The wearables era at Apple began years ago. However, Wall Street and Silicon Valley are only now slowly starting to pay attention to what Apple has been building. Apple is the undisputed leader in wearables, and they are pulling away from the competition. Given how Apple’s wearables strength continues to be underestimated, the company deserves more credit for what it has achieved and where it is headed.
A takeaway from Apple’s recent 3Q19 earnings was that we are witnessing the wearables era continue to unfold at Apple… Wearables nearly exceeded Services in 3Q19 as Apple’s top revenue growth generator when looking at absolute dollars. Consensus was not expecting this to occur as Services was positioned as Apple’s growth engine. It is clear that consensus spent too much time on the Services highway and ended up missing the exit for wearables.
One way of thinking about Apple’s wearables business is that it’s a train gaining momentum. Competitors face declining odds of being able to stop the train.
MacDailyNews Take: The behemoth that is iPhone obliterated everything else for so long that as its long shadow recedes a bit and settles into stasis, Apple’s diverse underlying businesses are slowly illuminated. The best selling watch – not just smartwatch – in the world is Apple Watch. AirPods’ unti sales growth was a massive 80% YOY for Q319! It’s a testament to iPhone, the world’s best-selling product ever, that it was able to hide several Fortune 500 businesses in its prodigious shadow for so long.
I am actually glad the iPhone has diminished in importance as Apple can more clearly see they need to fire on all cylinders for all their current products (like, ehem, the Mac) as well as future ones. NEVER put all your apples in one basket or give the appearance of such. It works against you on so many levels.
Apple’s lead likely won’t last. Just as quickly as Apple’s iPhone business got jacked by tens of millions of low-cost Android smartphones, it will likely happen again when Chinese companies start flooding the market with low-cost smartwatches with all sorts of features. It’s just not that hard for motivated Chinese companies to take over. Those Chinese companies are not going to let a lucrative market pass them by and eventually they will be rapidly cutting into AppleWatch market share percentage. Global consumers absolutely love cheap devices and if Apple won’t make them, other companies will. They know for certain Apple will never challenge them.
People have always loved cheap devices, and yet Apple still thrived. You sound like you weren’t paying attention to this in the 90s when Apple started its rebound. Cheap windows computers were all over the place, cheap mp3 players, cheap cellphones– yet it’s Apple that has come out on top. Apple shifts and pivots and dodges and weaves forward, while most others attempt to play catch-up. They actually create additional value people are willing to pay for. The cool thing is that they also force the other players to up their game and stop producing mediocre crap. In the end, we all get better stuff. Apple will be fine, as long as they keep striking out into new territory.
Ugh, so much hand-wringing about Apple all the time.
Like chinese crap mp3 players tried to fuck with Apple iPods and now the dirty chinese airpods try to do the same. Why? Aren’t there Chinese smart watches now? There are dime a dozen. People like you may find them appealing while many of us will find them appalling.