“Apple seems to be doing well: it’s once again the most valuable U.S. company, with a stock-market value of around $945 billion and its shares trading around $200,” Daniel Newman writes for MarketWatch.
“But if you dig a little deeper into Apple’s business, as I have, you will find plenty of reasons to worry,” Newman writes. “Below are seven red flags that suggest to me that Apple may, for the first time in over a decade, become a risky investment in the coming 12 to 24 months.”
1. Apple’s market is saturated: …People are holding on to their devices longer and/or moving to competitors’ devices.
MacDailyNews Take: All of the data we’ve seen show high iPhone loyalty.
2. Apple has stopped trying to be the best: This reminds me a lot of the Steve Ballmer era at Microsoft. Microsoft notably missed Mobile, Cloud, and Big Data because it was too focused on driving short-term profits for shareholders… Under Tim Cook, Apple has fallen into the same trap of no longer thinking of its users as its customers, and instead thinking of its investors as its customers. Innovation and design have become secondary considerations and it shows.
3. Apple has an identity crisis: Steve Jobs had vision. Tim Cook has spreadsheets. Spreadsheets don’t make great Apple products. Vision does.
MacDailyNews Take: Also true.
Tim’s not a product person, per se. – Steve Jobs discussing Tim Cook, as quoted by Walter Isaacson in “Steve Jobs”
4. Apple keeps missing the boat on innovation: Today, Apple no longer seems able or willing to create new markets in which to grow.
MacDailyNews Take: Too soon to make pronouncements like that. Apple Glasses alone could create a massive new market for smartglasses and transform everyday life in the process.
5. Apple has fallen behind: On the phone side, Huawei and Samsung are reinventing the smartphone with foldable technology, 5G and a plethora of other advanced features.
MacDailyNews Take: Poppycock. Those foldables are beta-esque (or worse) jokes and 5G is nowhere near in place and ready to go.
6. Apple quality isn’t what it was: Consumers don’t want to pay for a premium experience, only to suffer the kinds of quality-control issues they were trying to get away from in the first place.
MacDailyNews Take: Sounds familiar.
7. Apple has a growing trust problem: The list of Apple’s misdeeds in the last few years is sadly growing.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Some of this list is overwrought, overblown FUD, but some of it also rings very true. Apple brass would be wise to take note and make qualitative improvements ASAP.
SEE ALSO:
Tim Cook is not the best person to be CEO of Apple – April 2, 2019
Bull, 7 x s, 7 x h, 7 x i, 7 x t
Apple management doesn’t have to change a single, f*cking thing. Daniel Newman is a nobody that confuses genuine financial analysis with regurgitation of long tired critics of Apple’s business model and success.
I’ll address Newman’s fourth item (it’s indicative of Newman’s flawed logic): Apple keeps missing the boat on innovation. Of all of Apple’s competitors, WHO has invented/developed anything more successful than the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch or AirPods in the last 12 years?
Industry-shaking advances in technology happen about once every 20 years. Before Apple can be criticized for failing to live up to EXPECTATIONS, one should look at what industry-shaking technology the competition has successfully introduced. The answer to that is they haven’t introduced anything. The norm in the industries that Apple competes is watch what Apple does – then copy it as fast as possible.
Newman is a hack and should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Click bait.
Yep.
We’ve reached the foundation of innovation that is just laying the groundwork for future innovation.
Most people agree with #2, #3, #6. All center on less quality.
Just a reminder: Quality sucked pretty bad under Steve Jobs too. iCloud was a flop under his watch (no pun intended). He let the Pro Apps suite (Final Cut Pro, Motion, Soundtrack Pro, Shake, Logic, LiveType, Color, Cinema Tools…) wither on the vine. Apple implemented the Backup app in Mac OS X but never completed the Restore function; you could back up but you couldn’t restore. As the opportunities in Big Data were in their infancy, Jobs’ attention was elsewhere. Maps launched with a disaster. Siri 1.0 wasn’t much better than Newton 1.0. And on and on and on.
But you know what? Despite all that, Steve Jobs was the best damned CEO since Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. People freaking loved every new Apple product, called iPhone the “Jesus Phone,” and couldn’t wait to see what he’d come out with next. His frenetic rush of innovation in the years just before his death may never be matched.
The trouble with Apple now isn’t that quality has deteriorated. It’s that expectations are insane. Apple didn’t come out with the Apple ][, Macintosh, iPhone, iPad, Watch, and AirPods in consecutive years. Many years went by between some of them. It was about 22 years between Macintosh and iPhone!
Tim’s doing fine. He’s not a product visionary, but the Company Steve Built doesn’t need a product visionary at the helm. It needs a captain at the helm. The whole damned company is peopled with thousands of product visionaries.
Most people think John Ding dong is a ding dong with a tiny ding in his tiny dong
Contrast today’s Disney stock appreciation the day after Disney + vs Tim Cook’s Apple TV + annc. No pricing or details no release date, nothing. Still pulling the string on a hobby. Mean while missing buying Netflix for 20B instead buying Beats for 3B. Announcing a stupid TV app that is so confusing and not up to Apple Standards. Tim Cook is lost along with Eddy Cue. It is a very sad day when you think of how many companies are leaving apple in the past. I hope as a 17 year shareholder that Apple can regain the innovation edge but I sadly think that the Tim Cook era is exactly like the Ballmer era at Microsoft.
Talk about 7 lazy reasons. Boring….. zzzzzzzz snooze.