Your taste in phones clearly sucks.

For what it's worth, at that time, I had a look at Microsoft per your rec. I bought a bunch of it. I also, reloaded up on Apple too. Been holding ever since.

This is how non dogmatic minds work.

This is the way I feel about the cameras too but most Asian exchange students (girls especially) prefer the more processed look of Samsung. They basically consider the slightly washed look a feature.

A lot of them use iphone apps to take pictures that basically auto applies makeup like filters (including some lightening it seems to me) and the results look rather Samsung-ish.

I think this may be a case of Android makers (Samsung in particular but others too) pandering to its customer base.

Uncle Warren agrees.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/30/warr...-recently.html

Objective analysis (in other words, not you) shows the cameras to work out equally, small pluses and minuses in both. Side by side shots show equal clarity, color, range, again with small pluses and minuses. Clearly you're just deluded.
Idiot says what?

Congratulations on listening to someone smarter than you, and losing less money on your Apple investment as a result. You're welcome!.

No, Microsoft is still crushing Apple by 120% return since I came here and preferred that over Apple.

Such a dumb argument, don't make me bump all the posts of your ripping Apple that have nothing to do with MSFT. I'd bet most funds own both instead of one or the other, point is completely irrelevant especially since they are in slightly different businesses as well.

Is it possible they are bumping prices to account for fledgling user growth? This is still their flagship product, with headphones and watches worth only 5% of revs. Interesting though that the latter are projected to grow by 35% in 2019 while iphone sales growth keeps going down every q. Makes me wonder when Amazon will launch a watch and eat Apples lunch again (hello siri)?

They are taking the high end in the increasing polarization of all kinds of retail industries.

Apple still dominates the high end in terms of brand cache, revenues, and profits. It's THE status symbol phone. The much talked about slowdown in sales for iPhone 7 Plus taught Apple a really hard lesson: Chinese consumers want the status symbol of having the most expensive phone on the market. This is true to a large extent in Asian markets, and is actually true to a pretty decent extent in the US. The high price is, in a perverse way, a feature. This is actually a pretty well studied phenomenon in marketing and branding.

Like I said before, Apple is basially the LV/Nordstrom/Bergdorf Goodman of the smartphone market now. That means ridiculous margins but it also means being boxed into the high end.

The iPhone XR is pretty much something like a "Nordstrom Rack" and it will help them pad sales numbers and reach some previously unserved customers (like kids of probable XS owners) but the market for XR is more limited than some people seem to assume. Furthermore, XRs being too successful may actually be detrimental to the Apple brand.

You see something similar on the laptop side with Apple blatantly ignoring the incredibly popular MacBook Airs. I am sure Apple knows upgraded MacBook Airs will sell like hotcakes but Apple does not want to cut into MacBook Pro 13" sales and is likely not too interested in selling "budget" machines.

Says the dude who jacks his ego off on internet forums all day....

Yeah, apparently, Apple is into this washed out look (beauty mode?) too now.

Valuation is starting to get a bit stretched by historical standards, no chance I'd advocate shorting this beast but I think it's time to be mindful of the fact that the stock is throughly outpacing total unit sales at this point. They are doing well in alternatives like the watch and services but make no mistake, the lack of unit growth in iPhone due to the market being saturated means the only choice is to keep raising prices & hope your loyal following doesn't notice the marginal difference in quality.

Apple is basically the Luis Vuitton of electronics. The big difference is Apple has basically 100% of luxury fashion electronics.

Apple unit sales growth has been consistent with smartphone growth overall. There is more room for margin growth still in the medium term. Apple upgrade and other financing programs make the stupidly priced phones more affordable (psychologically at least). The sheer amount of value smartphone creates in our lives also means it’s easy for people to justify buying a super expensive phone, especially one they are familiar with, giving apple more room to raise prices.

Meh I mean payment plan or not, I think analysts and the media underrate how savvy the consumer is especially the younger you go. A $1000-$1400 phone is what it is no matter how important it is to our lives. There are very solid alternatives across the smartphone market, the difference in quality between the worst/best continues to narrow. What helps Apple is their retention rate/brand loyalty but that still doesn't prevent the stock from being overvalued. Probably has benefited the most under Trump/new tax law but again that's reflected in the rising multiple.

i tend to avoid companies that build ****. or grow stuff, or extract stuff, or try to score patents. they require some fairly specific knowledge and its just not worth a casual investore to know enough to be worth investing in them.

so apple is out for me...i have a solid bunch of things that dont have tarrif risks, and dont require factories...among the riskiest investment there is. my approach is a select few tech stocks roku, square, align, shopify, netflix and if i feel a case of the ****s i buy banks reits and utilities.

apple is nevera bad buy though...they have a decent service business i just have better options

What are they doing with all their cash is the question?


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Let's just say phone lasts 2 years and is about 1200. That's 50 a month.

That's less than a dollar per hour. That's pretty close to what you end up paying for ~Zegna level of suits.

Many people who the polish of Apple iPhones (I am running Samsung S9+ and XS Max side by side now, and I am ditching the 9+ soon), will find the difference to be worth 1000+. I am in this situation after trying out the S9+ for a few months.

The problem is quite fundamental. Android users are generally speaking cheaper and tolerate more BS. This, in my experience, has meant apps and sites serve up more ads on Android versions. Android versions of the apps I used also crash more. For some god forsaken reason the search "box" on 2p2 (I don't use tapatalk) doesn't work on my S9+'s chrome.

Apple is going after people who are very willing to pay to not have to deal with all that BS. iPhones have their own annoyances but overall the experience is more polished.

Agreed. Thesis is simple: what you get for $500-600 annually doesn't even begin to compare with how much it has improved our lives (bar the philosophical 'being connected is bad' argument) and how much we use it. When any product is so cheap few will bother paying $200 bucks more annually if it even provides the tiniest bit of extra comfort.

The whole samsung slightly worse phone for a slightly lower price threat doesn't seem too relevant yet in such a situation where price << utility.

Samsung makes solid devices, I'm one of the weirdos that has switched back and forth between iPhone, Galaxy and I can say that Android doesn't bother me compared to ios. They are just different, obviously anecdotal but they aren't alone. Google's offering continues to improve... To suggest that the consumer doesn't care about what they spend on their device is short sighted based on the really strong economy. There will come a point when the utility will not match the price and given unit growth is stalling out, that will put a cap on the multiple.

Love the company, just saying the stock is overvalued short term and I think you'd get a much better point to enter if you were putting a new dollar to work. Everyone owns AAPL anyways, through the indices and mutual funds, its pretty unlikely most in a 401k don't have exposure. It's a market proxy so it's hard to get too excited either way.

There is still room for higher prices at least for another 5, probably another 10 years. The ceiling will get higher as China and India catch up to US.

I actually think 20PE is about right for AAPL. That implies only 5-7% long term growth depending on what you put down as cost of equity and AAPL's immediate short term growth prospects.

They will keep raising prices as long as people will pay them. That's how the market works.

No longer breaking out unit sales after this quarter, fiscal year. Wtf? Stock is responding in kind, need some kind of clarification otherwise this is bs.

Confirmed:

"Apple locked in a strategy of boosting prices to offset slowing sales..."

Market has spoken loudly on this issue... They can keep raising prices all they want but the arrogance that it won't affect unit sales is coming home to roost. That earnings call still is the big overhang on the stock, been shorting it off and on after stating above I wouldn't due to them not breaking out unit sales. Tim Cook is a hypocrite on transparency, still can't believe he'd allow this to happen.

The other thing that withholding unit sales has done is give power and credibility to every bit of bad news. The Nikkei article about supply slowdowns and a supplier saying orders were cut over the last week has caused extended panic selling whereas before it would dip and then brush it off. often very quickly.

Cook made a major miscalculation if he cares about share price. The corollary of that is that he would be smart enough to know that which means he has excellent reasons for not breaking out numbers any more despite that, which is bearish in itself.

I remember when Buffett was bragging the utility of the iPhone should make it worth $2k a device. All these analysts touting the higher ASPs... It's a smartphone, the market is becoming saturated even in some of their key emerging markets. Their retention rate and how often people replace their device is going to be tested in the years ahead, especially if the cycle turns.