Thanks for posting the link, chinacat. I enjoyed the article/graphs and I'm including this comment by Wiseyou, a person who I mentioned several months ago would be a welcome addition to this board. He's a professor at Rutgers University, frequent international traveler to China and India, and, in addition to being an obviously satisfied user and proponent of Apple products, always posts thoughtful comments to Apple-related articles on Seeking Alpha. I'm not suggesting everyone on this forum will agree with everything he writes, but I admit to enjoying commentary from a person who is specific about their thought process and gives *reasons* for their conclusions and expectations.
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Comment made in reference to the Seeking Alpha article, "Here We Go Again: Time To Buy Apple Shares Cheap After Earnings Concerns"
Wiseyou Comments (665) |Following |Send Message |
On February 1, Apple will announce its Q1’18 earnings, representing the 3 months of October through December 2017. Every evidence-based report that has come out to date suggests that Apple’s Q1’18 will not only exceed Q1’17 significantly but will exceed Q1’16 representing the Christmas of 2015. Many Apple watchers believe that Apple’s revenues will exceed $100 billion for the first time, about 15% higher than the top end of their guidance range of $84-$87 billion.
So, why did Apple stocks fall 5% in the past week? First, there were rumors of reduced demand for the iPhone X, which some people claimed will reduce the Q2’18 earnings. Since Q2’18 has barely begun, these rumors are based on supply chain reports. But, a reduction in orders for iPhone X components is not surprising since Apple sales and revenues for Q2 is typically half of Q1. IPhone sales should and do decline every year. The question is whether they are declining more than usual and nobody has the actual numbers.
But there are are indications that iPhone X sales was astonishing high in China in Q1’18, e.g. 7 million of a total of 14 million iPhones. Many Americans don’t realize that the upcoming Chinese New Year is the single most important holiday of the year, sort of like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter all rolled up into one giant 2-week celebration. Many Chinese count their birthdays from the Chinese New Year, not from their actual birth date. The Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is when everybody shower gifts to their relatives, friends, and people that work for them.
A second reason that some people may be down on Apple stocks is because of the recent “battery throttling-gate”. In fact, many lawyers have jumped on the bandwagon and several dozen lawsuits have been filed against Apple, claiming that it throttled its iPhones in order to get people to buy new iPhones. Apple offered to replace batteries of all iPhones that show problems for only $29, a $50 reduction from its usual price of $79. Millions of people are crowding into Apple stores over the past 3 weeks, to replace the batteries in their iPhone 6, 6S, and even 7. It is true that battery replacement extends the life of iPhones. But, I believe that it will not stop or slow down the sales of new iPhones. That is because people are giving their old iPhones to their children, parents, and other relatives. They buy new iPhones for themselves.
A third reason for Apple bears to sell Apple stocks is the HomePod. Already 3 months late, Apple’s smartspeaker has ceded ground to the long established Amazon Echo but also the Google Mini and Maxi Home. At $349, the HomePod is more expensive than the Amazon Dot ($49), Echo ($150), and Google Mini ($50). The higher end Google Maxi is $390 and Sonos just lowered the price of their competing high-end smartspeaker capable of using Alexa to $349. Many reviews have concluded Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant are much better than Siri. Some people think that HomePod is DOA (dead or arrival).
A lot of people don’t remember what it was like when Apple first launched their iPod, iPhone, and iPad. In all three cases, people scoffed at these devices as redundant, expensive, and copies of existing technology. Remember people comparing the iPod with much cheaper MP3 players at the time, the iPhone against the Blackberry and Nokia, and the iPad against laptops? However, all three series of devices not only sold well but ended up dominating the market. The iPod revolutionized the music market and killed off MP3 devices. The iPhone of course became the best selling smartphone of all time. The iPad now outsells all tablets.
I predict that the HomePod will revolutionize the smart speaker market just like the iPod revolutionized the music industry, the iPhone revolutionized the cell phone industry, and iPad revolutionized the computer market. The HomePod will not only be the best sounding speaker for the price but it will possess two other characteristics that none of the other smart speakers can match. It will be private and secure.
The privacy and security issue is more important than people think. If your smartspeaker has access to your Android phone, it means that anybody who has voice access to your smart speaker will have access to your private information, from contacts to messages and emails, and can order goods and services on your credit card. This includes children in your household, voices from your television or radio, or recordings of your voice. In fact, on your Echo device, Alexa will offer to sell you things and, if you say yes, the order will go through. You can’t change your mind and cancel the order. To do so, you have to go to their Amazon web site.
Millions of people have Echo devices in their house without realizing that somebody can just take their Echo device and order anything they want from Amazon. The default status of the Echo device is “Voice Purchasing On, Confirmation Code off” (http://tinyurl.com/y9r...). If you have a 5-year old child in your house, imagine what happens if he or she engages in a conversation with Alexa. “Hey, Alexa, I would like a pizza.” Alexa responds by saying, “I can order the pizza for you _________. What kind of pizza would you like?...”. Your child says, “Oh, a pepperoni pizza.” Alexa says, “It will be delivered in 10 minutes.” This is how insecure the Amazon Echo is and the vast majority of people don’t have any idea that this could happen in their house now.
On an Amazon Echo, even if you were to turn on confirmation code so that you have to say a confirmation code to order things, anybody within earshot can hear that code. Worse, if if there is voice recognition, people can record you saying the code and play it back. All voice recognition are easily fooled by a recording. It is far too easy to order things on Amazon Echo and the Google Home devices or to connect the devices to your home devices.
At the present, Apple is the only company that is serious about your privacy and security. It is interesting that some reviewers complain about HomePod’s privacy and security features. For example, Mike Prospero on Tom’s Guide (http://tinyurl.com/yas...) complained that Siri only recognizes one account at a time, the account of the person who set the HomePod. What does he expect? He also complained that you have to make your phone call on your cell phone and then hand off to HomePod. Well, if anybody can initiate a phone call on your iPhone through your HomePod, you might as well open up your iPhone to anybody. He points out that Apple has stringent security rules for HomePod interactions with HomeKit, that companies have to show software certification to the HomePod. Finally, nobody has access to your interactions with Siri, not even Apple under subpoena. This is not true for Alexa or Google Assistant. I am glad that Apple is paying attention to privacy and security on the HomePod (http://tinyurl.com/yao...).
I believe that Apple will do very well in 2018. The Q1’18 will likely exceed Q1’17 by double digits. The same is likely to happen for the rest of the quarters. Apple will be adding 3D Face ID to their iPhone 8 (http://tinyurl.com/ybc...) and iPads in the coming months, and perhaps in the Macs, giving them added security and major advantage over the competition. The Mac Pro will come out in 2018, giving Apple dominance in the pro desktop category. The iMac Pro has been almost universally acclaimed by professional users. I think that HomePod sales will add $10 billion to the revenues of Apple, a new source of revenues and earnings, as well as a platform for a secure voice-commanded home device control. Initial reviews have been quite positive (http://tinyurl.com/yag...). Finally, the HomePod should boost Apple Music subscriptions, since it is designed to use Apple Music.
28 Jan 2018, 08:41 AM