“Apple Inc.’s next earnings report will include just 10 days of iPhone XS and XS Max sales and no iPhone XR sales, but Wall Street will be combing the company’s commentary for indications of demand for those new devices heading into the holidays,” Emily Bary writes for MarketWatch.
“In many respects, Apple is well-positioned for its most crucial season, thanks to a trio of pricey new smartphones meant to appeal to a broad consumer base as well as what seems to be a decent balance of supply and demand,” Bary writes. “Still, Apple must contend with trade tensions that threaten to hinder Chinese demand as well as an elongated smartphone cycle that’s kept it from meeting unit-sales estimates over the past few quarters.”
“The key test for Apple is whether pricing and a reasonably exciting iPhone slate will outweigh those issues and keep Apple’s valuation higher than $1 trillion,” Bary writes. “While Wall Street will be looking at Apple’s September-quarter numbers to gauge initial demand for the iPhone XS and XS Max, it will likely be more concerned with what executives have to say about the holiday period when Apple delivers fourth-fiscal-quarter results Thursday after the bell.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As usual, Apple’s guidance is key.
By that time the new iPad Pro’s and new Macs introduced will paint hopefully an even rosier picture though not complete by any means. That won’t happen until we see a Mac Pro worth buying and the Apple devices line is at last up to date. They cannot fall behind again! Now that the spaceship is built hopefully they’ll begin to allocate resources as they should’ve all along. No frikkin’ excuses! No more false reassurances that “Macs still mean a lot to them” without visible real product backup! Actions, not words!
I agree that Apple doesn’t seem to have a lot of interest in the Mac lineup. They may have some but most of their attention is always focused on the iPhone because that’s where the money is. I’m only puzzled because I wouldn’t think it would take much effort to upgrade desktop or laptop hardware. But Apple is always trying to stuff hardware into some tight cases and that’s not smart. Maybe Apple needs to find some large ultra-quiet fans that can move a lot of air. Putting an i9 in a iMac would seem to be asking for trouble and those Radeon GPU chips really tend to run much hotter than any GTX/RTX GPU processors.
So far, the iMac Pro seems to be a pretty good desktop so the airflow design may be quite decent (at the expense of not being to user upgrade the RAM memory). I can only hope Apple isn’t BS’ing about being serious with its desktops. I’m really curious about this Mac Mini Pro Apple is rumored to have coming. Honestly, though, why should a wealthy and resourceful company like Apple have such a hard time adapting new hardware when other computer companies do it so easily.
Other computer companies practically jump at the chance to put in new CPU/GPU processors just to say they have the latest hardware. Isn’t it a valid selling point that should also exist for Apple?
Exactly. The amount of resources Apple would have to pony up for to keep Macs current is chump change for them. Why they were happy these last couple of years to give the impression they didn’t a damn by NOT doing so is beyond me. Seems to go against every business instinct about keeping customers happy. And Apple Mac customers are pretty darn fussy about such things. Not like it didn’t go by unnoticed. They damage their brand being so negligent. Of course they probably live in such an Ivory Tech Tower they don’t have a frikkin’ clue.
I can just about tolerate Cook’s lacklustre presentation but it really is time that he started to deliver his long drawn out promises and start presenting far from lacklustre products. Ones that actually excite us with innovative features would a true bonus.
Don’t forget that the X did not come out until Nov last year. There are many customers waiting to upgrade from last years phone once their 12 month cycle is complete.
It’s strange how with the FANG company group, all their stock prices climbed into earnings so their weak(ish) quarterly results only dropped them back to where they originally were before that recent climb. It appears Apple’s share price isn’t going to climb into earnings, so I hope Apple has a decent quarter to announce or the stock will just fall further without any gains at all. I suppose in most cases, Apple’s share price doesn’t usually climb a few days into earnings. There’s usually just a lot of doubt about how Apple is going to report.
I’m kind of expecting there will be some negative news going into earnings but I’m not too concerned about that. It’s usually just some attempt to weaken the share price without much proof.