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Let me think. What would an Apple loyalist say to this?
  1. Decline in unit sale is irrelevant. (Despite iPhone sales account for majority of revenue)
  2. Apple is a 'service company' now. (Despite growth in service revenue is less than decline in iPhone sale)
  3. This report is fake. No one knows the answer, because Apple no longer publish unit sale.

I'm not an Apple loyalist, but 1 and 2 have some merit. A decline over a crazy big number isn't anything to get in too big of a twist about. And service revenue is pretty important.
 
Make no mistake Tim, this is lack of innovation and pure focus on money, not on customers (beyond security, which is more less ok). Period. In Steve's golden age we would pay whatever crazy price Apple came up with becuase we felt iPhones (and Apple devices in general) were truly remarkable. Now the cameras are "good", but below the competition. Siri has failed to evolve and only does a couple of more things than a few years ago. Mail app is kind of rubish, without proper font sizing and smart filters, faceId slower than the technology it replaces?, No quick-charge adapter in the box of a 1000Usd Device?. Outside USA nobody uses Animoji's nor iMessage because we want more interoperability at least for messaging, nobody can send, without a considerable effort, Animoji's in WhatsApp!. I Hate Android OS but every year I like IOS a little less and less.
 
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Make no mistake Tim, this is lack of innovation and pure focus on money, not on customers (beyond security, which is more less ok). Period. In Steve's golden age we would pay whatever crazy price Apple came up with becuase we felt iPhones (and Apple devices in general) were truly remarkable. Now the cameras are "good", but below the competition. Siri has failed to evolve and only does a couple of more things than a few years ago. Mail app is kind of rubish, without proper font sizing and smart filters, faceId slower than the technology it replaces?, No quick-charge adapter in the box of a 1000Usd Device?. Outside USA nobody uses Animoji's nor iMessage because we want more interoperability at least for messaging, nobody can send, without a considerable effort, Animoji's in WhatsApp!. I Hate Android OS but every year I like IOS a little less and less.

So in other words you’ll keep buying Apple products—maybe just less frequently. Papa Timmy says thank you.
 
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15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.

I sense a bit of drama... !!
 
I'm not an Apple loyalist, but 1 and 2 have some merit. A decline over a crazy big number isn't anything to get in too big of a twist about. And service revenue is pretty important.

Sure, and you could be right. But to put some numbers down;

Apple achieved 13% of year-over-year growth in Q1 2018. However, it achieved -5% of y/y growth in Q1 2019.

Yes, it is a negative 5.
 
I sense a bit of drama... !!
More than a bit.

These people focusing on YOY percentage decline are being obtuse. I think it’s time for a remedial math lesson here:

Percentage change = (final - initial) / initial

That means it’s just two data points and a scaled measure of their separation. Thus, if the “initial” data point was crazy large...of course you’ll get a large percentage decline! Derp.

People are overlooking that compared to two years ago, this is a net 5% increase. Last year was just a crazy crazy good quarter. This year is less crazy good.
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Sure, and you could be right. But to put some numbers down;

Apple achieved 13% of year-over-year growth in Q1 2018. However, it achieved -5% of y/y growth in Q1 2019.

Yes, it is a negative 5.

See above. This is why YOY estimates are pretty lousy indicators. Look at the trend line and tell me what you see.

Now could this be the beginning of the end? I mean, sure. But the evidence supports that no more or less than it being a blip. Also, we knew revenue would slow eventually. It can’t grow at the rate it was indefinitely. But to call that “Apple’s fault” as many on here are doing ignores the many exogenous factors.
 
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See above. This is why YOY estimates are pretty lousy indicators. Look at the trend line and tell me what you see.

Now could this be the beginning of the end? I mean, sure. But the evidence supports that no more or less than it being a blip. Also, we knew revenue would slow eventually. It can’t grow at the rate it was indefinitely. But to call that “Apple’s fault” as many on here are doing ignores the many exogenous factors.

The trend line is telling me that revenue has begun to decline. I look forward to seeing what Apple can bring to the table.
 
15% down, and it’s the tip of the iceberg. BlackBerry RIM didn’t collapse their sales in a year. Nokia didn’t disappear overnight. Motorola didn’t vanish in a quarter or two.

15% decline is nothing to laugh at or ignore. The massive PR failures under Cook is nothing to laugh at.
`actually no it’s to do with how the market is and due to the high quailty of apple products people don’t see the need to upgrade so often...so no the comparison is a poor one with those companies.

65 million in one quarter says it all that apple will still be at the top of the food chain for years to come
 
What’s the evidence for prices being too high? It can’t be the record iPhone revenue Apple recorded in regions other than China.

Apple does well in the US, it is currently hurting everywhere else according to Tim, straight from the horses mouth.
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These people focusing on YOY percentage decline are being obtuse. I think it’s time for a remedial math lesson here:

iPhone sales numbers while currently healthy have been flat or declining for around 4-5 years now.
 
The $84B Apple delivered is nothing to laugh at either. Citing BB and Nokia, two organizations that unlike Apple, didn’t change with the times is a false equivalency.

Massive PR failures are not showing in the numbers, unless one considers $84B a dismal financial failure.

Would you consider losing 400B$ in stock value in a few months ‘a dismal financial failure’ then? I guess some people would...
 
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Marissa Mayer scenario currently unfolding. High expenses, low morale and rotten Apples everywhere. Tim should be thinking about retirement.
 
The trend line is telling me that revenue has begun to decline. I look forward to seeing what Apple can bring to the table.

That’s one data point. Not a trend. By definition.

Why does everyone keep confusing their personal opinions about Apple and its products with an objective analysis of the company? Good grief. It isn’t hard.
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iPhone sales numbers while currently healthy have been flat or declining for around 4-5 years now.

This is true — albeit as manufacturing costs and thus prices have fob up too. But as stated above, that’s not unexpected. And it’s faulty logic to assume that says anything in particular about Apple and its products. Maybe it does, maybe not — but that’s speculative at best.
 
Would you consider losing 400B$ in stock value in a few months ‘a dismal financial failure’ then? I guess some people would...

Hate to break it to you, but stock market movements aren't diagnostic of a company—or predictive—in any way, manner, shape, or form. They're more a function of people's priors being wrong than anything.
 
Apple focused too much on the phone sales and not us devs and now neither backend devs want to work on the mac nor Mobile devs want to develop for the iPhone, its a downhill trend from here. If only Apple would have focused more on the developers Mac and iOS would have had tons of games, and thus users. But now that Apple ecosystem is lagging behind with their own non open policies they are waking up. Well Tim when you and Angela were busy buying a new yacht and private mansion devs were migrating to android ecosystem And your users were migrating to cheaper and better phone tech than expensive Apple. You gotta understand when iPhone was released there was only iPhone and nothing else, in 10 yrs the market has changed and there are tons of different kinds of Phone Manufacturers, providing better and cost effective phones. There is no point of a very powerful phone that has no apps to run them and no use case to use their power. iPhone Processors are reaching i5 level performances without any use case. Its an over powered machine thats it. No apps to leverage them, nor in everyones reach to buy it. Yet your VP of Marketing kept saying Apple has never been about Market share. Well if you have never been about Market Share then you should be now because there isnt any more premium market share left for the largest company on the planet. You have to produce mass market products like Samsung if you dont people wont like it.
 
When you continue to sell a two, three even four year old phone along side the newest phone people tend to think why upgrade, it's still on the market.?.

Apple needs to clean up and clean out its line up of phones. Sell newest and last year's phone (at a discount) and only that. Upgrade cycle ill pick up, slightly, with this IMO.

And put out a pair of beige or black wireless headphones. Those white ones look so silly on metrosexual men.
 
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Apple is moving to a services company.
Sure but their services are dependent of their hardware sales at the end of the day.
If iphone/Mac unit sales continue to go down services will eventually decline as well.

That’s because Apple is becoming less reliant on iPhone sales.

Yeah sure but iphone sales = 3x services & wearable combines.
If iphone unit sales continue to decline how will services and wearables be able to replace them? They will eventually also go down because Apple's market reach will shrink.
 
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If the 65.9 million number is correct then that is a huge miss. They haven't been below 74.5 since the December 2014 quarter. The XR was supposed to appeal to all those iPhone users who thought they iPhone X was too expensive and held on to their 5S, 6, and 6S devices for another year. There was supposed to be a supercycle of upgrades. That didn't happen. Now revenue guidance for the next quarter is down too despite robust services growth.

We'll have to wait for at least another quarter to see if this is really a one-time aberration due to China's economy or if it represents a permanent retreat in the market.
 
I'm not an Apple loyalist, but 1 and 2 have some merit. A decline over a crazy big number isn't anything to get in too big of a twist about. And service revenue is pretty important.
You seem like a reasonable dude, so I will bite on service revenue (Item No. 3):

[First, I have no direct dog on this fight, like others in here vested heart and soul on AAPL, as all my investments are focused on Vanguard index funds: I believe in the US economy at large.]

Lets go to the Apple "services tape"/s:
  1. OS-independent Internet Services::= AppleMusic, iTunes
  2. Hardware-dependent Services ::= AppleCare[insurance], ApplePay[mobile payments], iCloud[storage], AppStore[Mac and iPhone Apps]
Have I missed one or more?
Note that the "big-boy" services revenue are proportional to hardware sales: Specifically, AppleCare, ApplePay, iCloud and AppStore.

Only when, and if, Cook can unleash a profitable services stream, independent and agnostic across player hardware, then one can state, irrevocably, that Apple has turned into a "pure services" company.

Maybe it will be AppleStream[TV and Movies], but until then, services revenue will remain proportional to iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales. [HomePod notwithstanding].

Just my view. [You probably feel otherwise.]
 
Hate to break it to you, but stock market movements aren't diagnostic of a company—or predictive—in any way, manner, shape, or form. They're more a function of people's priors being wrong than anything.

It’s a measure of what people THINK the company is worth, given all the information that’s out there. Apparently people see enough reason to value AAPL 40% lower than a few months ago.
 
Sure but their services are dependent of their hardware sales at the end of the day.
If iphone/Mac unit sales continue to go down services will eventually decline as well.



Yeah sure but iphone sales = 3x services & wearable combines.
If iphone unit sales continue to decline how will services and wearables be able to replace them? They will eventually also go down because Apple's market reach will shrink.
This is a false narrative.

If iPhone sales were down 15%, how did services grow at 20% y/y?

Answer: Because the installed base grows WITHOUT iPhone sales growth. This is what you and a lot of analysts are having trouble understanding. The user base grew 100M in <12 months. All of the devices (mostly iPhone) are getting services. In fact, Apple said they now have 360M paying subscribers.

As long as iPhone users don't LEAVE the platform, services will continue to grow despite a unit sale slow down. People are just not upgrading as often. They aren't switching to Android. Apple just said iPhone has a 90% loyalty rate.

New unit sales and installed devices do NOT have to move together. Apple just showed you that.

Think about it this way. Apple has 1.4B active devices. Imagine they sell only 110M iPhones this year (literally half of last year), their user base will STILL grow unless 110M iPhone users switch to Android and "turn off" their iPhone. Understand now?
 
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