“Peter Thiel is a prescient investor and well-known venture capitalist. A technology icon, he’s a member of the Trump transition team, and will help shape tech policy over the next four to eight years,” John Divine writes for US News & World Report. “Thiel is also a man who thinks the age of Apple, the largest public company in the world, is over.”
“‘We know what a smartphone looks like and does,’ Thiel says. ‘It’s not the fault of Tim Cook, but it’s not an area where there will be any more innovation,'” Divine writes. “Thiel focused on the smartphone industry for a reason: iPhone sales account for an incredible 60 percent of overall AAPL revenue.”
“Cook is certainly aware of Apple’s crippling one-dimensional nature. Unfortunately, all of Apple’s attempts to do something new in recent years have failed miserably,” Divine writes. “‘The Apple Watch is looking like a failed product and has been surpassed by Amazon Echo as the device de jour, highlighting Apple’s competitive pressure from Google and Amazon at delivering intelligent cloud services,’ says Peter Yared, CTO of Sapho and former CIO of CBS Interactive.”
MacDailyNews Take: That’s opinion, not proof.
Divine writes, “‘The reality is that the innovation days may be behind it – they are selling LG’s screens at this point rather than their own,’ Yared says.”
MacDailyNews Take: There’s an example of what we warned of when we wrote last month: “Apple ceding the display business damages the Apple brand. Apple does not lead in an essential personal computing component and other companies logos are destined to be in Mac users’ faces all day long. Not smart. Cook & Co. should reconsider their decision and make and sell Apple-branded displays. Direct profits aren’t the issue, ancillary profits are; smart executives like Cook should be able to recognize the power of perception.”
“Apple isn’t a growth company anymore. It got too big for its own britches, and too reliant on one product,” Divine writes. “While there’s little doubt AAPL will be a prominent blue-chip company for decades to come – its massive cash hoard alone makes this inevitable – whether it will ever thrive again is very much in doubt.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Poppycock.
Again, we believe Thiel meant that the age of iPhone is over, not Apple. Either way, he couldn’t be more wrong.
The iPhone age has many years left in its run and Apple, of all companies, has done it multiple times (Apple II, Mac, iPod, iTunes, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch) and, we’re certain, will do it again!
SEE ALSO:
Why Peter Thiel is wrong about Apple – January 13, 2017
Peter Thiel says the age of Apple is over – January 12, 2017
President-elect Trump meets privately with Apple CEO Cook, tells tech leaders: ‘I’m here to help you folks do well’ – December 14, 2016
Tim Cook, other tech elite attend tech summit with President-elect Trump at Trump Tower in Manhattan – December 12, 2016
Tech investor Peter Thiel’s embrace of Donald Trump for U.S. President has Silicon Valley squirming – July 20, 2016
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel funded Hulk Hogan lawsuit to take down Gawker which outed him, Tim Cook, and others – May 27, 2016
An open letter from Apple co-founder Woz, other techies on Donald Trump’s candidacy for U.S. President – July 14, 2016
The sky is falling! The sky is falling! We’re all gonna die!
Talk about crap – “Apple’s crippling one-dimensional nature”
Yeah, what company would want to have over $200B in revenue per year, roughly 60% of which is provided by one model lineup? Nope, doesn’t sound good to me. After all, the remaining 40% only represents $80B or so in revenue…can’t do squat with less than $100B per year. Might as well just sell it and give the money back to the shareholders. Hmmm, where have I heard that before?
Ford sells cars and trucks and depends a great deal on the F150. Exxon Mobile depends on oil and gas. Residential mortgage companies depend on residential home sales. Sure, diversity is nice, but lack of diversity is not a death sentence. Analysts simply want a new company to pump and dump – Apple does not offer sufficient churn and excitement anymore, so it must be doomed.
If you are an individual investor on this forum, then buy or sell AAPL as you see fit. You likely know far more about the company that most analysts and pundits. If you are invested in mutual funds (recommend no-load, low fee index funds!), then you don’t have to make any decisions.
Is he American?
Peter Thiel “…a member or the Trump transition team…” has just decamped to New Zealand…..
Just sayin’
Peter Thiel “a member of the Trump transition team” has just decamped to New Zealand…
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11788452
Just sayin’
In your dreams FUDsters
The only reason I know Dell is even around these days, is seeing their monitors placed in movies LOL.
You can’t hide unique and beautiful design Apple products. I am typing on a MacPro connected to a Cinema display. Apple should have stayed in the monitor business.
He’s half right. Apple has too many balls in the air where they don’t have enough talented people to head and work in all the different departments. Johnny Ives is notorious for stealing other people from other departments. One area that needed improvement was iTunes and Apple TV Eddy Cue has really dropped the ball here. Apple is still working as a small company with all the people and a lot of stuff is just getting lost in the noise. Apple is suffering with releasing new products all the time that used to just work now they all have bugs. Tim Cook is a great production manager but we need somebody at the top that’s innovative like Steve Jobs was.
It’s Apple’s game. If they wanted to they could drop the iPhone profits to an industry standard of 0%.
It would wipe out the competition.
Even at an industry standard + 5% they would wipe out the competition.
With $350 billion in the bank they have many options.
They could do that, and wipe out almost all Apple’s value.
Tim Cook and other officers would be fired.
Employees would leave in droves from all levels of the company.
Racing to the bottom wouldn’t prove anything and would only be a problem for competitors for a very short time before Apple was so crippled it wouldn’t matter any more.
I think that the age of the Gibson Les Paul is over.
I mean, it was designed in the early 1950’s, for crying out loud. Just who the hell plays guitar anymore? ‘Classic’ design my arse.
Talk about ‘long in the tooth’.
/s
I believe Gibson releases new Les Pauls more often than Apple releases Macs. There are more Les Paul models than you can shake a stick at.
All of those Les Paul guitars show less variety than the various product lines Apple sells.
I read what Peter Thiel had written weeks ago and decided to play it safe, and smart.
I sold off all of my Apple products in a garage sale and went down to Staples and bought a whole bunch of DELL equipment. I have to say I felt really good at the time and I’m sort of convinced I made the right decision. My wife is very proud of me and my colleagues at work are in awe of my quick decision-making abilities and to the person said, “you have exactly what it takes to be the office manager!”
But to be honest, I have to confess, I am having a few problems. My very shiny, dangerous and masculine looking DELL equipment has been on the fritz. It keeps shutting down on me whenever I touch the keyboard. I’m not sure if it is the equipment or the electrical power coming into the house. I had the people from the electrical company come out and they said everything looks good. Then I called an electrician. He said, “for a little under $2,000” he could make sure everything was wired properly. I decided to take him up on his offer, but after paying him half upfront I haven’t seen or heard from him for weeks. I’m beginning to worry. I’m still very confident in Peter Thiel’s sound advice, but I have been having sleeping problems the last week or so concerned that maybe I should have bought one of those other off-brands of computers rather than DELL. If anyone can give me good advice I would really appreciate it.
In the meantime, I’m waiting on a new CD from Microsoft thinking that maybe that’s the problem and that if I reinstall Windows 10 again everything might work real good this time.
I am glad I took Peter Thiel’s advice. The man is a genius!
[SARCASM]
There is no doubt some seriosly stupid decisions are being made at Apple….
Whats even more worrisome is that no one seems to care at Apple… there seems to be this smug attitude prevailing there with zero accountability towards their loyal and caring fan base ….and their best advocates….
No explanation for some real stupid idiosyncratic and off the wall descions… no PR to control the narrative… its preplexing at best…
To quote AG…
Success breeds complacency… complacency breeds failure …the paranoid survive..
Apple stop being Smug and start being Paranoid… REAL Paranoid.!
MDN should walk very carefully. The last time a media outlet hassled Peter Thiel, he litigated them into bankruptcy.
That is the worst reason to keep silent – legal bullying
Apple is a one trick pony that developed the iPod and iPhone to be one less dependent upon Mac sales. Good idea.
Once the iPhone took off, Apple decides to let the iPod, Macintosh, Mac accessories (routers, monitors, etc) twist in the wind. Instead of using pikes of cash to take on the server market , Apple says fuck it, kills the server HW and castrates the OS X Server OS. They totally FUBAR or abandon Pro market apps because the trend is to chase mobile toys. Not good ideas.
I work in Medical Imaging- a field where Macs once had a good market position even before the return of Steve Jobs. Now the whole field has been handed over to Windows and LINUX. The same thing is multiplied over numerous professional fields. That is money on the table- serious long term money on the table.
Someone needs to tell the Apple Board that Air Traffic Control, Radiologist Workstations, Architecture, CAD/CAM, HD Movie editing , etc will be done on something other than a fucking iPhone or Tablet. Technology companies do not busy themselves designing watch bands. Apple needs to decide if they will morph into a fashion house for trendy bullshit or again design the disruptive things that will bend the arc of history. Rental Rap is not going to do anything but mark someone’s bad taste.
Dav, is RIGHT ON THE MONEY!!!!
APPLE, there are many professionals in the world that don’t do their work on an iPad and laptop. He need big, honking muscle machines sitting on the desktop!
Come on, we’ve told you this over and over. This guy’s message should be ringing in your ears. Don’t give away these exceedingly important niche markets to Windows. Work to own them. Make it so that anyone in the fields of science, math, stats, video processing, etc would be crazy not to be using a Mac! If you have to, give the damn things away! Why not, you’re not making anything from them now and appear to be not interested in them for the future.
To get people in the fields of science, math, stats, video processing, etc to stick with the Apple world, Apple needs to install Nvideo gpu’s and not abandon inter-application scripting, even though less than 1% of 1% of total users use it, because scripting can let these target people apply an app for more uses than the app’s developer had designed it for.
Long after Trump leaves us, Apple will still be around.
First FUD running up to earnings report. So predictable. Watch the lemmings follow.
DavGreg I couldn’t agree more… Apple had the momentum and could have moved on the server side and captured a lot of the commercial customers… but they pulled back or sat on their heels and the momentum is shifting the other direction. Turning their backs on the professional customer, who kept Apple alive until Steve’s return, is the wrong decision. I hope they don’t wait too long.. I would love a mid-tower Mac that I can upgrade…
Apple should focus on what made them great. I don’t care about an apple car, helicopter or glasses if I see that they have a half ass strategy on existing products:
– I’m a business traveller with an 11″ macbook air. I use email and office products. Nothing special but I like a small laptop : 1500€ for a macbook? – crazy
– no complete monitor anymore and the thunderbold screen died after 14 month. Repair cost 900€- yeh right
– iphone ok
– icloud 5GB is a joke. Please after buying an Iphone i expect more to keep my platform working
– apple work great but not promoted enough.
I was planning to buy a new 11″ mb air (current 5 year old). But just decided to wait hoping apple gets their act togeter
Well, the age of Macs seem over at least Sad. Cook is pathetic.
It’s the Apple phone and watch company now. RIP Mac.
“. . . but {the iPhone} not an area where there will be any more innovation,”
Yes, and no one will ever need more than 640K of memory.
Totally Agree, Apple is in decline.
Theil is an idiot. He told us during the campaign that Trump shouldn’t be taken literally, that he didn’t mean to build a real wall, or enact a Muslim ban, that is was just figurative.
Well, it turns out that Trump in this one case was being honest, he was telling us exactly what he wants to do. Theil is an idiot. Don’t trust his judgement.
The move to turn from technology to ‘fashion’ pricing structures has been a sad development.
The truth is the FITBIT type of device is so much cheaper and it is selling millions more than the Apple watch. Unfortunately they pushed this as a watch with gold and $1000 leather straps and not as a bit of tech in order to grow the market first.
Did he just compare the Apple Watch to the Amazon Echo?
Can’t imagine too many people strapping an Echo to their wrist…