Apple’s precarious and pivotal 2019

Last week, Apple “had to do something they almost never do. They had to revise their earnings guidance. Downward,” M.G. Siegler writes for 500ish Words. “The stock was halted. Yikes… The company is now the 4th most valuable corporation in the world. That sounds like a great thing until you remember that until recently, it was the most valuable company in the world — and for much of the past several years, this was the case by far.”
“Tim Cook’s letter to shareholders on the matter is fascinating. On one hand, he makes a very simple case: chalk it up to China,” Siegler writes. “On the other hand, all of that could have been explained in one or two paragraphs. Cook’s letter is nearly 1,500 words long.”
In one part of his missive, “Cook is basically making a case for the end of buying phones at full price each year and instead, a world in which you pay Apple in perpetuity to constantly get the new iPhone. This is — wait for it — a service! The name is even right there for the taking: iPaaS — iPhone as a Service,” Siegler writes. “And it’s a service Apple already has, in the form of the iPhone Upgrade Program! Unfortunately, it’s not a great service right now — I’m a member — as it’s largely outsourced to a third-party, Citizens Bank. Cook is suggesting that Apple is going to put a lot more emphasis here. Which makes a lot of sense, both to help continue to obfuscate the true price of the iPhone, but also to keep that all-important base of users locked in. It’s also Apple’s most interesting inroad to an ‘Apple Prime’ offering. That is, an all-encompassing suite of services you pay Apple for — just like Amazon Prime, with all that offers from an Amazon-perspective.”
Much more in the full article – recommended – here.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, as “precarious” as you can get when you’ve just brought in close to US$1 billion per day for the last 90 some odd days in a row. Oh, yeah, and with $237.1 billion in cash on hand as of November; more than that now.
Filed under “oh-so-precarious.”
Quotes with which we’re sure Cook & Co. are quite familiar:
Change before you have to. — Jack Welch
I think money is a wonderful thing because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback. — Steve Jobs
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Once again: We’d really like to see a way to pay for all of the Apple services we choose for one price. Give us a bunch of tick boxes and let us choose our combination of iCloud storage, Apple Music, iTunes Match, etc. and let us pay a single price for all of our choices. — MacDailyNews, October 17, 2016
For more about the idea of “Apple Prime,” please read: “Apple ‘Prime'” by Kevin Williams from Practical Tech February 26, 2016.
SEE ALSO:
Apple plans to launch TV streaming service first in the U.S., then swiftly expand globally with free original content – October 23, 2018
Apple plans to give away original content for free to device owners as part of new digital TV strategy – October 10, 2018
We might be inching closer to ‘Apple Prime’ – June 28, 2018
Apple reportedly considering subscription bundle of Apple Music, News and original video content – June 28, 2018
Apple is building a media platform like we’ve never seen before – June 27, 2018