“Doomsayers and rumormongers surpassed themselves this past quarter as they noisily called Apple’s most innovative and most expensive iPhone X a dismal failure,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for Monday Note. “On May 1st, actual numbers told a different story.”
“Apple must be a psychotoxic company, attracting and then unhinging the fragile minds of journalists, bloggers, and analysts,” Gassée writes. “The decades-old routine rose to its highest pitch with the advent of the Smartphone 2.0 era, when Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone to chuckling predictions of doom. Since then we’ve been treated to a replay of the Mac vs. Windows, ‘closed vs. open’ defeat and facile predictions of failure under the banner of academic authority because ‘modularity always wins.'”
“The tradition continues with the iPhone X. We’ve been bombarded with ‘news’ items that prepare us for the grand-scale failure of the device: Forbes’ Ewan Spence declares ‘iPhone X Defeated As Tim Cook Steals Victory Away With The iPhone 8’; weak holiday sales means Apple will slash its production target by half according to Nikkei Asian Review; suppliers are jumping ship with such abandon that KGI Securities’ analyst Ming-Chi Kuo predicted that ‘the iPhone X will be ‘end of life’ in the summer of 2018,'” Gassée writes. “On May 1st, Apple’s quarterly report evaporated the auguries. In the report conference call, Tim Cook declared that the iPhone X has been the best-selling iPhone every week since its launch.”
“While iPhone X doomsday predictions depressed AAPL stock price, Warren Buffett bought another 73.5M shares,” Gassée writes. “Apple also benefited from lower prices as it repurchased $23.5B of its own shares in the quarter.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: To some, Apple is as psychotoxic as its share price is usefully malleable.
Wall Street is a game. Play it well via unwritten rules ignored by blind officials or simply observe the resultant melee from the safety of the sidelines. — MacDailyNews, January 13, 2016
SEE ALSO:
Strategy Analytics: Apple’s iPhone X the world’s best-selling smartphone model in Q1 2018 – May 4, 2018
How did analysts and pundits got the iPhone X ‘panic’ story so very, very wrong? – May 4, 2018
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway bought 75 million more Apple shares during the first quarter – May 4, 2018
Why was iPhone X so successful at $999 despite a slew of fake news? – May 2, 2018
Uh, yeah, about those iPhone X ‘concerns’ from analysts: Never mind – May 1, 2018
Apple beats Street with best Q2 ever – May 1, 2018
Apple’s iPhone X isn’t selling well – or is it? – April 21, 2018
Apple’s iPhone X to be discontinued this year, analyst claims – April 20, 2018
Morgan Stanley: Apple stock may fall on ‘materially’ weaker iPhone sales – April 20, 2018
Apple’s iPhone X made 5 times the profit of 600 Android OEMs combined – April 18, 2018
Apple’s iPhone captured 86% of global handset profits in Q417; iPhone X alone took 35% of global handset profits – April 17, 2018
Bernstein: Ams AG is biggest winner in Apple’s TrueDepth Camera system – April 10, 2018
Apple’s iPhone X is the UK’s most popular smartphone – April 9, 2018
Apple’s iPhone X sales continue to disappoint, some analysts say – March 22, 2018
Ignore the iPhone X naysayers – March 10, 2018
Will the naysayers admit they were wrong about Apple’s iPhone X? – February 5, 2018
Do iPhone X sales spell trouble for Apple? – January 30, 2018
Apple supplier says report of iPhone X production cuts was overstated – January 30, 2018
Another January, another misleading iPhone supply cuts story from Nikkei – January 29, 2018
Apple stock drops after Nikkei report of iPhone X production cut – January 29, 2018
Reports of Apple cutting iPhone X orders make no sense – January 2, 2018
Apple stock tumbles on one poorly-sourced report of low iPhone X demand – December 26, 2017
Apple and suppliers shares drop on report of weak iPhone X demand – December 26, 2017