“Uh oh. There are thunderstorm clouds on the technology horizon, and the once shining beacon of hope for the tech sector has it a wall (it’s Friday; mixed metaphors are on sale),” Kate MacKenzie writes for Mac360.
“Apple is projecting not just slower growth in the future, but no growth, as in revenue and profits in the next quarter that are going down; lower than the same period last year,” MacKenzie writes. “It’s been expected for years by the Chicken Little market prognosticators, but now it’s official. Apple has hit its peak. Years from now will we look back and see 2016 as the start of the Great Technology Apocalypse?”
“A change is coming, a filtering of players, consolidation, if you will. Once major players – HTC, Motorola, BlackBerry, and others– are no longer major. The mid-range and low end of the smartphone market, the largest mover of technology the past decade, operates on thin to no margins, and there’s only one company that offers an aspirational brand. Even while Apple’s revenue and profits dip, competitors will drop even more, and worse, their most valuable customers, who aspire to own better products, will move from Android and Windows to Apple,” MacKenzie writes. “Apple will not only weather the stormy apocalyptic clouds, it will emerge lean and clean and mean because Apple’s entire product line is aspirational in nature which attracts the customers that will prosper during the apocalypse.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Bring. It. On.
Cull the leeches!
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Everyone could see this coming, especially the analysts and CNBC anchors, who all absolutely hate their iPhones, iPads, Macs and the integrated services this whole ecosystem offers!
Thank god everyone can go back to using dumb phones & “death screen” PCs.
Apocalypse indeed if this were to happen!!
Why does everything have to be based on the end of something, and be called apocalypse?
Things change all the time. It’s not so melodramatic.
AND the word “apocalypse” actually means “to unveil, or reveal, or uncover. If you are on the other side (wrong side) of the unveiling, I guess one could call it the ending. . . . But to the ones to whom it is unveiled, it is not the “end”.
This writer is too young to look at history. Look how well Apple did during the Great Recession against all the other tech companies. IF, and I hats a big IF, Apple has a flat quarter than so be it, the future looks brilliant.
Agree. Spring is traditionally a slack quarter, anyway. We know the Spring quarter will be down — and substantially so — compared with the just-reported quarter.
Let’s see how Apple does _this_ Spring compared with _last_ Spring results. That’s the relevant comparison.
“This writer” actually makes the same argument you do: in a downturn, Apple will come out better than everyone else.
From the blurb _posted above_ she says this:
“Apple will not only weather the stormy apocalyptic clouds, it will emerge lean and clean and mean because Apple’s entire product line is aspirational in nature which attracts the customers that will prosper during the apocalypse.”
So, perhaps she is “too young” to believe the nonsense that this is bad news for Apple? She used her brain, instead of the market’s conventional wisdom?
A tree must be pruned in the Fall in order to promote new growth in the Spring.
– Chauncey Gardner (Being There)
It is time for Apple to change before it is too late.
Start by releasing cheap products that people will flock to. Make OS X and iOS more vulnerable to hackers and virus, Lower your rule book for app submission on itune and create a search engine that will spy on every damn Apple user… Make a backdoor, cancel Apple care and get rid of Cook and Ives… That would be AWESOME!!!!
Pressure’s off for now and everyone can recharge for the new spaceship voyage.
Bulshit.
Will NEVER happen brain dead.
Then how do you explain the iPod Nano?
Moving on. There are alway ups and downs. People want to get rich too quickly.
Growth is relative. As the dollar strengthens, expect the economy to relax a bit. It may even deflate, which seems to be the 21st century. “The Great Deflation”
As long as Apple remains focused on providing excellent services, software, and hardware I really don’t see a problem looming.
I agree. I am however concerned that Apple isn’t providing the level of excellence they used to. And like it or not, the competition is as good or better than Apple in many ways.
Here’s just one example: the Thunderbolt Display. Can anyone here defend Apple selling old hardware for such an inflated price? Anyone with a brain would get a state-of-the-art Dell UltraSharp for less.
If that was the worst of Apple’s oversights, then the future would be bright. But across the board, Apple’s current product lineup is showing all kinds of holes. Apple seriously needs to attend to its product portfolio, and I’m not alone in seeing that Cook is doing a shitty job keeping things fresh.
Apple launched the iPhone 6 and 6Plus in September of 2014. They blew it to not offer a 4″ model alongside them. Today, 1.5 years later, millions of people are struggling along with old Apple 5S models because that’s the best Apple is willing to offer them in a small size.
Does this sound like a company that cares about delivering the best user experience to its customers?
Sad but true. I am still using iTunes 11 on an old Mac Pro because newer versions absolutely suck. Apple has a lot of work to do.
Some fm what you post is reasonable. but then you get melodramatic and start talking about millions of people “struggling” along witd the old iPhone 5s. Poor folks, having to use a phone that was cutting edge less than two years ago. Bring in the Red Cross! Where d we send the donations?!
I know that Apple isn’t perfect, but iPhones have only existed for 9 years! Somehow we managed to survive in 2006 without them. Now, for some reason, people are struggling to make do with a two-year old cell phone. And me an obsolete iPhone 5s…it would represent a significant upgrade for me.
Well I can tell you my girlfriend’s 5S has been extremely sluggish and problematic. I’ve never had to restart an Apple product so many times in my life.
I can’t explain it, but I strongly suspect that old hardware does not work as well with new iOS versions as Apple would like all of us to believe.
What sucks most is that Apple keeps ratcheting up the iOS but not the 4″ phones, and then restricts people with old iPhones from moving back to lighter/smaller/faster/less bloated versions of iOS.
Peak or plateau, it’s up to Apple. They could release phones in the future with even higher profit margins and others with lower prices to reach more people, it all depends on them.
Q2 may be better than expected based on the encouraging China numbers. Their huge buying holidays are coming up in the next couple weeks.
Also anecdotally, I am noticing an abnormally large number of friends and clients buying the 6S Plus this January – upgrading from the iPhone 5S – for various reasons like battery life and the camera and “I just didn’t have the time before the holidays”.
Don’t count the 6S out yet for huge sales in Q2, Q3 and Q4 – not everyone is an early adopter waiting for the 7.
OMF am I sick of stupid:
but now it’s official. Apple has hit its peak
Right. I’ll let the future bludgeon this garbage into grey goo.
“Apocalypse” <- Isn't this just too too contemporary of the hysteria of WallNut Street? I keep saying, this is so very reminiscent of coke psychosis. WallNut Street On Dope.
Company fortunes rise and fall over time. Apple’s has. But the author is correct. Apple has hit a peak (even if you call it a plateau) and isn’t likely to have the heady growth of recent years for a few years to come.
Apocalypse? The signs are all around. Smartphone shipments are stalling thanks to penetration. PC sales are falling thanks to penetration and market dynamics, including the move to mobile devices. Consolidation trends are already here and major players are no more (Motorola, HTC, BlackBerry, Nokia, et al).
But, as the author suggests, Apple is well positioned to overcome this downturn and emerge better than ever.
Sorry, but I continue to point out that this is stupid. You can’t define the top of a plateau until you’ve found the other side. That (at least temporary) other side would potentially be this current Apple quarter. If that quarter demonstrates an overall year-over-year decline, I’ll care. Until then, this is all still FUD FUD FUD amidst an hysteria infested period of WallNut Street’s history. And when/if I care, I’ll then consider the effect of this hysteria infested period of WallNut Street as a potential direct cause of the turn down in commercial sales, among other economic decline factors.
IOW: It ain’t that simple.
You thankfully point out a number of third party factors affecting the entire economy at the moment, so thank you. What that has to do with Apple may be entirely temporary. We simply don’t know yet. I wish the author of the article had simply stated “I predict Apple has hit a plateau” instead of pretending there is anything to indicate that said plateau is based in reality.
IOW: Data trumps rumor mongering.
Actually, you can define the top of a plateau at any time. You might be wrong, but calling the time of death can be done by anyone. All Ms. Kate is doing is saying Apple, in its current state, has hit a peak, and downhill is coming… for awhile. Apple itself says the next quarter will be lower than the same quarter a year ago. That’s down. As to whether or not this peak is that last ever, or just a downturn until Apple wins a few more battles and wars and the market corrects in AAPL’s direction remains to be seen. By the way, data usually trumps rumor mongering but that has nothing to do with the article. Apple has, at best, hit a plateau, and if the company’s revenue and profit fortunes continue to drop, as Apple itself says it will, then this most recent quarter is the ‘peak.’ Math says so, but time will tell.
‘Defining’ anything, realistically, requires data. Waiting…
The future seldom turns out how you expect. Even corporations the size of Apple cannot avoid worldwide economics and downturns. Innovative organisations like Apple have their vision of the tech future which they seldom share with outsiders. If Apple were driven by market share and sales they would be designing cheaper iPhone models. This is not What Apple is about, so expect surprises and great innovation in their future product offerings. There will always be a place for quality designed and engineered products that look like works of art, and their will always be a discerning folk who want to buy and enjoy them. Quality will never go out of fashion. Apple will fall when the competition does it better , there is little sign of that as far as I can see.