While the relatively modest iPad updates might have led to a flurry of ‘Apple is doomed’ reports from analysts, an early roundup by Fortune suggests that the consensus view so far remains positive. Most are rating it a buy or overweight – meaning they expect it to outperform typical stocks – with the majority setting a target price in the $112-120 range …
While some were impressed by the product announcements – Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brian White describing the iPad Air 2 as “shockingly thin” and the Retina iMac as “amazing” – most were focused more on the iPhone 6/Plus and Apple Pay.
Most noted the early success of the iPhone 6/Plus, with Chinese sales opening today. Baird’s William Power said that Apple Pay would “open a new chapter for the Apple ecosystem,” while RBC’s Amit Daryanani noted the “potential recurring revenue from Apple Pay transactions.”
Morningstar’s Brian Colello viewed the Retina iMac as a precursor to an Apple television: “Our only real surprise was the quality of the retina as its 5k display has more pixels than even the most-advanced Ultra HD TVs. We view this 5K display as the type of high-quality (and likely high-priced) screen that Apple will likely include in any potential full TV products. ”
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Apple is not ‘doomed’. They were just updating their iPad and Mac product lines.
It is really too bad then that they did such a bad job at actually updating the iPad and iMac product *lines*.
Honestly, stop and look at what Apple did in that ~90 minute presentation. They spent around a third of it comparing themselves to Android, while completely glossing over how bad iOS8 uptake is compared to previous versions of iOS, and repeating what they already presented last month. They were over 30 minutes into their 90 minute presentation before they mentioned anything new at all.
They released a brand new iPad Air 2, which was a decent upgrade, they released a truly impressive new 5K Retina 27″ iMac, and they released an upgrade to the Mac Mini.
For the iPad Mini 3 they added TouchID. That was it. That was their entire “upgrade” for the iPad Mini 3. They didn’t upgrade the processor, they didn’t improve the camera, they didn’t incorporate a better screen, they add one singly little feature. As for the iMac product line, they didn’t upgrade anything. They introduced a single new iMac product and didn’t even do a spec bump to any other iMac. The only product *line* that actually got any sort of significant upgrade was the Mac Mini. Which, really needed an upgrade, but for all of the impressive upgrades done it was really just a bunch of catching the Mac Mini up to where the rest of the Mac products have been for a while. And we were supposed to get excited by this? One upgraded iPad Air, one TouchID added to last year’s product, one new Retina 5K iMac, and catching the Mac Mini up to every other Mac?
Then, to take things from we got a new iPad Air and 5K iMac, to “Apple is doomed” was following up with some very short-sighted and blunderous seeming moves like keeping the failing A5 processor in the lineup for another year, and keeping the anemic and honestly way too small nowadays 16GB as the lowest storage option and not doing anything to improve any other iMac. This reeks of greed, but to me signals a much worse scenario.
Is this the beginning of the Balmer era for Apple?
To me the shift from Gates to Balmer was the fundamental shift of Microsoft from being engineering and design driven to accounting and business driven. Is this the beginning of Apple being driven by some bean counter instead of the innovators and engineers and designers? It isn’t like these creation types have left Apple, but it seems like they are making less and less of the calls. There is no engineering benefit to keeping the iPad Mini 1 in the lineup. There is also no engineering benefit to keeping the bottom storage level at 16GB. There are many engineering pitfalls in these actions though. Pitfalls that are just now starting to rear their head with the woes of updating Apple products to iOS8, and not just two, three, or four year old devices, but devices that were being sold by Apple just a month ago or even right now, today. The only benefit to doing these things is in some ledger that an accountant will be pouring over. This all reeks of some accountant looking at the ledger and deciding that they can make a few more bucks this quarter if they keep the A5 for another year. This all reeks of some accountant deciding that by keeping a barely usable 16GB as the bottom level that they determined that X percentage of buyers will move to the next level and this will increase their profits for the next few quarters.
The problem with this type of thinking is that after next quarter’s ledger looks so good you have customers who are upset with the company for selling them such poor quality products. Customers who start to feel that Apple isn’t any different or better than Samsung or any other third-rate producer. Why pay for an Apple product that is barely functional at the time of purchase and can’t be upgraded to the new operating system coming out next year when they can get the same thing from any Android manufacturer for a fraction of the cost?
The accountants will then be baffled when next year the books don’t look as good as they did when they started making decisions. So, they will make more decisions based on artificial realities created by spreadsheets. Which will usually result in poorer quality products and less differentiation for the company. Which will drive more customers away, but analyst and Wall Street will love the moves, because these fields are usually dominated by the same types of business school bean counters.
This isn’t some flight of fancy on my part. It is a very real process that has happened time and time again. A lot of companies never survive the transition from their founder. Many times this is because the vision, in this instance design and engineering vision, is lost and the people who can’t see beyond a column in a ledger start making decisions on how to make the total cell on the spreadsheet look good for next quarter.
I hate to say this, I really hate to say this because I have never said it before, but this is the first time where I watched an Apple event and honestly, truly felt that this would have never happened had Steve Jobs still been in charge. I don’t believe for a second that Steve would have ever allowed such crippled products to be sold, to lack such a vision of the future.
And that is what truly makes me cautious of Apple’s future. To many of their decisions seem to be geared toward immediate financial gratification for the company with no view of the long term consequences.
care to put your money where you mouth is abundantly at?
Awesome
how does GOOG miss their earnings and the stock still rise? if AAPL beats the stock still goes down.
Hedge funds and mutual funds greatly impact Apple prices. It’s way Steve Job’s called out hedge funds several times for artificially lowering Apple prices.
Google has far more loyal investors than Apple has. They believe in the company and stick with it through thick and thin. Apple investors are only interested in making money and don’t give a damn about the company. They sell off their stock for any reason at all. Apple seems to have attracted all the useless vampire investors.
Laughing boy, you are a riot!
Google is a software company that enjoys the new world multiples because of lower perceived risk. Apple is considered a hardware company with greater perceived risk. “Perceived” is the keyword to watch.
I don’t think anyone has taken a pulse on how Apple investors think; nor Google investors. It is almost an uncollectable fact. That is why your hypothesis is laughable.
With the increased margins on iPads and iPhones its easy to buy Apple stock. Most consumers are going to skip the 16 GB entry models of the iPhone 6 and 6 plus and iPad Air 3. Apple is selling many more mid tier tier models now and increasing the profit margins significantly.
This is an astute comment – As the iPhone 6 plus and the new iPads are driving us to greater mobility and greater computing power, the storage (which Apple makes more money on) will also increase. I do expect this to have an impact on margins in the coming quarters. But one catch is that the iPhone 6 plus, which is the prime driver of margin growth, may have supply issues. This would have to be the single most important thing that Mr. Cook would be looking to resolve.
The jacktards insist that Apple has lost its “magic”. Whatever the hell that means. Apple is a consumer tech company like any other consumer tech company. The odds are of them pulling off some groundbreaking tech at every event is next to nil. The tech business has always been about evolutionary upgrades and Apple is no exception. The freaking idiots who always expect Apple to show some miracle product and then are disappointed when it doesn’t happen are just plain stupid. Some of Apple’s offerings were nice and others were somewhat weak but that’s just par for the course.
Apple has decided that 95% of consumers do not need powerhouse computers to simply run Facebook, fetch email, watch Youtube and run some word-processing program. To the power user most of these entry computers make no sense, but that’s what CTO is for. People are even complaining that they don’t like what Tim Cook wears to host the event. For tech people, how stupid is that to talk about. They tweeted they didn’t like the jokes either. Apple will now be required to hire stand-up comedians to host the TECH events. Apple should stop these events. No one seems all that pleased with their new products and obviously Wall Street hates them.
I agree with you that they should stop holding events like this one. They really didn’t present anything truly worth an event at this one. The 5K iMac was impressive and the iPad Air 2 was nice. However, nothing that they presented really needed an event. A press released and a silent release to the Apple Store would have been more than enough.
Having this event was a blunder. There just wasn’t enough for an event.
Now, the event like they held for the iPhone 6/6+ and iWatch was a good event. They had a lot to talk about and present that was new and innovative at that event. Those events they should hold, but not events for something like this.
It seems impossible to please customers these days. The retina iMac is a huge leap in technology, and undeniably impressive. As for the iPad Air 2, which is a product that will be used by a lot more people, its update was more than expected.
In just one year: they shaved off a lot of thickness, they made it significantly faster, including much faster wireless and graphics, they dramatically improved the display with full lamination and worlds best anti-reflective coating, they improved the camera’s substantially, they added a second microphone and then there’s Touch ID.
How’s that not worth an event? Don’t watch it if you simply weren’t planning on buying the products or if you think only new product categories are worth mentioning.
The bitching is getting old. Apple didn’t pack the Macs with the level of a much needed spec bump as they could have because Broadwell still isn’t ready. The iPad Mini 3’s lack of an internal upgrade is pure marketing. They don’t want you to buy it. This product was inevitably meant to be a lower tier iPad, with not just the screen size to be the only differentiator from the iPad Air line. They want you to buy an iPad Air 2, which of course got the best upgrades. Or maybe the iPad Mini will match the specs of the iPad Air every other year.
But if you check out the Online Store, all older models of the iPads have only up to 32, with the 1st gen iPad Mini having just a 16GB model. This is purely to get consumers to purchase the new high end products. It’s just business.