“Apple could introduce a car by as soon as 2019, but assuming an average selling price of $55,000 and 200,000 shipments, the contribution to the tech giant’s earnings in that year is probably not enough to ‘excite’ investors, said the research team at Jefferies this morning,” The Fly reports.
“However, a car would give the tech giant some ‘much needed’ diversification away from the iPhone and would be positive for the broader tech space, the firm added,” The Fly reports. “Jefferies analysts Sundeep Bajikar, Mark Lipacis and their team say their analysis indicates the automobile industry is ‘ripe for disruption’ and that Apple is well positioned to introduce a car.”
The Fly reports, “A car could add 32c to Apple’s earnings per share in FY19 under a best-case scenario, Bajikar tells investors.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Newspaper regurgitation topped with 100% pure bullshit. Yum!
SEE ALSO:
Apple’s ‘Project Titan’ just sped up – September 24, 2015
Why cars are Apple’s next big market – September 23, 2015
The deeper reason for an Apple Car – September 23, 2015
Volkswagen emissions scandal spotlights need for an Apple Car – September 23, 2015
Morgan Stanley: Apple Car, if true, ‘one of the most important moments in transportation’ – September 22, 2015
Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz: Apple Car ‘is going to be a gigantic money pit’ – September 22, 2015
Apple speeds up electric-car efforts, aims for 2019 ‘ship date’ – September 21, 2015
Apple meets California DMV officials to discuss ‘autonomous vehicle’ – September 18, 2015
Documents confirm Apple is building self-driving car, Project Titan further along than many suspect – August 14, 2015
Apple Car development proceeds apace – July 27, 2015
Apple hires veteran Fiat Chrysler auto industry executive – July 20, 2015
What’s up with Carl Icahn’s sudden obsession with the Apple Car? – May 18, 2015
Survey: 77% of hybrid or electric vehicle owners would likely buy an Apple Car – May 13, 2015
Apple’s ‘Project Titan’ could reshape the auto world – February 22, 2015
Yep. And they’ll sell three of them. What a joke.
“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item.”
steve Ballmer
“Apple should pull the plug on the iPhone… What Apple risks here is its reputation as a hot company that can do no wrong. If it’s smart it will call the iPhone a ‘reference design’ and pass it to some suckers to build with someone else’s marketing budget.”
John Dvorak
“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
Ed Colligan (Palm CEO)
(Palm Extinct)
“Apple …. a niche manufacturer”
Vanjoki (Nokia CEO).
(Nokia broke, sold and trashed).
The iPhone now takes 92% of the world’s cell phone profits.
1) Apple has never said they were building a car
2) the 55 -200k price is the analyst’s idea not Apple’s
3) experts have said it would take a billion plus to design and make a car. Even if Apple spent 10 -20 billion it won’t hurt it. Apple has spent 130+ billion on stock buybacks and still has a huge amounts in the bank.
4) Even IF the car doesn’t sell (IF the car exists), the technologies probably will be TRANSFERABLE to other things. The Force Touch Tech in the Apple Watch is now in the iPhone and they will make a TON of money (tens of billions) from the iPhone (not to mention the pressure screen on the iPad Pro) .
But I’m betting that if Apple built a car it will sell enough to keep them in the game. and I’m betting what they learnt will go into future smart tech like robots and their kin .
It’s amazing what ignorant BS an analyst can produce by anatomic extraction.
“We project that…” Uh, would be asking too much to use some facts instead of false assumptions? What if Apple ISN’T building a car, but its OS instead, working in tandem with a manufacturer? My out-of-the-blue hypothesis has no factual basis whatsoever, and little to stand on. But for that matter, the hype machine on an Apple car is rapidly spinning wildly out of control, and the article above is evidence of that.
And they pay these assclowns to publish garbage like this? May God have mercy on us all.
Slow news day,Brian.
One thing is for sure. Apple isn’t building a cheap car. Even if they’re working with someone like BMW, Volkswagen, Or Mercedes, this is going to be a premium automobile. 60K seems like a good guess.
You’re a sad little troll…back under the bridge.
What part of whose ass did this analysis get pulled from?
Yours?
Could be, Bob. Did you have a birds eye view?
If Apple does build a car, I bet they build a half dozen and drive them around for a year or so. Then they will make a decision from there to build or to contract for a builder to add the best features of the car.
I hope they can bring in something aimed a bit more at the common person. I find it disturbing that Apple is making moves from being an aspirational brand to a luxury brand. When cost is no longer tied to value and is only targeted at what a particular market will bear it limits the market to the wealthy. There is a difference between not seeing the value in Apple products like the iPhone or Mac and let initial cost be your only guide (a lack of wisdom that MDN refers to as the “he-haw demographic”), and not being able to afford pricing that no longer seems to present the best value. It is understandable that Tesla, maybe Apple will too, targeted the luxury market first – for many reasons – because it IS a smaller market; they have the money to fund further development. But, Elon Musk, like Steve Jobs wants to make the biggest bang for good, targeting changing life for the most people, the common person. I don’t believe Steve Jobs ever saw Apple as a luxury brand, nor did he think first of shareholders. He thought about bringing insanely great products to as many people as possible – to change the world. If you only ever sell to the 1%, you may be doing alright in your bottom line, but you are not changing the world. It will take large minds and large hearts and a holistic vision to craft a future where a form of capitalism benefits all (and therefore is sustainable) and not just the few. Too bad that such vision is rare.
60k in an automobile is aspirational. Technologies in aspirational and luxury cars always trickle down to the low end vehicles over time so they do change the world. Some of today’s least expensive cars are filled with amazing tech that you paid a premium for just ten years ago.
I don’t want a car with technology “trickled down” from Apple’s car, if they ever make one.
Android used technology trickled down from iOS.
Still an interesting concept and they have the money to do it, however, it’s a big risk. They’re expensive to build as much as they’re expensive to buy.
But very interesting.
apple never said it was going to make 55 to 200k car
that’s the analyst pulling numbers from thin air.
I maintain that Apple won’t sell a car, but will offer a mileage-based subscription plan. You’ll say “Siri, send an Apple Car to take me to the airport” and a car will come to your location (and if you move, it will find your current location) and send a push notification when it’s ready. You’ll get in and go to your destination, maybe have something from the car’s minibar. Then the car will either pick up somebody else or return to the base for charging and maintenance.
Private automobile ownership is so twentieth-century.
Aside from aligning with apparent hipster preferences for non-car-ownership, this would make sense for a couple other reasons. (1) Avoid the sticker shock inevitable when selling a limited-volume private car packed with new technology, while undercutting pricing for human-driven Uber and taxis. (2) As Tesla has found, auto dealers’ capture of state regulators is a nightmare for direct (non-dealer) car sales, and hard to imagine Apple would be any more willing to go through existing car dealers than Tesla is. That said, iPhone and Mac brands are all about personal differentiation through individual ownership; so for Apple to predicate a new car (transport-service) business on the opposite would require some twisting of the larger brand.
The disruption may be more in how it can be used
A few reference points: It cost Nissan about $1 billion to bring the Leaf – a mostly clean-sheet design – to market. I’m not sure of the exact number, but at this point Tesla has burned through about $2 billion (expenditures in excess of revenues) on their way to developing three cars (roadster, Model S and Model X – probably some $$ to Model 3, too), establishing its Supercharging stations and equipping a factory. Accounting for some inflation, maybe it will cost Apple $3 billion to get to market with its car – and quite possibly less if it turns to a contract builder like Magna (or BMW). This is 1.5% of Apple’s cash stash. Even if Apple took the money, put it in a pile and burned it, it would have virtually no impact on the stock price. On the other hand, if Apple can establish a business case at least as good as Tesla’s, they could add $30 to $40 billion to the company’s value. If Apple was successful, the value add could be a lot more. Sounds like a reasonable risk-benefit case to me.
Good points, especially the one about Apple setting fire to $3B. Many sceptical observers said that about the Beats acquisition—that buying them and burning up the money were the same thing.
What if Apple hadn’t acquired Beats, beaten to the punch by Google, or Amazon, or someone else—?. I suspect that the same corps of sceptical observers would’ve condemned Apple for sloth, for failing to compete.
If the music experiment comes to nought, so be it. At least Apple tried it. The same goes for wearables, and cars, and anything else on the event horizon. Apple does take calculated risks, always has done, based on their own fine instincts and not those of imagination-starved analysts.
Thanks for the info.
Very well stated argument.
Heads Apple wins; tails Apple does not lose.
I want to see the car machined from solid 7000 series billet.
No you don’t. The strength properties of any billet that thick are poor. There’s a reason that car companies use thin stock for everything — way stronger than machined billet, and way fewer issues with fatigue crack propagation.
Everyone else at Everything-Except-Mac Daily News seems overly enamored with “liquid metal”, i.e., light pressure aluminium alloy castings which are weaker than any forged billet of any thickness. But castings look pretty, and that’s all that matters, right?
55k… keep that car dear!
I’ll wait few years to get one second (or third) hand at a more digest price… 😉
…Oh! Wait: maybe there’ll be no upgrade available for “older” cars… and they’ll be stuck somewhere useless?
My guess is that there wouldn’t be a used market. Apple would reaquire the older ones for recycling.
A car is hundred year old technology. That is not what interests Apple. From what I have read, there are two areas in which Apple can improve the car — electronic control systems and the power source. Apple already has a lead with Apple CarPlay.
Apparently, Apple is also developing fuel cell technology that will use a powdered, safe, and convenient form of hydrogen that can be sold by current retail establishments, gas stations, etc. If the latter is true, then it will revolutionize the auto business and put the Tesla battery option out of business. More available, more convenient, no wait for charging, totally clean with water as the waste product, and much greater range, etc. And it does not require any new infrastructure for distribution of the hydrogen fuel because it can be done through multiple existing channels.
So stop focusing on the “electric car.” That is not the story. The story is primarily the fuel source for a car, as it has been for decades. He who builds a better fuel source, will have the world knocking at his door. If the Apple fuel cell rumors are true, Tesla (and the other auto companies) should be scared, very scared.
All of you assholes might just want to wake up… With speculation 3 years out and a price tag on top of it?
How can anyone even bother to speculate on what might happen… Yes, they are probably building a car. NONE of you know any more than that. Can we just let that be the news for now? By the time the care comes out, it will be hyped up to be a spaceship with Steve Jobs sitting int he back seat.
The question, if they are building a car, is do they partner with someone and put their cars in other dealerships or do they start building car dealerships?