“If any other major tech company had the kind of year Apple did in 2016, it’s a fair bet that they would have been crucified by investors and pummeled by critics,” Chris O’Brien writes for VentureBeat. “For each quarter so far in 2016, Apple posted year-over-year revenue declines, the first time in more than a decade. The first nine months of 2016, Apple reported $139.77 billion in revenue, down 12.5 percent from $159.11 billion for the same period a year ago. Profits also were down throughout the year. Unit sales of its major products, the iPhone, iPad and Mac, were down or soft. The main bright spot was the ‘services category,’ which continued to climb thanks to traction in its Apple Music and App Store sales.”
“Oh, and let’s not forget that Apple could be on the hook for a $14.5 billion dollar tax penalty thanks to a European Union ruling that its Irish tax scheme was illegal. Or that the company apparently massively scaled back its automotive-related plans. Or that the incoming president of the United States criticized the company for manufacturing its products overseas,” O’Brien writes. “Naturally, the stock is up about 10 percent so far this year.”
“The company continues to print cash. It has enough money to continue buying back stock and and paying big dividends to investors. Apple is not going anywhere,” O’Brien writes. “Yet a golden age of blockbuster growth is clearly over. And now we’re about to find out what comes next.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple is down because they left oodles of easy money on the table this year.
A 4K-capable Apple TV would have been so easy, it’s inexplicable and unforgivable to have not had it on the market for Christmas. New iPads, even just “refreshed” with current A-series processors, would have generated significantly more holiday sales this year. Ditto for updated, even just speed-bumped, iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro models.
There are just a few blatantly obvious reasons why Apple’s revenue declined in 2016.
SEE ALSO:
Apple has to start addressing theses problems in 2017 – December 27, 2016
Apple is always being accused of leaving money on the table, but I wonder how much of that money still comes into Apple’s coffers at a later date?
If Apple were to release a 4K capable Apple TV, would it only be bought by people with no other TV device, or would some customers abandon the devices they had been using up to that point?
I suppose that depends on the stickiness of the rest of the Apple ecosystem for that consumer at the time they need to make their choice. If the current trend continues, the Apple stickiness may be reduced and choice of an alternative brand will be more likely.
Sometimes I struggle to understand how a company with so much money and people that is in the tech industry is so slow to innovate, amd how several of their products have been left to rot.
Then I realize what it is: Tim Cook. He’s just like John Sculley. Apple chasing R&D unicorns with things like the Apple Car, where new breakthrough products are nowhere to be found.
Sculley ballooned Apple’s R&D spending with little commercial products to spit out; he confused Apple’s products lines to a complicated mess.
As Steve Jobs said after about 10 years of being away from Apple with Sculley at the helm:
“Apple, unfortunately, doesn’t deserve too much sympathy. They invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D, but very little came out They produced almost no new innovation since the original Mac itself.”
We all read more and more articles like this article about Apple. Do these articles really do any good? I agree with most of them. Apple spends a good deal of time on the iPhone, services, and some “car thing”, while getting out of the hardware, monitor, professional software, and networking businesses. They figure they don’t make enough money there so why waste the time and effort. Trouble is, they don’t have anything to replace it. And they continue to lose the hardcore Apple people that helped build the company. This entire year I’ve spent $149 on a pair of AirPods. This is it on new hardware from Apple. My money has gone somewhere else. I did upgrade my iPhone, but my monthly cost stayed the same as it has for several years so there was no increase there. Apple has nothing to buy for a desktop person. AppleTV is only about 50% of a hub, what is there to buy? Maybe iTunes stuff is the only thing I can think of. And you wonder why I have been selling off a good deal of my Apple Stock. Apple’s growth has come from new markets not existing markets. And please don’t tell me “Apple Loves the Mac”. It does not but with the lose of business and educational markets, Apple has decided that they need to do some work in the area. Very forward thinking of them. Watch for some bandaid in 2017 of a faster graphic CPU and updated connections and that is it. It takes time to really come up with something new and there just getting back into development mode again. Maybe 2018 will be the year.
Hopefully they’ll double down on “activism.”
I understand and feel the frustration. Attacking one or a few execs is presumptive ignorance- there are many factors, but I agree- many shortcomings, involving each product line including availability, distribution, and quality control. We can blame Intel, Cook, Cue, Ive… politics is your own damn agenda. Making a political or social stand in no way distracts a CEO from his company. There are other problems. Unrelated problems- hopefully, this will be an explosive, game-changing year for Apple. If not, then we know, at the very least, much more than we do now. They screw up 2017, something is Terribly wrong.
I don’t think they will. May be a few snags, but overall, I think it’s going to be one hell of a year. Why? Because it’s about F’n time.
4K Apple TV? Seriously? Overkill silliness.
Apple has LOADS of little problems right now. Let’s help them focus on what’s critical.
• Getting a user-beloved Mac Pro out on the market is one of those focal points.
• Growing up OS X beyond ‘X’ is another one. (I find it unfathomable that Apple managed to break Font Book, yet again, in 10.12.2. Good gawd).
• Growing up Siri beyond being a linear equivalent of using Google in a browser is another one. One-upped a few times over!
• • • Etc. Please add your own critical focal point…
One definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.
I would have to agree with that on an experimental level. When you deal with consumers and markets however it may just be that the reverse is true “Insanity is doing the same thing and expecting the same results.”
And many Apple users endured the roll out of miserable products.