Stratechery:
I believe that Apple’s management made three critical errors in their forecast for this last quarter that were predictable precisely because they had made the same errors before — errors that I wrote about at the time. In other words, I am very much susceptible to confirmation bias as well.
That noted, if indeed I am right, then that is good news for Apple: I suspect the company is in better shape than the last week of hysteria suggests.
Good examination from one point of view of what happened to Apple last week. The Quarterly Call at the end of this month will be very interesting.
Sorry, Shawn, I must disagree.
The key to Apple’s success in any market is its integral combination of hardware and software.
You could potentially run non-Apple software on Apple hardware. But it would be such a disappointment.
You could run Apple software on non-Apple hardware. You’d have a Hackintosh. It works for a few, invested people.
The problem with the Chinese market is the, well Chinese version of the internet.
From what I understand, WeChat and QQ *are* essentially, the internet. One doesn’t use apps — one uses them.
This is disturbingly similar to something that I watched a few months ago. Facebook, in many countries, *is* the Internet. Going on the Internet is “going on Facebook”. Facebook subsidizes carriers to allow free “internet” access, as long as it’s through FB.
See Rohinghya.
What I can’t understand is Apple’s decision to terminate the SE (and effectively terminate the iPod). Without a flow of new customers coming into the ecosystem who is going to upgrade?
Thompson makes the common analyst mistake — believing he understands Apple’s business better than the top managers at Apple do. (guess Thompson never wonders why they’re managing the first trillion dollar company and he’s running a blog).
In particular this nonsense:
…he states that, but provides no evidence. It’s absurd to believe Apple/Cook assumed iphones would be in growth quarters…uh, forever. First because the premise just not plausible. And second, considering the data Cook has available to him that we do not, it’s not plausible that he believed that premise.
This piece is just more analysts just selling their own product. Which happens to be made up blog posts.