's Samsung of Taiwan. If Foxconn would develop, build and sell their own products, you pretty much have Samsung minus the refrigerators and washing machines.

The thing is that Foxconn knows how to manufacture an iPhone, HTC One or Sony Xperia Z, while Samsung either doesn't or doesn't care to build one. The question is whether they can design a phone on par with them, because if you're starting to build phone accessories, that's how it will end.

I don't think you understand how huge Samsung is. They rival GE. Foxconn is a pebble compared to Samsung. Samsung is the 2nd largest ship builder in the world & #1 in IT. They have a sizable construction & industrial products wing, as well as insurance & more in addition to all their more well known consumer products.
 
I keep looking for the quote from Foxconn, that their Apple business is declining, and that cutbacks & changes are due to Apple, and nothing to do with other electronics companies who have been experiencing negative 'growth' for how many years now??

WSJ has lost all creditability with negative Apple stories, so I don't see any need to take this nonsense seriously at all - except to note that Wall St manipulation of Apple's stock price continues unashamedly.

Looks to me like Apple's taking on other manufacturers, and maintaining its Foxconn manufacturing levels - which won't suit Wall St, at all.

I don't get all the ostrich heads in the sand around here regarding Apple's flattening growth curve. It's pure math. But specifically to Foxconn, it's true they assemble products for a diverse group of clients, but Apple is by far it's biggest. It built a new factory primarily just for iPhones & iPads. So when Apple growth slows, yes, it's materially affected. iPhone sales growth % will not match last years.
 
Some Asian countries are very bad at anything demanding creativity. The entire school system in China, for example, is designed to churn out production workers. I've seen this first hand

Pretty sure it's the same thing here, bud. You're way over-flattering yourself. The difference is that China is still a very poor country with very little leisure time and money for creativity.
 
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