Apple on track to become $2trillion company by December 2020?

[Deleted User]

Browntoa wrote: »

They seem to have their eye off the ball again

No 5G iPhone until late this year at the earliest , almost all their rivals have 5g models and are currently grabbing that market share from Apple on 24 - 36 month contracts that I suspect they will find hard to grab back those lost customers.

Their days of innovation seem to be over unless they are successfully hiding development

I’m afraid the same arguments that have been made ever since the iPhone came out in 2007.

Apple is doomed as they don’t have physical keyboard.
Apple is doomed as they don’t have 3G enabled phone.
Apple is doomed as they don’t have 4G enabled phone.
Apple is doomed as they don’t have a cheap iPhone.
Apple is doomed as they got rid of the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Apple is doomed selling a phone at £1000
Apple is doomed as the iPad is just a big iPhone.

The list can be endless.

I’m unsure why people continue to throw this word innovation around and say Apple don’t innovate. Apple never made the first mobile phone, computer, smart watch, wireless earbuds, tablets etc etc. What they try to do is make a product and build upon that product year on year in the way that see as being a benefit to their customer. I would rather have Apple products built today than built 5 or 10 years ago because they have got better year on year.

Apple is a great business, just like all the other big hitting companies out there, Samsung, Amazon, Facebook and Google. If I had the money I would be invested in all those companies for the long term.

Apodemus

MaxiRobriguez wrote: »

That's not what's happening in reality. Middle and lower income have seen a real terms pay cut since the financial crisis as pay lags inflation. Consumer debt growth took over the steering wheel but peaked in 2018 and has been withdrawing since.

The continued combination of those phenomena will result in fewer people in the middle/lower brackets spending large sums on expensive Apple tech. The middle/lower earners make up the vast bulk of the population.

While that may (perhaps) be true for the UK market, it is not true for the wider global market with a rising middle class, and a consequent rising demand for “luxury” products. Whether Apple can maintain their position in that market is open to debate, but the market will be there and is still growing.

Thrugelmir

Deleted_User wrote: »

Apple is a great business, just like all the other big hitting companies out there, Samsung, Amazon, Facebook and Google. If I had the money I would be invested in all those companies for the long term.

Once upon a time there were other big hitters. Kodak, Xerox, Polaroid, IBM, Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Pan American, Tower Records, Compaq to name a few.

[Deleted User]

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Once upon a time there were other big hitters. Kodak, Xerox, Polaroid, IBM, Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Pan American, Tower Records, Compaq to name a few.

True but with that thinking then no one would invest in companies period.

There is always a risk investing in the stock market all you can do is take proper advice and make your own individual choice based on what factors are important to you.

Browntoa

This today , Samsung made over half of ALL 5G phones sold in 2019.


https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/samsung-says-it-made-over-half-of-all-the-5g-phones-sold-in-2019

Almost all on long contracts of 24 -36 months as is the norm now in all the big markets.

danm

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Once upon a time there were other big hitters. Kodak, Xerox, Polaroid, IBM, Sony, Sharp, Panasonic, Pan American, Tower Records, Compaq to name a few.

interesting observation.


I think what companies do so much better now is make sure consumers are invested into the eco-system and integrate their products into an everyday need. when i switched from buying a kodak to a cannon there was no 'barrier' - if i want to buy a ASUS desktop today, i need to consider how invested i already an in the ecosystem/cloud and the opportunity cost to starting that over.


technology is so much more intergrated with everything we do - some people believe(d) that FB will go the way of myspace and the other social networks before them, but they have made there product almost an extension of the consumer rather than a consumer choice.


key is figuring out the next big shift.... be that AI, or bio-integration etc.

Thrugelmir

Deleted_User wrote: »

True but with that thinking then no one would invest in companies period.

There is always a risk investing in the stock market all you can do is take proper advice and make your own individual choice based on what factors are important to you.

I was merely expressing a view that even "great" companies often disappear totally, get taken over or that the advance of technology reduces their sphere of influence. Something that needs to be considered when one is investing for the longer term.

Apodemus

danm wrote: »

I think what companies do so much better now is make sure consumers are invested into the eco-system and integrate their products into an everyday need. when i switched from buying a kodak to a cannon there was no 'barrier' - if i want to buy a ASUS desktop today, i need to consider how invested i already an in the ecosystem/cloud and the opportunity cost to starting that over.
.

The Kodak analogy is a poor one. SLR cameras knew all along the importance of their ecosystem and there were big barriers to moving from one manufacturer to another. Try using Canon lenses on a Nikon! Kodak simply failed to grasp that it needed to move from being a chemical company to an electronics company.

sebtomato

Apodemus wrote: »

While that may (perhaps) be true for the UK market, it is not true for the wider global market with a rising middle class, and a consequent rising demand for “luxury” products. Whether Apple can maintain their position in that market is open to debate, but the market will be there and is still growing.

The rising middle classes are in China or India, two countries where the iPhone is performing very poorly...

sebtomato

Deleted_User wrote: »

I’m unsure why people continue to throw this word innovation around and say Apple don’t innovate. Apple never made the first mobile phone, computer, smart watch, wireless earbuds, tablets etc etc. What they try to do is make a product and build upon that product year on year in the way that see as being a benefit to their customer.

I would agree with that statement: Apple doesn't innovate in the sense that they are never first in the market to try new technologies (in effect, they buy those technologies/components from third-parties anyway). They just wait and see the outcome of other companies innovating. Apple's R&D budget is actually much lower than its competitors, in term of % of turnover.

Sometimes, they really lack insights/vision: for instance, they criticised heavily the Surface laptops from Microsoft, because it's tablets with keyboards and pens...just to do the same several years later (iPad Pro with the "amazing" pen).

The issue is that many Apple customers believe they have the latest and greatest technologies, and therefore are happy to pay a premium on their products. Great marketing but won't last forever.