Food for thought as Apple enters the future without Jobs. An interesting read.
7 Reasons Apple is More Doomed Than You Think - Forbes
7 Reasons Apple is More Doomed Than You Think - ForbesApple is in the news for losing its rank for a time on Wednesday as the most valuable publicly-traded U.S. stock. And now Henry Blodget — who first became famous for the gap between his bullish reports on tech stocks and his bearish emails about them — is touting seven reasons why Apple is a buy.
But I think all those reasons are wrong and the stock has further to fall.
Apple fell $23 a share — dipping below $400 on April 17. According to Bloomberg, one of its audio-chip suppliers, Cirrus Logic, produced too much inventory — which analysts concluded meant that iPhone sales could fall short of analysts’ expectations.
Vernon Essi, Jr., an analyst at Needham & Co., wrote in a research report, “We blame Apple for losing its mobility mojo. This was simply an inventory overbuild for the iPhone 5 relative to Apple’s forecast.”
But this has not stopped Henry Blodget’s Business Insider from arguing that investors should buy Apple shares. According to the SEC, in 2000, Blodget issued a very bullish analyst report while at Merrill Lynch on a company called 24/7. The next day, he wrote an email claiming the company was “a pos [piece of ****].” This helped get him banned from the securities industry.
And in the article he co-authored, The bull case for Apple: Why the stock is not as doomed as some think, Blodget cited seven reasons for touting Apple as a buy. Here’s why I think his argument does not hold water.
Except for the iPad, the same was true for the last several years when Jobs was there. They was nothing really new just improvements on products that already existed.If Apple comes out with some insanely great new products, despite the lack of Jobs' showmanship, it has a chance to be innovative once again. Something in the realm if a better 4K TV experience, something in the realm of a fitness oriented iWatch could turn the page, especially if no one else has done it right. But since Steve's death, nothing really new has come down the pike, save for maybe the new Mac Pro. That's an original design. More stuff like that will turn more heads than larger smartphone screens.
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Worked perfectly for me, sinc. Interesting article!Not sure what you mean by back door, mine is a direct link to the Forbes story and works perfectly? Anyone else have issues with the link?
Asymco - InvulnerableGoogle was perceived as invulnerable. In contrast, Apple is seen as temporarily enjoying a stay of execution.
You know this is an old article eh SINC... 4/18/2013 almost a year old.Food for thought as Apple enters the future without Jobs. An interesting read.
7 Reasons Apple is More Doomed Than You Think - Forbes
Exactly. I totally agree.Apple isn't growing at the insane rate that they used to anymore and thus financial people spell doom for Apple simply because there stock dropped. Apple could make more money than any other company every year and it wouldn't make the stock company happy unless that number is getting bigger every year, for the most part what the stock market cares about is the potential for growth and right now its looking as if Apple may be hitting their ceiling.
Any new product started after Tim Cook would have been in the works for less than 3 years right now, so I don't think it's been long enough to say Apple has been less innovative since Tim took over. As I look at it Apple is really doing the same pattern they did when Steve was in charge. There was a 6 year gap between the iPod and the iPhone, the iPad came a little quicker at 3 years later but it's also essentially a big iPhone with software optimized for a bigger screen. Big disruptive products simply do not come along that often.
i think that was iMatt's point...
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Regarding Apple being "doomed", that seems like an overly dramatic statement. In my opinion they are still better poised than the other major tech players.
However, until Apple actually knocks something out of the park post Steve Jobs I agree that the doubt that they can achieve the same level of excellence will be there and is justified.
Jobs was a visionary. Tim Cook seems like more of a efficient taskmaster. He'll keep Apple churning out solid products, but will the breakthroughs be there? Everyone will just have to wait and see....
Ok guys, sorry I missed the tongue in cheek aspect of iMatt's post probably because SINC was being serious with his.Apple has been beleaguered and doomed since before the days when it really was beleaguered and teetering on the brink.
I guess a home run would silence some critics, but don't forget that like every other Apple home run, the next one will almost certainly be ridiculed by pundits.
Mac
iPod
iPhone
MacBook Air
iPad
... all huge hits (and pretty much the entire list of Apple game-changers in the last 30 years, except arguably Newton), most of them ridiculed to varying degrees at launch. I guess the iPhone stands as the exception. You can add the Mac mini as another success that was initially ridiculed, but I wouldn't include it in a list of game-changers.
Another thing they all have in common: only a small part of Apple's success was built on the 1.0 version of any of them. Mostly it was built on constant improvement and iteration.
So, here's my fearless prediction for Apple's next home run:
It will look like a great big flop to most critics. And it will indeed be expensive and underpowered at first. But it will be good enough to get critical mass and justify a second version. By version 2 or 3 it will be a big success. And then the usual suspects will either eat a little crow, or they will proclaim the "surprise" hit doomed by the arrival of cheaper competitors. And of course there will be lots of insults for anyone who would be fool enough to buy such a thing.
And yes, in case there's any doubt post 18 was completely tongue-in-cheek.
As Apple still has Ive who was/is very much apart of a modern Apple's success.until Apple actually knocks something out of the park post Steve Jobs I agree that the doubt that they can achieve the same level of excellence will be there and is justified.
Baloney. There was a parade of devices available for sale starting nearly 4 years before the iPod. As I noted above, the iPod was considered lame because it didn't have features that were already in the best-in-class devices when it was introduced. (But it did have iTunes!)Digital music players had not been around for very long when the iPod came out.
But multi-touch screens were not new. Various companies were working on the technology through the late 90's and early 2000's. The Microsoft Surface was actually released BEFORE iPhone.No one had done touchscreen phones before, so that was new. True the iPad was derived from the iPhone (other way around actually), but no one had tried that design with tablets before.
Touch-screen phones poised for growth - USATODAY.comBut the iPhone will have its fair share of rivals.
Shipments of this advanced strain of touch screens are projected to jump from fewer than 200,000 units in 2006 to more than 21 million units by 2012, with the bulk of the components going to mobile phones, according to a forecast by iSuppli Corp., a market research company.
"This new user interface will be like a tsunami, hitting an entire spectrum of devices," predicted Francis Lee, the chief executive of Synaptics Inc., a maker of touch sensors.
Synaptics' latest technology is in a growing number of cell phones, including LG Electronics Co.'s LG Prada touch-screen phone that launched this year in Europe and South Korea and handles gesture-recognition similarly to the iPhone.
Innovative is usually taken to mean first to market with an idea. As I've shown, Apple has never actually been first. With iPod, iPhone and iPad, they've taken existing tech and made a killer product that swept away the existing competition.fjnmusic; said:These were three hugely innovative ideas that helped Steve set the bar very high before his passing. I think the AppleTV is a great innovation and I've been using one or more since they first came out. A great invention that they don't promote enough. It seems that with Steve's passing some of the spell has worn off. Apple needs leadership and it certainly hasn't found it yet. Tim Cook is a good business manager but he certainly is no visionary nor is he the promoter that Apple needs.