Apple

[haselden10]

After losing their spot as the worlds biggest public traded company. Add to that they are losing more market share to android and now windows phone and with the release BlackBerry new phones imminent. Now alot of critics are Apple is going on a downward spiral does any one else agrea with that or not?
By the way I wrote this on a android tablet and I dont like Apple but they made phones and tablets cool.

 

[gazingdown]

How is this "Albion in the news"?

 

[haselden10]

It was put in the area my mistake now dont know how to delete it

 

[Dave the OAP]

It's cyclical. Apple have been innovative in the iPod/iPhone market and Samsung have brought out a product that looked exactly the same as the iPhone and made it cheaper....but they haven't copied it, no sireee, not at all....it looks nothing like the white iPhone ....nope...nah..nitch.

There have been copies of stuff made in the far east for hundreds of years and apple and Nokia are another long line.

 

[Bold Seagull]

I think shareholder confidence is well aware that for the first part of Tim Cook's tenure, a lot of what Apple had in the pipeline was still the work of Jobs, and his vision of where Apple should be going. Now the company is relying on Cook and his ability to steer Apple into new avenues, and so the share price is effected by that confidence or uncertainty.

I wouldn't confuse share value with market share though, I think you may be over emphasising Apple's dip in sales which only applied to predicted sales of the iPhone 5, whereas I think most of the other products all hit their predicted targets.

 

[beorhthelm]

...Samsung have brought out a product that looked exactly the same as the iPhone and made it cheaper.

yep, for one model. then moved on. meanwhile Apple have stuck with the same old design, but a bit longer.

anyway, the market cap of the company is pretty irrelevent to how the products do, and their loss of market share doesnt matter much if they are still making umpteen billions a year profit. really say more about the short termism of the traders who would "punish" a company with what were stellar results, only not as stellar as expected.

 

[tinx]

I read some where that with the amount of cash tey have in the bank, they could sell nothing for 10 years and still not be in debt. I think they'll be ok.

 

[Biscuit]

I use a Mac at work, a Macbook at home and my phone is an iphone 5.

I don't use these products because they're 'Apple', I use them because they are the best for what I use them for. It's as simple as that. There's no loyalty from me I'm afraid. Having said that it will take a hundred years for a windows PC to catch-up with my work Mac. It changed my entire workflow because it handles large media without breaking sweat and nothing crashes..

 

[TWOCHOICEStom]

No need to be alarmed at all. It's just the first year for a long time when they haven't continued to grow in a declining pc market.

Look how many iPhones and iPads they're selling. Ridiculous amounts. They have a totally unrivaled app/music ecosystem. They just need to continue to innovate, that's the challenge.

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

It was put in the area my mistake now dont know how to delete it

If you had been using iOS, this wouldn't have happened.

 

[Bozza]

They're still selling gazillions of phones and tablets.

The issue for them is: what is next. iPod, iPhone and iPad have driven the ridiculous growth over the last 7 or 8 years and had the company growing at the rate of a start-up despite their gargantuan size. Sooner or later that growth was going to slow and, unless they come up with something else groundbreaking* then there may well be a period of stagnation. Will the much rumoured Apple TV (as in a big TV set, not a small set-top box) be their big next product? Who knows.

I think they have definitely mis-read the market with phones, currently, however. When the iPhone was first launched, the phone function was still pretty core. Today, the multi-function nature of phones means they truly are pocket sized computers. As such screen real-estate is important and Apple are missing out on the c5"+ 'phablet' market. If this year's iPhone is just a 5s with a small spec-bump then I think they will see iPhone sales start to diminish - even I might jump ship.

If I do change phones, I still can't see my changing the computers we have at home - all Macs, and I also can't see me moving away from iOS tablets either.

(* - some will claim Apple have never done anything groundbreaking and point to earlier MP3 players, touchscreen phones and tablets. However, prior to Apple entering all of those markets, no-one had delivered product in the way Apple did.)

 

[Lady Whistledown]

I suspect Haselden10 is simply a secret Bozza account, designed to slip such matters on to the main board in "error".

Cunning.

 

[Lady Whistledown]

AAAAAAARGH. What's with all the double posting lately? I'm pretty sure I haven't got fat fingers

 

[beorhthelm]

I think they have definitely mis-read the market with phones, currently, however.

i'm not sure they have, just everyone else has addressed different sub-markets. it was always Job's stated aim to not compromise and to be high end products. the business is constructed around high margins rather than chasing market share. so the market has become much larger, and they inevitably become a smaller part of it as a result. you cant sell $500 phones in Asia, Africa or South America when someone will do one nearly the same for $250. you can get away with it in the west for only so long as the middle class, cash rich, trendy market isn't saturated.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Anyone interested in design, or simply a unique human story, then I'd thoroughly recommend Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs.

Certainly not a sycophantic book in anyway whether toward Jobs or Apple, but a real story about the birth of a company, the singular vision of one man, and how incorporating the importance of design into products transformed the technology industry.

As [MENTION=6886]Bozza[/MENTION] states, very few of Apple's products have been uniquely conceived by then, but an absolute attention to detail and wanting to get something absolutely right so that it was loved by it's users, goes some way to understanding the devotion the brand enjoys.

 

[Biscuit]

If this year's iPhone is just a 5s with a small spec-bump then I think they will see iPhone sales start to diminish - even I might jump ship.

I'm sure that'd depend on another phone being better than the what Apple were offering. The way I see it, the next iPhone might only be marginally better, but it's going to be judged by it's own yardstick because I can't see a decent competitor at the moment. No one has made a phone as good as the iphone5. It's ease of use and multi-tasking is fantastic, but it's the appstore that keeps me coming back. They'd have to get something drastically wrong now, as they have this stranglehold on the app/music market. Windows stores offer alternatives, but it's not in a position to challenge Apple yet. It's just about continuing to be innovative and delivering on big ideas - much easier said than done, mind.

 

[El Presidente]

Apart from as a timer for cooking pasta, has anyone found a decent use for Siri yet?