SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the it-worked-until-it-didn't...-now-what? dept.
Apple has had an incredible decade. Since the iPhone debuted in 2007, the company's sales have jumped tenfold. The stock has soared over 700%. And up until last November, it was the world's largest publicly traded company. But two weeks ago, Apple issued a rare warning that shocked investors. For the first time since 2002, the company slashed its earnings forecast. The stock plunged 10% for its worst day in six years. This capped off a horrible few months in which Apple stock crashed about 35% from its November peak. That erased $446 billion in shareholder value—the biggest wipeout of wealth in a single stock ever.
[...] Despite the revenue growth, Apple is selling fewer iPhones every year. In fact, iPhone unit sales peaked way back in 2015. Last year, Apple sold 14 million fewer phones than it did three years ago.
[...] In 2010, you could buy a brand-new iPhone 4 for 199 bucks. In 2014, the newly released iPhone 6 cost 299 bucks. Today the cheapest model of the latest iPhone X costs $1,149! It's a 500% hike from what Apple charged eight years ago. [...] In 1984, Motorola sold the first cell phone for $4,000. The average price for a smartphone today is $320, according to research firm IDC. Cell phone prices have come down roughly 92%. And yet, Apple has hiked its smartphone prices by 500%!
[...] Twelve years ago, only 120 million people owned a cell phone. Today over five billion people own a smartphone, according to IDC. [...] now iPhone price hikes have gone about as far as they can go. [...] A publicly traded company that makes most of its money from selling phones is no longer telling investors how many phones it sells!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 23 2019, @03:10AM
I've played with my girlfriends surface and I really liked it and was very impressed. She squealed with delight as she could see how impressed I was and how much I was enjoying it.
Like most people, I am not a fan of Windows 10, but as far as the Surface goes, for a similar price of a iPad Pro you get a real laptop that works also very well as a tablet and comes with a real OS that can run real applications and not just dumb single-function apps.
This is Apple's problem: They have lost their imagination and are currently releasing products based on momentum built up during the Steve Jobs days. Their obsession with "thin" is an obsessive compulsion. A Surface-like device running full-fleged version of OSX is something I really would have expected Apple to come out with, certainly not Microsoft. Apple today feels like the stagnant Apple from the mid-90s that almost ended up going bankrupt. Unfortunately there is not Steve Jobs to come to the rescue this time.