“I believe Apple is setting itself up for a Q2’17 blowout,” Alex Cho writes for Seeking Alpha. “Now, I know many of the other analysts are downplaying the importance of the next quarterly earnings report, as many point to the iPhone 8 cycle as the main catalyst by which investors are bidding the shares. But I think it’s worth focusing on the next 3 months before we build any anticipation for the iPhone 8.”
“I believe Apple’s outlook was a little too conservative,” Cho writes. “There may be upside of perhaps 3-5 million iPhone units, assuming Chinese consumers regain some ground, currency headwinds are offset by a dollar inversion trade, and channel inventory gets so lean that Apple ramps production to meet its 5-6-week channel inventory objective.”
“As such, I’m estimating that next quarter revenue will be above the high end of outlook, and roughly $3.7 billion above consensus estimates of $53 billion,” Cho writes. “Therefore, Q2’17 seems like a set-up for another blowout quarter.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: From your lips, Alex, to Mr. Market’s ears!
Cook got lucky on Samsung’s misfortune. He is ruining Apple. Everyone’s so excited with the spike in AAPL, knowing darn well that Cook the incompetent is not producing Mac products worth buying.
Gimping the Mac Pro and increasing the price by 30% doesn’t count.
Stop smoking bro.
You are out of phase.
Were you there last week or too stone to understand the numbers?
I share your pity.
Anyway, you should go troll elsewhere.
I agree with him. The samsung fiasco helped the numbers. And Pipeline Tim needs to GO!
realspike, you’re accusing and casting aspersions. How about bringing some facts to the table? Apple did indeed benefit from Samsung’s implosion. When a person brings forth facts, that doesn’t make him a troll. It’s obnoxious posts like yours or botty’s that signify troll behavior.
I agree. The core Long-term Apple zealots are neither as numerous nor as zealous. Many of us are drifting away from Apple bit by bit. I used to read this site every morning, first. Now I only dip in occasionally and I no longer check Apple’s share price.
I like my iPad. I’m using it now, in bed. But I resent the loss of focus on the Mac and I hate the crappy no-travel keyboard on my MacBook and the clutter on my desk made by all the bits that would otherwise be in a tower underneath but are taking up 3 times the space of my Mac Pro on the desk.
I run Win10 on parallels. Meh, it works. I only use it for one app but it’s the most important app. I use Word when I have to (landscape tables in an otherwise portrait document, auto-numbered headings – both of which were in Pages 9 [how do I get a copy?] and Excel which is clunky but functional.)
I love the Mac. I could live with a Samdung (not a big phone user) and a famousbrand Chinese tablet but the Mac is my best friend, though a more and more annoying friend as time goes on.
If I ditch my Macs, I will ditch everything Apple.
And I stopped evangelising Apple a while ago. I sold a pile of Macs for Apple over the years – a Microsoft MCSE running an IT biz but using Apple. I convinced a lot of people to switch.
There were a lot of people like me. And I would guess a lot of them are evangelising less today.
And reading this column less too.
Still, I’m not reading the other three Apple columns at all any more.
Things tend to go in cycles. I recall some dark times for Apple and the Mac, times when even I wondered if Apple would make it. We are not in such dark times…not like the early to late 1990s – say 1992 through 1997 – when Apple was struggling mightily even with the hope of the AIM alliance and the PPC.
You sound like a good person and I would hate to see you and others leave. But what are you running from and running to? The grass may not be greener and I suspect that many will eventually come back to the Mac, especially if Aple kicks off a new era of parallel processing A-series based Macs. Time will tell. I am patient and there is nothing compelling enough to pull me away from the Apple ecosystem right now.
Apple’s “dark” times were when it had poor leadership and it only turned around when that unfocused leader was removed!!!!
That is why I want Pipeline Tim GONE!
https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
Haha. I am not running anywhere. I still have two Macs, my iPad and two iPhones. But my enthusiasm for the company and its products is less and less over time. I really don’t like my Macbook 12″ – the keyboard is horrible for typing and I do a lot of typing. And I have to use Office since Pages was stripped of some essential capabilities. So I suspect my first departure from the Apple ecosystem will be when I replace the Macbook with something with a decent keyboard. My iPhone 6 is a few years old now – I kept my last iPhone for 7 years so I guess I will keep this one for some time to come. When I bought the iPhone 6 I never considered an Android phone, but that won’t be the case next time. I may still buy an iPhone, but perhaps not. My Mac Pro was bought for film-making but I never came to terms with Final Cut Pro X which I hated so much I just stopped making films. So it has plenty of power for what I use it for (trading the US markets via Win10 on Parallels). When I replace this machine it will be with a Windows machine – it only has one function and it makes no sense to run Windows in emulation.
Its like any relationship breakdown – its not an instant thing, but a litany of disappointments and frustrations over time. I used to admire Apple, but I don’t any more. And things that I ignored (like the black hole that is bug reporting) now grate.
It really bothered me when Tim Cook said he could run Apple on an iPad. I thought that the most stupid comment from a CEO I had ever heard. It also made me fear for the future of the Mac – and that started me looking harder at Windows notebooks with decent keyboards.
Perhaps Cook and others will eventually realise that real work does not mean reading a few emails on your iPad and delegating all the hard work to your huge team. Yes the iPad will run business apps usefully, but general commercial work requires something much more capable. And if not a Mac, then a Windows PC.
But I guarantee that if Apple lose their Mac customers, they will slide inevitably into oblivion. Its always been about the Mac. And its always been about the Mac because of how the Mac works. The iPhone has been more about status than function. Fashion rather than capabilities. In Europe it is not possible to rely on Apple maps. So the user must use google maps. It works the same, I assume, on iPhone or Android. The user experience is therefore the same for this app. For me, maps is the main function of my phone along with Skype, Whatsapp, nd other third party apps. I don’t use Apple Music (and never will – I have 750 classical CD’s in iTunes – which is hopeless anyway for classical music) and almost no Apple apps on my phone. My user experience on an Android phone will be almost exactly the same as on an iPhone – same apps, working the same way…
And it will be the same for most iPhone users. All it will take is for the gloss to come off the Apple name – and then people will decide that Apple’s prices are unjustified. In Europe that has been the case for a long time – Android rules here.
But you are right, there is nothing compelling enough, as yet, to make me jump. But I am primed to do so should that situation change.
Fair assessment –
sign my petition to remove this idiot
https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
I agree with that. – Please sign this – https://www.change.org/p/apple-board-of-directors-remove-tim-cook-as-ceo-of-apple
I am not sure that removing Tim Cook will result in any meaningful improvement. Steve Jobs was a one-off – Apple was different, under his leadership, from any other corporation.
What we are seeing is Apple turning into a run-of-the-mill US corporation. Any replacement of Tim Cook will be just more of the same.
The board will replace Cook when the numbers become unsatisfactory. No-one on the board will be measuring Tim’s effectiveness by the enthusiasm of Apple aficionados. And they are unlikely to appoint anyone (because they will not find anyone) who can fill the shoes of the great man.
The great Apple doughnut is destined to become a shopping centre.
The exploding Samsung effect has been wildly overstated. When Samsung’s problems started Apple was already making iPhones as fast as they could and were selling them as quickly as they could make them, demand was exceeding supply. It wasn’t possible to significantly increase production in order to exploit that opportunity.
The real opportunity arising from Samsung’s debacle was for other smartphone makers. They were addressing the same price points that Samsung’s customers were interested in and their products would have been essentially the same as what they were used to.
Obviously a certain number of former Samsung customers switched to iPhone, but that happens every quarter. It could only have made much of a difference to Apple’s financial results if Apple had a lot of unsold iPhones instantly available for sale, which was not the case.
cause they sell lots-o-iphones?
Tim Cook , are you expxecting people to buy the Mac Pro as a collectible item ?
I was pleasantly surprised with Apple’s past quarter to say the least, but two good quarters in a row is too much to expect from Apple’s relatively unchanging product line. There’s just going to be even more dependency upon the iPhone and little else.
I would be a little more upbeat if Apple were able to repatriate its huge overseas cash pile without such a high penalty but that’s probably hoping for too much, too soon. But meanwhile, Apple is still piling on debt and I’m not smart enough to really understand the need for all that extra debt. It’s definitely possible Tim Cook knows what’s going to be taking place in the near future for Apple so I suppose I shouldn’t be criticizing. Apple’s market cap has pulled away from Alphabet by over $100B and still only has a P/E half of Alphabet’s. I don’t have a clue what’s in Apple’s pipeline. Who can be certain about the next iPhone’s supercycle which I think is pure speculation.
I’m not going to get overly excited and if Apple can maintain this current $130 share price for the next quarter, I’ll be more than satisfied, especially if the dividend is being raised. No point in becoming overly greedy.
Usually MDN pans Seeking Alpha, but here as SA blows smoke up Apple’s ass, MDN reposts it enthusiastically. Consistency please.
Now please tell us, what new product in Q2 is going to spur increased sales? If and when Apple announces something entirely new, then maybe a blowout is plausible. Until then, I don’t see it. Late arriving Airpods and overpriced MacBooks are not enough to push AAPL up higher in the first half of 2017.
Seems like the blogosphere is waiting for the 10th anniversary iPhone, which is probably sucking up all of Apple’s attention right now since Cook’s Apple cannot do more than one thing at a time. That won’t be announced in the next quarter, Cook has clearly chosen to time iPhone releases to bump up end of year sales. For years now Apple has been flat in the first half of the year.
You can see now that Apple’s profit see-saws with every iPhone release. Apple inexplicably refuses to fill in the valleys with other product introductions. It’s an embarrassment now. Apple needs to update every one of its Macs, iPads, iPods, and Mac accessories for meaningful growth in the off-months.
So SA is just playing stock games now. Q2 will be a snoozer. AAPL is now correctly seen as a one-trick pony. If Apple doesn’t deliver a best ever iPhone every year, Wall Street will punish AAPL severely. … which makes it all the more strange to see Cook take on more debt from Wall Street, feeding the menace.